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
Can Podcasts Influence Elections More Than Debates?
In this episode, we explore the growing influence of podcasts in shaping public opinion and ask: Can podcasts sway elections more than traditional debates?
We dive into why presidential candidates, like Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, are hitting the podcast circuit, and how long-form conversations are changing the political landscape.
We also discuss the launch of This American Life Partners, their new listener-supported model, and the challenges facing the podcast industry with the rise of AI-generated content. Is AI a real threat, or can human creativity keep podcasts personal and authentic?
Links mentioned:
- The New Yorker: How Podcasts are Transforming the Presidential Election
- This American Life Partners
- Is AI a "Threat to the Podcasting World"?
- Vergecast: They're Called Podcasts
Sound-off Question: What are some things you've gone to in-person lately and what made it valuable?
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Thanks for listening & keep podcasting!
If you connect with people in real life, like you know it's a real person, it's not an AI.
Speaker 2:Well, right now, you do Right now. You know it's a real person, but humanoids are on the way, albin.
Speaker 1:There we go. This is going to be Blade Runner pretty soon.
Speaker 2:Didn't you just watch the Tesla Wii robot thing?
Speaker 1:I did it, they called it.
Speaker 2:Wii robot I don't know what they called it, but it was something like that and they had the Tesla humanoid bartender. That was like making jokes and mixing drinks.
Speaker 1:I went on a cruise ship like five years ago that had a robot bartender. Oh really it was just like an industrial arm that very slowly like shook your drink for you and poured it out.
Speaker 3:Guys, guess what Tesla? It's Teslala bot. Guess what tesla bot's name is optimus?
Speaker 2:optimus. Yeah, I think elon said something like they'll be available in what? 2026 or something for around 30 000 and you will have this robot that can act as your personal assistant around your house and can do whatever. I didn didn't watch the whole event, but there's. Technology continues to move at warp speed and so, yeah, right now, it's hard to identify online If you're interacting with a human or a robot. Soon you're going to be struggling with this in person, like I don't know if that's a robot or a human.
Speaker 1:I'm going to be off living in the woods somewhere. Just me and my like robot friends. Yeah, what do you? What's this face? Jordan.
Speaker 3:So two days ago, futurism published an article that Tesla's robots were just remotely controlled dummies. Analyst confirms.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 3:But, it was stupid, because the only information I could find is that the director of iRobot has been very like critical, like, oh, you're just stealing from my movie and whatever.
Speaker 2:And making it real.
Speaker 3:Who cares? Who cares?
Speaker 1:Wait, wait, wait. Irobot is a movie based on a book, and so Isaac Asimov isn't popping out of the grave going you stole from my book to make your movie. Here we go, grave going you stole from my book to make your movie.
Speaker 3:Welcome back to Buzzcast, a podcast about all things podcasting from the people at Buzzsprout.
Speaker 2:So, jordan, have you heard from either the Harris campaign or the Trump campaign about scheduling their appearance on Buzzcast?
Speaker 3:No, I have not, Unfortunately. I checked my spam folder several times a day and it just it hasn't come in.
Speaker 2:I think if they respond, jordan, they're not going to respond like on your email. Or even though we told them fan mail, they're probably not going to do that, probably going to be certified mail. You've been waiting by your door.
Speaker 3:You know I do have a PO Box. I haven't checked in a couple of weeks.
Speaker 2:That's where it is.
Speaker 3:And I bet anything, it's stuck in there yeah.
Speaker 1:You know, since we talked about the presidential race and podcasting last episode, kevin keeps posting every time he sees them. And now the YouTube algorithms serving up for me and there's like, yeah, it's, there's so many of these.
Speaker 3:I know it's crazy.
Speaker 1:You know, it felt like I remember when Obama went on WTF and it was like, wow, that's big and probably no president went on another podcast for like five years.
Speaker 2:That wasn't even when he. That wasn't during his campaign, though that was just when he was president.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but then I mean, in like the last few weeks it feels like there've been all these different podcast appearances. And then I saw one like two days ago. I don't know if this is true or not, but somebody was saying that Kamala Harris was going to go on Joe Rogan. Yeah, that's the rumor.
Speaker 2:That would be awesome, that'd be so good.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's both Trump and Kamala Harris are in talks to go on Joe Rogan, which is actually really interesting because Joe Rogan has been very like I don't know. He has not said kind things about either candidate Right, so it's interesting that they would want to go on his show.
Speaker 2:Well, you're going to get the biggest reach. You can possibly get on a podcast, but I would think the sticking point for both campaigns would be the format, because I don't see Joe like. I don't think he sets a duration. I think he says you have to block off somewhere between you know, around four hours and we're going to go as long as the conversation goes and I bet that's probably hard honestly for both campaigns to block off that amount of time. With how many days left? 20 something days left till the election?
Speaker 3:I don't know. It's funny Cause like I've only listened to a couple episodes of his podcast, like if there's someone on there that I'm interested in and what I found was interesting is his interview style is basically like he just lets people talk like 20, 30 minutes straight and then he'll circle back to something he thinks is interesting and he'll talk for like two seconds and then, like he just lets the guests talk for another like 15, 20 minutes, and I was just like this is weird, because he's not like a great interviewer but he just kind of like lets people I don't know dump.
Speaker 1:This is actually my hot take for podcasting that. I think he is a good interviewer but, it's not like a investigative journalist. He's not ever going to challenge people and get something like whoa. You know he cornered him and got him.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:He does this like oh, we're just friends, we're chatting, and sometimes people say stuff You're like I can't believe you said that, but he's very non-confrontational and so he ends up getting like a bit more personal stories from people. Yeah, and you get stuff like Elon Musk went on there. Remember that when he went on there like years ago. And then he's like, oh, can I smoke weed on this?
Speaker 2:show. Let me fact check that Elon did not ask if he could smoke weed on the show.
Speaker 1:Okay, not ask, but it's the environment. No one's going on like 60 minutes and ever thinking about even drinking when they go on.
Speaker 3:That's true, yeah.
Speaker 1:There's different environments where you're going on and you know they have set up questions to try to put a little bit of a squeeze on you and they're probably only got you for five minutes before the interview ends anyway.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But Rogan gets you on there for four hours and you're just chatting and he'll be like oh, what do you think about? What are things in the news? And it just kicks off like an hour long conversation that probably is not going to come out in any other interview.
Speaker 2:So sometimes they become really interesting and sometimes they're just like oh, this random person who I don't know who they are just kind of chatted with the guy from Fear Factor for a while and I have heard Joe talk about this, the style of his show, and it's why I say I don't think he would compromise on the amount of time, that he'd want to sit down with both candidates, because he's I've heard him say things before Like the first hour is just getting them comfortable. It's just creating an environment in which they're comfortable and we're just talking and we're sharing and they start to build a trust with me that they can just they can share things they haven't shared other places. And that's where he feels like the value of the show comes from is that he's really trying to get the person to have a really honest conversation, things they wouldn't say other places. And his secret to doing that is just time, it's just duration. I'm just going to spend a lot of time with them.
Speaker 2:They need to be able to say things. I don't respond in a judgmental way yada, yada, yada. So the fact that a presidential candidate, 20 something days out from election day, would be able to clear three or four hours to be able to sit down with him and do that, I think is very low. But if they did it, I think it would be it could change the outcome of the election, like it's possible. I don't really know the numbers, but I think more people it's possible would listen to that than would have watched the debate.
Speaker 3:I agree.
Speaker 1:Well, 2020, the whole election is swayed over something by like 60,000 votes across a few states. Maybe those numbers are not exactly right, but it's somewhere. It's under 100,000. Looking at some of the numbers from these shows, I mean one of them passed week with Theo Vaughn 14 million views. Yeah, yeah. Impulsive with Logan Paul. So I guess it's impulsive. Yeah, 6.6 million views. Yeah, I mean, we're talking millions of views. These are probably a lot of. These are going to be more of a reach than a lot of new, you know, going on the nightly news or something going doing for a sit down interview or the debate.
Speaker 3:I literally have the debate like bookmarked and have yet to watch it and I probably am not going to like. If I'm being fully honest with myself, I'm not going to do it.
Speaker 1:You can watch the highlight reel.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I can watch the highlight reel. Some of these are like so weird. Like it's odd choices though. The podcasts that are going on and I think it's like part of this humanizing thing, but the full send podcast they're like pranksters. It's this like goofy, pranky thing and Trump went on there, but they have like 2 million views on that video. And then I saw that, like JD Vance was on ruthless competition, which is like a fishing competition YouTube channel, like I don't know, it's just like they be and it's so odd because the video description makes it sound like oh, jd joins us for a thing and Tomfoolery ensues.
Speaker 1:It's just so weird.
Speaker 1:Well, one of the things we started to talk about last time that I think is why more campaigns are leaning into this going on podcast is because podcasts do select for its typical demographic. And if you're thinking guys who listen to comedy podcasts like Joe Rogan or this past weekend with Theo Vaughn or Impulsive I don't know if that's comedy, but whatever they are if you're like, oh, that's the demographic we're trying to reach, then you can go on a podcast that caters to that audience and you can talk about the few issues that are really important to that audience. I mean, it's probably the thinking also behind when Harris went on Call Her Daddy.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know you're trying to talk to predominantly young women and oh, here's a massive podcast that talks to young women. Boom, you're set. So I think there's just a bit of a dry. I mean, we are not listening to all of these shows we're not watching. I don't watch any of them.
Speaker 1:No me neither, but the fact that you know, I think they're going on because they're not really trying to reach me, or else they'd be coming on Buzzcast like we've been inviting them. You had some really good quotes. Could I read a couple of these?
Speaker 3:Absolutely yeah, could I read a couple of these?
Speaker 1:Absolutely yeah From the New Yorker. Trump said on the Lex Friedman podcast from a political standpoint, you have to find out what people are doing and what they're watching and you have to get on. Harris made a similar point on Call Her Daddy when Cooper asked what motivated her to go on the show. One of the best ways to communicate with people is to be real, to talk about things people really care about. This is a moment in the country and in my life where people really want to know they've been seen and heard and that they're part of a community and that they're not out there alone. And then he put out this other quote when Trump appeared on the full send podcast. He stated we don't have freedom of the press and the neck boys are the press, now the knock boys, yeah.
Speaker 3:That just really caught my attention because we were kind of talking about how it's interesting that they're going on this rather than just like the regular, like news circuits. And I think that you know trump saying that these prank show podcasters are the press now really speaks to like the magnitude of like. Even though you may be in like this odd niche, you still have influence. I mean, we talked about, like, the influence of podcasting a few episodes ago, but I think that it just really points that out.
Speaker 1:I really thought this was a great point. People want to feel like the candidates have seen them, that they understand them, that they're paying attention, and both of them identified. People are paying attention to podcasts. Yes, they're spending a lot of time with them. You get so much more value from two hours talking to an audience and you probably can convince people. Versus 30 second attack ad, I've never watched one and thought it changed my opinion. That may be incorrect, but I've never felt like this changed something. But I have watched hour long conversations with a celebrity and went, oh, I might actually go see their movie now. I like them. I think highly of that artist now. I didn't in the past, but they seem interesting. If there's something that could sway people for maybe being undecided to voting, I could see it being a podcast.
Speaker 3:Yeah, ivor Glass made an announcement to the listeners of this American Life that they will be launching a premium subscription version of the program called this American Life Partners. The reasoning behind this new listener supported model is that the ad market has dropped and they're anticipating the ad revenue this upcoming year to be a third less than in previous years. This is actually really similar to something that we saw back in March. Pj Vogt made a similar announcement for his podcast Search Engine, saying that podcasting is in like dire straits right now and that the future of the work is listener support and we had covered that in an episode back in March. But I don't know. It's just it's so interesting that all these major podcasts are making a switch to listener support.
Speaker 1:You know it's funny, as years and years ago this American Life had an app where you could listen to old episodes of this American Life and I'm pretty sure it was something like $3 one time to buy it. Oh wow, I bought it and this is like my second iPhone I ever had and I don't know if it's still that app. I'm sure the app is now gone, but it's funny how, like the business model at some point was all radio and then they went what if we got three bucks on a podcasting app? And now the listener support is such a big piece and they're saying, hey, we're going to probably not make as much money off the podcast revenue and the radio revenue we're going to have to supplement with listener support.
Speaker 2:It's definitely impacting large podcasters, right. We saw the same thing with Twit. Twit has been reducing their staff, cutting back on expenses asking for listener support.
Speaker 2:Even smaller networks like Replay FM they're doing a lot of pushing around I think it's called replay premium or something like that where you get access. It's basically a network of shows that have come together and they're selling instead of an individual show subscription or a premium thing, you get access to like 10 different shows premium and they're selling it and splitting the revenue that way. I think podcasting made a shift towards a different type of advertising. I think a lot of this has to do with the programmatic style advertising that has been a big push into the industry, probably just really over the past five to seven years. Roughly is when it started infiltrating with these dynamic insertion technology and stuff. Megaphone was actually a huge mover in kind of bringing this to the mainstream and then tools even like Buzzsprout adopted it and started applying it or letting more independent podcasters have access to the stuff and we don't push it again Like a great use for it is certainly advertisements, but that's not the only use or their uses just to make your own announcements, to say things like we're going to be at this meetup or got a new course coming out, or whatever you want to use dynamic content for. But I think, specifically, the use case around advertising is not as strong as some people thought it could be, and when you think about long form content, I think the advertisement play that was happening in podcasting was mostly host read. It was more like woven into the content. It was leveraging the trust of the relationship between the podcaster and the audience, and programmatic broke away from all of that, basically to be able to scale and for efficiency, and so the value of those obviously went way down and people are struggling to figure out where the value is. There's probably still some value there, but is it at a $20 CPM, a $10 CPM, a $5 CPM like, a one cent CPM, like how valuable is it? Measurement in open podcasting is difficult. Some platforms, like Spotify, who has now bought Megaphone, is trying to fill that gap much in the way that YouTube did in terms of better reporting, better numbers. They control the player, they control the media so they can give better reporting, but again, you give up a lot of listener privacy in order to do that. So anyway, it's all very complicated, but I think it's led to this story of podcast. Advertising is super valuable for brands, product services that want to advertise on podcasts, because it works really well.
Speaker 2:Well, that was seven years ago. Programmatic ads start coming to podcasting at the same time to leverage this great news about advertising on podcasts. But the return wasn't what everyone said it would be, and so it's slowly been pulling back, like how valuable is it? How accurate are these measurements and all this stuff? And now brands like the story's completely shifted and I think brands are more gun-shy about yeah, that was all hype, it's not real. We spent $20,000, $30,000, $40,000 in podcast advertising. We weren't really able to measure the return. We didn't see it clearly like everyone said we would, and so it doesn't work. I don't think that's an accurate way to look at it that's an accurate way to look at it.
Speaker 3:You reminded me I saw an article in Ad Age this week and it's about how Walmart is redefining podcast advertising through influencers. Basically, what Walmart is doing in their advertising strategy, they're focusing more on what they call dedicated moments, and so it's not just having like a brief sponsored by ad read. What they're doing is they're investing in sponsored content where it's a little bit more integrated with the creators, like they're basically leaning into allowing the creators to do what they do best and then they are better able to relay the information that the sponsor wants to relay. And so I think that there's like a silver lining here that they're realizing oh, these programmatic ads, like people aren't listening to them, they're not connecting with it, and the value in podcasts is that the listeners can connect to the host, and so it's best to give the host the reins and allow them to like really meaningfully deliver the message.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, the one I always think of is Bill Burr doing a Sherry's Berries ad. Read that he just made fun of Sherry's Berries. There's this berry company that does chocolate strawberries and he made fun of it for minutes and then Sherryry's berries fired him. But then they started seeing so many people signing up with the promo code that they were like, oh, we want you back. Because what happened was, even though he's making fun of them, and they took it as like, well, I don't like this guy making fun of us for money, him joking was content. And so then everybody was like, yeah, it's kind of silly, but actually it would be kind of a nice gift to send my mom some Sherry's berries for mother's day. And so they actually went and bought it, even though you know the content itself was still he was teasing the company.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think stuff like that can definitely work as just an advertisement, but I think it does work best when it's more like a sponsorship. You know, something was really great about podcasting seven years ago, roughly, and it started to shift and people tried to capitalize, I think, a lot on the hype around something that was working. They tried to scale it and then it started to break and now there's like this backlash. Now podcast advertising is not where brands want to invest money. But I really like thinking around what Walmart is doing. I think they're saying no, there is something there. I think we just missed out on it when we tried to, you know, scale it and make it super efficient and roll it out to every show possible or whatever. And so I don't like to like swing back too far the other direction and saying advertising and podcasting is terrible, it's broken, it'll never work. And there are people who have been banging that drum since the very beginning. I don't think they're totally wrong, but I don't think they're totally right either. I do think there's this middle space.
Speaker 2:So, buzzsprout, we sponsor the Pod News Weekly Review. Because we sponsor the Pod News Weekly Review, we're interested in getting people to listen to that show so we link to it, often like from our Facebook group, when whenever there's a good story in the pod news email newsletter, we pointed out to people and we talk about it. We talk about it on this show. We reference articles from that all the time. We're trying to drive people to listen to that show as much as possible. It's a great show. Because it's a great show, we sponsor it and because we sponsor it, we want to get more people listening to it and we've been a longtime sponsor of that show. I think we're in our third or fourth year of sponsoring that show since the very beginning. And so now James and Sam the hosts of that show they just know that this show is sponsored and brought to you by Buzzsprout and so anytime there's anything that they're talking about that they could relate to Buzzsprout in any way, they always do a really good job of tying it back in, because they're doing a good job of taking care of their talking about a competitor who launched something and they just might be like and as a reminder, you know Buzzsprout has had this also for a long time so like we're not paying them extra to do that. That's just a nature of a really good sponsorship relationship. That stuff is wonderful. We do not ever ask James and Sam for the numbers on their show, like, how many downloads are you doing? We don't log in and look at that stuff. Even though we could, we wouldn't do it because it goes against who we are and our values and principles. But when we're talking about are we going to renew or not, we talk about, we think about the relationship and the value and what they're doing and do we want to continue supporting it and do we feel like they're treating us well and are we treating them well? We just those types of things are valuable in podcasting. I think they're going to be the advertising that sustains the podcast industry long-term.
Speaker 2:I don't think it's going to be commercials, especially when you're talking about long-form content 30, 40 minutes, 60 minutes, when there is an ad break in the middle of a 60-minute episode. That's my chance to check out. As a listener. I get to relax for a second. I'm in here for an hour. I might skip it if I'm driving in the car because I'm so into it. I just want to get back to the content. I don't think it's a commercial, but if I'm listening to Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend and he starts talking about MeUndies. I know that's going to be a funny bit. I'm not going to skip that commercial.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you don't want to because it's part of the content, it's part of the joy of podcasting and makes it possible for people to be able to invest a lot of time into podcasting is you have to have your loyal fans, your super fans, the people who are getting a lot of value out of your show and they want to return some value. Whether you call that value for value or what do you call that premium content, or whether you call them super fans or whatever label you put on it, it falls into that bucket and that is huge. And podcasters should consider that and give people the opportunity to join that group of people who are supporting the show and making it happen. And then I think sponsorships host, read ads and stuff. That stuff also has a long track record of working and working well. But you have to approach it like a job. I can't not just going to read ad copy. I'm going to make it entertaining. I'm going to give my listeners a reason to listen to this. I might try out the products so I can vouch for them. So it's a testimonial, it's not a commercial.
Speaker 2:And then there are shows that are big enough, that are just like. I don't want to have to do any of that. I'm going to play commercials, I'll take the $6 CPM. That's fine. But unless you're massive or something and the scale of that stuff works and you control your expenses and you have a small team, it's really hard to make those numbers work. Big organizations like Spotify and stuff they're going to try to make that work. They're highly incented to and they position themselves to be able to do it better. Youtube has made it work in the video space. Spotify is trying to do it in the audio space. I think they're saying it's more difficult than they thought. So now they're trying to go into the video space because at least YouTube has shown them the path of how to make it work in video. But whatever, it's not a game.
Speaker 2:I don't think that smaller and more independent type podcasts can participate in successfully long-term. It's definitely subject or it's definitely at the mercy of, kind of like, what the market thinks about podcast advertising at any given time. Five years ago, everyone thought podcast advertising was the opportunity that every brand should be pressing into and we should be charging $25 CPMs for these commercials that get dropped in the middle of shows. Now that tune has changed and nobody wants to pay more than $16, $17 CPM. Okay, Well, like if your business can survive those ebbs and flows of you know, the whims of the market, fine, but most people can't. And that's where you have people like Leo Lepore and this American Life, and they built an organization around these $25 CPMs and now nobody wants to pay them anymore. And now they're caught off guard and they're like, oh no, what do we do? We're gonna have to shut down the show. We're gonna have to lay people off. We're going to change formats, we're going to stick with what you know like sponsored content works.
Speaker 3:It does.
Speaker 2:Working the endorsements into your show works. Having that loyal fan base that wants to support the show, giving them opportunities to do that, selling premium content these things work and they should be your base. Anything above that should be gravy, and if you set your business model up like that from the beginning, I think they'd be in a much better spot.
Speaker 1:Guys, I've got some background noise now because we're on a Thursday. Well, kevin, I think this fits really well with the topic we had next, this AI. Is it a threat to the podcasting world? And there's all these. I mean, we talked about Notebook LM and now we're starting to see a bunch of kind of junk podcasts show up that are just Notebook LM shows. People throw some stuff in there and all of a sudden there's just tons and tons of junk content. It feels to me like this is kind of the same story. Podcasting was human first and podcasting advertisement was human first. And people went. You know it would be great if it worked just as well, but I didn't have to do any work for it. You know it's just as effective, but no work involved. And so we've made programmatic ads and then we're seeing they're not working as well. And then we now are like you know, it'd be great if I could create a podcast but do almost no work. And now we're getting junk podcasts.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And it feels like, I mean, it's the way email used to be. Email used to be all people you knew and it was really high quality, and then it became like just where tons of spam went.
Speaker 1:And the same happened with Facebook when it was all friends it was like just college friends that you just met and then it was a bunch of ads and AI generated junk and things get junked up as the lowest common denominator kind of gets tossed in. Oh, let's just make a bunch of notebook LM shows, let's make a bunch of programmatic ads. And I was looking at it. I'm like you know, right now there's ListenNotes is doing this thing where they're trying to detect all of these AI generated podcasts, which I think right now is totally doable, because everyone knows the two voices of Notebook LM. You know that always generates.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But that's going to be gone pretty soon. Pretty soon there's going to be a world where you can generate totally new voices and you can use your own voice and you could use the voices of famous people, and I think we're going to end up with a ton of just you know frankly, mostly garbage podcasts that were completely generated by AI and there was no human ever in the mix.
Speaker 3:Yeah, in this listen notes called action about the AI junk up. If podcasting he says like it's not just having like all these fake shows in the ether but it's bad for listeners, it's bad for the podcast creators and it's bad for financial infrastructure and bad for hosting platforms, I mean, that's I somewhat agree with this. I don't, I don't know if I like, fully agree with it. I think it's a little doom and gloom, honestly, but I don't know. I just I want to see what your guys' thoughts are on. Is this actually bad to have these AI podcasts out there?
Speaker 2:I don't think it's bad at all, I don't think it's good, but I don't think it's a problem.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Here's why and it goes back to one of the things that I love about podcasting is that podcasting is not something that works like traditional social media. Even YouTube, I think, very much works like traditional social media in that there are platforms that promote content and, of course, there's a lot of responsibility that comes with that, and when they don't do a good job, oftentimes the public holds them to account for that. But it's why they get the criticisms like why are you platforming this person or these bad ideas or these bad thoughts?
Speaker 1:Or.
Speaker 2:I was just watching silly cat videos and then you tried to sway my political opinion on a subject matter. They have to figure out how to navigate that stuff. That doesn't really exist in podcasting. It's also why I get nervous when I hear arguments around in the podcast industry like apps need to do a better job of helping people to solve this discoverability problem. Well, when you solve the discoverability problem, you start to hurt. One of the things that's beautiful about podcasting is that it's like self-selection. You see a little bit of this like I draw the analogy oftentimes like to the publishing industry. When you go into a bookstore, right, of course, there's the New York Times bestsellers out in the front table, and then there's who knows what deals you know Barnes and Noble or whatever has with different publishing houses where they're going to face their books forward versus put them, you know, sideways on the shelves.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And you know that stuff exists too a little bit, and I think that's a little bit like what you see in Apple podcasts, where they have some charts and they have some new and noteworthy stuff and some editorialized sections of content that you can browse through. You see a little bit of it, but it's not super algorithmically driven. As far as I know, there's no way that I can call up Apple podcasts and pay them a bunch of money to you know, push my podcasts on the people. No.
Speaker 3:I've tried to get things listed and they're like nah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, who was the band? Who was it? Remember when iTunes gave everyone a free album U2. Yeah, u2, and everybody hated it. It was such a disaster because they pushed this free album to everyone's devices and people were like I don't even like YouTube, why did you push it onto my device? Anyway, this stuff doesn't exist in podcasting right now, too much. It's one of the reasons I come back to and I love the pod role. It's like pod role is not an algorithm.
Speaker 2:It is the podcaster that you already like, telling you what other shows they like. And so back to the point of AI content. I think, fine, like podcasting is the amazoncom of the book world. You can have a hundred million, 200 billion podcasts out in the world. It doesn't matter, because we're not a physical store. Like we don't have only so much shelf space that we have to account for, so there doesn't have. Like, you can have as much as you want. It's still self-selection.
Speaker 2:If people are not finding your podcast, if you're not doing good job marketing and getting in front of listeners that it resonates with, and then they're not telling other people, it's not going to go anywhere. And that is kind of what I think is going to happen with these AI podcasts, unless they're good, unless the AI is really really, really good and it starts resonating with some audience and somebody behind it is putting a marketing engine behind it to get it out and get people listening to it, and then they like it, and then they tell people and they tell people and they tell people. It's not going to go anywhere. And so is it possible to create AI content that plays into the YouTube algorithm and YouTube unknowingly gets tricked and starts promoting this video? Absolutely, you could totally do that.
Speaker 2:It has happened on TikTok. It happens on TikTok. Does it happen on Instagram? It it happens on TikTok. Does it happen on Instagram? It happens on Instagram and it's a battle that's happening between is the AI getting better fast enough that the platforms are trying to filter it out and recognize it? But in podcasting, we don't have to worry about it. It's like create all the junk content you want and burn all the bandwidth you want and pay for it and put it out there. It doesn't matter because it's self-selection. There's no algorithms that are pushing it.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, I'd say the losers, if there are any, are going to be the indie podcasters who are trying to get noticed, because people's bandwidth for listening to endless shows to try to find a new exciting show is going to drastically decrease when they find out there's just a ton of junk out there.
Speaker 2:But how are they going to find?
Speaker 1:it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean. Think about how hard it is to market a podcast. It's so hard to market and promote a podcast and people that are just like generating these AI podcasts they're not putting effort into that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. But I'm saying, if you want a new magic the gathering podcast, you're like, oh, I really want to listen to magic the gathering podcast, I want to find one of those. And then you're well, how are you going to find it? You're going to go on to your podcast app, you're going to start searching, you're going to look around online. See, I disagree. You disagree that people look around online for podcasts.
Speaker 2:No, I disagree that somebody is going to go into a podcast app and search for Magic the Gathering, sort through the results and start listening to podcasts. I think the way that they will do it is more to like. The second point that you said is that I'll search online for Magic the Gathering podcasts and I'll try to find curated lists that are showing me what good podcasts are for Magic the Gathering. Or I'm going to post on Facebook or Instagram, I'm going to ask my friends or my trusted circles, or I'm going to go find a Reddit group about that and ask them what they're listening to.
Speaker 1:I think that we're going to move more towards human curation, because the problem that I'm saying we're going to have so much more crud in the whole system the lists are not curated by some person who's really sat down with 20 great magic, the gathering podcast. They just went online and they found 20 and they stuck them in an article to try to rank and they used AI to help write the article anyway, and it's just a cruddy article that's now out there. And then you go to the Reddit forum, because that used to be where people could find stuff from just humans, but it's actually there's a bunch of AI on there too. It's not that great. If I post on Twitter, I get a bunch of recommendations. They're also recommending that I invest in their new crypto scam and it's just like everywhere you go, it's a bunch of junk.
Speaker 2:But I don't think it's necessarily a problem, though I think what it does is it starts to change human behavior, and so the way that I used to find a magic gathering podcast was that I could go to Google and type in good magic gathering podcast and I could trust the results that came back would land me at a solution to the problem I was trying to solve. Then I'll continue to do that. As soon as I start doing that and it starts not working anymore, then I'm going to have to come up with a new tactic. I'm only going to pursue things that land me at a positive solution to the problem I'm trying to solve. And so I think you're right, it's going to change behavior, but I think people are going to figure it out and how to work it. I just think it's going to change stuff. I'm not going to go to Google for that anymore. Like you said, if Reddit used to be a place where I used to be able to solve that problem, but now, because AI has come in and junked up all the results, it's not a place I can do that. I have to find somewhere else to do that.
Speaker 2:But podcasting largely, at least in my experience and the experience of a lot of podcasters who I've spoken with how do you find the next best show that you want to start listening to? It's usually through word of mouth. I don't think it's been the result of Google searches or even Reddit forums or stuff. Once in a while, I'm in a conversation with somebody in a online discussion and a podcast gets dropped in there. Well, I trust it because of the context in which it was delivered.
Speaker 2:But one of the things that happens a lot in the podcasting space is people talk about what are the importance of SEO and optimizing my podcast for search results. Well, there's nothing wrong with it, it's not bad. But I think you need to really limit the amount of time that you put into that, because I think so few people actually really find shows that they become fans of and long-term listeners from based on just like Googling around or searching around. The magic of podcasting is that it comes from a human recommendation. It comes upon I stumble upon something randomly and I like it. It comes because somebody shared a clip or I did a book club and somebody referenced something that it reminded them from a podcast. That's how the discoverability happens in podcasting, and I think it's wonderful, it's wonderful. I don't think AI can ruin that. It might change a little bit of how I go about making that happen.
Speaker 1:I think you're missing a little bit of it In the 90s, like the way you found out about stuff was like you had to talk to people that you knew in real life. It was hard to connect with people you didn't know in real life. You could get a pen pal, but like you weren't just going online to some forum or maybe you were, but I wasn't. I wasn't going out to any forums early in the 90s. But we got online and so many of our communities moved online and so much of the internet is getting polluted by all this AI crud and the more of that that happens, I think, the more we will then retreat back to. Stuff has to be in person again, which I personally like, but the loss will be. Hey, if you're into something that your local community, it's hard to find a group of people around it then it is going to be harder to connect with real people online because it's going to be way hard to verify.
Speaker 1:Is this a real person. I mean right now you can use image editors to create fake driver's licenses really easy. All of the stuff we use to verify people online is breaking and the more fake podcasts and the fake AI videos and fake LinkedIn profile accounts, the more we're going to go. Okay, stuff has to happen in real life, but that does mean this age of being able to go online and feel somewhat confident. I'm talking to a real person who's interested in whatever thing I was interested in. That might be coming a bit to a close.
Speaker 2:I don't know. I'm not going to say I disagree with you, but I will say in all of my online community experience that I can think of, people are generally on pretty high alert for anybody who's there for selfish or self-promotional reasons.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:And so think about what happens in our Facebook community group for Buzzsprout. As soon as somebody starts answering a question with something, even if it's as simple as why don't you DM me? I know the solution to this problem Everybody's hair is standing. They're gone. There's something fishy about that. Yeah Right, If you go into a Reddit group and you're trying to answer somebody's question and the solution happens to be your uncle's auto repair shop down the road, solution happens to be your uncle's auto repair shop down the road. You're going to get lit up for that, and so, as hard a time as humans have like knowing that people are on the lookout for anything, that's like self-serving and my own self-interest as part of offering a solution to somebody else it's hard to pull off for humans. Think about how advanced AI is going to have to get before it's going to be able to effectively pull that trick off at scale. So I'm not saying it won't be able to happen.
Speaker 1:I don't think you have to pull the trick off. I think that we all are going to be on high alert now, for podcast recommendations are probably junk, or podcasts that I might try out for just 30 seconds to see if it might be any good. There's a lot of them now that are junk, and the more junk that there is, the higher the cost to find a new one, and so the less likely you are to go searching.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, but I'm not likely to go searching now, and so maybe I'm an outlier.
Speaker 1:I definitely do find myself searching. I might give you a human recommendation. At the end of this show I saw something that somebody wrote about Icon, who does rebuilds of old Ford Broncos or FJ Cruisers, and I was like I wonder if the guy who founded it had a good podcast. And I searched and I found an episode and I listened to it on my drive home and I was like oh, what a great episode about craftsmanship. This is really cool. But in the future, if I pull it up and there's 30 of them and I'm like are these really going to be real interviews? I don't know Like, are these just synthetic, like recordings of this guy's voice?
Speaker 1:At some point I'm going to be like the losers are the new podcasts. The indie podcasters are trying to break in. I think the established ones are going to have kind of a bit of a win, because the more established you are, the more people go. But I've been listening to this guy for five years as a person and we'll stick with the shows we have. I think there's just going to be a loss for people who are trying to start something new and now they are competing with the AI, crud, I don't know and if the more listeners have to put in effort to figure out what's good and what's not, then I think it's going to be a little bit tougher on. Like the new podcaster who's already you know, they're putting in some real work to try to get the first 30 listeners. I think it's going to really stink if they have to do that in an environment where there's just hundreds and hundreds of notebook LM level podcasts.
Speaker 3:I mean, this is a really difficult problem to have, because it's basically like what's the solution? One of the things that people have proposed is to be able to like tag the content as AI created.
Speaker 1:It's a nice proposal, but also people should like turn themselves in when they rob a store. Oh yeah. Yeah, I mean it's, they're not gonna, it's not gonna happen. The whole point of generating it is to sneak it by people.
Speaker 3:I mean, and that's like the exact thing. But also, like in this ListenNotes article, they say one potential solution is to introduce clear watermarks or signals that help platforms like ListenNotes easily identify and remove AI generated content. And that kind of like left me in a weird I don't know. I had a weird feeling about that because it's like okay, so you're just going to remove any AI generated content. You know what, if this is like an actual creator that, due to health reasons, like has to use AI? I don't know, it's just.
Speaker 2:I think the podcasting world is getting a little bit wrapped up in solving the wrong problem. I think they're feeling threatened that AI voices are going to come in and replace the real voices, and I don't think listeners care about that. I think listeners care about the quality of content and they care about being entertained, or they care about learning something new, or they care about an interesting story, something that helps them emote a feeling one way or the other, and I don't think they care if it's AI content or a human voice.
Speaker 1:They're looking to scratch the itch that is itchy today, and so this is the kind of content you're coming to real humans for scratching the itch that's itchy today.
Speaker 2:But the problem we're solving is not how do we identify AI content so that we can filter it out. It should be how do we promote the best content and how do we demote terrible content? Doesn't matter where it comes from. I'm happy to watch a movie that entertains me, that makes me laugh, that teaches me something. I don't care if it's all CGI or not, I don't care if it's a completely AI movie with AI actors. If it scratches my itch and I'm entertained by it, you get my $12 and my 26 bucks for a box of popcorn. I'm going to watch your movie.
Speaker 2:And the same thing happens in podcasting. So if you feel threatened as a podcaster, the answer isn't how do we identify it so we can clearly label it, so people aren't tricked or whatever? No, it's none of that. It's create better content. It's create content that is better than the AI content, and right now the bar is pretty low because the AI content's not that great. The problem is it's just going to get better, but so can you. You can get better, you can create better content, and that's what we should be doing, and that's the problem that we've always had. Nothing's changing. Maybe the bar's raising a little bit because, oh, there's more competition now. Great, I can be a better podcaster, I can create more compelling content, I can tighten my niche, I can market better. That's what we should be focusing on.
Speaker 3:Let's hop into sound off.
Speaker 1:These are all verified to be from humans.
Speaker 3:Yes, so far. So far We've met some of them in person. All right, so let's kick things off with Tate from Panda Pen, a storytelling podcast said Hi Buzzcast. I have a question about creating chapters. I'm wondering if Buzzsprout adjusts the chapter times to account for the additional seconds of the dynamic content or if this means all the chapter time markers will be off by however many seconds the dynamic content is.
Speaker 1:Yes, tate, we will do it, we will make them work. So if you put it in, you put in the chapters and then we will adjust them to fit the dynamic content and if you ever take it out or edit it, we will adjust them again. Every time we touch the audio file we update all of those chapter markers.
Speaker 2:And just to be clear Alvin says we will adjust them. Actually, the robots will adjust them. The robots make the adjustment when we made this feature Kevin goes.
Speaker 1:so you have to have the feature but we don't have time to program it and for the last three years it's just been me going in like, hey, this audio file got updated. I'll go check them.
Speaker 2:Steph wrote in from the Geopats podcast, said two things. One, I hope you're all okay after the hurricane and yes we are. Everyone from our team has made it through the hurricane with a minimal amount of disruption and damage. So thank you so much for asking. It is very disruptive when those major storms come through and we know a lot of people didn't make out as well as we did. So a lot of people in Florida are hurting and we appreciate thoughts, prayers, any way that you can support that. So thank you so much. And two, please stop using podcast when you mean episode. It's confusing and I can sincerely apologize. It is confusing, which is why we, as real human podcasters, sometimes get confused because we're trying to talk fast and give you good thoughts on the fly and sometimes we get those words wrong. So please forgive us. It's how you know, we're human and we are imperfect, but we'll do our best to do better about that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I tried to find the instance that she was referring to and I looked at the transcript and we said the word podcast 94 times and episode 66 times. So I could not identify at what point in the podcast we mixed it up or what time at what point in the episode we mixed it up.
Speaker 1:I think it could be me. I pretty regularly say podcasts when we're referring to a single podcast episode.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So we will. Yeah, let's try to be a little bit more focused on those.
Speaker 3:We'll try, all right. We also got a fan mail from United Arab Emirates saying hey guys, I hope you're doing well. Just a recommendation for an episode you should listen to a history podcast by Verge Cast, which has some insights despite what we already know. Yeah, so, verge Cast, it's like 2004 week at the Verge and they published an episode called. They're called podcasts because the term podcasts was coined in 2004. And apparently there's a pretty contentious history behind the name of what a podcast is or how it came to be and who coined it, and so I definitely recommend giving that a listen. It is fascinating, so I will link to that in the show notes too. But, yeah, great recommendation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, last week we asked people what are your thoughts on AI in podcasting? D sparkling life coach podcast reached out and said I have mixed feelings towards AI generated podcasts. Thing that fascinates me about AI and what I think are good uses like if a person had laryngitis they could record their episode using AI. Ai can translate your episode into another language so that it could work for people who don't speak the language that you speak, and she loves using it for brainstorming ideas, figuring out SEO. There's nothing like the imperfect human aspect of podcasting and the emotions, the personality, the sense of humor, the different cultural thoughts, et cetera. So AI is an amazing tool, but not a replacement for real people. I think that's a great way to put it. Yeah, good thoughts there.
Speaker 3:All right, we got Tate again from Panda Pen. Although I write, edit and produce all my podcasts, I use an AI-generated voice to narrate all of my stories. I use them due to health issues and I create an episode that explains why I used AI-generated voices and use dynamic content as a disclaimer at the beginning of every episode that the narration is by an AI voice. So he says I had pushback before doing the explanation episode and dynamic disclaimer, but nothing since then. I have 28 five-star reviews on tiny podcasts, so I guess people are okay with it if there's a genuine reason. Yeah, yeah, I would say so. I think that's actually really smart to put in a disclaimer and just be like hey, here's why this is AI.
Speaker 2:I love that, all right. Another Kevin not me wrote in when life gives you lemons podcast wrote in and said my only experience with AI has been on YouTube, where I've seen many videos use AI to replace an accent or to create clickable artwork for them. A group of a few people have created film trailers for fictional films, and these always seem to be labeled with the word Panavision in the title. I don't know if that's mandatory or not.
Speaker 3:Interesting. I think I've seen some of these. They're almost like AI fan made film trailers. Some of these they're almost like AI fan made film trailers. It's usually for like a book or you know, maybe a follow up from like a series that was beloved like years ago. And it always irks me so much because I get really excited that there's like a new whatever, like Ready Player One something, and then I'm like, oh, cool, and then it's not actually that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I might have seen one of these a couple of weeks ago Did I ask you guys about? This is the second Home Alone reference in this podcast, strangely enough. But did I ask you about? Are they doing a new Home Alone with, like all the original characters and they're older now?
Speaker 3:I don't remember that, did they?
Speaker 1:leave like a 40-year-old Macaulay Culkin at home.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes the trailer had a 40-year-old, macaulay Culkin. He's talking about how hard his life has been.
Speaker 1:Since his parents left, kept leaving at home.
Speaker 2:But no, I don't know. The trailer said something about nobody gets left home alone this time or something. But it's like the original Buzz, the original Mom, the original Kevin they're all back. But I don't know if it was a real movie or not, but I saw a trailer for it on some social media site or something and I was definitely like wondering is this a real movie or not? Obviously, I didn't care that much because I didn't like look into it at all.
Speaker 3:I'm trying to search, I'm looking up like, okay, like I knew of the first three home alones, and then it was like now I'm into like home alone four, and then it was like home alone five, the holiday heist home alone six home sweet home alone.
Speaker 1:I'm like.
Speaker 3:How far does the rabbit hole go?
Speaker 1:Not only is there another one coming out, there's actually been six more that we never knew about. What is this, jordan? I can't believe it, but there's a piece of fan mail missing, because my favorite one that we've gotten, maybe ever. I'm going to have to read here from Jacksonville, florida, ending in 1440. I had to look this up. It is in my phone. I work at a podcast hosting company and I have to constantly delete podcasts that are AI generated. They typically are just spam used to drive traffic. I am not a fan. My co-workers rarely appreciate my deep passion for policing the beautiful world of podcasting. This is Tom Rossi.
Speaker 3:I was going to say I have a feeling I know who that is.
Speaker 1:It's cracking me up. I was at the office and Tom's like hey, you get any good fan mail recently and I'm like I don't know if I've looked at that. He's like, oh, you should probably check it out.
Speaker 3:That sounds like Tom.
Speaker 1:So good thoughts on podcast spam Tom.
Speaker 2:Let's jump into that for a second. Do you guys want to talk about it for a sec, because I think there's something interesting here. Yeah, why does Buzzsprout police AI podcasts on our platform?
Speaker 1:Because we have free podcast accounts and people will put up like hey, the number one dentist here in Boise, idaho Right Podcast and it's like a fake dentistry podcast.
Speaker 2:But if somebody used AI to generate something that's like attempting to be high quality content and we're on a pay plan, would we ever police that?
Speaker 1:No, I think, honestly, spending $12 a month is a pretty strong signal that you're trying a little bit. Most of these are not trying. It's like it's a gambling website, or it's a crypto scam, or it's somebody trying to get a link for their family dentistry through some scammy SEO thing. All of those and those are almost 99% of the time those are on free plans because they're not willing to pay any amount of money for that work.
Speaker 2:And I know Tom just tries to stay ahead of it a little bit, but the reality of the free plan for Buzzsprout anyways, the free plan for Buzzsprout is really like a free trial. It's for people. It's designed for people who are interested in giving podcasting a shot, but not sure if they're, if they're going to fall in love with it and want to stick with it or not, yeah, and so it's kind of self-pol keep doing it on Buzzsprout. Then you have to start paying. But there are platforms like Spotify for podcasters and Red Circle and even I think what's the other? Acast has a free plan and they're like legitimate long-term free podcast plans.
Speaker 2:And they've got another problem, like again, because this content isn't high quality, but it does use resources on their platform. It does, especially for Spotify. It completely junks up their search results and stuff like that. So, like for them, everyone has their own unique problems of why they might police this stuff, so that's why we police it. But again, I think ultimately it's not a problem for listeners. High quality content is going to win and they're not probably going to care whether it was AI assisted fully, ai generated fully, human fully, no, human doesn't matter. I think they just want to be again. Scratch the itch. That's itchy. I'm just saying I'm going to get a t-shirt on that.
Speaker 3:I was going to say, is that our Buzzcast t-shirt Going to have some swag?
Speaker 1:You know, we talked a lot in this episode about AI and communities and we just did this Buzzsprout meetup in Nashville, or at least we will have done it by the time this episode releases. I'd like to know what are some things you've gone to in person lately and what made it valuable? I think that I'm more interested in doing in-person events. I'm more excited about going to them, but what makes them a win for you, especially when it's like an online community that you're connecting with in person? And I'd love to hear that from our listeners so we could try to incorporate as many of those things into making Buzzsprout meetups and get togethers in the future more fun.
Speaker 3:Awesome question, albin. All right, so to have your response feature our next episode. Go ahead and tap the link to send us a fan mail message. And, as always, thanks for listening and keep podcasting. And as always, thanks for listening and keep podcasting.
Speaker 2:Did either of you listen to any of the episodes that were labeled as undeniably good podcast episodes that we went through in the last podcast?
Speaker 3:No, I have not had a chance to yet.
Speaker 1:No, but I'm going to Nashville in a couple of days. I'm going to be on an airplane. I'm going to have some time to load up some episodes.
Speaker 2:Yes, so I was in that exact of days, I'm going to be on an airplane and have some time to load up some episodes. Yes, so I was in that exact same position. I was. I was in the car for a long period of time and I I ran out of podcasts.
Speaker 3:Road tripping.
Speaker 2:And so what I usually would do is, you know, text somebody or whatever and ask for a podcast recommendation. But then I remembered we had just asked this question as a sound off question, and so I pulled up our Buzzcast episode. I got the list that Jordan put together so nicely, started clicking through and found a couple of winners. All right, tell us what were the winners.
Speaker 3:Let's hear them.
Speaker 2:I didn't get through all of them but I, so I started at the top, which was the everything eighties, calvin and Hobbes episode.
Speaker 3:Yes, oh, I really wanted to listen to that. Calvin and Hobbes episode.
Speaker 2:Yes, oh, I really want to listen to that. Is it good? It's so good, it's so good and so good. In fact, I am now a follower of the Everything 80s podcast because I looked at all the other episode titles they had and I was like, oh, that's something I'm interested in.
Speaker 1:I actually listened to another episode Are you about to bring up Home Alone for the third time this episode?
Speaker 2:No, but I probably could.
Speaker 3:You're going to do?
Speaker 2:it aren't you, but no, but I probably could You're?
Speaker 1:going to do it, aren't you, but I listened to two.
Speaker 2:I listened to the Calvin and Hobbes episode, which was wonderful, and then I also listened to they have a Seinfeld episode about how Seinfeld started. Listen to both those, and there is like a dozen more in there that I'll definitely listen to.
Speaker 2:The other thing that's great about that podcast is it's very evergreen content, and so it's like I don't have to listen to them in order. I don't feel like I'm behind, I just feel like, oh, I just found this whole treasure trove of fun things that you can listen to you can just jump around.
Speaker 1:Yeah, all this stuff is like 40 years old anyway, so you're okay. Yeah, it's true, all right.
Speaker 3:Tell us about this. Other ones, kevin, other one that this one's kind of funny. It was um called talk lit, get hit.
Speaker 2:Oh, this is the 50 shades of gray one. How was it they did 50 shades of gray? This was a podcast episode. It's kind of long and it's definitely not for me like. So I'm not a follower of the podcast now, but there was something about this episode that kept pulling me back, so. So I would listen for like 10 or 15 minutes and I'd be like you know, this is not really my thing, and then I'd go listen to something else and so, like, I'd flip over to another podcast episode, I'd listen to it, and then the way Pocket Castle works is that when you get to the end of that episode, it automatically goes back to whatever you're listening to before that, and so then?
Speaker 2:it keeps pulling me back in and I find myself like getting more and more and more into it. Yeah, and here's what I love about the take. So the podcast is like a book review. So I guess they read books and they talk about them. And the only thing that I'd heard so far about the 50 Shades of Grey.
Speaker 2:I don't know if it's a book or a series or something, but it just started just started, I think, with the main 50 shades of great book right, and I think that's yeah, it was a fan fiction actually, oh, yeah, I didn't talk about any of that. They're just reviewing the book, um. But I'd heard enough people talk about it that kind of had this mental impression that it's a really good book.
Speaker 2:I know, like I knew it was kind of um risque yeah but I thought my impression was that it's it's really good writing and really good character development. I just assumed all those things. No one had ever told me that. But I was like for a book to become this popular, it must have all these things. And the two women who do this, this podcast episode book review they completely changed my opinion on all that.
Speaker 3:They hated it, absolutely hated it, and they make so much fun of this book kevin, I had a roommate back when this was at like its height of pandemonium, and I had a roommate that had devoured it and she's like, oh, jordan, you'd love this, because I love all that like young adult fiction, stuff like that wait, 52 degrees, not young adult fiction, right it's not young adult but it's a fan fiction of twilight and so, like I loved, loved that series.
Speaker 3:And so she was like, oh, you'll love this too. And so I was like Okay, and I opened it up and I started reading it and page two, they had printed a sentence twice on the page and I said Nope, and I shut the book and I like put it away and I never read it again. I literally got to page two and there was like some glaring typo issue and I was just like nah, this isn't for me.
Speaker 2:I'm not going to suffer through this.
Speaker 3:No.
Speaker 2:Well, I don't know if I could say this is an undeniably good podcast episode or not, but I will tell you that by the time I got through with it, I had thoroughly enjoyed my experience of listening and I have a whole new perspective on the Fifty Shades of Grey book. And I know they were saying this is the stupidest, like they hated it. I absolutely hated this book, but it actually kind of made me want to read it because-.
Speaker 2:I know you just want to experience the stupidity these characters are so stupid and they'll read like a paragraph or two from the book and they were like who would do this, who would say this?
Speaker 2:This is the stupidest thing ever and it actually kind of makes me want to read it, like, oh, this might actually be a comedy and I enjoy comedies, for whatever reason. So those are the two that I made it through. There are a few more on that list that I'd like to get through. I do want to. I definitely want to go back to the reply all one or two long distance, because I love all reply. Also, I good chance, I've already listened to that, but I've just forgot it. So I want to re-enjoy it if I if I have already listened to it. But yeah, I think this, I think the list is serving its purpose. Like, these are really good podcast episodes and somebody should put a bigger list together. Um, I think we have like eight on there right now or nine, but yeah, I love it.
Speaker 3:I mean, Alvin talked about what was that website. It was just like undeniably good Like read something wonderful, I think. Yeah, it'd be so cool if we had something like listen to something wonderful and it was just this like I don't know info dump of undeniably good episodes. That'd be so cool.
Speaker 2:The Fifty Shades of Grey episode really stretched the concept for me of this is something that I would never seek out on my own. If somebody recommended it to me in person, I probably would just pass on it, but because it was on this list of it's undeniably good, I'm going to give it a shot. And, like I said, pocket Cast did play its part in continuing to pull me back in, but by the end I was really happy. I listened to it, it was fun. It's not something I'd necessarily not going to go out and make my own recommendation for it, but there is something I really enjoy about, like a savage review, a review that's just scathing.
Speaker 1:There's something like so enjoyable about it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's true, and I want to say I don't know, I can't remember if they were both Australian podcasters or if just one of them was, but I can clearly hear in my head one of the women's, her voice. She has a strong Australian accent. She kept saying it's so stupid, I can't do an Australian accent. But like I loved hearing her say that and they were laughing hysterically, I was laughing alone in my car, driving by myself. I just love the way that kept making fun of these silly characters.
Speaker 3:There was I don't know, it was just recommended by like a comedy podcast and there was a period of time where I was listening to fanatical fix and where to find them, which is basically like these girls go on to Harry Potter fan fiction forums and they read the worst of the worst and it is so funny. But like I, I just I. I don't have a specific like episode recommendation.
Speaker 3:I don't even know if I would recommend it because some of it is funny because of how wildly inappropriate it is, but like outlandishly so, and so it was just I. I imagine that it was similar to that, but it was just them like cackling at this, like terrible writing in these fan fiction forums. It was so good.
Speaker 1:There's a really good podcast called if books could kill. That's done by the same.
Speaker 3:Oh, I've heard of that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we know that they do the. You're wrong about podcasts the same people. And if books should kill, I pulled it up and like the first episode is about Freakonomics and I loved the Freakonomics podcast, I loved the books. And I'm like wait, you're saying this is a bad book and I'm like no way. And I went and listened to it and they are just so brutal and there's like I don't know how much research they did, but it was so impressive, like the level that they just destroyed the book and they're like no, you think this makes sense. Here's the study they're citing. Here's why that makes no sense. Here's why it's like and you're like oh wow, there's a lot going on here that I totally missed, when I just read the book and was like man nailed it, nailed it like over and over. I just read the book and was like man nailed it, nailed it like over and over.
Speaker 3:So it changed your opinion on a book that you liked.
Speaker 1:I mean, I hadn't read the book in I don't know 15 years, so I would have to go back again to give you a real take. But I went. Oh, I should have been reading this much more critically than I did the first time.
Speaker 3:I experienced this a lot as a parent. There's like some movies or TV shows that I loved is like a kid or a teen and I'll like tell my daughter like, oh my gosh, you're gonna love this. Like this was my favorite, and then we put it on and I'm like, oh, this doesn't really hold up.
Speaker 1:My experience was we watched Beethoven with my daughter about the giant St Bernard.
Speaker 3:That is such a boring movie.
Speaker 1:Boring. Yeah, I love that movie and then when I'm looking we're watching it I'm like wait, the whole premise is that there's a veterinarian that's getting paid by a gun manufacturer to like kill dogs and research it. This makes no sense, yeah, and he's like trying to basically kidnap family pets. Yeah, like this makes. Yeah, this doesn't. This doesn't work.
