Buzzcast
Buzzcast is a roundtable discussion about podcasting from the people at Buzzsprout. We'll cover current events and news, podcast strategy, tools we are using, and dip into the Customer Support mailbag to test our podcasting knowledge. If you want to stay up-to-date on what's working in podcasting, Buzzcast is the show for you.
Buzzcast
Introducing Buzzsprout Weekly: Your Podcast News, Now in Audio!
Alban and Kevin are back from the Podcast Movement Meetup in Orlando with some fun ideas to share your podcast with others at your next meetup or conference! We're also unveiling Buzzsprout's newest podcast, Buzzsprout Weekly, along with an update for our Android users. Then we are diving into efficiency in both podcast listening speed and bandwidth, leading to a shocking confession from Kevin about his content consumption habits.
Links mentioned in this episode
- Buzzsprout Weekly
- Alban's Podcast Listening Speed Tweet
- Buzzsprout For Android Waitlist
- Tom's Bandwidth Efficiency Tweet
- Podtastic Audio, Ep. 154 Enhancing Your Podcast with Video: A Deep Dive into Riverside. FM with Stephen Robles
- Podtastic Audio, Ep. 153 Mastering Podcast Editing: Expert Tips and Tricks with Steve Stewart from Podcast Editors Academy
Contact Buzzcast
- Send us a Text Message
- Tweet us at @buzzcastpodcast, @albanbrooke, @kfinn, and @JordanPods
- Send a "boostagram" through Fountain or Castamatic
- Email us at support@buzzsprout.com
Thanks for listening & keep podcasting!
If I can be annoying and pedantic for a second, it's a champing at the bit, not chomping. Oh no, why that? Got under that, just stuck under my skin. I could be the whole bit and I'm like champing, champing.
Kevin:All right, let me. Let me get a clean. Take a champing at the bit so Jordan can edit this in Hang on. So if you've been champing at the bit, I'll just say the word champing, champing. Have fun with that, jordan. Cut that in, make it sound perfect.
Jordan:So last night I got a text from Alban and it was a picture of him and Kevin with a podcaster named D, and Alban was holding his phone up in the photo and so I zoomed in. It was a zoomed in photo of me on your phone. I was just like what is this?
Alban:And then I did respond for about two hours as we were at the podcast meetup.
Jordan:Yeah, you left me hanging.
Alban:We went to this podcast meetup. We met lots of people. We met a few different people who listened to Buzzcast and we took a photo with one of them and she was like oh, jordan's not here. And Kevin was like try to zoom in on your face from your host photo on Buzzsprout. And I was like I'm sure I have photos of Jordan. And so I searched my photos and I had a photo of you, jalon and I in Atlanta and I was like all right, zoom in and hold it up. And it was all all four of us having a great time.
Kevin:Yeah, it was fun. I thought we had a pretty good showing. Maybe, maybe 40 people. I'm not really good at guessing numbers in large rooms.
Kevin:Yeah, I feel like 40 sounds about right two or three people were buzzcast listeners so that was fun connecting with them. Um, took a couple photos, got to hear a lot about different people's podcasts and what they're, what they love about doing it, the struggles that they're having great, great conversations. A fun venue. It was at the Gravity Tap Room in Orlando, which I've never been to before. Nice location like easy parking and nice space.
Alban:One of the things this occurred to me at the end of the night, somebody was like I just had such a great time, these are such good people and was kind of telling me how much she enjoyed it. And we were talking and I was like you know what it is? It's that everybody here one is good at talking, they're podcasters. They're good at telling you about things. They can monologue if they need to. You don't have to worry that the conversation is going to be boring. Two, you share something. You both enjoy podcasts and you both enjoy creating them. So you have shared problem sets. But then, three, they're also totally different than you because they're podcasting about something else. And so every conversation, it's easy you go up and you're like oh, I see your name tag, that's your name, what's your podcast about? And they'll tell you something interesting.
Alban:And it could be, you know, somebody talking about oh, I love craft beer. It could be somebody who loves knitting. I met somebody who is a literary agent and she told me about how much she has to do to prep, you know, and getting new clients and trying to get them jobs. It's just, everybody is interesting. And then all of them will then have a question or two. That's like I met somebody who was like I use Spotify for podcasters, but I wish I could get into Apple, and I was like I mean, here I pull up a YouTube video and I'm like here's a video we made, here's how you can do it, and there's a section on how to use Spotify for podcasters to get an Apple. And it's like a blast to be able to be very helpful at the same time that everybody's just so interesting, and so I think it's just built for me to enjoy it.
Jordan:Yeah.
Alban:You know, you have this combination of just good people brought together, and I just consistently enjoy meeting all sorts of podcasters.
Jordan:That's what I like about conferences too is you just get to meet really great people. Everyone's super nice, and I love when they vent about their podcasting problems and I'm like I have a fix for that. It's just very like satisfying yeah.
Kevin:You know something that we discovered last night. I hadn't known that this would work. I think I did theoretically because I wanted to test it last night. But people who have the Buzzsprout app on their iPhones, you know you're meeting new people and they're like what do you podcast about? And yada, yada, yada. And I'd say, oh, bring up your podcast in the Buzzsprout app. And they bring it up and I'd say, hit that little share thing in the top and then, instead of like, give me your phone number or whatever and I'll text it to you, all we have to do is now touch the top of our phones together and if you have the app on your phone and they'd be like, yeah, and they'd open it up and it's a hit share, and then we'd tap our phones together and it would send me their podcast to my phone.
Alban:Yeah, I had never seen that before and I was like, wow, it can do that. It's like you built this app?
Jordan:What are you talking?
Alban:about.
Kevin:That's so cool, it's so cool, it's really cool, but it's it's. It's a great way. If you're standing in front of somebody and you want to share your podcast with them, you just launch the buzzsprout app, tap share, and then bump your phone up against their phone and it shoots it right over to them.
Jordan:Oh, so at podcast moment we're just going to see a bunch of people like clacking phones together. Yeah, Just bumping phones, just bumping phones.
Alban:It's very cool. This is something I was going to say for next week when it showed up, but since we're talking about it, when I was in, I think, dc, matthew Passy, who had a really big podcasting agency, started a company where they make NFC chips and he had bracelets and he has little stands and he has all sorts of things that it's like if you put your phone near it, the NFC chip will pull up the podcast in your podcast player, and so he had this bracelet and he was telling me about his show I think he called it podcast beacon and so I'd put my phone near it and, boom, it pulled up his podcast on my phone. And so he made bracelets for us, for podcast movement, and he made, I think, like a table placard which has got like an image of our artwork. It says just tap to listen.
Jordan:No way.
Alban:I think they're on route to us, so I'm a little bit early to this story. But when we go to podcast movement we'll all have a nice buzzcast bracelet.
Jordan:I'm going to be like walking around, just like accidentally bumping into people Like, oops, listen to my podcast.
Alban:Oops, this girl is like extremely clumsy, but also like Greg her podcast really well.
Jordan:Are there any more of these podcast movement meetups that you guys are going to be going to, or is this last one?
Alban:They're going to do one in Charlotte, I believe, and I think they are maybe looking at adding some more. I'm surprised at how many we went to and then how many people reached out with new ideas. They're like oh, come to Atlanta, or maybe you should be over here in Texas, and so there's lots of interest.
Jordan:Come to Boise.
Alban:Boise would be great. I know lots of great podcasters there and it is just a lot for us to do all the traveling, and so I'm not sure if we will do them. But I would love for us to be able to figure out what more ways to support local meetups or help people organize them, because it's so valuable for the people who are in the area who now get to go meet with people for the first time. I'm not sure if Kevin and I going on a giant United States tour of all these podcast meetups is probably the best use of our time to take a month off to do it, but it really is just a. It's just a great thing If you're a podcaster to be able to go to one or two and connect with people in your area. It really is wonderful area.
Jordan:It really is wonderful. So if you stuck around for our post show last episode, I mentioned that we have been working on a new podcast and Megan, who helps podcasters in support and does a whole bunch of stuff on the marketing side, she writes our weekly newsletter, and so I've been working with Megan the past few weeks in creating an audio version of that newsletter, and so I've been working with Megan the past few weeks in creating an audio version of that newsletter, and so now we are launching Buzzsprout Weekly, which is a great podcast. Megan is hosting the podcast and that's the second Buzzsprout podcast. I've gotten to work with someone on the team who's never like done a show before, so this has been a lot of fun. It's been great.
Alban:This is your calling, jordan. I think you are so good at helping somebody who's very anxious or just unsure of podcasting. You know it's the first time. They're like this doesn't feel good. I remember that very vividly for me and you know I didn't, I just had to kind of push through it. But I've seen you now do it with Priscilla. I've seen you now do it with Megan and both of them you're like you got it. You're doing amazing and they are doing amazing because you're encouraging them so well and both of those shows have turned out so good.
Alban:So we've been listening to Buzzsprout Weekly for a few weeks and it's been hidden and now it's about to go out to the world and people start listening to something that's going to be like a five minute episode that's just covering what we already have in our newsletter. But it's so nice to listen to it. There's more personality and sometimes you don't feel like I want to let you know. Go read another newsletter in my inbox. It's nice just to queue up that episode in the morning on, you know, monday or Tuesday when you get the episode.
Jordan:Yeah, and we have all the same links in the show notes of the podcast that we do in the newsletter. So, yeah, it's a. I think it's definitely going to be a huge convenience for people that are just wanting to get that information very quickly.
Kevin:Yeah, I like this a lot.
Kevin:My around town driving happens in the morning and so I love the idea of being able to consume like some of the things that normally come into my email inbox If I can get them in an audio format for some things. I like that and so I'm excited about Buzzsprout Weekly being able to listen to it. I do this once in a while for PodNews, so PodNews comes to my email inbox every day, and if I'm sitting, if I'm working from home that day, or if I'm just starting my day at my home computer, that's a great place for me to consume it. But I also have it queued up in my podcast app, so if I'm starting the day in the car, I can also just consume it there without having to sit on your phone while you're in traffic. Safe thing or ideal thing, but I love listening to podcasts and so hopefully there's a percentage of our audience that feels the same way and starts tuning into the show.
Kevin:This is the first weekly show that we've produced at Buzzsprout. This show, of course, is every two weeks. Happy to Help, I think is every two weeks, is that right, jordan?
Jordan:Yes, we did have podcasting Q&A, which I think was weekly.
Kevin:Yeah, and that's on hiatus.
Jordan:But that was another short form. It's really nice because we make sure that everyone doesn't get like burnout on the podcast. We're very like conscientious about like okay, short form weekly is totally cool. Long form it's going to be every other week.
Kevin:Yeah.
Jordan:Got to give it space.
Kevin:So doing the weekly show? Are you going to produce it every single week? Are you going to batch these things or, yeah, just going to do it every week?
Jordan:Well, I mean, yeah, that's the thing. I mean it's just like with buzzcast. I mean buzzcast we can't batch record buzzcast unless we don't cover any current events, and so buzzsprout weekly is sort of the same thing, where, you know, we we do include some like industry insights and news and stuff like that. So it kind of has to be every single week. So you know, when I go on vacation here we might have to do some moving things around or people stepping in. So it's going to be interesting, it's going to be a little challenging, I think.
Kevin:So how does that play into when you're, when you're setting up like the production of a podcast and you know it's going to be weekly, you know that people's schedules change from week to week and sometimes people are on vacation and stuff.
Jordan:Yeah.
Kevin:How do you use that knowledge and those like, how do you embrace those constraints in formulating how we're going to put the show together?
Jordan:Basically, we have so many talented people on the team that I don't think it's that difficult to find people to step up when others need to like take a step back, and so I think that that is massively helpful in making sure that we do publish. When we say we're going to publish the podcast, you know. So when Megan goes on vacation, you know maybe Alban can step in and he can record the podcast episode, and you know things like that or I can do it, you know. Whatever, no pressure, but I think I think that definitely helps is just having like an awesome team that you can rely on.
Alban:I also really love the concept of this podcast. You know it's similar to what Pod News is doing almost every day. It's similar to the show that I list to Discover Daily that the Perplexity team puts together. It's five minutes, it covers the main things that happened in this area and you can listen and you feel like, okay, I'm caught up and if you want to dive deep, you can dive deep, and if you don't, you can move on. But it's really nice to have those five-minute little here's what you need to know in this area and then you're done.
Alban:There was this whole idea years ago that everybody was going to have morning briefings from Alexa. Do you remember this, Kevin? Everyone was trying to build little mini podcasts. It would all get clumped together into a morning briefing and it never really picked up as much as we hoped. But I think these five-minute podcasts are a really nice way to, if you can say, I want to know the top podcasting stories every day.
Alban:I'm an indie podcaster and I want to know the few things that Buzzsprout thinks are important for me. I want to know what's happening in science and technology today, whatever it may be. There's these little mini podcast episodes that you can just queue up, they can autoplay on a playlist and, as you're going around your morning, in the first 25 minutes you've listened to three, four of these little mini episodes. But now you're like oh, I've caught up on all of the areas of news that I like to keep in touch with and now I feel like I don't have to go jumped into social media, I don't have to go onto my news website and try to dig around to see if something's happening. I feel like I'm caught up, I've seen it and now you can move on with your day.
Jordan:Yeah, and from a production standpoint it's really not a big project to do. A five-minute episode from start to finish probably takes, like, let's say, 40 minutes, 45 minutes, and it's not a big deal. But you are getting that information out there, you are getting a podcast episode out and yeah.
Alban:So could you walk us through what those 40 minutes look like for you? So Megan's already written the newsletter and then how do you, the two of you, meet and record from there to published? What does it look like?
Jordan:Yeah, so basically 9 30 in the morning on Monday, I'm going to hop on Riverside. She's there and what we do is she has a version of it, because if she was to take the newsletter and just read her newsletter into the microphone, the way that you write and the way that you speak are completely different. It's just not remotely the same. And so that was one of the things that we really had to work on when we first started this was she would write it in a way where she was like, yeah, I would say this this way, and so she'll just kind of like, you know, change the content of the newsletter a little bit and she's like, yeah, this is how I would speak. But then, once she got on the microphone things that are cute when she writes them sounded really corny or cheesy and it was just like, oh, that's not gonna fly, or she'd be like that sounds weird, that sounds weird when I say it out loud. And so what I think she's learned to do is to like, actually, when she's writing it, say it out loud, and then she can be like, okay, that feels natural or that feels right, and so that's made it a lot faster. So now we record. I think we're gonna we're to get the recording down to like 15 minutes and that's with like two or three takes, you know, because sometimes you say things incorrectly or fumble your words and so that'll take about that long.
Jordan:And then I export the file, edit it, put the music bedding underneath it and then upload it. And it's really nice for show notes because she already has the newsletter written. So it's really nice for show notes because she already has the newsletter written. So it's really easy for me to just pull those links together and write a short episode description and then put it out. So yeah, when it's all said and done, I mean, let's say, 40 minutes to an hour if I have to wait on anything, but it's like a big bang for your buck. You just don't have to spend a lot of time on it. But it's going to reach a lot of people and it's going to benefit a lot of people.
Alban:It's the perfect example of we've already done the work in collecting the stories. Megan's vetted them, we're doing all the work to create the content and now the podcast is just another way to distribute it.
Jordan:Yeah.
Alban:And it's nice if maybe it's an hour start to finish. If you count Megan's time as well for the recording, we're putting an hour of work in, but if a few thousand people listen to it, that's a huge return for so many people being able to listen to this podcast and going yeah, I don't really want to read a newsletter every morning. Well, now it's another way for us to share what we think is important about podcasting and I'm excited for more and more people to be able to listen to it.
Jordan:So Buzzsprout Weekly will be out at the time of this episode publishing, so I'll put a link in the show notes where you can subscribe to it. Alban, you posted a spicy tweet that says if a podcaster isn't worth listening to at 1x, then it isn't worth listening to at 1.5x or faster, and you might as well have kicked the podcasting Twitter's hornet's nest. Do you care to comment on that?
Alban:Well, podcast Twitter kind of didn't care about it. The podcast threads people really didn't like it.
Jordan:That's where they are.
Alban:I'm trying to be a little bit better about cross-posting things, and so I pulled up LinkedIn threads and Twitter and what I thought was just a very boring tweet, posted it on all three and then it came back to threads later had like 30 people saying this is the worst take.
Jordan:Yeah, people were upset.
Alban:It's not a bad take. It's a very good take. I stand by this a hundred percent. There's sometimes people will post things and be like I just said it, I completely believe it. It's so strange to me that speeding up podcasts is like the norm that so many people are like let's listen to podcasts at 1.5, 2X, like way faster than it was recorded, but nobody does this for movies. No one's ever watching movies at 1.2X.
Kevin:Wait a second. I do it for movies. No, you don't I do. Oh my God, kevin. Yeah, I'm sorry why. I don't know why. I do it for movies no, you don't I do. Oh my God, Kevin. Yeah, I'm sorry, I know, I do feel I don't know why. I do feel a little worse about doing it for TV shows and movies. I know you do this for podcasts.
Alban:I've heard you do it for podcasts and it was like unsettling. I got the car once and Kevin, I think, was listening to like three X and it was terrible.
Kevin:It wasn't three three acts and it was terrible. I never go above two.
Jordan:Oh my gosh. But even two is just like brutal.
Kevin:Okay, well, here's here's. Here's my take. Alban, open your mind a little bit. And, and Jordan, I think you're going to get this once I say it. Okay, but there are a lot.
Kevin:I like a lot of podcasts. I like to listen to a lot of podcasts, and most of the ones that I listen to are in the hour range or so, and I realistically probably couldn't if I'm listening to them all at 1x. I couldn't listen to nearly the number of shows that I listen to, given the amount of time I have to listen to podcasts in a week. And so I've kind of found this system where I don't get the full appreciation or depth of thought around the content that I do if I listen at 1x. But what I'm doing when I'm listening at like 1.5 to 2 is I'm just listening for something that's like the interesting point, and then I will like I'm like, oh, that's a really good thought.
Kevin:I will back up and I'll slow it down to 1x and I'll listen to that segment at 1x. And so all the time I'm listening at 1.5 and then I'm like, oh wait, that was great, that was great, and whatever, I'll grab my phone, I'll pause, I'll back up, you know, a minute or two, hit down to 1x, and then I'll listen until the point where I'm like, okay, they've made that point, I understood it, I got it, and I'll go back to 1.5 or two. And so that's how missing some things I totally agree. I'm not challenging that, but I use it to get to those points that are really interesting to me more efficiently.
Jordan:See, and I think you're making more work for yourself, like no wonder you're not consuming more podcasts because you're constantly having to fidget with your phone and like stop and go back and then like change the speed, like that sounds exhausting to me.
Kevin:Well, what I find when I listen that fast is I can understand all of it, I'm comprehending it, but I'm not absorbing it. I do need to really slow it down to at least like one X. I never go below one X. Does anybody go below one X? Does anyone listen at like 0.75?
Alban:Uh, yes, I had a responder, um Brett Hall, who does a podcast called talk cast theory of knowledge cast very, very deep uh, science of philosophy podcast. And he said oh, I have people who say they listen to mine at 0.7, which makes sense. I've listened to his podcast. It's very dense so I could understand listening slower. But let me, can I make this point a little bit more clear, cause I hear what you're saying and this is what I've formulated this over years. Like as a kid, I realized there's a functionally unlimited number of books. It's just they're unlimited.
Alban:I will never read 1% of the books out there. So what you have to do as a reader is just to accept. You will never get close to the end of books. Books are being generated faster than you could ever read them. You're falling further and behind your entire life. You will never get even closer. So what you have to do is have a very strong filter what are, for me, the top 0.1% of books, because that's all I'm ever going to read. Even if you read thousands of books, it's only a tiny sliver. So find what is the very best for you, and so I've gotten very good at if I, in a 100 pages. Am not loving this book. I'm done. I don't care if I bought it. I don't care if it's been recommended. If it's 100 pages and I'm not really into it, it's okay to let it go.
Kevin:But what if the life changing lesson for you is on page 101? What if?
Alban:it is, the chances that there's a life changing lesson on page 101 have gone way down because they had a hundred pages to make that life-changing lesson and they didn't even do it. But now the chances that book two has a life-changing lesson in the first hundred pages is probably better than book one. That's the argument.
Kevin:The probabilities have shifted. All right. So here's how I read books. I read them pretty quickly. I think I read them much like I listen to podcasts. I kind of skim through a lot of the content, Like I'm reading paragraph by paragraph, and sometimes I'm even jumping a paragraph and seeing if I'm still following along and I'm moving through the book pretty quickly. And then I find a point that I'm like oh wait, that there seems like there's something there. I'll back up and I'll read it again more slowly.
Jordan:I oh wait. There seems like there's something there.
Alban:I'll back up and I'll read it again more slowly. I'll be honest, because the point you're making to me right now is so offensive. It's making me more. I'm feeling so good about this 1X. It hurts. Just think about this. Books, movies, magazines, social media, podcasts, youtube videos, tiktoks there's unlimited, even on Buzzsprout. I did the math. We're doing something like 45 new minutes of episodes on just Buzzsprout are coming out every minute, so you'll never could listen to all the episodes produced by Buzzsprout podcasters, even if you listened, but my goal is not to listen to everything, it's just to listen to as much as I can.
Alban:So you have to accept your life is limited. You only have a finite amount of life and you've got to pick. If you're going to create and engage with content, make it the best, make it the very best stuff. And so, if I'm already.
Kevin:Yeah, I think how you're choosing to filter the best and how I'm choosing to filter the best are just different.
Alban:And I think what you've decided to do is I'm saying I'm knocking out 99% and you're going, I'm knocking out 98.5, but I'm now going to engage with that 1.5% a little bit less. I'm going to kind of miss some of it. It's going to kind of like some of it will get me and then I'll go back and I'll listen to it and I'm like, if I'm going to engage with it, it's at least worth engaging with fully. And so for me that means the best books I often will go back and reread three, five years later, means I take a lot of notes when I listen to podcasts, when I read, when I watch videos. Like I'm mostly trying to take notes because then I'm like something is durable and years later I'll have something I remember.
Alban:Oh, I remember how I felt from listening to that podcast or reading that book, even 20 years later. But there's so many books that I just cruised through because I wanted a stamp and I wanted to be able to tell people yeah, I read Anna Karenina. But if you ask me now, what does Anna Karenina mean? I'd be like I remember like five facts about it and me getting that stamp like I read it is not worth anything and at least it just doesn't feel like there's any value. But there's books I've read so much more slowly that I remember so much and they have so much more meaning for me. So the argument is if it's worth reading, it's worth reading well, if it's worth listening to, it's worth like engaging with fully. And if you think I've got too much going on, the best way to save time is just delete a bad podcast. You know you're halfway into it. You go, this stinks delete and you've saved all the rest of the time. I don't know.
Jordan:This is feeling very existentialist. Like you, only have a finite amount of time, so be intentional with every minute of it.
Alban:Yeah.
Jordan:And I don't disagree. I love that, but I mean, sometimes I also just want to consume as much crap as I can.
Kevin:You guys might find this highly offensive, but on the regular, if I'm watching a movie or a TV show that I've never seen before, I will regularly just skip through large chunks of it. Oh my God.
Alban:What, kevin, are you listening to music You're like, oh, I got to listen to the new Taylor Swift album, just crank it to 2X.
Kevin:Oh no, I don't. No, I don't listen to music at 2x, but I do skip songs like a lot. Yeah, but I'll be watching a movie and whatever like a scene happens where they're doing like character development. I'm like I kind of know what's gonna happen here.
Alban:I know what yeah, with the guns three minutes ahead. Am I still tracking the story? Yeah, still tracking the story, I'm fine keep going.
Kevin:Oh, am I still tracking the story? Yeah, still tracking the story, I'm fine, keep going. Oh man, I mean, who the heck? I don't have time to sit around and watch a two-hour movie and get this done in an hour 15, it was good. I and I try to bring this to real life as much as possible, like the guidelines I give for people when we're having conversations, like they're like. I want to tell you this story about something that happened to me, and sometimes I'll say something like in the realm of okay, tell me the briefest possible version of the story you can and then allow me to ask clarifying questions if necessary. All right, this would be the most efficient conversation that either one of us have had today. We'll both feel really good about it.
Jordan:Oh man, it's a miracle that this podcast gets to be as long as it does.
Kevin:I just don't know how it happens, all right. Well, Alban, good job for putting out something that stirred some conversation. I don't know that I'm convinced enough to change my listening habits around podcasting, but it's opened my mind to a different perspective.
Alban:Well, if you want to dig into this more, I think if you want the more existential version of it, I would go read 4,000 Weeks by Oliver Berkman. It's a book about your life, is something about 4,000 weeks long, and you feel that when you start thinking about those numbers, you go that's a lot shorter than I expected and he's like, yeah, you can't do everything, but you can do some things well, so try to find out what is super important to you. I really enjoyed that book. I almost immediately reread it and took notes because I enjoyed it so much. And then the co-founder of podcasting, Adam Curry the podfather tweeted a long time ago and this really landed for me. If you're regularly listening to podcasts at sped up speeds, watch out, because you'll find out that you become less patient with real people in your real life. That's true.
Alban:That's 100% true, I've been on the receiving end of that, kevin. You're like all right, dude, you got to talk 2x. I'm talking at 0.7 speed, naturally.
Kevin:Yeah, it's definitely not. It's definitely not healthy. I do feel more anxious. I do feel like if I come off a four hour car trip and I've just been listening to a bunch of podcasts at 2X the whole time, when I get there I am like amped up, like people are thinking like did you, were you chugging coffee the whole time you were driving here? Let's go. We got to hurry up. We got to make some decisions.
Alban:We've got to get to the point. Some people did point out they're like well, what if there's a podcast that I only like, part of it and at least sharing my workflow? You know I will listen in a podcast app big fan of pocket cast right now. But if you then want to be like, oh, there's only something in this show I want, but I don't want to have to scrub through and find it, I will share it into this app called Matter M-A-T-T-E-R. It's like a reader app for reading articles, but they will transcribe the episode and then you can just scroll through and read the section you want. You can take notes and if you click play, you can get a really nice podcast listening experience. So if you are interested in shows and you know this is not worth listening to at 1x, 2x or any other speed I would check out Matter and Transcribe there.
Kevin:I cringe a little bit to think that people who are listening to the show might be listening at 1x.
Alban:I listened to this show at 1x and I live it at 1x yeah.
Kevin:I know. But after Jordan's done the final edit I will listen back to see what made it and what didn't. And when I'm listening at 1x, I'm like we all sound just so sleepy and boring, like talk faster. And then I put on 1.5 and I'm like, oh, that's a pretty good show. I got some pets. So I think there are some shows, quality wise, that are really only kind of worth listening to at 1.5 X, and this might be one of them, one of the most unhinged takes I ever heard.
Alban:I want to say this was from Song Exploder shared this that somebody once reached out to Song Exploder, which they will interview an artist, talk about the show, tear it apart and at the end they play the song and someone goes yeah, it's great, but could you make another podcast feed where you speed, you slow down the song half speed and they're like what, why would we do that? They go well, I listened to the whole show on two X because it's kind of boring, but then I get to the song. That's too fast, so I want you to slow down the song piece. And Ritchie K Shorway is like that is just hit 1X, that's all you have to do. I have to make a whole nother show so that you don't have to hit 1X at the end and switch.
Kevin:That sounds like a really good idea for a podcast app, Like the podcast app itself should be able to recognize whether this is speech or this is music, and so if you crank up the speed a little bit, it should only apply to the talking only. So when you set your speed it could be like a I don't know. I think somebody already has a smart speed thing.
Alban:Yeah that's overcast. Smart speed is really nice because it will just find the brakes you know the natural brakes in my voice and it just tightens them up and everybody sounds better.
Kevin:Other people call them like gap zappers and stuff like that. Yeah, but I don't know if anybody's taking the time to figure out how to speed up speech. But not music. Yeah, free podcast idea. I like that kind of million dollar idea.
Jordan:Take it million dollar idea. Take it so about three months ago we released Buzzsprout for iOS and we've had so many podcasters talking about it and loving on it, but our Android users have felt a little left out. So we have promised that we are working on an Android app. We had them sign up for a wait list and now do we have any information on that, Like where we're at with it?
Kevin:Yeah, the first batch of early invite invitations went out last week or this week I don't know what week we're on but they went out in the last couple of days.
Alban:They went out two days ago, but that will be like a week and a half ago when this episode comes out.
Kevin:Yeah, and so Alban is maintaining that list, and if you are an Android person and you are champing at the bit to get your hands on the Android app for Buzzspr, like to get access to that app as soon as possible, the best way to do it is to get on that list. The app I'm happy to report it is really, really good. We're trying to bring that same level. We've talked about this a lot on the show, but we put a lot of time into really crafting a strong app presence for Buzzsprout in the native experience. So we did that on iOS and we wanted to make sure we put just as much care and attention and detail into what we're bringing to Android as well, and so we've been working on that heads down for almost 12 full weeks now, and that's like a long time, considering the app was already done for iOS, so it's just translating all of that over for Android and making a really good experience for Android. So some of the like conventions on Android are a little bit different and we wanted to make sure we respected the platform, that this was going on and we wanted to get those right, and so that's what the majority of that time has gone to. But, like if you put the Android app right next to iOS, they are very similar, but the iOS version feels very iOS-y and the Android version feels very Android-y, and I think we're kind of proud of that. You want the apps to feel appropriate on the platform, not that just something was just ported over and it doesn't feel like the rest of your Android apps. We wanted to make sure we paid attention to those types of details, so I think we struck a pretty good balance. I think it feels really good. So hopefully, if you're an Android person and you love Android apps, you love the way they feel. We hope that this Buzzsprout app feels right at home on your Android device and sets you up well to be able to monitor and make quick updates to your podcast and get push notifications and do all the fun things that iOS users have been doing for the past 12 weeks. Now it's your turn too. So get on the list, download the app. Send for the past 12 weeks. Now it's your turn too. So get on the list, download the app, send us feedback, let us know what you think, if there's any improvements. We want to hear that stuff and share it with your friends who are podcasters as well. Like I said, I said this when we released the iOS app.
Kevin:Since getting this app on my phone, it's very much now feels to me like I can't imagine podcasting without it, whether it's just checking in on your stats, making quick updates to an existing episode For us, we do the Snapcast. I don't know, jordan, if you use it to unpublish or if you just do it the same time that you do, but I've unpublished a Snapcast before through the iOS app. Fan mail is a fantastic experience through the app, just getting that push notification, tapping and looking at your fan mail right away. Once in a while, we'll accept ad opportunities that come our way, and I do all that stuff through the app, and so I can't really imagine podcasting anymore without it. It's kind of like before we had it, I didn't miss it, but now that I have it, I'm like, oh gosh, podcasting without this app just feels terrible. I would never want to do that again, and so hopefully our Android customers will be able to have that same experience soon.
Jordan:We already talked about a tweet, but yesterday Tom Rossi also tweeted Thankfully at Spotify implemented conditional get requests with e-tags. This resulted in 87% reduction in bandwidth and processing for both Buzzsprout and Spotify, and it sounds good. But I don't understand what this even means and I wanted to comment like oh yay, what does?
Alban:that mean, but I thought maybe I'd just ask you guys. So the way podcasting works is all of your information is put in the RSS feed, which is just like a webpage, and then the podcast apps check that page constantly to see. Has something changed? When I say constantly, I mean constantly, every podcast getting checked more than every minute of every day by most apps.
Alban:So we're talking millions and millions of requests from Spotify, apple and all these other apps every day, and when Tom and I were going to these meetups, he was telling me about e-tags and conditional get requests. So think of this page. It's got a ton of information and for us they probably only get changed once every week or two when somebody publishes a new episode or updates it, but Spotify is still checking it, or any other app checking it every minute, downloading it, checking hey, is this changed? No, throw it away. Check again the next minute. Is this? Download it, Check, Is this changed? Oh, no, throw it away. And so Tom has been really trying to get more people to do this thing called podping or PubHub.
Kevin:SubHub or something like that.
Alban:Websub is the new name for that when we go out and we would say this one's updated, because we're only telling you once every two weeks this updated. Now you can update it, rather than you coming to us. They haven't implemented that. But what he did do is he reached out to someone at Spotify and they went wow, these conditional get requests with e-tags would be really good. So what they do is they ask hey, can I get that RSS feed? And Tom goes sure, and then they put something on it called an e-tag, which just is like think of it as like a number or a label. It's number 1,000. They go okay, Next time Spotify comes back, they say, hey, I want that episode, number 1,000. And then Tom or Buzzsprout will reply number 1,000 is still current, that's the same one. So all they get is like yes, it's the same from us.
Alban:Rather than let me give you the entire file, which might be multiple pages of content, download that every minute of every day. It's a huge difference. Instead of every minute, we're sending this whole RSS feed every minute. Now we're just saying no changes, no changes, no changes. And then, when there's a change, we go yes, change, here's the whole thing. And then they go great, they download it and they make the update. So it's a more efficient way, much more efficient. 87% reduction, so that's a big, big improvement for not just Buzzsprout but also for Spotify, and these things add up, this is a good amount of energy that's probably was being wasted and now it's not so positive for pretty much everybody.
Kevin:It's always shocking to me how some of the larger players in technology are, you know, not super concerned about efficiencies around bandwidth, but they are very concerned about like creating. If they create like physical products, like making sure that people understand how eco-friendly these things are and how they use recycled material. And when you're done with this physical product, we're going to recycle it and all this kind of stuff. But at the same time, what they're doing on the energy side with the and like in this example, bandwidth equals energy how inefficient they are. And so there are improvements to be made that are beneficial for the world also in just being more efficient in how we're moving data around. It's all powered by computers, and the more compute you're using to push stuff around unnecessarily is not good for the environment, it's not good for the planet, it's not good for our energy resources and where we derive that energy from, whether it be clean or not. Because, again, energy, kind of like money, is a little bit fungible If you're not using it here, you can use it somewhere else. No-transcript, and so I don't know.
Kevin:I've just always kind of found it a little bit like strange that these companies, they want to talk how much of recycled aluminum they use and how they're efficient in their glass process and how they're reducing shipping container size and how they're not going to send you a power brick with every new phone they deliver anymore but nobody wants to talk about.
Kevin:Okay, but you're requesting all this data thousands of times a day unnecessarily, like we could be more efficient there too, and when you do it, you should be proud of it and do press releases and tell other people so that other people feel the pressure to also be responsible for the planet. It's great that I'm not saying don't do it for your product stuff and your physical stuff, but there's also efficiencies to be had in podcasting and how we get updates for our podcasts, and so it's not just about oh, who cares if the listener gets the podcast within five minutes you published it, or 20 minutes later or an hour later. Is that that big of a deal? Well, it's not just about that. It's also about being efficient in the bandwidth that we use.
Alban:Yeah, I had the same conversation with somebody on Reddit when Pocket Cast said, hey, we're going to use pod paying and someone was like what does this matter? Like I'll get the episode five minutes after it comes out or two hours later, and I'm like you're right, as a listener, that's often not super important to you. I understand that it is really valuable for the efficiency of the internet and it is interesting. So many companies are not really all that focused on it and we were like a true startup. I think everyone would say what the heck is Tom doing? Wasting his time trying to get conditional get requests and pod ping done. You should be focusing on something else.
Alban:But this is Tom taking this thing. He goes. This is important to me. I just want to reduce bandwidth and waste. It's a bunch of waste. I don't like it.
Alban:And so, year after year after year, it's oh. We're zipping the RSS feeds differently. We are actively removing tags that aren't used. We are trying to reduce the amount of information that we're sending out across just the internet. Where now we're using pod ping, now we're using conditional get requests.
Alban:All of those add up and year after year after year, each one of them looks small ish. But I know that I've worked with Tom now for 10 years and I've seen every few months, tom find some new little efficiency to add in, and it's phenomenal that we can do this, that we can continually make this a little bit better, and maybe it's a part of the world that nobody ever will notice, except for a handful of nerds on Twitter who retweet it. Zero retweets, so no retweet. A few nerds will like it, like me, but it's making the world a little bit better in a little bit of an area that Tom cares about, and I love that he's doing it, and every time I see these it makes me feel good it might save us 45 cents a month or something. Even if it's small, it's still an improvement. It's probably a lot more than that, but it's an improvement for the rest of the time that Buzzsprout's around. Everybody will get this incremental improvement.
Jordan:Well, thanks for the explainer. I understand now and it's not as complicated as I thought it was. It's time for SoundOff, the segment where you send in your responses to our podcasting questions. We have some fan mail, but we had to record this episode early, so we actually just had the last episode like a few days ago, so we actually just had the last episode like a few days ago, so we have not had as much fan mail. So if you do send in fan mail between the time that we're recording and the next episode and you don't hear it, that is why and we'll have to pick it up on the next episode. But let's get things started with a message from the United Arab Emirates. I have just had a question to Kevin regarding the PSP Podcasting Standard Project. I haven't seen any progress there, especially in the HTML code updates for the project description. Is there any update there?
Kevin:Thanks, yeah, thanks for the question. Yep, love the Podcast Standards Project and all that's going on there. Sam Sethi is heading up communications for that and I know something exciting that he's working on is he's trying to put together a like a virtual PSP event that should take place later this summer. I think is what he's shooting for, or maybe in the fall, he wants to make it like a live event and also record it, probably so that you can listen to it at any point in the future. I know he's working on that. That'll be a big, exciting thing.
Kevin:Also, all the companies involved in PSP have been making progress. So RSScom, Transistor and Pocket Cast have all announced support for PodRoll within the last week or so. So I think it's done on RSS and Transistor. It's coming soon to Pocket Cast and Pocket Cast has said that they are going to support transcripts. That is coming soon as well, and so that is all a part of the PSP V1 specification that all the people involved agreed that we would all support this within this year, and so it's happening. It's all moving along. Everyone's kind of operating on their own timeframe, but the PSP is putting parameters around or guideposts probably a better way to think about it around how to prioritize those things within each organization that's working towards those goals. So stuff is happening.
Kevin:I know that the communication is probably still a little bit slow. Again, nobody's like totally in charge of running this thing. It's a coalition of people working together and so when you have that stuff, sometimes the communication gets a little bit fuzzy, like we haven't heard anything for a long time. But PSP is not something that will move super fast. The super fast, exciting, cutting edge stuff is all happening in the podcast index podcast namespace project. It's in those get hubs and there's a lot of talk always going on there. They describe themselves as running with scissors because they're, you know, they're happy to, you know, risk breaking things to get the next best great idea. Psp is a little bit different in that we're trying to figure out what is the stuff that they've experimented with that seems to be working really well and is stable enough to accept as a standard, and so standards move a little bit slower. If you're looking for the latest and greatest, check out the podcast index and the podcasting2.0 namespace project.
Alban:From Woodside, new York. Hey, buzzcast gang, I just discovered your subreddit and see that it only has 48 members. I'm not on Facebook and I was always wondering if you had another social community. And, lo and behold, the subreddit hath cometh to my periphery. Anyway, why don't you guys promote it so that you, you too, can grow it and become a booming social network community? Well, woodside New York, we are promoting it. It was at zero and we went from zero to now 48. That's actually a high score for our subreddit. It took multiple months.
Alban:Somebody at one point created the Buzzsprout subreddit, who did not work here, and then it got banned because they weren't moderating it and they were using our registered trademark, and so for months, jordan and I were trying to get it back and we got it back and as soon as we did, we promoted it in the newsletter, and so now we're promoting it. Now, if you want to come, hang out with us on Reddit. It's our Buzzsprout. We'll put a link in the show notes and I've been really enjoying it. I hop on there early morning and respond to anything that's new. Jordan's been on there quite a bit more. I really have always loved Reddit. I like it quite a bit more than Facebook, but we're going to continue using both. And if you don't like Facebook and if you're on Reddit, come on over and hang out with us.
Kevin:We'd love for you to join us. Festival Sounds out of Jersey wrote in and said you're right. Say not quit on yourself. We have only released one episode a month for the first six months and we're getting about 100 downloads per episode. Now we're at about 1000 downloads per episode after 12 months and 13 episodes. So most of our growth is coming from our listeners sharing with their friends and family. That's our momentum story and I hope it's encouraging to others. So thank you, festival Sounds. That's really cool. I mean that's phenomenal growth.
Jordan:Yeah, and I think that's a great example of you do not need to be putting out two episodes a week in order to grow. They're putting out one episode a month and that's attainable. That's something that anyone can do is one episode a month and that's attainable. That's something that anyone can do is one episode a month, and they just kept doing it and grew that way. So I think that's a great example. David Clark of the late bloomer actor says team. I was initially very interested in the video upload option to Spotify, but it seems apparently they continue not supporting the openness of podcasting, in that once you have video upload, your RSS feed will no longer be accessed, even if listeners only listen to the audio version. No thanks Spotify. Yeah, I think that is a bit of a caveat to it, but I mean, if you want your video on there and you're willing to accept that, then that's okay too.
Kevin:Yeah, I'm kind of of the mixed minds on this. I mean, I think if you're taking the time to, there's a lot of work involved with producing a video podcast, and if you're taking all the time to do that, you probably want to make sure it's available in as many places as possible, especially if you're getting some traction with your audio version on Spotify and you have a chunk of your audience there, and so if you're uploading it to YouTube, what Spotify is doing isn't really any different than YouTube. So if you're not objecting to YouTube's how they're approaching video podcasting kind of hard to say well, Spotify is worse than YouTube. I mean, it's kind of the same thing, and so, you're right, I would like it to be more open as well. It's not. I get it.
Kevin:I do have a little bit of clarity for you, though. If you do use the replace episode feature in Spotify, you're not going to get any of those stats reported back to Buzzsprout. When you replace it with a video, you are doing exactly that. Like they're. They chose the right words. You are replacing the audio version with a video version, and even if someone just listens to the, you know if they toggle it. So they're not watching the video. They're just listening to the audio version. They're just listening to the audio from the video and so it's not getting pulled from Buzzsprout anymore. So we're not getting the data back. It won't be reflected. So just know, if you do it, you're going to need to also check Spotify and add those download numbers to the ones that you're seeing in Buzzsprout to get your full picture of your audience. But yeah, video is a different beast.
Jordan:Yeah, that's exactly it. Like this isn't just another reason why video podcasting is such a pain in the butt is you now have to. Once you get your stuff up on YouTube, then you have to, like, check YouTube for the stats, and then, if you do it on Spotify, then you have to go on Spotify for the stats because you can't get it on Buzzsprout, and it's just.
Kevin:Yeah, it's just another reason why I'm not doing it and we talked a lot about this in the last episode, so if you didn't catch that, go back and listen. But yeah, video is kind of different, not super easy, and so we hate the idea that video would become a roadblock for somebody who just wants to create an audio podcast. Because audio podcasting is so accessible, it's really easy. But at the same time, I don't want to discourage anybody. Somebody says, no, video podcast is really important to me and that's what I'm passionate about. Well then, this is a great new way for you to get some distribution on your video show. But don't feel like you have to do it. You can have a really successful hobby, a career. You can achieve a lot of podcasting goals by just doing an audio show, and there's nothing wrong with that, it's fantastic.
Alban:Somebody in Burbank, california, reached out. It would be much better if Spotify sent listeners to YouTube video platform. I disagree with this. I understand where you're coming from, like isn't it nice when everything's in one place? And I know videos on YouTube, I know audios on Spotify, I know that hot takes are over on Twitter, you know where things go.
Alban:But what Spotify is doing is challenging YouTube a tiny tiny bit and they're like hey, we're going to have some video content, so there's a little bit of competition and they could just put a link so you can go watch on YouTube. But they're trying to do something different and they're trying to give people a reason to engage with Spotify more and I think it will only make YouTube better. It will only make Spotify better for them to have this competition. I'm with you, burbank California, that I'm gonna watch things on YouTube and I'll listen on Spotify. But I am happy there's some competition. For the same reason, I'm happy that there's Instagram shorts and YouTube shorts and they're challenging TikTok, that it's not just one platform, that there are a few different ones all pushing each other. I'm glad that Spotify's leaning into video a little bit.
Jordan:We got a message from Paulette Just heard. You read my text and realize you thought I was in Louisiana and not Los Angeles. Maybe you have a listener named Paulette in that state, but this is Paulette in California. And yes, Alban is so much taller than expected. Met him at PME this last March. Paulette, I'm sorry. It's like the punctuation saves lives with like the let's eat grandma and let's eat grandma, you know what I mean. Like I didn't have like the L dot A dot, so I made that mistake. I'm so sorry. Punctuation would have definitely helped though.
Kevin:Lexington, kentucky, wrote in and said hello. I listened to the episode on having video podcasts on Spotify and I would like to know how I can set this up for my show that is distributed on Buzzsprout Jordan, can you tell them how they can log into Spotify?
Jordan:Yeah, I actually just did this last week claimed a podcast on Spotify while hosted on Buzzsprout. So you're just going to go to Spotify for podcasters, click sign up and they come up with like a few different options. You can either say that you have are like starting a podcast on Spotify, or you have a podcast with Megaphone, or you're hosted somewhere else. So you're going to click hosted with somewhere else and then they're going to walk you through some steps to create your profile and then you can claim your podcast and it's that easy. So that is all you have to do. It's very quick. So if you have any issues with claiming your podcast on Spotify or running it, run into anything shoot an email to our support team and we can help you with that.
Alban:And we just got one last night while Kevin and I are driving back from the meetup from San Diego, California. Hey guys and lady, just listened to your podcast. Recently I edit and produce a show for clients on Buzzsprout. I got familiar with using it. Happy podcasting, Chris. At Podtastic Audio.
Jordan:Awesome.
Alban:I actually looked up Podtastic Audio when this came in and 154 episodes about the podcasting industry, and the latest two are both friends of the show. Steven Robles from Riversidefm did an episode doing a deep dive on video podcasting, so if you want to learn more about that, I'd go recommend that episode. And also Steve Stewart, who does Podcast Editors Academy often a speaker at Podcast Movement did a recent episode, so we should drop links to those. I think those would probably be pretty good listens.
Jordan:Yeah, all right. Well, you got a new subscriber in me too, because that sounds awesome, all right. So last episode we asked have you ever lost podcast files due to a lack of backup and, if so, how did you handle it? Did we get any responses to that, Alban?
Alban:We didn't get any in fan mail, but I did get one over on Twitter from Tom Raftery. Tom reached out. I think he's in the UK so I know he might not want to be sending fan mail texts, but we do have a UK number now so it will be quite a bit cheaper for you, but anyway he wrote. Hey, Alban, regarding the sound off question, I've been lucky enough to never have lost a podcast file. In fact, I still have all 55 episodes of my pod leaders podcast, which I ran from 2005 to 2007. And then he sent me a screenshot of episode one, an interview with Robert Scoble from Microsoft from November 2005. November 2005 ends up being I mean, that's got to be, I don't know first 10,000 podcasts in the world. That's extremely early. So four years before Buzzsprout launched. Yeah, you beat Kevin to the podcasting game.
Alban:Tom and I would actually love to go back and listen to this. It's so much fun to dive into the history of podcasting and listening to. I've listened to some of the really early Adam Curry episodes. I've listened to some of the is it Daily Source Code, kevin, is that one of the first shows? I really enjoy listening to these old shows because so many of the conventions of podcasting that we got to take for granted get invented in those first few years where some of the things from radio come over. Some of the conventions of podcasting that we got to take for granted get invented in those first few years where some of the things from radio come over, some of the things don't, and we kind of built up this new podcasting thing. So you know, tom, maybe send us a link. If this is out there live, maybe we could listen to it and share it with the rest of the Buzzcast audience.
Jordan:So, Alban, do you have a sound off question for our next episode?
Alban:Yeah, I want to hear how fast are you listening to podcasts? Tell us why. Are you a one Xer like me? Are you somebody who's really getting into it and you're going 0.7, like one or two people that we've heard about? Or are you at Kevin, listening at three X speed, racing through episodes? And when you tell us, give us a little bit of the explanation, were you convinced by either of us, our arguments, and are you one of these like degenerates, who's also speeding through videos and movies, which makes no sense? So let us know by sending in fan mail. We've been getting some other responses on other platforms and we just need send us a fan mail. That's the best way to reach us because they all come in together. So we hope to feature your answer in the next episode.
Jordan:And with that, thanks for listening and keep podcasting. Do you see the bags under Alban eyes? Alban, you look like as tired as I feel. It's like 830 here, but it's like 1030 there. I don't have bags under my eyes's eyes.
Kevin:Alban, you look like as tired as I feel it's like 8 30 here, but it's like 10 30 there. I don't have bags in my eyes, I noticed. I just didn't want to say anything it looks like it's me.
Alban:You look dog tired we had a late night, you know. We went down, we drove down to orlando and orlando's, you know, two and a half hours, and it wasn't actually all deep in the heart of orlando, it was a little bit closer to us. So we drove, drove down there, kevin, tom and I, and we stay, and this ends at nine. But there's people there talking about podcasting, so we stick it out till a bit after 10, until the last people leave. Then we leave and we start driving home and just hit, you know, massive traffic, and so then we were back at Kevin's house by 1230. And then I'm home, well, after one, because I've got a bit of a hike beyond that.
Kevin:Yeah. So when we were driving home last night, we got home super late and Alban doing this thing, this workout routine that he's committed to, that he has to do two workouts every day. And so I was curious because he was, he was doing these um podcast meetups last week where he was in DC and then Philadelphia and New York, and I was asking how did you get two workouts in a day when you were on that schedule and trying to hit all those meetups? And he was just filling me in and I was like well, wait, you have another workout to do today then. Right, yeah, Because, uh, like he did a workout before we left to go to orlando and then we were coming home and I thought maybe you had to get it done before midnight, like are we gonna have to pull off on the side of the road? And like you're gonna have to on the highway.
Kevin:What do we have to do? Give him some dumbbells in the back seat? Yeah, um, but he clarified for me that he just has to do it before he goes to sleep for the night. Yeah, that it can actually be after midnight. Then this is the best part. I was like so what are you gonna do when you get home? And he's like I'll probably just get on the treadmill and you know, and do a walk for 45 minutes or something, as jordan tell me does. Walking on a treadmill does that sound like a workout?
Jordan:no no, that's exactly what I said sounds like you're just, you're staying up, you're phoning it in 45 minutes after you get home and you're like watching something on the tv while you saunter about right saunter about.
Alban:The challenge isn't to like to get a certain number of steps for the day.
Kevin:This, the challenge, is to do two workouts, and so walking on a treadmill does not qualify.
Jordan:Yeah, aren't you supposed to get like your heart rate up?
Alban:This is the workout. This counts.
Jordan:It does not count.
Alban:It's two in the morning, jordan, you don't want to get your heart rate up.
Jordan:Well, if you're going to commit, just commit.
Alban:All right, I'm on day 74 of this 75 day workout program.
Kevin:part of it is so close to workout today and so you don't want one of the last ones to just be. Well, I actually really just kind of phone that one in and walk down the trail.
Alban:The deal is that you can't, really you can't lift or run twice a day for 75 days and not injure yourself. You will injure yourself yourself. You have to have some recovery. Oh, so you have to do some.
Kevin:I thought you were doing 75 hard. It sounds like you're doing 75 mediocre it is 75 hard.
Alban:This is like official rules the official podcast rules 75 squishy. Priscilla said this to me the other day's like well, you're, oh, you're almost done with your 75 hardish or something. And I was like hard it it's.
Kevin:I'm doing the real thing, I'm doing super hard so after I said this to them, that Alban getting in his car and he's like you know, I'm gonna not be able to walk now. I've actually got to do something like a real workout. So I want to hear what did you do? I?
Alban:because kevin is. I'm like it is a lot, it's part of the program you're supposed to do. You have to do some recovery. I've probably haven't done a walk workout in I don't know three weeks. I'm lifting weights every day, I'm running almost every day and I'm like I can take a walk. And then kevin's like wow, it just feels like what a waste, what a a commitment, what a ruin, and I'm like you're such a jerk that you're doing this.
Jordan:You're so lazy.
Alban:But one thing I did learn is that there's some kind of active recovery you can do for your hamstrings, where you put your treadmill into like sled mode and then you push it in reverse. So you are like walking, but backwards, and then pushing the ground, and it's supposed to be something good for my hamstrings to recover. So instead of walking, then I have to do this thing, which is just this is what you did.
Kevin:This is what I did. You walked backwards.
Alban:Uphill. I feel like I was bullied, honestly, and this was how I was able to live with myself. But I was like if my heart rate gets over 120 or something, then I'm not going to be able to sleep until three and then I'm going to ruin the whole day.
Jordan:Did your heart rate get over like 95 even?
Kevin:I cannot believe you did that for 45 minutes. You walked backwards, pushed the treadmill backwards for 45 minutes.
Alban:I had some PT in there. You pushed the treadmill backwards. I could walk around a target for 45 minutes.
Kevin:I had some PT in there.
Jordan:You pushed the treadmill backwards. I could walk around a target for 45 minutes.
Alban:Jordan if you do two 45 target workouts every day for 75 days. You did it. You did this thing If you do all the other stupid legalistic rules.
Jordan:Oh, I don't need to participate anymore. Then that's easy Done 75 target hard.
Kevin:I'll tell you what. I had, a fleeting thought I didn't share with you last night, Alban, but I'll share it with you now. Alban parked his car at my house and we met there and then we drove together and so we came back to my house and he had to get in his car and go home and go do his workout. And I had this fleeting thought of you know what? He's committed to this thing. He's on day like 73 or four. He's at the end. Maybe I should just say, dude, let's just go in my garage and I'll do a workout with you. I have a workout partner to help you get through it.
Alban:I was about. I almost said I'm walking, but if you want to go for a run right now, I'll run with you right now.
Kevin:I really wanted to be that type of friend for you, and then I just couldn't do it.
Alban:It was 1230 and you go.
Kevin:Yeah, if you want to do this dumb thing you could do it. I got this 830 meeting in the morning. My mind has to be sharp. I just I want to be that guy for you, but I couldn't do it, and so I'm disappointed in myself. Sounds like you're a little disappointed in me for walking backwards. There's disappointment all around, but I am proud of you that you got it in good work because maybe, maybe I'll do this.
Jordan:I don't know, who knows, I could walk yeah, it doesn't sound that hard you could just jordan.
Alban:There are a lot of other rules. Well, the first rule is you've got two workouts a day one. Both of them have to be 45 minutes. They can't be together, so, like when kevin and I go play pickleball for three hours, I also have to have worked out that morning before we do that. They have to be split.
Alban:One has to be outside oh and so if you get stuck where it's raining and that's the only time to do it, you you're doing it in the rain. That's the whole point. Has to be out there in the sun, you're going to have your rocky moment like your workout montage moment.
Alban:All right, that's. That's rule one. Number two is you've got to be on a diet that you pick, that you are a hundred percent compliant with no cheap meals or anything. You have to drink a gallon of water a day. You cannot drink alcohol at all. You have to read 10 pages of a nonfiction book a day. What Every day? You have to take a photo of yourself every day to track your progress, and so now I have this hidden folder on my iPhone, which I think are mostly for like inappropriate photos, but mine is now like workout like 74 shirtless photos of myself.
Alban:I a few times pulled up in my phone to show somebody a photo and the first thing that happens is it's a hidden album. But the way it opens is because it sees your face.
Jordan:Yeah.
Alban:And so I open up my phone.
Jordan:So you're like holding your phone away from your face, like trying to open it.
Alban:No, I don't think about it. I just opened my phone and it goes unlock and it's like it's not one photo of yourself, it's like a stream of photos just like dead face in the mirror there's no smiling no, you know what you should do.
Kevin:At the end of this album you need to take all of those photos that you've taken of yourself every day and send them to one of those services where they can print a flipbook so you can flip from day one to 75 and see this body transformation. Oh man, I like that.
Alban:Let's do that yeah.
Kevin:And they can be. We'll put little Buzzsprout logos on them and we'll hand them out at podcast moment.
Alban:I mean I listened to a ton of podcasts from this thing. Maybe to pull it back to what this show is actually about, I did listen to a ton of podcasts. Uh, I mean, you're spending a lot of time working out and a lot of it was early morning by myself. It was really nice. I got, uh, I listened to a ton of shows, I found new shows and it was great did you okay.
Jordan:so with the I'm stuck on the reading 10 pages thing because I love that. It's like you're not going to only go hard on your body, You're also going to go hard on your mind, kind of thing.
Alban:And can you? Can you listen to audio books too?
Jordan:Like. Is there that kind of like?
Alban:loophole Audio books are. That is not. There's no loop.
Jordan:I loophole audio books are. That is not. There's no loop. I read so many books. I mean, like the idea of reading more is just like so fatiguing to me.
Kevin:Yeah, well, you don't have to read 10 additional pages to what you normally do.
Alban:You just have to make sure you get 10 pages in yeah, but it's gonna be 10 pages of a non-fiction book read like in a physical format. I don't even think kindle is allowed.
Kevin:This is gonna be the same 10 pages every day.
Alban:There's up to be a different 10 pages and if you start a book you have to finish it. So if you start a book, that's not good. You've committed to it, it's a whole. Here's the thing it's made by this guy who was drinking a bunch and like playing video games in his parents basement and doing nothing with his life and he was like he came up with a bunch of rules for himself and then he did them and he's a nut. I'm pretty sure the guy's a nut. And then he made this program and I always saw it online.
Alban:I was like, oh, this is dumb. But at one point somebody said if you accomplish it, then for years you'll know like it was very difficult to do this thing and I had the discipline to do that. I can handle whatever blah, blah, blah thing in the future. And that resonated with me enough that I was like I will take on the legalism and the stupid rules just for the purpose of. I've never done something, I think, very hard physically in my life and it'd be good to have one thing. I was like all right, that was a huge pain for 75 days, but I did it.
