Buzzcast
Buzzcast helps podcasters stay informed, inspired, and excited to keep podcasting.
Each week, Jordan, Kevin, and Alban break down the podcasting news, trends, tools, and creator debates that actually matter. We share what we’re seeing at Buzzsprout, what we’re testing ourselves, and what podcasters should pay attention to without chasing every new thing.
The goal is to help you keep podcasting without burning out. Expect honest opinions, practical takeaways, occasional rabbit trails, and a reminder that podcasting should be fun!
Buzzcast
Apple's Hidden Project To Help Podcasts Get Discovered
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
In this episode, the hosts reveal how Apple Podcasts is quietly helping listeners find more podcasts, discuss what the future holds for AI-generated podcasting content, and review YouTube's guide to podcasting on its platform. They also share what they're thankful (and maybe not-so-thankful) for this holiday season.
SOUND TREATMENT
APPLE EPISODE TOPIC TAGS
- Bumper Blog: Apple is quietly tagging podcast episodes by topic
- See if your podcast has been tagged using PodNews Apple Podcasts Episode Topic Viewer
FIRST PODCAST RECORDED IN A FIGHTER JET
- Watch/listen to this episode by Lead Balloon, it's fantastic!
100% AI-GENERATED PODCASTS
- How I Made One of the World's First 100% AI-Generated Podcasts by Eric Borgos
- Jordan recommends AIVA or Soundraw for AI-generated music
GUIDE TO PODCASTING ON YOUTUBE
- Best Practices
- Podcast Playlist Guide
- Monetization Guide
- Check out Meta's AI-generated video project, Make-A-Video
Kevin (37%), Jordan (32%), Alban (31%)
Contact Buzzcast
- Send us Fan Mail
- Tweet us at @buzzcastpodcast, @albanbrooke, @kfinn, and @JordanPods
Thanks for listening and Keep Podcasting!
It's some HP plasticky thing. It's ugly, but it got good reviews and it was like$100 Put on my desk. It works. Now, it does the thing where it takes the stuff on your screen and puts it on paper.
Alban:I just love how you're describing printing stuff. It's now on the paper thing.
Kevin:That's it's job. Right.
Jordan:I just want to let you know that your audio was the cleanest of all three of us. Like it was the least amount of work I've ever had to do editing audio on it was on yours because of that new mic.
Kevin:Earthworks ETHOS?
Jordan:Yes.
Alban:Yeah, I listened. And I found myself paying attention to more what Kevin said than to let either of us said when I was listening to the final, the content is always great. But Kevin's voice sounded really good.
Jordan:It was like so smooth and velvety. There were no harsh tones. It was just all, it was so nice.
Kevin:That's very nice of you to say. I do take it as a microphone compliment, though more than a voice comment. Because we've been talking for a long time. And I've never gotten those compliments before that microphone is doing its job.
Alban:No one's ever said you had a velvety voice before.
Kevin:Never heard that. I will say I thought it was a little bit over compressed. So I came into the RODECaster Pro and turned off the compressor adjusted a little bit. So hopefully it's even better. But yeah, I'm really happy with this microphone.
Jordan:Yeah, I was just so shocked. Because you said it was condenser, you said that you have to have a sound treated room. But it wasn't picking up anything. I mean, the thing is, is like we're constantly taking drinks, doing things like that. And usually our mics pick that up. But Kevin's like didn't at all. It was just so clean. It was weird.
Kevin:Yeah, well, one of the things that I do is I do ride my mute button. I don't know if you noticed that. But usually when I'm not talking on mute myself, which every now and then you guys will make a joke, you might see that I'm laughing, but you don't hear it. I forget to unmute myself, but I tried to write it to make editing a little bit easier.
Jordan:But even you know, you take a break in between like a sentence, like take a quick sip or something like that. And then like that will make it because you don't mute in between sentences. So there's certain things like that, that do get picked up in audio. But I mean, it didn't this time I was I was so surprised.
Kevin:That's great to hear. Yeah. Sounds like everyone needs an Earthworks.
Jordan:I would love to have one but living downtown, I don't think I could do it. I do think that my surroundings you know, even if I were to soundproof my room is, like spend like $20,000 I'm sure stuff would come in. Like there's no way.
Alban:Have you ever talked about where you live Jordan, like in comparison to non podcaster friendly activities.
Jordan:I don't think I have gone into it. I do live in a very busy downtown area. I'm a block away from the police station, the fire station. And then I'm also right next door to a lawnmower repair shop. And then on the other side of that right now, right outside my window actually is a furniture repair shop and they run their power tools, probably like 10 feet from me. And then and then you know being downtown, you know, yell off like drag racers, we get a lot of loud people at the bar across the street from me. So it's not a very conducive area. Oh, and I'm two blocks away from the train station too. So you get train horns as well. It's yeah, it's literally the worst place I could possibly live to be a podcaster.
Alban:Do you know the Busy Town series the Richard Scary like kid books where there's all the animals like riding around do all this stuff.
Jordan:Yeah
Alban:That's where I imagine you live now. Lawnmower repair shop, police station, drag racing, bars, you live in these--
Jordan:I think that's a really good representation of where I live. A lot of people out and about.
Alban:Well, it's a testament to your editing ability because I never hear it in the final episode, and you definitely don't hear it in Dreamful. So you do a great job of cleaning all that up
Kevin:True.
Jordan:Well, and you have new paneling to in the back.
Kevin:I just went on the website measured up my wall ordered some just to see how they perform. So far. I think I like them. They are much much thinner panel than like a foam acoustic panel that you would get off Amazon or something. There's varying qualities of course of foam. I had some of the thicker foam was almost two inches thick and does a really good job but it doesn't look very neat. Like it's very hard to get those squares exactly right. So the pattern was always a little bit wonky. They're hard to adhere to your wall. Anyway, felt right solves all those problems are like maybe a quarter inch thick. They come with these very sticky pads almost like to the point where these things are never coming off the wall. I had to actually pull one off when I was installing it and you can get the pad off but the sticky thing is stuck to the wall and that's not coming off without trashing the drywall. So I'm going to sell the house with these on the wall.
Jordan:I wonder if you could sub the Command Strips, you know the ones that you like pull the tab and it stretches it out and then the adhesive comes off. It would be really expensive, but I feel like that would maybe be like a less damaging alternative.
Kevin:Yeah, I think I think you're right, if you definitely wanted the flexibility of taking them off the wall, then that would be a good idea. I'm throwing in the towel going all in. As long as I live in this house, there's going to be some sort of acoustic treatment on these walls. And so even if I tear up the walls pulling these off, because I want to put something else up, I'm just gonna put something else over the trust walls. So.
Jordan:Yeah, I've looked at those exact panels a few times. And I really liked them. I mean, their website, I know exactly what you're talking about. And their website is so fun to like, look around and play with. And you can design your own kind of like panel mural for your wall. And it's super cool. But I just wasn't sure if it would actually be correct sound treatment for like a podcaster. So that's really cool. That actually is working for you.
Kevin:Yeah. So Alban and I were talking about this morning. It's not the way I think there's a difference. And I'm not an expert. But I think there's a difference between like sound containment, like if I was being noisy in here, and I didn't, I didn't want to serve anybody in the outside, or if they're being noisy on the outside, and I don't want to hear it in here. That's different than just knocking down the echoes and the reverb in the room. So my goal is just to knock down the reverb. So it's not a huge room, but it's it was all hard surfaces, it's wood floors, it's a flat roof. If you don't have something on the walls, then you're going to hear a lot of reverb in my voice is gonna sound terrible, like I'm using, like a laptop microphone or something is what it would sound like. As soon as I put something up on the walls, whether it be a curtain or a felt panel, or even just like throw a dog bed in here or a beanbag or something that starts coming down immediately. And so these spelt panels are great for that, but they don't offer a lot of noise insulation.
Alban:Yes, the difference between sound proofing and sound treatment like sound treatment is going to cut out the reverb, it's going to help make the audio sound better. But oftentimes, we want a little bit of soundproofing too. I've got somebody doing lawn work outside of my house, you've got one at your house, Kevin, Jordan's probably repairing all the broken lawn mowers next door.
Kevin:But that might be my next project because my son is a drummer. And it is so so loud. He plays acoustic drums. And so I've talked with someone and they said they make these heavy sound blankets. They're not just like a regular curtain. It's almost like a weighted blanket. And you've got to figure out a way to mount it up in front of windows and doors. Maybe I'll look into getting a couple of those for him and seeing how they work because I do have these big windows right next to me where I record and so if I can have a blanket like an acoustic I don't know, I don't know what do you call it a soundproofing blanket or something?
Alban:I think it might be like a acoustic blanket. I mean, it's if you go to the movie theaters, have you ever noticed, you know, just seems like these big curtains like over the whole side of the movie theater? I think those are acoustic blankets to like, really dampen all the sound?
Kevin:Yeah. So you don't hear the movie playing in the theater next door.
Alban:Exactly.
Kevin:Yeah.
Jordan:I know a lot of people will use those moving blankets because they're like, thick and quilted. You know, I'm talking about and they work really well. I think they're probably made of the same stuff.
Kevin:I'm experimenting. I really like felt right. It's hard balance to figure out what's something that's like, not super expensive. It does the job that you're trying to accomplish with acoustically treating your room. And it looks okay to like, like, if you're trying to do it in your house. You don't want it to be super ugly. Like I don't want to have a room that just has moving blankets all hung over the walls.
Jordan:You know, what I actually did for my room was I went to a craft store and I bought two I think it's like 48 by 32 inch canvases. And they're like student canvases. So they're cheap. They come in packs of twos. It was like 20 bucks, right? Because they were on sale. And I took my daughter's toddler mattress and I actually cut the mattress open and then I cut the foam of the mattress and half when she was done with it. Obviously, She wasn't still using it.
Kevin:Now she's sleeping on the floor.
Jordan:Yeah, she had graduated to a big girl bed, but I'd cut that mattress in half. And then I just upholstered those canvases with curtain fabrics I bought at Walmart, the whole project cost me like 25 bucks. And I have two huge acoustic
Kevin:It's very crafty. panels.
Jordan:Yes.
Alban:Yeah, that's really smart.
Jordan:Yeah, they look really nice, actually.
Alban:What makes it so hard, Kevin is you're on a budget, like you want to not spend a ton of money. And this is an area that there is professional stuff out there that can cost 10s of 1000s of dollars. And you don't know how well it's going to perform until it's attached to the wall in your house. And so like, you know, you're only doing it once, and you really don't want to regret it. And you know, it's not coming back off the wall and getting shipped back to whatever the company is. And so it's just a intense purchase, because as soon as it's up, it's not coming down.
Kevin:Yeah, I'm with you. So I think the best that we can do. I mean for the sake of this, you know, a great business venture, the best we can do for the sake of people who podcast on Buzzsprout and listen to the show is I think we all need to continue our endeavors into soundproofing and treating our rooms and report back so that everyone doesn't have to go through the pain. We can just go through the pain ourselves of tearing up our walls.
Alban:Well I can tell you as far as sound treatment goes, the thing I've really liked the most was getting bass traps and putting up in the corners of the room. I don't have them up in this room. Now I used to have in my old office and they put them up in here, but they cut down on reverb like to an insane amount, so we have them up in the Buzzsprout studio at the office. And I remember the first time right when Travis put them up, and I walked in there and I was like, Whoa, is quiet in here. And it was strange because I use don't notice the room tone. You know, the whole office like even when I was talking, there's a lot of noise, little homes and and stuff. And as soon as you walk in that studio, it's like, everything gets way quieter. So really is the bass traps to do a lot of that work. And it's really, really noticeable. Yeah, I think we did the Auralex is that was called Kevin.
Kevin:Yeah, they're a little bit more expensive. I found some bass traps on Amazon that were like maybe six or $7 each, and I've got them in the four corners of this room. And those are fantastic. Definitely get those no matter what you do, we can put a link in the show notes.
Jordan:Dan Meisner had written a blog on the bumper blog, and it was titled Apple is quietly tagging podcast episodes by topics. So for some time, he found that they had started tagging podcast episodes with topics and I thought maybe that would be you know, just like keywords pulled from like a transcript or something like that. But it's not exactly that. And Podnews had reported on this and they actually built a Topic Viewer that's really cool. So you can go to their site. I'll link to it in the show notes. And you can search for a podcast or for your podcast and see if your podcast has been tagged by Apple, it seems like they've only tagged a select amount of shows. It's really not that many Buzzcast wasn't tagged, but I did find that my podcast was tagged. But here's the thing, they actually didn't tag all of my episodes. So I had to go through and find which episodes were tagged by Apple. The example that I pulled was dreamfields Pride and Prejudice episode. And what's so cool about this is that what they tagged for topics is things like British novels adapted into films, Jane Austen characters, British novels, British romance, English novels, nobility, things like that, even though those are not words that I say in the show. It seems like they have some sort of like aI polling that information. And it's funny because I actually don't have transcripts for my podcast, either. So they must have something going through the actual audio and saying like, this is what I think relates to that.
Alban:Yeah, we know that Apple has been using automatic transcripts. For a while they've been doing that in the background for some of the biggest shows, they seem to be transcribing them. I know, Dan surmised, that maybe the what they're doing is some kind of like NLP, like natural language processing to do topic modeling and try to figure out based on all the words here, it's very likely related to the subjects. This is also what like Google is doing with every blog post on the internet. They're like, okay, based on all the words used, we think it's related to this topic. And here's the types of things it should rank for, is really powerful when you're trying to figure out when are we going to surface these episodes, because for a long time, SEO and Apple podcasts, at least really just meant it's got to be in the title of the podcast, or it's got to be in the title of the episode, or maybe the author tag, like there really wasn't super detailed. And I'm guessing that's what this is all being used for. Like if you search British novels adapted into film does Dreamful come up? I haven't tried it on Apple podcasts. I'm guessing that's what they're probably trying to do is figure out a way to surface the right episodes for certain searches. This one's a little like direct that we're searching the exact topic.
Jordan:My podcast shows up when I search "British novels adapted into films" Dreamful pops up, and it's right there, Pride and Prejudice.
Alban:And there we go.
Jordan:That is so cool.
Kevin:It's great. Yes.
Jordan:What a great tool. That's amazing.
Kevin:Yeah, I mean, this is exactly how you would go about building the backend tech and the data that you would rumble through and organize if you were building a really powerful search engine. The challenge of course here is that it's very different than a typical search engine that says searching words that people write and publish to the web you're searching you're trying to do the same thing with audio so it probably must start with a transcript of some sort. But really super interesting that Apple is interested in continuing to invest in podcast technology. That's super exciting. Apple has always been really good and healthy for growing podcasting right they I don't know I don't I don't want to get like too excited because because Apple is a big players. They have a lot of labor, a lot of power, but it's like they've never really done anything, like really harmful for independent creators are gonna get it I mean, people are going to make arguments that like Apple subscriptions takes 30% of the revenue but like just in the last episode, we're talking about, like how they justify that by helping you grow your audience and show it to more people and tools that they use that they build into their player to promote your subscription offerings and stuff like that. I don't know I don't want to sound too much like an Apple fanboy. But I'm excited that Apple continues to be excited and continue to invest in podcasting in a healthy way. So them pouring effort, energy, money resources into a search engine. That is really Powerful where you can search things like British novels adapted for film, I guess you didn't episode like that. And it surfaces Jordans podcast. That's great. It's gonna help people find more podcasts, people who find more podcasts become podcast fans. So it helps all of us I, again, I feel like Kevin, you're not seeing something here, like they're going to use this in a bad way. It's going to hurt us. But I don't see it yet, like Apple's been in the podcasting for a really long time. And they just continue to do good stuff for podcasters.
Alban:It's so funny. We're in this space where people are constantly saying, like, how do I grow my podcast? How do I get in front of the right audience. And we're also in the same space where people are saying, what new podcast should be listening to, like, I want to learn about this topic, and I can't find a podcast on it. Like, there's podcasts out there. And there's people who want to listen to them, and they're not finding each other. And I think it's why we see some of the biggest shows just keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger. You know, I don't think people are searching for like early 2000s Comedian interviewing almost everybody every three days. Yet, Joe Rogan continues to grow faster and faster. Because more and more people are saying I'm into podcasts, let me look at the top 50 and find a few shows. As we get to better search and better recommendation tools that's going to change where more people can start to find the shows that they're interested in, get drilled down to individual episodes that are interested in and shows can serve those audiences. So one of the examples that Dan wrote about in the blog was probably going to mispronounce this Warren done boss, the city in Ukraine and the region. So if you search that this episode comes up is Putin's war in Ukraine, a turning point from BBC, and this is a episode that actually doesn't use the phrase war and done boss, but it is tagged because so many of the topics they're talking about are related. So it's really interesting that they're able to see a phrase figure out oh, because of topic modeling, this episode is actually highly relevant and able to serve that up, it's totally different than the past, where if people search something, I pretty much had to be the title of the episode for it to pop up. Yeah, I'm
Kevin:I'm also thinking that I really like to focus on search, which has like user intent behind it. So they're gathering this information, they're categorizing it, they're putting analysis type tools and functionality around it, but for the benefit of presenting better search results, not for the benefit of think of like a YouTube situation is what I'm thinking in my head, like, oh, since you listen to this, you're gonna like this. Like, those are recommendation engines, there's nothing necessarily wrong with them. But they do have the potential drawback of like, you know, its algorithm late, either out how do I say this word. And algorithmically, I'm still not gonna even try to say that. It's that. But with the intent of keeping you on platform, keeping you listening to the next thing versus a search approach, which is there's user intent, the user is looking for this, let's try to figure out the best search results around that search keyword that we can or those keywords, I like that a lot more. Just because I listen to a comedy podcast doesn't mean everything I want to listen to is related to comedy. Like I also might want to listen to some sports podcasts. And that can be like the black hole of rabbit hole, where algorithms can start pushing you in certain directions, where now people are trying to craft their content around doing something that the algorithm likes versus just creating great content, and then having a really good search engine available so that anybody searching for content that matches that finds it. It's a small difference. But I think it's an important one, that Apple is more focused on instead of trying to figure out who you are, why don't you just tell us what you're looking for. And we'll point you in the right direction instead of us saying, oh, because you're, you know, this is your sex. This is your hobbies. This is your income. This is where you went to school. And this is what you do for a job, we are predicting that you're going to like all this and that's why you should use their app. I think that's where it starts to feel creepy versus just Oh, you want a to listen to a podcast about whatever. Buccaneer football let's show you the best Buccaneer football podcasts that came out in the last week.
Jordan:You know what else I love about this, because it's such a wide representation of the topics discussed in the podcast, if somebody is generally interested or curious about a topic, the thing is, is like there's so many podcasts that are just super niche down, and they'll have these key words that are within that like tiny niche. And so people who are already interested in that topic will be looking for that, in particular, this gives the opportunity for someone who's just kind of on a wider spectrum, like generally interested in something they searched the general like macro topic of it. And what happens is it's going to take those podcasts that are very niche down that may not have otherwise popped up anyway. And then it's going to finally put them in front of somebody who's generally interested. Yeah, that's really cool. I'm super excited about this.
Alban:I don't imagine that this is coming. But as you focus more and more on making search a priority inside of any type of app where you are the one connecting the listeners and the creators of content, you know that People who want to find something to people who have it. That is the best business model of all time, which is search intent based ads, not saying the apples interested in this because they except for like the App Store, haven't really loved doing many ads. But you could see them doing some like podcast ads, where you start searching for certain things. And it's like, yeah, but recommending this show that if a people search one of these 30 keywords, you know, serve up my episode at the top.
Jordan:Something else that actually really intrigues me about this, and makes me very excited for any podcasters is that, you know, I don't have a background in marketing. There's a lot of things, I'm still learning about that kind of stuff. And so we talked about SEO, a lot with podcasts. And podcasts are hard to do SEO for. And I am really excited about this. Because as somebody who is still kind of learning that and trying to figure out how best to make my podcasts optimized for search engines, what's great about this is that Apple, again, Apple is doing it for you. They're saying, This is what your podcast is about. These are the keywords, these are the topics and they're just automatically doing it for you. You don't have to do anything. They're putting it in there, and then making it searchable based on that. So yeah, again, it's another one of those things I don't have to think about. I really love Apple for that, because I'm not very good at things like that. So I'm sure that there's a lot of other podcasters that really struggle with the same thing. And so this is super beneficial to them.
Kevin:So you mentioned that Buzzcast is not indexed yet, like we, there are no topics being surfaced through Apple for Buzzcast. But there is for Dreamful like, is there a way for podcasters? To find out one? Have you been tagged yet? And if so, what are those? I mean, I guess the, what is it, the Podnews tool can help you do that. But then like, what about Buzzcast? So we're not indexed yet? How can we get, is there a way?
Jordan:You know, I don't think that there is a way to submit your show to be indexed, I think what's happening is Apple is just like working down the line for their top podcasts. I know that you know, their top 200 podcasts globally as a whole, not all of those have been tagged yet. But Dreamful is and I'm nowhere near any of that. So I'm not really sure what route they're going with the tagging or if it's kind of randomized at this point, I think that it does take some time for them to process that. So maybe just be patient. It sounds like they've been working on this for a long time. I think Dan said something like, what, six or eight months. So it's taken some time just to get the few that they have done. But if you want to see what it looks like, you know, you can go to the pod news tool and look up popular podcasts and see what that looks like. And then yeah, you might be surprised to find that your podcast is as well. And maybe if it's not tagged yet, maybe check in another six months or a year from now and see if it has been tagged.
Alban:One of the theories I had was that since Dreamful has an apple podcast subscription, Apple has a little bit more of an incentive to make sure that your show is surfaced. Ooh. And so I wondered if maybe they prioritized doing this modeling for shows that do have a premium content feature.
Jordan:That's very interesting. And I think that Apple has prioritized some subscription. They've been working harder to feature subscription based podcasts, things like that. They're kind of like lifting those podcasters up a bit more. So yeah, you might be right,
Kevin:we should do that. Let's launch a premium version of Buzzcast. See if it helps us get tagged or indexed in this new feature or topic ized more quickly. Let's do that. In the new year, we'll launch Buzzcast premium. And we will go behind the scenes with people from the Buzzcast team, not from the Buzzsprout team. And we'll come out with a new episode every day. And it'll be $50
Alban:We wait. No, I would like to know though, if we launched a premium version of the show, what would we do? I've only ever had one request and that was Buzzcast without any of the crypto stuff they offered to pay for a non crypto version. So we could drop the buzz boost for the premium. We could take out the Buzzsprout adds
Kevin:weight, why would you drop the buzz boosts? That's That's great.
Alban:That's what was requested. That's what the people want. We gotta let people vote with their money with their wallets.
Kevin:Here's what I think we could do. For real. This is a real idea. You're gonna laugh and really we never talk about like what we're working on. Now. We're always talking about things that came out after they came out. But we never say here's what we're working on. Like it's going to release. We're working on that this work cycle. We could do bonus episodes, at least like once a month or once every two weeks or something like that. That can be short, condensed episodes, but it's when we're talking about things that we are working on. That would be something worth paying for.
Alban:That would be people could come in and hear us like argue about development and Tom's in here. And he's like you're messing it all up. That's gonna cost so much money on the server and we're not doing
Kevin:like how the sausage is made podcast.
Jordan:That would be cool. That's a lot better than my suggestion which was going to be the musical.
Kevin:Let's rock music. Just sing everything.
Jordan:We actually should do that just to test the waters and see if Buzzcast does get tagged after that, like if it if it kind of like expedites the process of us getting tagged, that would be a really interesting experiment to run. And then we'll know.
Kevin:Yeah. And I liked the idea that more and more we're seeing subscription or pay to enjoy content in the podcasting world. And so I'm not necessarily saying that there's a huge draw on my site to do this for Buzzcast. But I do think there's an interest from the Buzzsprout side is becomes more and more commonplace for there to be the opportunity to have a premium level show or offer premium level content for us to get more experience in that area.
Jordan:All right, I saw this crazy story about the first podcast recorded in a fighter jet, mid flight, lead balloon, that's the podcast and they were invited by the US Navy, to be the first podcast to take a ride in the Blue Angels flight demonstration. So the host of the podcast got into an F 18 Super Hornet fighter jet, and was trying to interview the pilot, while they're doing like these loops, and going against all these like G forces and things like that.
Lead Balloon:This time, the plane rolls all the way over. I'm hanging upside down from my seat restraints up and the pilot pulls up hard, which since we're upside down actually points the nose of the plane toward the ground and puts us into a steep dive. "There's a smoke trail if you look straight up", and condensation billows up over the wings of the plane as the aerodynamic pressure forms little clouds as we finished the half loop and grind back into level flight against our four G's of momentum.
Jordan:It's so funny, because when I first saw this, I thought that is going to be a not very well produced podcast, there's no way that you're going to be able to hear the voices of the podcaster in the pilot during this. It's not going to it's just it sounded very like experimental to me.
Alban:It's right next to a jet engine. I think that was a safe assumption. Yeah,
Kevin:I wouldn't assume that that's a well treated environment recording.
Jordan:No, I mean, how much like noise gating did he use for this? Right? So I just yeah, that was my initial impression. And boy, was I wrong.
Kevin:Okay. So, first of all, I want to figure out what are we doing wrong on Buzzcast that they didn't call us to be the first podcast recorded inside of a Blue Angels jet. That's incredible.
Alban:What not even only that Kevin. I mean, this is our hometown. I don't know if Jordan knows this. The Blue Angels are headquartered at NAS, Jacksonville. Oh, they were just here a couple of weeks ago. Like that's where I played baseball growing up. That's right near where I grew up. The first demonstration from the Blue Angels was in Jacksonville. And yet they're going outside of the city to get some other podcasters. So I, yeah, I'm pretty bummed out that we weren't invited.
Jordan:You know, I think I think it might be something to do with a niche, and not you personally. Lead balloon is a podcast about aviation.
Kevin:I don't know, I'm gonna I'm gonna continue to take it personally. And I also, I also wanted, this was just a single podcast are flying in a single jet, right? Yeah, they usually fly five jets at a time. So I think all three of us plus lead balloon and who should be in the other jet? I don't know. Let's get Joe Rogan and the other jet. And then we'll have five podcasters, flying around talking to each other interviewing pilots. I can't wait for this to happen. This is happening in my mind is actually
Alban:really well done. Like I watched part of this Jordan and like super high energy very well produced. A lot of times when things are gimmicks, they 100% rely on the gimmick, and they're like we did a podcast and a fighter jet. And then you're like, Okay, what was it? Oh, there was no topic, there was no interesting information. You just did a podcast and a fighter jet. Okay, moving on. They didn't just do the gimmick. It's actually a good podcast. It's on YouTube with a video component. But also, there's the audio only version. And it's interesting, like you're learning a lot about the pilots and the Blue Angels. So yeah, high recommend.
Kevin:I'm gonna listen to the audio version first. So I have not watched the video or listen to the audio, but I want to listen to the audio first.
Jordan:I just kind of was planning on popping in to look at it. Like I was like, oh, it's kind of interesting. And I mean, it kept me really engaged. I was hooked. I did watch the whole thing. And I was engaged the entire time. I don't usually watch YouTube videos, but it didn't feel like watching a YouTube video. It felt like I was watching just like a really fun short documentary. It was great.
Alban:Yeah, they're talking about like breathing techniques and how to not lose consciousness. Yeah. Is this cool?
Jordan:And it was funny, too. Yeah, there's one point where he's trying to do his podcast and so he's like, crap, I gotta get video of this. And he's trying to get his camera out. But he also doesn't want to like drop the camera. So there's like the tension of like, if he drops it, it's gonna break something in the jet it's yeah, it's a lot of fun. So We'll all put links to that in the show notes. Man, you've got to watch the video, you got to watch it. Eric Borgo said, I hope that's how you pronounce his name. He wrote how I made one of the world's first 100% ai generated podcasts. And we've heard that podcast of Steve Jobs and Joe Rogan. And it sounds kind of creepy. But this is the first podcast where he kind of like start to finish produce the podcast using AI technology.
Kevin:Yeah, so start to finish all with AI, which after listening to the Steve Jobs, and Joe Rogan one, I think I was expecting a less computer generated sounding voice when I started listening to it. And it's totally not that it is a computer generated voice. And so it was hard for me to get into it a power through a little bit like I think there's definitely something interesting here in terms of this is the first of what could be something that's very, I don't know about popular, but it could start to become something, right. But you're looking at a very early version, like I don't know, imagine what what's a good example, like if Steve Jobs presented you with a piece of glass before the iPhone came out and said, just imagine that this was a screen and you could touch it and move stuff around. And like he's moving a little piece of paper underneath the screen as you're like dragging your finger around a piece of glass. And he's like, if you move your finger up, it would move up like that. And you're like, Steve, I don't get this. So I'm wondering like, is there really something here, but the presentation, the content, the voice, none of it hit for me, like, I've never listened to a 45 minute or an hour long episode of that. But that's not the point of it. The point of it is that the technology is moving in the direction where this stuff is going to be possible. So is it like five years from now? Not only will the content be indistinguishable from just regular humans having conversation, but also the voices would be indistinguishable? And if so, what does that mean? What does that mean, for podcasting? What does that mean for media? What does that mean for everything? That is, you know, mind bending to think about, I do remember, two and a half, three years ago, I had a very early conversation with Dave Jones and Adam curry when they were talking about boosting, and streaming and value for value and being able to do these micro payments. And the first demo they had of that app was inside of a chat application. It wasn't a podcast listening app, it was like a chat client, and you had to log into the chat client, and then somehow, in the chat client, you could find a podcast, and then you could start playing a podcast within this chat client, and then you could boost it. And I was like, guys, I don't really understand what you're doing here. But that wasn't, you know, their vision for what it could ultimately be. This was just the first iteration of it. And so I think this is similar. This is the first iteration. So I don't think it'd be wise for us to immediately dismiss this as this is garbage. It's never gonna go anywhere. I think there is something bigger here. It just, you know, you have to think about what could this be if machines if computers could actually generate engaging content, and it would probably start in the audio world, like, it's not going to start in the video world, like, you're not just going to, I don't know, type in like a movie theme. And then, you know, a couple hours later, the AI is going to render out a full movie, like maybe that is 15 or 20 years down the road, but it's going to start an audio. Right. And so for people who are interested in audio, this is something that we should think about some of this is there is some interest here.
Jordan:Yeah, I think what you were saying about how it just sounds robotic, the Joe Rogan. And Steve Jobs piece was just so well produced and just sound is so lifelike. And I think that's because that they used an AI voice cloning tool to achieve that kind of realistic inflection and things like that. But what Eric did here, he listed out every tool that he used to create the podcasts and a lot of it was very, like open source, free tools, things like that, though, it's funny, because the vocals was one of the few things that he did pay for. I guess that doesn't really support my point here. But what I'm trying to say is that he you know, it's not the highest producing because he did use a lot of free tools. But you know, I did the math on all of his stuff. Because he listed out everything that he used. I went looked at, like what the subscription costs, what it costs to render certain things. And his podcast episode came out to like five minutes and 50 seconds, and it cost him over$60 to do a five minute podcast. Here's the thing is looking at his list of items that he used, you know, he talks about doing podcast topics with NLP cloud, and he used like a name creator and AI generated faces, which there's a bunch of those kinds of things that you can get. But I saw that in his music. He cited that he used storyblocks, which I thought was kind of funny, because that's actually not AI. I have also used storyblocks for my podcast, and I was really surprised that he didn't actually use an AI music site such as like Eva. It's actually an AI composer. I've played with this. It comes out amazing. You can make all sorts of different music and you're able to use it in your podcast. and stuff like that. And then there's also sound draw. And that's another one where you can tell the AI, what kind of music composition you want, and you're able to use that. So I was super surprised that he didn't use music AI for his 100% ai podcasts, I'm not sure that this podcast is the first 100% generated.
Alban:When we look at like aI content. I mean, we already have a ton of it that exists in text form right now, even before these large language models were prevalent, a lot of finance blogs were like Apple crashes, 20% today, but it would just be because it was checking the ticker. And when I saw it went down 20% It just dropped in a couple like stats into a template article, and then would publish. And it was enough information that people would still share it and read it. And then the next level is using these large language models like GPT three, where it's trying to actually write something given a prompt, it's guessing what could be written after that. So we see it in text, there's been this whole wave of people who tried to like create affiliate sites and different websites to get a lot of traffic based on a bunch of AI content. And we've already seen Google crack down on that pretty hard because this content, at least right now, it's not any good. It's not like people are reading those blogs going this is a really insightful blog, the most insightful use cases in my mind are where a person's doing 90% of the work, and they get stuck. And then they say like, oh, what could come next. And it kind of has a few ideas. And you owe like, I've now broken through that little bit of writer's block. So there's a tool I've played with called Lex. It's fun to use. But when you think about like the end game, where is like aI generated content for individuals, like you pull up in your podcast app, and there's a podcast or a video that's created just for you personally, it starts to get like, that's where this is all going. It the only reason to create AI content is so that we can create so much of it is 100% personalized to people. It's not just tick tock where it's an algorithm figuring out which of the content that humans have made would be best for you, it would be that all the content that AI could just crank out and find something personalized to you. It just seems like a little bit to me, depressing future, we went from a world where it was like Walter Cronkite, you know, reporting the news for everybody. And everyone talks about oh, it's so fragmented. Now, if the future is AI, creating individual content streams for everybody, that feels so much more disconnected, not to put like a negative, I don't know, like a dystopian view of it, I think is super interesting. I'm also not thrilled about where it seems to be going. This podcast, I love him showing the process of putting it all together and how easy it is. So it is really interesting. And it's also interesting to me that the voices are what we're calling out as Oh, it doesn't seem super realistic, because the voice is going to get better and better. The content itself, the fact that we're not critiquing the content is a little bit scary to me. Like if a language model can mimic your podcast enough that people the AI podcast really, kind of sounds like me and my buddies, then probably your podcasts like you got to level the game up, you got to be a little bit more human and have something unique to say. It can't just be the rote, you know, typical advice that everybody else is giving.
Jordan:I'm looking at this through the lens of accessibility, you know, people who maybe have lost their voice for whatever reason, or aren't comfortable speaking into a microphone, this is, you know, something that is really accessible to anybody. And it's not that expensive, it's actually really quite cheap now that resembled AI is point 006 cents a second for the audio that is rendered through their program. And there's some other ones that are free or maybe a little bit more expensive, but worth it because the voice is you're able to adjust like the tonality and the way that things are said and kind of adjusted a bit more. So it's lifelike. So for somebody that's not able to or uncomfortable with using their voice. Same thing with video, we're starting to see more AI video and it has these AI people that are speaking the words from the podcast. And that's another means for someone to actually get the word out there or present as something else. But which kind of also freaks me out because you know, as a woman, I'm thinking about catfishing as well. So there's there's upsides and downsides, I think it's going to be a really, really amazing tool for people and then it's also going to be a very bad weapon for some others.
Kevin:It makes me think that at some point, we're going to see some if not like a legal requirement, at least like an ethical requirement to tag this content as AI generated versus there's a real humans having a conversation. So that's something I could see like probably in the next day, we're gonna make predictions maybe we're getting towards the end of the year may Maybe in 2023, we'll see a tag added to the podcast namespace about like aI generated versus human. Maybe it can be up as something in the person tag where you say, you know, person is AI.
Jordan:Yeah. So if you want to listen to the AI generated podcast, we will link to it in the show notes. And you can make up your mind if you think that AI, podcasting is the future. YouTube has created a podcasting page. And now they have released a Best Practices Guide for podcasting on YouTube. This thing is 67 pages long is he did either of you make it through the whole thing I did, I made it through the whole thing. It's similar to their YouTube, just the regular best practices that they have, I know that I've seen some things, they they kind of just reused a lot of that information, you know, such as like the content strategy of planning, packaging, publishing, and promotion, channel strategy of managing your channel and FAQ kind of stuff. And then, in the content creation, I think that's actually where they change the most because they have in the content creation section, audio versus video. And it's really interesting, because they kind of have these like case studies. I have here in front of me, they have like audio versus video audio podcast on one of the slides. And it's kind of a case study of Bloomberg and how Bloomberg is just audio first. And it kind of goes through the ways that they do that. And then on the next slide, they have audio versus video video podcast, and it's 538. And they kind of talk about the differences between the audio and video podcasts.
Alban:This reminds me a lot of the talks that they've given at Podcast Movement. And then at the podcast show that Kevin I went to in London, where pretty much YouTube was getting on stage with someone. The first one I thought was I saw was Dr. Huberman lab, the Huberman lab. He does a YouTube show for his podcast, he does a video podcast on YouTube and also distributed to audio. And they were just having a conversation about how YouTube worked for his podcast. But then they did some with I think people from Rooster Teeth from the Rooster Teeth network. And what was interesting to me is, they weren't really launching a whole lot of new things. At least they haven't talked about new things yet. I'm sure there will be more in the future. But what they really did was say, Hey, here's how this type of content that most of you are already creating podcasters how it works in a video medium, it's a little bit different advice than we give on this show. I think YouTube seems much more inclined to say, hey, if it's audio only just get it up here anyway, because somebody will probably listen to it. And we say, if you're going to do a video podcast, at least make sure there's a video component that people want. But it's just really interesting to see YouTube highlighting all these features that they've done. And they've created to support creators in a video context and say, here's how you can adapt them for your show. So using comments using visuals, you know, having an interactive element with your audience, all those things. So it's a really interesting document to go through. I think a lot of it, especially if you've been around YouTube for a while. There's not anything in here that I was shocked to read for the first time. Yeah,
Kevin:I mean, it has to be there has to be some big podcasting announcement coming from YouTube sometime soon, right. Like all of the not just rumors, but actual official documentation coming out of YouTube seems to be I mean, a lot of it has to do with podcasting. And they really want to, I think, break down this perception that YouTube is only a place to do videos like they are encouraging audio only content now, like none of the tech doesn't seem to support that yet. And so that's what I'm thinking is that that tech is being built, there is some imminent release of that tech, where they're supporting some sort of audio first experience within YouTube within the YouTube ecosystem and apps that is coming. And they're trying to make sure that they have enough content in there to support it. So then when that stuff is released, it's like a chicken and an egg, right? Like, we've got to have the contents and then we're released this stuff. There's stuff that you can enjoy using all this new tech that we built that is an audio first experience. And so I think that's where they are in the process right now is they're saying, Gosh, we surely need more audio only content. We're building all this stuff. When it comes out. What are people going to listen to? Yeah, it's
Jordan:funny because looking at this, I initially was like, oh, audio podcast, who are they doing RSS feeds, like, that's exactly where my mind went. But then reading into the audio podcast they have it talks about instead of offering a video of hosts or B roll they feature an image in a waveform graph is the only visual for the podcast. So it's still a video. It's just a still image with a waveform. So my dreams are a little crushed, but I'm still holding out hope
Alban:this is all doable through something like headliner. I think there's some other tools as well where you can put in your audio and then say, hey, generate a waveform and make this have a video component. Like it's technically a video file. And yet the visuals are just moving wait for I just don't find that compelling at all.
Kevin:I'm with you. This reminds me of like the iTunes like how many? When you first installed iTunes back in the 90s? Like, yes, we all turned on the visualizer and looked at all the different waveforms that it could generate. Nobody actually like ran those things while you were listening to music, you queued up your playlist, you minimized it, and you went on with your day, like I'm not gonna stare at a waveform the whole time. So these tools, and get not a big knock on headliner, but like, it's just a way to get your stuff in the YouTube. Nobody really wants to watch a waveform. Yeah,
Jordan:yeah, I mean, it's interesting, because they say here that Bloomberg had 500,000 views, even though they were just doing the waveform thing. And I know that some podcasters in the Facebook group have sworn by uploading waveforms to YouTube, I personally don't get it. But I know that something that's kind of cool that headliner does is they will publish when you update your RSS feed, they'll automatically publish a waveform of the episode to YouTube for you. So you don't have to do it, which is really handy. I like that because I'm lazy. So if I were to do some YouTube, podcasting, that's probably what I would do.
Alban:It's definitely nice that you can have your audio available on YouTube. So I'm not knocking that. It's just there's something in me that knows now there's an audio file being sent back and forth across the entire internet, or a video file that's really heavy, and it should just be an audio file. And it feels like such overkill. And YouTube premium and YouTube music have these really nice audio first experiences. And so I think when that is brought to all of YouTube users is not only limited to the premium, then it makes sense for you to start having audio only content, not just audio first. So I'm excited for it. Anytime that another big player gets into the game, especially one with a huge audience. Like we saw, Spotify really brought a ton of new people into podcasting. And there is probably a whole nother wave of people who love YouTube that don't listen to podcasts yet. But if they started seeing it when they logged in, and they were looking at YouTube shorts, and they were watching YouTube full videos, and all of a sudden, they saw Oh, there's the audio only version. That would be pretty big. When we saw chi Chao, who leads the YouTube podcast team was that Podcast Movement, somebody said, you know, you do this, you watch the video, then you click the link to go listen to the audio podcast. And he goes, Yeah, we really don't like people going off site to listen to that. Maybe we should do something about it. I mean, he's not accidentally saying that's intentional. So I'm sure Kevin's right there is an audio first experience on the way, hopefully 2023 I'm actually a little bit more bullish that they're taking their time to figure it out than pulling a Facebook on us where they say everything is launching in the next like three months. And then three months later, nothing really launched. And then a year later, like and we're shutting it down. It'll be good to see I don't have much from this document that show what direction they're going. Besides that they're really leaning in on playlists. So it seems like the playlist is kind of like the fundamental piece, like maybe the playlist is the podcast,
Kevin:I think there's a good opportunity for YouTube to explore what can be done with Chapter images. And I hope that they would use the podcast namespace cloud images to do that if they do, but there's plenty of videos that I watch on YouTube, that I'm not really there talking head videos or something like I'm really just listening, even though there is a video to it. I am a YouTube premium subscriber. So I can turn my phone off, I can put in my pocket, I can listen to the car. So I get all that. But I also am very used to with the YouTube app. When I'm in that experience. I'm used to having some visual component to it. Podcast, like it could be a tipping point for Chapter art, you kind of get visions of like, what do I really want to see still images of a flipbook or something, whatever. But like Jordan was just talking about how there's these slides, and one of them is, you know, audio versus video, audio, and they're talking about audio, and one is video, like, we could put chapter marks around that we could put images associated with it. So when that is playing in YouTube, you could actually switch from the waveform to see the image and then switch back to the waveform or something, they could build all that in. And in, you shouldn't have to run through a third party service or even a Buzzsprout service to like, generate a waveform. That's ridiculous. The YouTube app itself can generate the waveform. Like they can just take the audio file, they can generate the waveform, maybe give the podcaster different choices of waveforms that they want to use, or get the listener, let's just be like, here's the six different waveforms you can use when you're listening to a podcast. And we'll show chapter when it can happen. I'm saying all this to say that there's a lot of opportunities to create a compelling audio first experience in YouTube. I'm waiting for that, like I know they want the content first, so that it's ready for when they launched this stuff. But really, I'm kind of like it's not a good audio at first experience today. And so it feels like they're saying, Oh, come on, send us your content, since you're conscious and it'll be fine. It'll be fine. You'll get three views. It'll be great. I think we have to do is I have to put the tools out there in A compelling enough way that creators are saying that is a good experience. I can envision suggesting or, or finding new listeners, expanding my audience through the YouTube ecosystem, I am going to publish there.
Alban:The reason it also doesn't feel right to me, even though I'm surprised the YouTube saying send us these fake video file ones. Because if I'm on YouTube, and I click one of those, and I'm expecting to see the host and the guest, and they're talking to each other, and then it's just a static image, I feel like I'm out. Because I'm in the visual mode. I want to see this right now I want to see the interactions. Whereas most podcasting, I'm like listening to it, and I'm doing something else. And so I'm in audio mode. And the search is very different modes is different types of content that I'm seeking out. And so if I'm in YouTube, and I'm thinking, I want to see something I'm locked in, I'm eating lunch, and I just want to watch a video while I'm eating. Well, if I pull it up in there says Audio Only, I feel like your bounce rates just gonna be super, super high the amount of people that just leave in a few seconds.
Kevin:Have you ever used a podcast app where you were like listening in your car, and you had it in CarPlay or something? And they use chapter art? And it shows up on your car display? Yes, that is. I've had that happen a few times. And I think it's a it's a really fun experience. Like I love it. So I'm doing my audio podcast thing while I'm driving in the car. And then they're talking about an image or something like that. And I just noticed something flashed on the screen. What's matter.
Alban:I just think it's funny that your example of you know, it's great is a visual component for podcasts while you're driving. It's kind of,
Jordan:but it's not like a movie. I was laughing because I was thinking of all the gory murder podcasts I listened to and they actually do have like chapter art of like crime scenes and stuff like that. And like being in the car and like the person behind me seeing all the corpses.
Kevin:Yeah. Anyway, I think we could be a good experience. I know what you're saying can be dangerous can be distracting if you have your headphones on and people in the car don't know what you're listening to. And then all of a sudden, weird images show up that could be problematic.
Alban:Jordans children are like traumatized. Like eight more hours of driving kids, we're going for Thanksgiving.
Kevin:All right. Well, my positive spin on that is that I thought it was a fun surprise that the art changed. And I thought it wasn't super distracting. Because not like there was a movie playing. It was just a picture. Like they were just talking about something. And then there was a picture of it on my car play this way. And so I just glanced at it, look at it and look back, just like you're looking at, I don't know what song is playing right now or something, something I
Jordan:was thinking about you were talking about, you know, when you're in the video mode, and you click on a video and you're expecting to see hosts talking. And that's a waveform, in their best practices guide, YouTube talks about how the thumbnails for the videos that perform the best are the ones that have, you know, host images on them, like it's people's faces and stuff like that. And I had that thought of like, this could be so misleading if people are like, oh, yeah, that's a great idea. And then they put their host image on the thumbnail, and then people click and it's not that at all. It's funny because I think that podcast cover art that doesn't perform as well as others are the ones that just have host images on it for whatever reason. And it's just one of those like differentiating factors between podcasts and video. It is so different. And so you kind of have to be mindful about that.
Alban:Jordan, I'm right now thinking of I have no idea what the name of this was. But when I was little, we had a VHS tape, there was all these like traditional stories that would be like an Aesop fables, or it could be retelling of some British novel, it's similar to like Dreamfall. It's like retelling of things that are in the public domain. And all of them would just kind of like Ken Burns effects of like images and like hand drawn images, they're moving and they're reading the story. And I'm kind of wondering like, what level do you need to get to that the visual component is actually compelling. Like, I think the waveform doesn't catch me at all. I think there's almost no value in adding the waveform unless you're creating something for social and you want people to click and listen. But on the YouTube side, if you could put your podcast in, and some tool was identifying, hey, we're right now talking about Jack in the beanstalk. And now I'm putting in an image of a beanstalk. And now I'm putting in an image of a man climbing the beanstalk like these aren't like super difficult images. And there might be a lot in the public domain. Or maybe you could use an AI tool to generate them. Like I wonder how far are we away from faking some visual interest? You know, just what like almost like B roll or Ken Burns effects on just static images? Like how far are we away from Dreamful could have a video podcast in YouTube that was almost 100% created by a AI tool rather than you actually selecting what's in it.
Jordan:I don't think we're very far at all. And it's so funny that you mentioned this. I actually had my husband tasked with creating a Ken Burns effect with the cloud background for Dreamforce So basically, I just expanded that pink sunset cloud kind of thing. And we have different layers of that. And he was able to make it ebb and flow in a video because I'm going to be experimenting with YouTube. I'm not on YouTube. And so I'm trying to be a better person and like, try new things. But it's so funny because I actually ran across this tool. It's an AI generated video tool that's in beta right now, by meta. And they're toying around with AI video generation. And so you can type in something like a cat wearing cowboy boots, and it'll create a video of a cat walking around and cowboy boots. So I don't think we're that far away from something like that. I, you really should go look at that page. I'll link to it in the show notes. Because I just got the biggest kick out of some of these videos. They are ridiculous. You know how AI kind of creates like a weird version of reality, like maybe like someone has three arms, for whatever reason is not quite explained. There's a really funny video of like a panda bear on a swing and his feet like aren't just quite right. There's so funny,
Alban:it's definitely the uncanny valley where some stuff is so not lifelike, like a cartoon, that doesn't feel wrong. And then there's things that are realistic, that look right. But there's this weird version where you get kind of close to real, and it starts getting very uncomfortable. And you're like, ah, something's off, but you can't even tell what it is. And then you realize the panda has three arms or something.
Jordan:We're getting into like creepy pasta territory, where it's like the stuff of internet, urban legends are made, like someone's gonna generate some freaky picture. And you I mean, you remember, like the MOMO thing that went around, it scared the crap out of so many kids and parents, and it was
Alban:like the fake. Yes, like a fake story of something that would like tell your kids to do bad stuff in YouTube videos. And
Jordan:yeah, and it wasn't real. And really what it was, was it was just a picture of this Japanese sculpture that people use to generate a creepy pasta or an internet urban legend around this image just because it looked freaky. And I feel like we're gonna get into that territory with some of these videos where it's like, you could type in like, trail cam footage of a jackalope. And it creates like this creepy creature on trail cam footage. I mean, that's where I'm going with it. Like I'm thinking of like all the crazy things I can do to freak RedHat out it's time for Masood. We got an we got a boost for 1000 SATs from an unknown secret admirer. And it's just a little heart emoji. But I wish I knew who it was. So we can give them a shout out. Yeah,
Alban:thank you unknown for the 1000 SATs and the greater than three. I don't know if that's less than three. That's a heart.
Jordan:It's either a heart or a double ice cream cone.
Alban:I'm gonna take it as an ice cream cone.
Kevin:I think it's a secret admirer and I think that this episode there's going to be another there's going to be another secret or another hint a clue dropped to who they are. Oh, in this episode. Yeah, for this episode, there'll be another one so it started with a heart next episode, it's going to be something else and it's all leading up in my mind to like Valentine's Day when they're gonna come clean. And they're gonna say who who they love most on the show.
Jordan:It's just gonna be
Kevin:this whole story that's this is just the very beginning. So
Jordan:you know, I'm into it because I'm like, Ooh, a puzzle.
Alban:This up in his mind can be really depressing. But this person never writes in again.
Kevin:It's a puzzle. That's what it is. They're playing into Jordan's love of interest sleuthing and figuring out who they are. So they're just starting with the heart. Next week will be another clue and like you will unravel it all but it's all gonna come together on our Valentine's Day.
Jordan:We're gonna have people coming out of the woodwork like it was me the whole time
Kevin:that we mortals podcast sent us 2222 sets. I would love to know your thoughts around integrating V for V currently have to use the podcaster wallet. also interested in the lit tag in Buzzsprout. I do a live show once a week or so. So if you need somebody for testing who doesn't mind running with scissors, I'm happy to put my hand up
Jordan:and I looked up their booster gram numerology and tu tu tu tu is the row of ducks boost rubber ducks, which to me seems more like a row of swans because of like the swooping neck but I see it.
Kevin:Yeah, so we've talked with Dave Jones a lot about integrating the pervy we we wanted to do it last year. It's kind of a long story. I mean, the short of it is is that Buzzsprout is a little bit too big to run it for everybody. So I liked the fact that you put your hand up and said if we if we are interested in doing something that you would like to volunteer, it's not something that could scale quite yet to all Buzzsprout users. But we think, I don't know, maybe in 2023 Maybe it'll be there. There's a there's a there's a lot of stuff, man when you're talking about moving money back and forth having people take, you know, like, what do they call it? The physical dollars? What do they call those things? Alban? Crypto and Fiat
Alban:fiat currency yet?
Jordan:Wait, what? Yeah, it's
Alban:just like state issued currency, government money real money.
Kevin:Right and turning it into crypto. There's a lot of liability. Yeah. So we can't just take you know, 10s of 1000s of people and take their their government issued dollars, turn them into cryptocurrency and assume the liability for all of that.
Alban:So we recommend FTX. Like just use somebody who really
Kevin:do not. So there's a lot to that question. But yeah, we are super interested in it. The lit tag, I'm super interested in the lit tag stuff. But again, it's like we're in the business where we serve a lot of people, a lot of customers and 99% of them are not are drawn to podcasting because it is kind of an on demand thing, not a live thing. And so I love bleeding edge and cutting edge stuff, but it doesn't always translate one to one with business goals and objectives. That's where we are on it. But we are super interested in continuing to pursue it and as soon as we find opportunity to make it work for the business, we will be rolling it out.
Alban:Speaking of Dave Jones Day Joe sent us 12,112 SATs. Here is a hint that the Podcasting Q&A show is live every Friday at 1230 Central Time for anyone who wants to listen to two people state unjustified opinions about podcasting technology in absolute terms and generally act like 12 year olds. I actually think Dave's show is very good. He does podcasting to Dotto show with Dave Jones and Adam curry. So they have more than just unjustified opinions about podcast technology. And they I don't think do a lot of editing that did they do any editing Kevin? No.
Kevin:I mean, I haven't listened live very often when Hebrew was recording in the Buzzsprout studio. I listened live to that one. And it's the exact same thing.
Alban:It's shocking to me how good they are live the first time they are pro this show is only halfway decent because Jordans editing out 80% of the stuff I said,
Kevin:now they're absolute professional, so you can tune in Friday at 1230 Central or you can listen to hours later when they dropped the episode. You're gonna get the same thing and it's excellent no matter how you listen, and
Jordan:Dave Jones is our top contributor. So he definitely earned that ad slot there. He's king of the hill.
Kevin:He's the man Yeah, the pod sage
Jordan:gene been sent us 8222 SATs and Gene said I'm surprised Dave doesn't know brake master cylinder. I learned about them via dark net diaries and I really enjoy the music. Yeah, the music slaps it's so good. And then Jean being sent 2048 SATs really glad to hear you're liking Saturn as it happens. There's another site now that also utilizes your lb while it's data contracts.ap is worth checking out
Alban:and then we got one more from Jean been 2048 SATs sees you're subconsciously drawn to black and red maybe you're also subconsciously a Georgia Bulldogs fan. Maybe you just don't realize it yet. Like you don't realize you like black and red gear.
Kevin:I think he's onto something. But I'm gonna move to a slight twist Jean being I don't think it's Georgia. I think it is South Carolina law. So black and red. I think I'm a Gamecocks fan.
Alban:Kevin went to Florida. I went to Georgia. So I'm a Georgia fan. I don't have any red and black gear. Do you want to tell why you like South Carolina? Kevin?
Kevin:Yeah, my oldest child is going to be going to South Carolina next year just made the decision and so I have my first Gamecocks sweatshirt which I'm wearing today as I'm recording but I think you're onto something I think I am. I am shifting away from the orange and blue and I'm going to be a black and red guy and going forward. Go Gamecocks orange a blue
Jordan:those are Boise State colors.
Kevin:Well they're also Florida Gator colors.
Jordan:So Oh, gotcha.
Alban:I think red and black go better anyway.
Jordan:I thought you were secretly BSU fan. Thanks for the SATs everyone and keep podcasting
Kevin:higher pixels mugs.
Jordan:This is my favorite. I think this might be my favorite thing I own Yeah.
Kevin:What does that call? Is that like a tumbler? Is that what they call? Yeah, I
Jordan:have a plugin mug warmer, because my coffee always goes cold.
Kevin:But you don't really need it with that just stays hot in there.
Jordan:Done. No I don't. That's the thing is like I don't need it anymore. And it's nice because I'll use monkfruit as a sweetener. But monkfruit naturally cools things like it actually makes things cool faster. So it's a good natural sugar substitute, but it will actually cool your coffee like twice as fast as it normally would. But this It stays hot for like hours.
Kevin:That's super interesting. I did not know monkfruit cool things. I use monkfruit as well. Great sweetener. I didn't need to get it at Starbucks.
Jordan:Oh, I know. Yeah, it's so good.
Alban:So Jordan, you just talked about how you're thankful for your higher pixels mug. We're gonna be releasing this like the day after Thanksgiving. So I wondered if like, we talked about a little bit of stuff we're thankful for in the podcasting world,
Jordan:I can start off because this one's super easy for me. I mean, not only am I thankful for my higher pixels mug, but I'm also super thankful for Buzzsprout because you guys are what got me into podcasting. And it completely changed my life, I now get to work in a creative field. And I get to do something that I really enjoy. And it kind of blows my mind every single day. So I'm incredibly grateful. That's what I'm thankful for this year. Did I make this weird?
Kevin:I can't say anything nicer than that.
Alban:Well, I think you you lead off with such a heartfelt one that when I'm gonna pop in with like something really stupid, I think it backfire, that I'm like, Oh, great. I need to like talk about how I'm thankful for my family, not how I'm thankful for my new keychain.
Jordan:Oh, I didn't say I was thankful for my family.
Kevin:This is like what happens at Thanksgiving, when people are starting to say what they're thankful for. And I'm sitting there thinking like, Oh, I'm going with mashed potatoes, because those were really good mashed potatoes. And then the first person's like, you know, something really heartfelt and, and I'm like, Oh, my gosh, I got nothing. Use potatoes.
Jordan:You know what, there's nothing wrong with living in the moment and appreciating the simple things. There's nothing wrong with that. In fact, I think a lot of people recommend that you do do that. And you actually take a moment to fully appreciate every little thing.
Alban:So I'm thankful that I do not edit this podcast. Like a negative way, but like it is so okay, I'm thankful for Jordan, editing the podcast, here we go. It's very nice to be able to show up, do a total of two hours of work, reading through some articles, recording the podcast, and then I'm done. And then later on, I can listen to it after it's already, you know, completed and fully edited and transcripts and everything. So I really appreciate that being the person who's not editing the show. Gosh, it's so much easier than the person who's doing all the work in the world. So thank you, Jordan, I appreciate that.
Jordan:Thank you. Thank you for appreciating me.
Kevin:Yeah, 2022 has been a heck of a year for Buzzsprout, our product continues to get better than ever, our customer base is better than ever, and our team is better than ever. So when I think about things I'm thankful for, it's all three of those things, it's been able to work in a great industry with great people and serve great customers. And I will give a quick update on the on the team side specifically some of anybody listens to the show and happens to be a member of our Facebook community. Maybe you met Cameron last week, who introduced himself to the Facebook community. He's our new head of design at Buzzsprout. And just a really great guy contributing in huge ways, like so quickly, has already had his hands on features that have rolled out and it's in the middle of a really exciting new project that we're trying to get out before the end of the year, which hopefully we can talk about maybe in our last episode of the year. So that's coming up. Maybe Cameron will join us on the podcast. At some point, I think it would be really interesting to hear his take on certain things and talk about how he plans to use design to make Buzzsprout a better product. And then we also have two new people who joined the team on the support team this week, Brian and Blake are joining our support team. So if you write into support on the regular, and are used to getting responses from Meghan and Priscilla, and Addy and Jalon, there's gonna be two more people who might be responding to you as well. So you get to know Brian and Blake and they will also be in our Facebook group. So our team is growing product is growing customer base is growing. And I'm thankful for all of those things. Can I talk about something I'm not thankful
Alban:for? Yeah, what do you I'm thankful for?
Kevin:So I have a you know, I've got some kids that run around the house, there's always trying to print stuff. You know, here we are, how long have desktop printer has been a thing like 30 years, 40 years or something?
Alban:They still are you gonna say you're not thankful for the printer being in your office? Well,
Kevin:I'm not thankful for just the fact that printers are terrible. And so I had a printer that it like when it worked, it worked fine, like it took from what was ever on your screen and it put it on a piece of paper. That's its job. And that would do it fine for me, but nobody else in my household could do it. Nobody could print from their iPads or their phones or their laptops. They always had to send me the document that I had to print it out. We're done with that. I'm like I'm done with this printer. I'm throwing it away even though it's works for me. I'm throwing it away and buying a new one. So I just went on Amazon. I'm like which printer works for everybody. Boom, it's some HP plasticky thing. It's ugly, but it got good reviews and it was like$100 Put on my desk. It works. Now it does the thing where it takes the stuff on your screen and it puts it on paper.
Alban:I just love what you're describing printing it Good Stuff is now on the paper
Kevin:you know, what HP does now is they made me to set up the printer I have to put in a credit card because they're gonna monitor for my benefit. They're gonna monitor my printing habits and automatically send you know when I need it. Oh, no. Okay, so just just sexually, I'm kind of like I can live with that I can live with it, I'm just gonna get around like a cartridge is like$20. And when I need one, you'll send it to me fine, I can get on board with that. But that's not what this is. That's not what this is at all. What this is, is they're gonna charge my credit card, I think 399 or 499 a month what regardless of whether I need ink or not. And then when I need ink, it will just appear. And so whether I print one page a month, or like 200, I'm paying 399 a month, and they'll send me ink when I need it. And I'm like, forget that I'm not doing that. That you know, they send you like these little half cartridges, your starter cartridge while I was doing all the printer alignment and stuff and everyone's testing and the blue already ran out in the first cartridge. So I'm like, I'm gonna go buy another cartridge. So I go I order another cartridge on Amazon. And today I stick it in the printer. And then I get an alert on my phone and an alert on the printer that you're using. It's still HP ink, but it's like you've gone off the subscription plan. We can't accurately monitor your usage if you're just changing out cartridges all willy nilly. There it's I'm getting scolded because I just want to replace the ink in my printer myself.
Jordan:What? George's?
Alban:Kennedy you gotta get off of this, like you cannot be a party to this kind of garbage that somebody is charging you to monitor. I don't
Kevin:know they got me though. I'm not gonna send it but how are you so principled. When
Alban:it comes to Spotify, I would never allow Spotify in my house. And yet, like, I'm totally fine with HP monitoring all my printing and charging me$4 A month so they can order overpriced ink.
Kevin:I'm not fine with this. I'm not fine with it. I'm just over it. I'm like tech exhausted. I have tech exhaustion. I'm
Jordan:so confused. Why so? So you're saying that you cannot use the printer? Unless
Kevin:No, I can't find it, I just get scolded. It's just it worked. I put the new cartridge in it. And I printed
Alban:and it was paid for and I know not to get critiqued by a printer. That's what you do.
Kevin:You have to turn you have to pay him for dollars.
Alban:Like I get it friggin printers just tearing me down fine.
Kevin:I told the whole story because I want you to have the context, I bought this new stupid thing in the first place just because I was trying to solve a problem and make my life simpler. And it's added all this other complexity and
Alban:stress. Well, let me send you a new link you gotta set up. The thing is you got to get an inkjet cartridges that's like the wrong way to go. It's laser print,
Kevin:I had a laser one that was my, the printer that just got rid of was a laser color laser printer that nobody can print from I've got
Alban:a just black and white laser, I think is Brother brand. And you can print from any iPhone or iPad or anything. My only thing I'm not thankful for about that. One is that it's in my office. And so my daughter will like want to print off like a coloring page. And so she'll print it. And then it starts printing in my office. So I thought that's your thing. Yours is much more intense. You're getting scolded by a printer,
Jordan:you know what you need to do, I have a printer, and I have put it up in a closet. And it just like is plugged in in the closet. And it's so nice because when my family needs to print something off, I'll have to worry about because it's in the closets out of sight out of mind. You don't have to have printers in on your desk anymore. You don't have to have them in your office anymore. Put it in like the linen closet or something. I'll work
Kevin:I love the idea of that. I love the idea of putting a printer like up in the attic somewhere and then rigging up some ridiculous shoot that the paper comes out of it and it works its way down a series of like lines and comes out of a slit that you've cut into your wall. I love this. I'm gonna do. I'm gonna take pictures. I'm putting the printer up in the attic.
Alban:Well, you need it. So what you're trying to do is make it so like inconvenient the no one prints anymore. You're like you can print but it's gonna cost you
Kevin:you're talking about for my family. Yeah. Oh, no, I don't I don't care what they print. I just want it to work. I don't want him to bother me to print this. You need to be able to do it themselves.
Alban:Kevin, you got your birthday gifts already planned out sponsored by HP.
Kevin:It's just it's just insane that this is where we are in the printer world. That again, the problem is simple. Take what's on my screen and put it on a piece of paper. That's it. That's a simple job. We've been doing it for 30 or 40 years like desktop class wise. And I don't know why this is still so hard. And now that they've solved the problem they have. They're like no, we're printers like that. It can't be perfectly. A printer that works. Let's introduce a Another problem, which is subscription services, let's make that as complex as possible. And if you try to get around it, we're going to destroy your life with emails and notifications. This is the business model of Hewlett Packard. Yes. You hear this is live. This is happening. I don't know, but I'm probably gonna get some ink delivered in the mail tomorrow, because somebody printed something
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