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How To Use Google's NotebookLM For Podcast Research

• Buzzsprout • Episode 137

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We cover a wide range of topics designed to help podcasters stay ahead in the ever-evolving podcasting industry. We kick things off with some major Buzzsprout updates, including our latest IAB 2.2 certification and Buzzsprout’s newly redesigned website customizer. Check out the websites created by Sparkling Life Coach, The Kids' Code Podcast, The Late Bloomer Actor, and The Writing Worship Podcast!

We then take a look at Google’s Notebook LM, how Acquired filled an arena with thousands of fans, and the growing trend of niche podcasts making big waves, like the HVAC School podcast.

Sound-Off Question: What is a podcast episode that is so undeniably good you could recommend it to anyone? (Based off the Something Large and Wild episode Kevin recommended to Alban)

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Thanks for listening & keep podcasting!

Kevin:

So this is. You guys keep asking me to read the outlines before we get on, but then I log on today and I see this outline, which is the longest outline in the history of Buzzcast, and it's not encouraging me.

Jordan:

You don't have to, it's okay.

Kevin:

I need an AI summary.

Jordan:

Welcome back to Buzzcast, a podcast about all things podcasting from the people at Buzzsprout. So let's kick things off with a couple Buzzsprout updates. The first is that Buzzsprout has just received the most recent IB certification, version 2.2, which is the strictest certification, and I believe we are only the fourth hosting company to achieve it. So can one of you speak a little bit more about why it's so hard to get this certification and what it means for Buzzsprout podcasters?

Kevin:

You know, I don't know all the technical details that was involved, but I do know that the process took longer than it's ever taken before. So we were really yeah, we did.

Kevin:

I think our first official certification was 2.1. I think we started when it was 2.0. And then somewhere in that process they went to 2.1. So we just went ahead and got the 2.1. And then we thought that the 2.2 recertification would be faster, and it wasn't. It wasn't actually more like code changes or anything, it's just they're asking more questions, I think, than ever and wanting more detailed responses than ever. So just the back and forth ended up taking longer. Not a lot of code changes, though I don't think any. Mostly the stuff that they're now looking for was like blacklists and the method that you're putting your blacklist together from and stuff like that. I don't know, I was on the periphery but I just saw a bunch of emails and I was getting status updates. But yeah, time intensive, not necessarily technically intensive status updates but yeah, time intensive not necessarily technically intensive.

Alban:

Yeah, it is a process. I mean the IAB formed because everybody measures things differently, and I think it might have started for radio to begin with. Advertisers wanted to know is everyone measuring this stuff in a legit way? You say 2 billion people listen to this radio station, but that sounds fishy to me, and so they tried to standardize the methods of measurement and at some point, podcast hosting companies were I think it was the advertisers who drove it. We're like we want to make sure that you guys measure stats the same way, and so the nice thing about Buzzsprout having it is there's no changes to the podcaster. Everybody gets it. It's on every plan.

Alban:

If you sell advertisements, then the advertiser knows like okay, these are totally legit numbers, it's been verified by a third party, they're comfortable with them. But even if you don't sell advertisements, you can be so much more confident. These numbers aren't inflated, these numbers are real. There's real people downloading these on real devices. It's not some you know internet bot running around downloading everything. Yeah, we did it in 2020. I think it was so quick, kevin, because most of their stuff that they were already doing, I think we did all of it by default. We've been doing it for a few years before following all their guidelines, yeah, and then maybe this time they updated a few things, so we ended up making I'm sure we made more changes this time than we did back in 2020.

Kevin:

Well, not changes, just documentation. I really do think it was just documentation. So I think the big back and forth was mostly around blacklists and IP addresses that you're not counting, that you're discarding, and where are you getting them and how are you keeping that updated and all that kind of stuff. And before they were just verifying that you had a blacklist, and now they actually want to see what is on the blacklist and where did you get it and how do you store it and how often do you update it and all that kind of stuff. So then we're having to provide documentation for all that stuff and that documentation then has to pass their muster and then they come back and ask you to you know, if they want you to change anything, change anything, do it again. So that back and forth just takes a very long time.

Alban:

I found a old Reddit post today. I was searching for the first time we rolled out IAB, so I was searching IAB 2.0, buzzsprout, and I found this Reddit thread and somebody said I got way more downloads as soon as I left Buzzsprout. This is awesome and everyone's replying going. That's not awesome Because the downloads don't go up as they get more accurate, they go down as they get more accurate. As you remove the bots, as you remove the duplicate downloads, as you remove the Windows server that tries to fake it and make it look like it downloaded your episode 200 times. As you pull those out, the numbers always go down. I think it's extremely rare. I don't think we've ever had it in the history of Buzzsprout. It's extremely rare that somebody accidentally filters out real downloads. It's almost always the opposite error that people don't filter, and so if you leave one host and go to another in your episode, downloads go up. That's probably not a good side. Yeah, at least if it happens immediately. If it happens over time, it might be because you made better content.

Kevin:

The problem is never. The problem never lies on the identifying a download. Like downloads are easy to identify, that was download. Now we have to figure out is that a person or is that a robot? And the robots are trying to look like humans all the time, and so that's the hard part is figuring out. Are these downloads that all look legit actually legit or not, and so like? Well, that's exactly what Alvin said Everybody can count a download. That's not the problem at all. So I don't know if it's something to brag about. As a hosting company, we guarantee the lowest numbers, but yeah, so we would never say it like that. We're not guaranteeing the lowest numbers, but we're trying to guarantee is the most accurate numbers for sure and that plays out Like I've set up PodTrack before on our podcast.

Kevin:

It might still actually be there. I've set up OP3. And every time I do sanity checks on our numbers, we are always at or below whoever I'm sanity checking against. So you can know for sure when you're hosting with Buzzsprout that your numbers are as accurate as they can possibly be. They're as low as possible possibly be. They're as low as possible.

Jordan:

It's terrible marketing messaging, but it's a little bit, a little bit truth behind it. Yeah, all right. And the second update we need to touch on is the new Buzzsprout website customizer. So we just recently launched a redesigned website for our podcasters, and now we have also deployed an update to the website customizer on your Buzzsprout dashboard.

Alban:

Yeah, we added all these new pages to the podcast websites and we're trying to be really smart by pulling from all these different areas around Buzzsprout. You know the hey, if you've set up PodRoll, we're going to pull in all that information. You have a description for your podcast. That's your about page. You told us you had some guests and contributors. That goes on the contributor page. So what we did here was we pulled everything together, we centralize it. So when you're on your website page, your website customizer, then you can see hey, if you want to update the things that are over there on that pod roll URL, click here and update your pod roll. If you want to change what's on the contributors, click here. And then what I think is great is that you've got these customizations color, fonts, image and as you change them you get a live update of what your website looks like. So you can see it right there Like this looks good. You can see if does it look better, does it look worse, and if it starts looking worse, go back.

Jordan:

It made sense where we have all of these different features and they were kind of like spread out across the website. So it made sense that, like, the hosts and stuff like that would be in the podcast info. And it made sense that, like all this different stuff, it wasn't until we updated the website to include all that stuff that we went, oh crap, no, it's like all spread out. Everything is not just like cohesive and right here. So I think that this is going to be a really welcome change for the podcasters.

Kevin:

Yeah, you know, I think it really came together at the end and this was the design team, I don't know. I would say it this way, like expressing their usability genius in that when you first set up your podcast and launch it, one of the tasks on that list is to go customize your website, so make it look like the brand of your podcast and, you know, choose your font, choose your color, all that kind of stuff. But then from that point forward, like, you're probably not going to revisit that page very often, but you will do management tasks on your podcast overall. So, like, if you have fan mail enabled, like as fan mail comes in, you might just want to read that fan mail and just be like, oh, that's a great testimonial of somebody who's really liked my podcast, I'd love to add that to my website. Well, I don't want to have to flip back then to the website customization process, find out where the fan mail thing is, sort through all those fan mails, find that one and publish it. But that is a very typical flow for a lot of website customization tools, and so what our design team did instead is they said no, like once you've customized your website, that just kind of lives over here.

Kevin:

You don't do that task very often Now.

Kevin:

You just manage your podcast like you normally would, and we'll put all the controls that you need to make sure your website stays fresh and stays updated, as you're just doing the regular management work of running your podcast.

Kevin:

So you get a fan mail and right there you like it, click the pin thing. I don't have to go to a customizer and find it and just do it right here and then I do a new episode and I have a new guest. So I go to the contributors page and I add that guest and I upload their headshot and fill out the info and then I assign it to the episode and I'm done. My website automatically gets updated. So it's not the most direct approach to building a website customization tool, but it's actually the easiest and this is like one of the benefits I try to express to people sometimes because we are in a space where we hear all the time this is podcast hosting built by podcasters. Okay, like that's one way to market your business. We choose not to market our business that way because that's not who we are.

Alban:

Well, we are podcasters, but that's not why we think we can make good software.

Kevin:

Right, we are software developers first and foremost. That's what we've been for a very long time, and we've gotten into podcasting.

Kevin:

We love podcasting and now we podcast and we're getting really good at it, but you know, what we're even better at is creating software, and so when you use Buzzsprout, the main benefit that you get is it's podcast hosting made by people who really know how to build great software, and so I think this is fantastic. You're going to come in, you're going to set up your website the way you like it and then you're just going to manage your show and your website's going to stay fresh and it's always going to keep getting new content and new updates and all that kind of stuff. You change the description of your podcast in the podcast info section. Your website's updated. You get a fan mail that you want to publish. It's there. You do contributors. It's there.

Kevin:

You hook up support for your podcast on the monetization section. It's on your website. Like, all those things can live in their own places. You don't have to always remember to come back and oh, I'm taking donations Now. I have to go enable that on my website. Or I had a new episode with the guests. I need to go enable that on my website, and so that's a big differentiator. I think that a lot of our competitors market themselves as podcast hosting company. You know, made by podcasters, for podcasters, podcasters, podcasters, podcasters. Well, at the end, of the day you're building software.

Kevin:

Shouldn't you be a software developer first? Yeah, I'm off that little rant. It just feels like bad marketing, like like you don't want to get a, buy a car that's you know, built by a race car driver. Like the thing's going to fall apart. How about you give me a car built by an engineer you know, and then maybe tested?

Alban:

Well, now I feel like the contrarian in me now wants to make this argument Don't do it. We don't use that language because I don't. It doesn't align with me. It doesn't feel right to say I want email software built by emailers or email marketers or something. But mostly what people are trying to convey when they use that kind of marketing language is we understand the pain points.

Jordan:

We use our product.

Alban:

We use our own product, which is a valuable thing. I don't think it's the most valuable. The most valuable is software can bring multiple disciplines together to make something even better than you imagined. And the old way of I mean the way a lot of people set up their website is you set up your podcast hosting one place, then you set up a WordPress or a Squarespace page and like maybe there's a plugin that works with podcasting. But you're kind of still going in there and you're like, okay, I added listener support through a totally new Patreon website, so now I need to add that link to my homepage on WordPress and I just uploaded an episode talking about that. I need to upload it to two places, and so you're going kind of juggling between tools. The value that we're bringing is hey, you can set up your Buzzsprout subscription on Buzzsprout and you can set up your episodes on Buzzsprout and you update your about page and your pod role and whatever, and it automatically is all happening on your website because we're the ones who built the website too. So the real value is not that we're podcasters, it's that we've been for years.

Alban:

Kevin started building a web tool. What do you call this, kevin? Like a blog tool, a CMS?

Kevin:

in the 90s. Yeah. Content management system Right A website builder Website builder, yeah.

Alban:

Kevin had Squarespace before. Squarespace was a thing, that's right.

Kevin:

Squarespace and Wix basically put our first product out of business.

Jordan:

Oh man it was called M-Sites.

Kevin:

M Mini sites. Yeah, mini websites. It's more like a card. Card is like the new competitor to M-Sites. Yeah, Many websites oh many sites it's more like a card. You know, card is like the new competitor to M sites. Anyway. I'm really glad I got out of the business, only because when Squarespace and Wix came on, they were doing it so much better than we were, and so we like solving problems that other people aren't solving really well. Yeah, and they were solving it better than us, so time to move on.

Alban:

It's funny, though, to have seen all these website builders come in and do these amazing like you could build this massive website. Anything could work on, almost anything can run on WordPress, and they moved up market and so things like bear, blog and card and other things like that coming. It came in and we're like wait, we can make a really basic version now too. Yep, and it's kind of started all over. Anyway, buzzsprout website customizer, built by software developers and hopefully useful for all sorts of podcasters around the world.

Kevin:

Informed by podcasters built by software developers. This next topic Google's Notebook LM. What is this? I know nothing about it.

Jordan:

Yeah, so Google has announced that their AI note-taking tool's Notebook LM. Yeah, what is this? I know nothing about it. Yeah, so Google has announced that their AI note-taking tool, notebook LM it can now make an audio overview of the topics, so it's like a short podcast episode with two hosts like discussing the topic in depth. Obviously, I had to test it out and see, like, what Notebook LM is all about, and so I had Notebook LM explain to me what Notebook LM is all about. And so I had Notebook LM explain to me what Notebook LM is, and here's a clip of the podcast that it created.

NotebookLM:

Ever feel like you're standing at the base of a mountain of information articles piled high, research papers everywhere, your own notes overflowing, yeah, and you just need someone or something to guide you to the good stuff. It's kind of a paradox. You know, we have more access to information than ever before.

Alban:

We do, but actually making sense of it can be completely overwhelming.

NotebookLM:

Exactly. So what if you had an AI assistant to sift through all those documents and just pull out like the golden nuggets you know specifically for you?

Jordan:

Yeah.

NotebookLM:

Well, that's what Notebook LM is supposed to do this, kevin.

Alban:

that is 100% AI generated Voices the cadence, the breaks, the stutter. You just throw in any document and it will go. Oh, I'll create a. I think the way they talk about.

Kevin:

It is like NPR style podcast discussing the topic and they're surprisingly good. It's so good. There is a show that I'm like 90.

Kevin:

I'm a bit of a conspiracy theorist, right, you guys all know this about me and I'm I'm like 90% convinced that this very popular show has been using something like this for the last year or so. I'm not going to say the name of the show, I don't think it's fair to the person. They're very popular, they're good people, but I'm convinced that they've been writing outlines and then shifting it to something similar to this If it's not this, it's something just like this and having it generate there, because this podcaster that I'm thinking about also does another show that sounds very different, like it's their voice. So they I think they have an LLM trained on their voice and for this particular show that they do, I think it's AI generated.

Alban:

It's exactly like that. So to back up Kevin's conspiracy, like six months ago, kevin sent me a podcast episode and he said what do you think of this episode? I and I went man, this sounds AI generated, like the way that they're talking. Kevin had told me what he thought the conspiracy was. He just said hey, listen to this episode. And I went man, this sounds like it was written by ChatGPT. He's like yeah, that's what I was thinking.

Kevin:

Yeah, I sent this to Jordan as well. Didn't you say the same thing?

Jordan:

Yeah, I remember that yeah.

Alban:

Yeah, so I think that this was significantly worse. Yeah, it was more obvious In my opinion, and if it was real, that's even worse. The one you sent us was worse than this is? It sounded like, at best, they were using an 11 Labs voice clone. This is so good you can just upload a book, you can upload articles, and there's something about the back and forth between two people. It's a little bit slower paced, there's gaps, there's anecdotes and they're kind of like doubling back on information.

Alban:

There's something about just like the podcast style that makes it a little bit more digestible, especially if it's like a dense I mean notebook. Lm is for researchers and academics trying to pull a bunch of stuff together and it takes something that could be really dense and it just makes it a little bit more conversational and easy to listen to.

Jordan:

Yeah.

Kevin:

Did Megan link to this in the newsletter this week?

Jordan:

She did yeah.

Kevin:

Yeah, and somebody posted about it in the Facebook group and I went in and read the comments and the majority opinion was like this is terrible, it takes, there's no soul in it, yada, yada, yada, it'll never, it'll never catch on. And I'm just. I just have a different perspective on it. I mean, given the story that I just shared and Alvin and Jordan chimed in on, like I do really believe that this stuff not only is going to be effective, but I think it's already effective. I think it's already working, I think it's already podcasts out there that are using it and I think, for the most part, they're fooling people.

Jordan:

Yeah.

Kevin:

And so now it becomes a question of I mean, if the content is valuable to the listener, what does it matter? Right, but at the end of the day, do we want to know if we're listening to real people talking or do we want to know if we're listening to a machine that made something? Does that matter? Is there a moral issue here? Is there ethical issues here?

Jordan:

I don't think we have time to get into that.

Kevin:

No we don't. But I think a lot of people are questioning, like, what are the ethics around AI? And there's been a lot of people ringing alarm bells for a long time about we have to solve this stuff, and the reality, I think, is that the technology is moving faster than the people are in terms of figuring out what is right and what is wrong, what is OK and what is not, what should the regulations be and what should they not be. The technology is just moving really quick.

Alban:

It is.

Kevin:

But these questions are still lingering out there.

Alban:

Well, I would say this is not an original podcast. We listened to something that was 100% we say AI generated. I know I said that, but Jordan threw a bunch of text in there and said make something that's AI generated from this text. That text came from somewhere, even if that text had been written by ChatGPT a small prompt that still came out of something Jordan typed in at some point. And then she decided which pieces to give to Notebook LM and there is a human element in there. I'd really argue this is more akin to translation than original creation. This is at least how I use AI pretty much constantly. Now is what I think of as translation problems. There's ways that we talk externally to customers. There's ways that we talk internally to the dev team. We talk externally to customers. There's ways that we talk internally to the dev team. There's a different way that you may talk in an email and it's just that, like your tone changes the amount of detail you have to give changes. The audience is changing. Those are all kind of like translations.

Jordan:

Yeah.

Alban:

They're changes. It's the same information, but it's been translated for a different audience. The way you'd write on a blog post is different than in a script for a video. I think that LLMs are just turning out to be really, really good at this, and so, whether you're taking a blog post and turning it into a podcast, a podcast turning it into a blog post, a blog post turning it into an email newsletter, AI is going to be very good for that, but at some point it has to go back to somebody had a good idea and put together.

Alban:

Here are the things that I think are really valuable and that I think should go into this blog post, newsletter, podcast, video, whatever it may be. It can be distributed in all those forms, but the idea had to come from somewhere. So I don't feel all this anxiety about it. I just think more we're gonna have people who can go deep on one topic, really think about an idea for a while, write it once or podcast it once, and then it can turn into all those other forms and can be distributed, whether the audience wants to consume it as a podcast or as a TikTok video. Ai could probably quote, unquote, translate it from one format to the other.

Jordan:

Yeah, and I think a lot of people are concerned about it coming for their podcasting jobs, but I just don't see that really happening with this. I mean, there's one point where I was testing it and I dropped in like 15 different sources, because you can upload files like PDFs and stuff like that. You can link it to your Google Drive and drop in like Google Docs and Google Slides. You can drop links to websites and then you can also, like you know, paste text in there. It lets you upload like 50 sources, but I did like 10 or 15 and it generated like a five minute podcast out of it and I was like this is not as in depth as I would have gone, so but it did give you like an overarching when you listen to Buzzcast you know we have five minutes of information and we turn it into an hour and 20 because we start going off about some random microplastics argument.

Jordan:

Exactly, but yeah, it's really handy though.

Jordan:

So, okay, I got my husband to start a podcast and the problem is is that I have to do a lot of like the research for it and stuff, which takes up a little bit of time.

Jordan:

So one of the ways that I've been using Notebook LM that I really love is when I'm introducing a topic to him and his co-host, I get to just pull in a bunch of like sources and witness statements and just copy in different like Reddit threads and stuff and slap it in there and I can generate an outline that is like in the timeline form, and so it takes like 10 minutes now to put together like an episode outline for them.

Jordan:

And it's super cool because I also do like a baseline quiz where it kind of like tests their knowledge on it before they go in, because they know nothing about the topic that they're going into for the podcast. It's kind of like the fun of it, and so I can ask it to use those sources to create like a pop quiz with like an answer key so that they can see how much they know about it. And it's just, it's really neat and it does like little dots. It'll ask a question and then give the answer, and then in the reasoning for the answer it'll have the sources linked so you can actually click and see what articles or what statements it pulled that information from to obtain that answer. So it's pretty neat.

Alban:

I mean, that's a really interesting way of using. You're using notebook LM for that.

Jordan:

Yeah, yeah.

Alban:

One of the differences for notebook LM versus chat, gpt or some other large language models is it's built for researchers and the idea is you're bringing in sources and it knows much less about the outside world. It's really dependent on those sources and the purpose of that is that you don't end up with as many hallucinations. I think you can still get some, but the number of hallucinations is really reduced and the usefulness is constrained because it really is only going to talk about the stuff that you give it.

Alban:

But, that's really valuable. If, let's say, you're doing a true crime podcast and there's been some court filings and you're not really comfortable reading all these court filings, you could throw all of those in a notebook, LM, and said OK, give me an outline of what's happened in this case over the last two years from these 40 documents and you could get a really nice outline that is probably going to be much more accurate than anything you would get from any other large language model.

Jordan:

Yeah, or if you want to pull something from a Freedom of Information Act document but you don't want the outside chatter of the internet to be influencing that. You just want to understand what's in the document, then yeah, that's another reason.

Alban:

Yeah, that's true so many things that you might get a court filing you want to talk about it. You're going to end up having everybody's theories, kind of polluting the internet. It's hard for you to sift through what's someone's theory and what's the this one document actually saying, yeah, notebook LN would be quite a bit better at saying, well, I don't know about all those theories, but I definitely know what's in this one document you gave me.

Jordan:

Yeah, and that's what I was running into when I was trying to create these outlines using chat, gpt, you know, in the past, cause there's just like all these, like conspiracies around the topics I was giving the guys and like what is this podcast about?

Jordan:

the topics I was giving the guys and like what is this podcast about? Um, I don't know. They've started a podcast about like UFO and UAP lore because I love it and they know nothing about it and it really freaks them out or they think it's stupid and so I'm just like slowly feeding them the information and like bringing them into my conspiracy, like bringing them into my conspiracy.

Alban:

One of the first times I met Josh was right after I asked you what conspiracy theory do you think is probably true? And you're like, well, are ghosts a conspiracy? Because I definitely think ghosts are real. And then I was like laughing. And then I saw Josh like a few weeks later and I was like Josh, I was like what do you think about Jordan believing in ghosts? He was like she doesn't believe in ghosts. And I was like you better talk to her. He's like what you believe in ghosts? I don't know.

Jordan:

I don't know how he didn't know that. He probably just like was in denial.

Alban:

You were saying that the house you live in is haunted.

Jordan:

Oh, it absolutely is yeah.

Alban:

And he, just he's in denial and Tell them.

Jordan:

You didn't tell your roommates, nope, your roommates. Well, yeah, I'm really excited about Notebook LM. I think it's going to be a great tool for podcast research and, obviously, students too. It's intended design, I'm sure, but I think, as a podcaster for doing research and stuff, it's going to be a massive time saver. Okay, so next I want to talk about two podcasts that seem to have absolutely nothing in common, but I think that they both prove a point about how much power and influence podcasts have. Now. The first one I want to talk about is Acquired, and I saw recently that Justin Jackson from Transistor, front of the show, he took his team out to San Francisco to see Acquired's live show and he wrote about the experience in his blog and it looked super cool. But I mean, it was just wild because it was an arena show with 6,000 people. Did you guys see this?

Alban:

Yes, I did. I mean, I've listened to the show before too, and it's exceptional podcast.

Jordan:

Yeah, yeah, I mean we've talked about like three times on the show.

Kevin:

This sounds like an incredible event. Like I'm super jealous. I didn't even know about it. Now, I definitely probably wouldn't have gone. Like I'm going to be honest with myself, I still would have liked to have had the opportunity to make the decision not to go.

Jordan:

Yeah, no-transcript Right community centers or like small local theaters. That's usually where they're held at, and so this is just. I don't know if there's ever been a podcast, live show done in a stadium. I think, even like smart list and stuff when they went on tour. It was just small theaters.

Alban:

Yeah. Now I think we should highlight why 6,000 people showed up. The Choir is a massive show that does deep dives into mostly tech businesses. They are in a location with tons of people who would listen to this podcast. Then they sell 6,000 tickets because they got a CEO on the show. This guy, Mark Zuckerberg of Meta, was the guest. And guest appearances from Daniel Ek from Spotify. Jamie.

Alban:

Dimon, the CEO of JP Morgan Chase, Jensen Wong from NVIDIA there's a lot of big names there for your podcast to maybe sell out a 6,000 person event. They're pulling some big names for this event.

Jordan:

They are. Is it funny that when I saw some of the articles about it, it's like 6,000 people come to see Mark Zuckerberg live tape, a podcast. It was just so funny because it was so like Zuckerberg focused and thinking in my head, I'm like who would go see Zuckerberg? No, they were there for Acquired, like they were there for the podcasters. So I'm not convinced that it was all about Zuckerberg. I think that it was just people who were big fans of the show and wanted to see it. I don't know.

Alban:

I think there's a little bit of both.

Alban:

I know that I'm probably speaking from the podcaster side, but you could go see Mark Zuckerberg. You go watch his stuff online. I don't know if I'd go to a Mark Zuckerberg event. Maybe some people would not just for him, but if it was oh, this is my podcast, I love go to a Mark Zuckerberg event. Maybe some people would not just for him, but if it was oh, this is my podcast that I love listening to. They just got a huge guest Mark Zuckerberg. This is going to be crazy.

Alban:

I definitely want to go and just meet all of the people who are also into this show. I've gone to live events for internet communities or newsletters that I've followed and those are really fun because you're connecting with people in real life who are into the same kind of weird niche thing. Acquired is a pretty big podcast, but it's still super niche. It's super strange corner of the internet that not many people would know about and you get to go and you get to bump into 6,000 people who are into the same thing. It's a wonderful opportunity to you know, make friends and connect people who are similar.

Jordan:

I was reading in like the New York times that a lot of these like tech billionaires and like celebrities and stuff, they're really moving toward going and guesting on podcasts instead of doing, like, traditional interviews, because they get the chance to like really explain themselves. There's not, like how do I want to say this? I think that news media outlets have really gotten a bit of a tarnished reputation, whereas if these people go on podcasts, they get more time to really like hash out their thoughts and their opinions on things and why they do things, and so I think that it's going to be more and more common that we're seeing these like podcast live shows that are quite a bit bigger, because it is becoming so popular for them to go on these shows.

Alban:

Well, if you're going to be misunderstood, there's much more of an opportunity for that to happen. If you do a 30 minute sit down interview that gets cut into a four minute clip on the nightly news. That's going to be really the opportunity for your words to get misunderstood or misconstrued, even if it's not intentional. It's much higher than if you go do a three hour nearly unedited podcast interview and you're like, yeah, even if I stumble and I mess up my words for a whole minute straight, then still the other three hours are going to make up for it. People go okay. I know Mark said that kind of in a weird way, but now I understand once he had a chance to clarify. There's so much of a better opportunity as a podcast guest to really hash out your thought, not be totally prepped and prepared, because you know, even if I say it wrong, I can correct myself while we're podcasting. Rather than good job, you had your 30 seconds on the news and now that's locked in forever the most important thing you ever did.

Jordan:

Yeah, one of the things from Justin's blog that just I don't know it really touched me is he said that during the show his colleague Helen said look around, we've likely served acquired audiophiles to everyone in this arena. It was a powerful moment. I love that. It reminds me so much of people talk about how you know, if you think about your podcast listeners and it's like everyone in a room, if you have like five people sitting in the room or 30 people sitting in the room and they're listening to you talk every single week, it's like a big deal. And so to put that in the context of like you're standing in an arena of 6,000 people, that would be powerful. That would be a really cool moment. I love it.

Alban:

I mean, looking at this arena, it looks like a massive amount of people. Yeah, it's only a small piece of the arena. There's probably less than 2000 people there. We regularly have over 2000 downloads on this podcast, but I've never thought the audience for Buzzcast might look like that that many people in one area.

Jordan:

Yeah, isn't that wild.

Alban:

We've had episodes that have been had more than the 6000 downloads, but I would never think like we could. You know that's what an arena looks like.

Jordan:

Yeah.

Alban:

Actually, kevin, can I tell one of my favorite stories of Kevin going on a big podcast the night before? You went on smart passive income. Kevin's wife is like, right before he goes to bed he goes Kevin, how many people listen to that podcast? He's like I don't know. I think the numbers have got to be like 60, 70,000. She goes wow, that's as many as in the Jaguar stadium. Good night, he kind of said he stayed up like thinking oh my gosh, that's a ton of people.

Kevin:

I love, I'm happy to be on a podcast. I mean, I say probably no more than yes, but it doesn't make me nervous to be a guest on somebody's podcast ever. But I really dislike public speaking. I'm very uncomfortable and awkward in public speaking situations. So there's a few times in my life where I have to force myself to do it. I never like it, I dread it, I get nervous about it. It's just something about standing in front of that many people and doing it. It's just. You know, I think it's not a weird thing. A lot of people feel the same way and so anytime I have to give a toast or a speech or whatever like it just don't feel good going into it.

Kevin:

Yeah, but podcasts are very different for me. I feel very comfortable in the podcasting space, and so my wife making that connection the night before was the absolute worst thing that could have probably happened to me. She's like that could have probably happened to me. You're going to be just like right on the 50 yard line standing in front of 60, 70,000 people. You know good for you, you're going to kill it.

Jordan:

It's scary when you think about it that way.

Kevin:

You know the point you were making earlier. Albin, about Jordan, asked the question and Albin was saying about how you could. It's easier for someone to probably get their thoughts taken out of context in traditional media interviews, where things get cut up, and having more time in a podcast to express yourself and your full thought and knowing that that's probably won't get chopped up, at least in most cases, these long, long form podcasts give you the opportunity. They exist in long form because they want to give people the opportunity to express their full thought and all the nuance around it. That can also go the other direction, and I'm reminded of the. I think it was a decoder episode and I hope I don't mess up the company, but was it the CEO? Alvin will know what I'm talking about. Was it the CEO of Substack?

Jordan:

Yeah, what happened?

Kevin:

Who did a very long interview on decoder. I wonder if we can dig this up.

Alban:

Yeah, I don't know if I want to play it. It made me cringe listening to it when I heard it the first time and even imagining again. It's just Nilay Patel's asking so what's your? You're adding these new kind of like social features into Substack. What's the moderation policy? And he's kind of like we don't have one, we don't really care.

Kevin:

Yeah, it was a bad moment for the CEO, cause you could tell he hadn't thought through that, but Nila had some really good points that you're now opening up, substack to, which was a private community between authors and their audience, and now you're giving the audience an opportunity to interact with each other, and so when you do that in a social like an online social environment, moderation policies are a good thing to start thinking about. At that point, unfortunately, the CEO hadn't given it a lot of thought and he really got put through the ringer on this show. Yeah, and you got to listen to this whole cringy exchange and it's full was it probably 15 or 20 minutes of just this poor guy getting grilled? And you could tell he unfortunately was not prepared to answer these questions.

Alban:

I remember thinking Nilay Patel did it so well because he let it get awkward so many times. He'd ask what you thought was going to be a softball question, like hey, if somebody has this level of hate speech, you'd take that down right and then you just leave it and he wouldn't help him and he wasn't prepped to answer those questions. So I guess you could enter if you haven't really thought about it and you're just expecting. I'm going to go on a show and maybe just be able to promote my new feature or my new product. If you don't have good answers, it could get kind of awkward because they have an hour to let it get even more and more awkward, when, after on the nightly news, 30 seconds after it's gotten awkward, you've got to get off the call anyway. So you're free.

Kevin:

Well, and I think the expectation is different, Like you're not going to go on the nightly news not expecting to get hard questions and not get pushed, and so you're going to prep for that stuff, You're going to have answers to all those things. But oftentimes I think you know new business founders or somebody who's been running a business for a little while and they do something notable and they get invited on a podcast. They might just expect it to be a casual conversation. They don't, might not necessarily know or have done the research of what type of show am I going on and how should I prep and what types of questions should I expect. And I think that's kind of what happened on that decoder episode.

Jordan:

I found a verge article on it, so I'll have to link to that in the show notes if anyone wants to read into that a little bit more.

Alban:

Yeah.

Kevin:

Yeah, my memory was that it hurt to listen to, it looks painful, it looks very painful. This is one of the things that I really think people who stumble into the world of podcasting, I think they really start to enjoy it because there's this authenticity that you don't get in other forms of media, so even on YouTube. Youtube's like publish whatever you want, except if you want to be successful here, you have to create content that plays to the algorithm. Well, in podcasting there are no algorithms. So if you want to be successful, you have to market your show, you have to find your audience, you have to ask that audience to help your show grow. And, you know, tell your friends and family and your circle of influence about the show if you like it, help spread the word. You have to spread the word yourself, and so you're not, you know, dumbing down content or creating content that caters to this algorithm or that, and there's an authenticity that comes in podcasting that you don't see in other forms of media.

Kevin:

So, for better or worse and I think it's better it's one of the reasons I really love podcasting is you're going to get at least the take or the perspective of the podcaster who you're listening to. You're going to get to understand where their biases are, what their vents are and their leans and the way they like to tell stories or whatever, and it's just very different. The agendas aren't necessarily there, or if they are, at least you know them because you've been listening to them for hours at a time, so it's good stuff. I don't know. I could, I could go on and on about why I love podcasts, but this is just reminding me of one of the reasons why I really love podcasts and I love the idea of getting I mean, come on getting 6,000 people together who listen to your show to watch you do it live. That's amazing.

Jordan:

Well, I mean we're going to come up with some more reasons to love podcasting, because there was a Washington Post article that was also published recently that was titled HVAC podcasts are a hot product for a cooling market. Yes, and in it they took a look at Ryan Orr, who created HVAC School, which is a podcast for people who work in the HVAC industry. Yes, it's not just that he created this podcast. He owns a HVAC company that has 330 employees, but he's been using his podcast to train HVAC service people. I don't know what they're called, what's the word for it?

Alban:

Trades people.

Jordan:

Trades peopleicemen women servicemen, servicemen HVAC men.

Kevin:

I don't know what you call them, but I know they're like the heroes. They could come in with capes in Florida. Anytime you see an HVAC person come in like you're like get out of their way.

Jordan:

They're doing important work. But what's so cool about this is he said that nothing I'd ever done in audio or social media or business writing, nothing that I'd ever done was even close to those first couple of weeks releasing this podcast. Because what he did was he created the podcast, he posted about in a couple Facebook groups and then it just like blew up. And I think that part of why it went so well for him is because he created a podcast which is like the perfect medium for these HVAC workers that are in cars for hours on end every single day, and he actually leveraged that. This is so smart. He leveraged it to make his podcast a certain length that is the usual like typical drive time for these guys.

Kevin:

Yeah, between service calls. Yeah, yeah, it's very smart.

Alban:

Yeah, underserved market. There is a lot of people who are doing this work. That it's pretty clear. They know if they're in the group or not. They know if they do HVAC work or not and so probably as soon as they were like one person found out about it, they're like this is a good HVAC podcast. I know everybody else in the HVAC business would probably listen to it. I now know tons of those people. I will send it over to them.

Alban:

And they're all people who are spending a lot of time in the car, so they're probably looking for good content like this.

Kevin:

Yeah, and I might hypothesize that there are a good number of amateur HVAC enthusiasts in the world as well, because I might put myself in that group.

Jordan:

Yeah.

Kevin:

Yeah, I do. One of the YouTube channels, one of the very few that I follow or subscribe to or whatever ring that bell on in YouTube is this guy who goes around and films, like with his GoPro, all his HVAC calls and so, yeah, and so he's like he's just driving to a house and then he gets there and he's walking around back and he looks at the outdoor unit and he, you know, diagnoses the problem and he goes in and he looks at the inside unit and diagnose the problem and he just talks you through it and it's all edited down. It's like, you know, every service call is like 10 minutes. But I I as a you know, I'm just very interested in HVAC because I live in Florida and when your AC goes out in Florida you can do an emergency call. It's very expensive and you're still probably looking at 24 hours minimum before they're going to get out there. So it's a very important skill to have as a Floridian to be able to diagnose and repair your own AC, at least for minor problems. So like, if you have a capacitor go out or something like that, you need to be able to get the lows, get to Home Depot, get a new capacitor, get it in that unit as soon as possible. If you just have a crudded up outdoor unit and you need to wash that thing off or whatever, like refrigerant coolant issues, like we can't really fix that because we can't get the license to get the coolant ourselves.

Kevin:

But I know a little bit more than I probably should about HVAC, but it's important, so I think I'm going to subscribe to this podcast. I'm going to start listening to it as well. I'm very interested in that. I was also just telling Jordan and Alvin before we started the show, I just bought like a swamp cooler for my garage so that I can work out out there without it getting too hot, and I also have that humidity problem then, so I have to have a dehumidifier. This is awesome. I'm all in on the HVAC stuff. You're a podcasting, but isn't that funny that somebody's like I'm going to start an HVAC podcast for other people who work in the HVAC industry, but I think that it can just expand beyond that.

Jordan:

Oh yeah.

Kevin:

Like there's probably other people who are just interested in solving their own HVAC problems from time to time. Who might listen?

Alban:

When I was listening to it I started trying to think of, okay, what other podcasts could kind of fit in this same format or kind of draw some learning from it. And I'm like, okay, underserved market, that there are a lot of people working in that often spend a lot of time in the car or are in an opportunity where they'd want to listen to a podcast. They have time to listen. Preferably they spend time alone during the workday, and so I was kind of brainstorming. But the first one that popped into my mind was logistics and trucking. How many people are in the logistics world and, like truckers sit on their radios and they chat with each other because they're all just kind of riding around in the trucks all day.

Alban:

And friend of the show, blythe, has a podcast called Everything is Logistics. She's one of the co-founders of the Podcasters Unite group in Jacksonville, which is all about the logistics industry. I'm just trying to think of, like, what other areas are there? And I know that Blythe does extremely well. So there's got to be more of these shows that you know you could be obvious, like the electrician show, but there's got to be other groups that I don don't know the dog catchers who are driving around town trying to find wild animals. Are dog catchers real? Is that a real thing?

Jordan:

I've never seen one. One's never shown up, but uh I think it's more animal control.

Kevin:

Now is what they prefer to be called. I don't know dog catchers anymore do you remember?

Alban:

I mean in the 90s, every cartoon movie was like a dog. That had escaped and every corner there was a dog catcher trying to get them.

Jordan:

And you were like no, get away. Yeah, they're the bad guys.

Alban:

They're always the bad guys, but I've never seen a truck that looked like the dog catchers I saw on TV when I was a kid.

Jordan:

So something else that was like a little unexpected from reading about this podcast is that this HVAC school podcast was doing a live stream one day and the EPA. They were like approving regulations with planet harming I can't even say this word with planet harming.

Alban:

Hydrofluorocarbons.

Kevin:

Hydrofluorocarbons yeah. Hfcs yeah that it's an industry term, great comment.

Alban:

Kevin knows from his YouTube channel.

Jordan:

But it's really interesting because they were doing a live stream and an EPA official left a comment on the live stream to let them know that, like the agency was listening to the conversation, so in a way, this podcast was kind of like influencing what they were deciding to do. Is that cool?

Alban:

Yeah, wait, wait, were they listening? Was the comment like oh, we're taking what you say into consideration? Or like watch yourself, we're paying attention, we're shutting this podcast down?

Jordan:

The APA is the dog catcher, they're the villain. No, I don't think it was as ominous as that. I think the EPA was just like letting them know like hey, we're hearing your concerns, we're listening to this, we care, and so it says that, you know, they later tweaked the rule that they had made. So I don't know, it's just, it's just so neat to see, like this podcast Cause I don't think that it's a very big podcast but they're having such a big influence, you know, on like legal decisions and training of all these workers all over the country Like it's just such an inspiring thing to show that you know your podcast doesn't have to be huge to have like a big impact.

Alban:

Yeah, that's. I mean, that is very encouraging One that the EPA was paying attention to it, because that's what you would hope is that they paid attention to the people that are, you know, impacted by some of these decisions, whatever it may be. But it's also like it's a relatively small podcast that's making a pretty big change. I'm reminded of a Buzzsprout podcaster years ago who what they did was they helped set up call centers, and they started a podcast about how they set up call centers and they only ever got like I think they said it was 150 downloads. An episode was on average, and there's not many people who are looking to set up a call center at any given point. But what would happen is they'd listen to the podcast for a while, they'd build a lot of trust with the podcaster and then they would reach out and say, okay, we learned a lot from you, but in the end, I think we just want to bring you on as a consultant. You help us set it up.

Jordan:

Yeah.

Alban:

And they were like oh, it's the best marketing we ever did and there's only 150 downloads an episode. Yeah, but those 150 downloads are the exact right people and if you can find a podcast that's targeted enough where it could have a massive impact, that's a huge win. If it's the right 150 people and if it's the EPA is listening to your podcast about what the EPA regulation should do, maybe just one or two people listening to it might be the big change you were hoping for.

Jordan:

Yeah, so I just I I want to talk about acquired and HVAC school, because it's just such an inspiring thing to see these two podcasts that are completely different. You know there are different niches, they're different like scales and you know audience reaches, but they both are very important in their own way and they have their own version of what success looks like and they all kind of have these things in common. So I mean, the first is like community building. I love this. I found, when I was like looking into the story acquired, when they had their big arena show, fans organized a meetup before the arena show at this bar to grab a drink and then walk to the event together, which I thought was just so cool. I don't know, I just I just love that Like there is just this like really big, bonded sense of community when you are, you know, into like the same thing. And then HVAC school was saying that he has created like a huge community of people that he like cares deeply for and they care deeply for him and it just has really brought all these people together and they're just sharing their insights and education.

Jordan:

And then the other thing I really want to highlight here is that it seems like there's a big shift in media for conversations that go in more depth, and we talked about this last week on the Quick Cast. But we talked about the New York Times article, how they were discussing that these celebrities and tech billionaires are going to podcast more than just traditional interviews, and then also listeners are sticking around more, and so I just think that there's a big move from these short form late night show or news interviews more into podcasting. All this to say, podcasting is super special and I think that we're more into podcasting. All this to say, podcasting is super special and I think that we're seeing more of that now and it's just such an exciting time. It's time for SoundOff, the segment where you send in your responses to our podcasting questions. So we're going to start things off with a shout out to Jim from Typical Confusion Podcast, who wrote in and said that they just achieved their 500th episode and are closing in on 300 live recordings, and he's been podcasting since 2015.

Kevin:

Isn't that amazing? That's really amazing.

Alban:

Nine years 500 recordings, 300 live.

Kevin:

Yeah, yeah, that's incredible. It's awesome. I would love to hear hey, jim, can you write back and let us know how you're doing your live recordings? I'm really interested in how you do that.

Alban:

I'd like to hear, like what five tips would you give yourself? You've done 500 recordings. What are five short tips that if you could go back and give them to yourself at the beginning, that would save the most time, the most frustration, those headache. What would you want to know back in 2015? What five little things.

Jordan:

Yeah, share your secrets with us and congratulations.

Alban:

Congrats. Tom Raftery reached out to me last week. We had a talk about microplastics.

Alban:

I said that this is the something that's been on my mind And'm like kind of I'm getting ready to go down the rabbit hole. I need to go learn about it or get it out of my brain. But I've been thinking a lot about microplastics and Tom wrote me and said hey, albin, you're talking about microplastics on the podcast the other day. I just thought I'd let you know. I did an episode of my climate podcast on that topic a few months ago so if you you are interested and want you can learn more about microplastics.

Jordan:

There you go.

Alban:

He's done 186 episodes, so I guess I should have guessed that he would have one out there. But we could also link to that in the show notes.

Jordan:

Absolutely.

Alban:

Great.

Kevin:

The Sparkling Life Coach Podcast. I love Fridays, not just because it's the start of the weekend, but because I always look forward to hearing the craziness that y'all have in store for us. It's not only a laugh fest, but I always learn something new too. Well, thank you, dee, that's super nice of you to say All right.

Jordan:

next up we have Tim from Australia saying I've been a Pocket Cast user for four years and watched it only continue to evolve and improve. So great to get the focus and positive endorsement of the Buzzsprout team.

Kevin:

Oh for sure, Loving Pocket Cast.

Alban:

Yeah, qr Code. Art wrote to us on Twitter and said I just downloaded an OPML that's a type of file with all the information about your podcast that you listen to, with 150 podcasts from Google Podcasts, and imported it into Pocket Casts. Very cool, and I apologize to anyone who hears all this background noise. Sometimes you got to record when you're also have your lawn getting mowed.

Kevin:

Well, if you mowed your own grass, this wouldn't be a problem. Yeah, Come on, buddy. Eric Nordhoff wrote in and said I will never think of fish or cut bait the same way again at K fin. After all, I need to make myself useful somewhere or another. Yeah, I think that's the correct interpretation of it, and so when you hear that saying from now on now you know.

Alban:

Eric is one of the friends of the show who hopefully, I think has the highest probability of being at our bus brought meetup because he's based out of Nashville.

Kevin:

Oh, we need to talk about Nashville. Can we push pause on this for a second? Yeah, okay, yeah, okay, yeah, because I need everybody who Alvin, you're going to start sending out emails and stuff soon, I imagine about this but anybody who's listening? Who's within what is it? A couple hours, maybe up to eight to 10 hours, it's probably worth the eight to 10 hour drive.

Kevin:

We're going to be together in nashville at the virgin hotel and we are going to do a meetup on thursday night, and so we would like to meet you if you're in the area and, like I said it's it's going to be a really fun event. I think we're. I think we decided yesterday that we're going to have like taco bar food and to hang out time with the Buzzsprout team. So I can personally say if I lived within eight to 10 hours, I would make the drive and I highly recommend that you consider the same More realistically. If you live within an hour or two of Nashville, please come, we'd love to meet you.

Alban:

The Nashville meetup is going to be October 24th. It's a Thursday night, 630 to 830. Yep, and we would love for people to come. You can meet the entire Buzzsprout team it's going to be. My guess is it's going to be half people who work at Buzzsprout and probably everybody who works at Buzzsprout and half podcasters. But if you live eight to 10 hours away from Nashville, yeah, kevin, would love for you to come.

Kevin:

Worth it, it is worth it, or you can make the drive. It'll be a lot of fun. So as soon as we get like RSVP form and stuff together, we'll be sure to link that in the episode show notes and we'll remind you on the next episode as well and any quick cast that we do in between. Yep, but put it on your calendar, save the date.

Jordan:

All right. And then we got a message from Nathan Gathright. Thanks for the shout out last episode. In case you missed it, after selling PondLink, I built exactly what Albin was describing. Episodesfm supports almost 40 platforms and sends listeners straight to their preferred app.

Alban:

What I thought was super interesting was how he was doing it. The way Nathan does this is he sets a cookie with your preference from the one time you click and say, hey, I want to listen to this on Apple Podcasts, then episodesfm will remember your device forever and say as soon as you go there, you don't have to sit around on episodesfm anymore. Instead, you're automatically sent over to Apple Podcasts. That sounds like the smartest way to do this. Of everything we were talking about, I didn't really consider you could cookie the device and then do it automatically. Just a great implementation, so I love that Nathan did that.

Kevin:

Nathan, what's the workaround if I want to switch podcast apps? So if I come one time and I click on Apple Podcasts but then I decide actually I like Pocket Cast better, I'm gonna start using that, what do I do? I mean, I know I can flush my cookies, but is there another way? Yeah, I think you got to go clear your cash. Oh, don't want to kill the cookies.

Alban:

Last episode we had a sound off question which was share your website and let us know what you think, because we launched the new Buzzsprout podcast websites D Sparkling, life Coach number one fan of the podcast, I think our number one listener wrote good job, love the website updates.

Alban:

I love the option of being able to highlight guests in each episode under contributors. I haven't had much fan mail, but it's nice that we can pin our favorites like. We pinned one of these messages. And I like the chapter sections too and just realized what the link box is for when I clicked on it. So one of the things you can do is if you have an episode, you click to share it. You can say I actually want it to start at a specific location, so that location could be any timestamp or it could be a chapter marker. So do you stumbled upon that. I think that's been out for a little while, but it's a nice little addition for everybody.

Jordan:

Yeah, it's super handy. Yeah, Looking at her website, she's got this pretty header. Everything looks so good. Man, she's got episode artwork for every single episode too, which looks fabulous.

Kevin:

And that shows up on the website. It looks great. The header image is fantastic. Barnabas wrote in from the Kids Code podcast. I've had a good bit of fun exploring my new website and tweaking some things. It's a little sad that I'm getting a new site in about a month. Oh, why is that? Well, because you started working on it or something, I'm presuming. Well, maybe I'm going to look at your website. You have right now the kids code podcast. It looks awesome.

Jordan:

I love it their host photos. They're so cute.

Kevin:

Contributors oh, they have stick figure faces.

Jordan:

That's so cute. That's perfect. This is very good. And episode artwork oh, this is a solid podcast. We love page two Very good.

Alban:

I love it. Dan Love. Page two Very good. I love that Dan the co-host has. It's no photo, dan, and his bio is no. Don't give Dan a bio. Everybody else has like a really great bio all written out.

Jordan:

Oh, this is so good, Barnabas. It's a great website, all right. And then David Clark, the late bloomer actor, says, have tweaked my page. I'm not sure about my giant head in the banner, though Might need some creative help on that one. Let's see here oh, look at that handsome devil, it looks great. What's your thoughts, team, on getting one's own domain name and then linking that to the Buzzsprout page? Well, we approve of that. That is definitely something you can do.

Alban:

Yeah, this is something I think it's really valuable. You can buy a domain name, you know, go buy it on GoDaddy or Hover or something like that, and then you go into the Buzzsprout customizer and one of the things you can customize is the domain that it's on, and we have instructions on how to set that up so that you could go to latebloomeractorcom or fm and it would pull up your Buzzsprout webpage. And I think that's the best way to do it, because, as much as I love you promoting Buzzsprout, you really want to promote your podcast on its own domain, its own home, where everything about your podcast is linked together.

Kevin:

Yeah, I'm kind of 50-50 on it, though, to be honest with you, because most people start their internet sessions with some sort of search engine, typically Google, and so they're just going to go to Google and type in the Late Bloomer Actor and they're going to find this page very quickly and they're going to be here. So I think if it's something that you want to do, it's fine, great, do it. There's nothing wrong with it. Do you have to do it? You definitely don't have to. I think people will still find this page very easily. One thing I want to point out is look at on the late bloomer actor website. Look at the podcast we love. This might be the most podcast I've seen in a pod role Whoa it goes forever.

Alban:

Yeah, they look like some really great podcast and if you scroll down to the third or fourth row, you start seeing some shows that we make hey conversations. We've got buzzcast. I love it. Tons of good shows on here.

Kevin:

I love this idea of podcasters recommending other podcasts they listen to.

Jordan:

I love it.

Alban:

Yeah, especially if you were listening to it and you're like, oh, I love David's podcast, you probably are going to like the shows that he really enjoys as well, especially the all these other ones about actors and they have overlap between between the subject matter, like these are probably going to be some of the best podcasts for you. Yep, and we got one more from Eric. We got a lot of uh double write-ins this week, which is great, from the writing worship podcast. I love all of the improvements, especially the speed of the Buzzsprout websites Very intuitive. I really like that too. I'm surprised at how much faster the websites are. I'm not really sure. Do you know what we changed, kevin, that made them so much faster?

Kevin:

No, I don't. We've got the best software writers in the business.

Alban:

That's what I'm telling you. This is why you want software writers building Websites, built by people who use websites.

Jordan:

I swear whenever they post like an update, like all right, we updated this I have. They might as well be speaking another language. I have no idea what they're doing, but I'm like it's not just the designers and the coders who are designing and building the website.

Kevin:

It's also the infrastructure team. So there are people at Buzzsprout who specialize in getting our servers up and how many servers do we need, and the configuration and making sure the you know know the firewalls and all that other kind of crazy stuff like. If you ever hear people from our infrastructure team debrief us on all the work that they accomplish during a work cycle, it's incredible it's incredible, it's amazing they could easily make up words and no one would know the names we wouldn't know

Kevin:

but other people, and I think only the two of them would know, nobody else would know have you noticed that they do like jokes and stuff like with their I don't know they?

Jordan:

they keep making like jokes in their little briefs and it's, I'm sure it's funny no, I don't think those are jokes.

Alban:

I think that's the name of the tech. They'll be like, yeah, we're using sidekick reload with some dot net and you're like I don't think that's real, that's like a fake website name yeah, they do have the coolest names for all the technology that they use yeah, well, yeah.

Jordan:

So these uh websites eric your website looks really great too. I noticed that you don't have a pod role enabled on here you gotta get working on that yeah, let's get the pod role.

Kevin:

You want us to go in there and add buzzcast for you. Kick it off.

Alban:

We can do it. People are like learning to write worship songs and they're like I gotta get some more good podcasts on this. What does Eric recommend? Oh, this podcast with a bunch of people arguing about the marketing of a podcast website builder tool.

Jordan:

Yeah, that's true. Well, it looks really great, and we will put links to all these podcasts in the show notes so you guys can check out the work that they've done. All right, so what should our sound off question for next week be?

Alban:

I thought of this today because I recommended a podcast that Kevin recommended to me a long time ago from this Is Love, called Something Large and Wild, and this was a podcast episode that Kevin sent and was just like. You know, there's some episodes that are just undeniably good, like beyond argument. This is a good story and even if you don't like the subject matter or you don't like the genre, you know it's good.

Jordan:

Yeah.

Alban:

What other episodes are out there that are good, and this, to me, is one of those examples. I'm sure I would come up with a few others, but it's just like it's a short episode, it's just a beautiful story.

Kevin:

Yeah, I think. What was the name of that one? Something large and wild, or something.

Alban:

Something large and wild. From the this is love podcast. It's episode two.

Kevin:

Every now and then, a podcast episode comes along that, like surpasses subjectivity, in my opinion. I don't know anybody who would listen to that episode and not enjoy it, and I think these are very rare, but they exist, and so I think what I hear you saying, albin, is, as anybody who listens to the show you're probably you probably listen to a lot of podcasts. There's a good chance you've come across one of these rare episodes at some point in your life, and it could be about something that, like it's very niche, or maybe most people don't even have an interest in, or whatever. Maybe it is something that is broadly popular, but you know that you could almost recommend this to almost anybody and they would enjoy it.

Alban:

Yeah, my question is I know these exist. What is a episode that, if you recommend, the hit rates's going to be like 95 people are going to go whoa, that was powerful, that was good. There's a website that I love online, called some it's like read something wonderfulcom, and it's just a collection of all the best articles that they've ever found online. Oh, and somebody took the time to say these are like 500 blogs or articles that are just good, no matter what they're wonderful to read. I'm getting I blogs or articles that are just good, no matter what they're wonderful to read. I might be getting that URL wrong.

Jordan:

I'll find it and link to it.

Alban:

I want to know what's the podcast version of this? We've got the inaugural. The first episode is the this Is Love podcast, something large and wild. We can link to that so people can listen to that episode and know this is the level you've got to hit.

Jordan:

All right, this is fun. I'm going to do this homework assignment as well. To submit your response, send us a text by tapping the link in the show notes and you're responsibly featured on our next episode. So until then, thanks for listening and keep podcasting.

Kevin:

We've got so many segments to our show now with like a. It's crazy. You've got so many segments to our show now with like a quick cast and post shows and show intros and.

Jordan:

I'll tell you what I feel like it's getting me more comfortable with when we make changes. I think when I first started with this like when we make changes it was just like my brain would like short circuit and I'm like I don't know how to pivot from here. And so I think just making like all these drastic changes to the podcast has made me like such a better um host, I suppose, or moderator in a way, because I'm able to go with it a little bit more. I still short circuit sometimes, like this morning when I was trying to think of, uh, an intro for the quick cast, I was just like, but I feel like once I get warmed up, it's a little bit better.

Kevin:

I don't know yeah, there's this, this principle about um always improving that yeah we at higher pixels, which is the name of the company that builds buzzsprout. We're all on the buzzsprout team at higher pixels, but one of the principles of the company is that we're always working to improve things, as, like, a side effect of always trying to improve is that we're also always in a constant state of change, which for most people, means that you're always a little bit uncomfortable.

Jordan:

Yeah.

Kevin:

Right, Because the only way you get comfortable is by getting used to something and then you find your comfort in it. But if, if, if something is always changing, you're always a little bit uncomfortable. But I think there's this really beneficial thing that also happens when you're always uncomfortable is you start to get comfortable in discomfort. Does that make sense, Is it? This is sort of a weird.

Jordan:

It's like the people that thrive in chaos a little bit right A little bit.

Kevin:

I hope it's not chaos that we're trying to embrace.

Jordan:

No, no, no. That's just the example I came up with. But I think about the people that you know. They kind of get used to the chaos and so they're comfortable in it. It's fine, it's doable.

Kevin:

Right. I mean there are people who respond really well in very, like, scary, panicky situations or something like I don't know whether it be a car accident or something like that Like there's a you hope that there's somebody around who doesn't panic, who can think clearly, who assesses the situation and then provides help, and now that's a very drastic example of what we're talking, what we're talking about. But I do think there's a lot of value in trying to condition ourselves as humans to be able to be comfortable in uncomfortable environments, whether that be. Oh, we're constantly changing things at work, so I can never you know, never totally feel comfortable.

Kevin:

Or you're like I don't know, like in my personal life, like raising teenagers, like I have to be able to sit down with my teenager on the regular and have uncomfortable conversations, and the harder that is for me, the less frequently I'm going to do it, which means I'm not going to parent them very well. But if I can get comfortable doing that, then we'll do them more frequently. And the same on their side, like the more comfortable they get with me saying uncomfortable things, the more they can process and digest and interact with me when we're doing those things We've also talked about, like ice baths and other things like. The more that we can push ourselves into doing things where I'm intentionally putting myself into an environment that's uncomfortable because it is there's benefit.

Alban:

There's some long term benefit 't think it's that becoming comfortable with uncomfortable situations I think they always stay uncomfortable for me but you start being okay with it and you go. It's not going to like wreck everything that we just changed up this episode. It's not going to wreck everything that I wore jeans and it turned out to be a hundred degrees, because I know if I've done an ice bath for two minutes, I can handle a hundred degree weather with a, with a, wearing a pair of jeans or um. But there are times where, like I feel like I get I don't know uh, pampered or something like for a while, like nothing goes wrong and everything is nice and the weather's perfect, and it seems like there's always money at the end of the month and you never stressed about bills and everything's going well. And then, like a little thing goes off, like your order's wrong at a restaurant. Oh, everything's ruined now.

Alban:

And like you get pampered to a level that, like one thing ruins it. And then there's other periods where you just start being like it's okay, lots of stuff will go wrong, lots of stuff will change. That's just the way it is. And when you can get to that spot, it's nice, because real things can go wrong and you can go. Yeah, I mean, I expect that things were going to continue to change. They've been changing the whole time I've been here. Yeah.

Jordan:

It's so funny because when I think back, like I mean a lot of people don't know this about me, but like the least stressed I've ever been in my life was in this period where, like I was just in between places and I was like technically homeless and I had like my kid and I didn't know where we were going to stay and I was like chill as a cucumber, I was just totally fine. And then now that like life is really good, I do have those things where it's like it's something little and I'm just like, oh my God, everything's falling apart.

Kevin:

Yeah, there's a lot of truth in that it's very easy to live Like there's nothing to lose.

Jordan:

Yeah, and you just deal with it. It's just life yeah.

Kevin:

And as you started acquiring success and possessions and all that kind of stuff, then you naturally fall into this place of like self-preservation, of like stuff all together, and like oh yeah, it can be hard, but there's something pretty focusing about having one real issue when you have a real issue.

Alban:

When, jordan, you said that period was the calmest you felt first time, what I thought of was when I mowed lawns because I was out of law school. I'd moved back in with my parents, I was mowing lawns all day. I had and I was trying to apply for legal jobs and it was not a good spot and it was very close to big bills every month coming in from. You know all my law school debt.

Jordan:

Yeah.

Alban:

And I was like there's a big problem here. But it helped focus all the small problems out. I didn't feel any embarrassment about oh, my car got totaled at the same time and I had no money, all these things didn't feel like big issues, because the big issue was very clear.

Alban:

It was the debt coming up. Soon I've got to get a law job, and so there was nothing embarrassing about mowing lawns every day. There was nothing bad about oh, I don't have a car. There's nothing embarrassing about being however old and being back with my parents. None of that bothered me, because when you have something real, focusing your attention on a real problem, then you go okay, the smaller problems disappear in a really like nice way, yeah, so let me try to bring it back to podcasting real quick.

Kevin:

but we started this conversation by talking about Jordan feeling a little bit unsettled, at least in the when you were beginning this production role as a podcast producer for Buzz Sprout, because we changed things so often and one of the things that I think it took time for you to probably like really believe it and for it to play out. But the benefit of always running experiments, of always trying something new, of not letting ourselves get too comfortable, is that we also don't necessarily expect the next change or the next experiment, the next thing that we're testing out, to be perfect, right?

Jordan:

out of the gate, yeah.

Kevin:

And so we hope it's successful. But the expectation isn't that we will nail it right out of the gate. So like when we we try Snapcast and now we pivot to Quickcast, or we try running a post show at the end of every podcast, or we try long bits or short bits or whatever they're all just in the spirit of we're trying to keep our passion going for the podcast, we're trying to have fun, we're trying to build our audience, and if this idea is great then we'll keep going with it, and if it's not great, then we'll just try something else. But it also takes away this pressure of having to nail it or having to be perfect right out of the box every time. And so, yeah, I think there's something comforting Let me see if I can say this right Something comforting about getting yourself, being comfortable in the uncomfortable.

Jordan:

Yes.

Kevin:

Or embracing discomfort might be a simpler way to say it.

Jordan:

It's good for you. Yeah, I fully. I am on board with that now. I don't think I was at first, but I am now.

Kevin:

Embrace discomfort in your podcasting journey. That's what we will leave you with this week.

People on this episode

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Alban Brooke

Host
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Jordan Blair

Host
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Kevin Finn

Host

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