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
What AI Should (And Shouldn’t) Do In Podcasting
AI is everywhere these days, but how does it fit into podcasting? In this episode, we’re breaking down what AI can do to make your podcasting life easier and what should always be left to good old human creativity. We’re talking about everything from tools that clean up your audio to ways AI can help you brainstorm.
But let’s be real—there are some parts of podcasting that just can’t be automated. Whether you love AI or are a little freaked out by it, this episode will help you think about how to use it without losing what makes your podcast yours!
Sound-Off Question: What part of podcasting do you not want to automate with AI?
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Thanks for listening and Keep Podcasting!
So today we are in the actual Buzzsprout studio. This is my first time recording with you guys in person and it feels really weird.
Alban:It feels weird for me too. It's been a long time since we used to record in the studio. This isn't my typical setup. It's not Kevin's, so we'll see how it goes. It's fun to be back, I guess.
Kevin:Yeah, I used to like recording in person a lot. I was not excited about going remote, but now that we've done it remote forever, it feels very odd to be in the same room. It feels like you guys keep just staring at me, waiting for me to say something important.
Jodan :I don't like it, it's going to be a lot of that, I think. I'm hoping that there's not going to be as much like talking over each other because of, like the lag. Maybe we'll actually get it kind of in tune here, or maybe we just talk over each other naturally and that's just what we do.
Alban:You're going to get like Mike bleed, you're going to get other. There's other things to clean up. Yeah, but it is nice to be in person sometimes.
Kevin:Yeah, you know now that we've done it both ways, I see how you can get used to doing your thing your way, like it just reminded me of the recent news in podcasting when Joe Rogan invited the presidential candidates to be on his podcast and he was not willing to compromise. Doing it in person, I think, and even so much so that he said in his studio right, yeah. Then I think the Harris campaign said come do it here or something.
Alban:He's always done that with everybody. I think he said you have to come here which does seem weird until you get in a groove, and if you go and do it a totally different way for one of your biggest guests ever and you screw it up, you're going to go oh. I wasn't comfortable yeah.
Kevin:So I think that's my way of just saying I understand what Joe Rogan was saying, and today's show might not be that great because we're out of our element a little bit.
Jodan :Oh, I'm really out of my element. I'll tell you what. When I was setting up this studio here something that happened that would never happen in Idaho I found a lizard.
Alban:There's a lizard in the studio In the studio.
Jodan :It scared the crap out of me.
Kevin:Yeah, we do have lizards in the office once in a while.
Jodan :Yeah, so I found one. It was a little jarring. Welcome back to Buzzcast, a podcast about all things, podcasting from the people at Buzzsprout. We're recording a little bit early this time and I'm in Florida because we're going to be at Podfest. We're going to be towards the tail end of it when this episode actually comes out, but how do you think that our surprise customized swag went? Any guesses?
Alban:Okay, this is my prediction. That's now in the past. Okay. Somewhat yeah I think it's going to go well. The surprise thing is a laser engraver that Kevin brought and we are laser engraving these like faux leather key chains and they look really good and we're going to pull podcast artwork and we're going to make QR codes on the fly and hopefully hand this out to people. We've had some in the office. We've engraved all sorts of stuff now and it turns out really good.
Jodan :They look amazing.
Kevin:Yeah the idea started from. We have some people now who have been with the company for 10 years, and so we wanted to do something to recognize people who've been with the company for 10 years or more. And we just had a company getaway, and so at that getaway one of the things we were giving to people who'd been with the company for 10 years was these luggage tags that were attached to luggage and some other stuff. But on the back of them I wanted to do like the higher pixels logo, which is the name of the company that makes Buzzsprout, with a little 10 year emblem on it. And so in order to do that, I couldn't find a company that would make the luggage tag exactly how I wanted it, with the stamp and all that kind of stuff. So I was like, well, I'll just get a laser engraver and I'll do the 10 year part.
Jodan :I'll let them handle the luggage tag part.
Kevin:And then I thought, well, we have this laser engraver and we're going to Podfest. What else can we do? So then I pinged Alban what a month, pull this off, but I'm going to lean into it anyway, because that's what Alban does when he thinks something's going to be super hard. Let's do it. And so yeah. So last week we got together in the garage and started testing out laser engraving these key chains, and I think it's going to work. Who knows, it might be a total mess. We might like pull off five of them and then put the whole thing away, but I don't think so. I'm feeling optimistic about it. I think we can do 100 a day.
Alban:Sometimes I think 100's a lot 100 a day but there's a lot of times where you think, well, it's going to be hard to do this at scale, so let's not do it. And something Tom always says is do for one what you wish you. Do things for everybody. So this happened when we expanded maternity leave or something, and then it was like, well, what about everybody who had kids in the past? Kind of stinks for them. It was like, well, yeah, but at some point, if we ever want to have a better maternity policy, we need to roll it out. And, yes, it's going to stink for the person immediately before that.
Alban:Yeah, who just missed it? Who just missed it? Right, what did I? What was my point with this? Oh, my point with this is do for one. Yeah, do for one what you wish you could do for many. And if you want to do cool luggage tags for everybody on Buzzsprout or everyone who listens to Buzzcat or everyone who goes to Podfest, at a minimum let's try to do 10, and then we'll figure out. Oh, here's ways we could do, and then we can figure it out for more and more people over time.
Jodan :How long did it take you guys to figure out, like what version of a key chain engraving we would do? Because I mean, the easiest thing is just don't create a QR code, like just type a name and engrave it, or actually probably the easiest thing would be to just print the Buzzsprout logo on those and then pass them out.
Alban:That sounds to me something you'd get at a gas station like a cheap little thing with somebody else's logo on it or just your name, and it says like Richard. We're like ah, we don't have like an Alban, but we got a Richard. You could take that yeah.
Kevin:The thing with swag that you get at podcast conferences is it's usually not personalized for your stuff. So you walk up to somebody else's booth and you get their sticker or you get their t-shirt. And for a long time Alban and I have been talking about wouldn't it be great if we could do something for them, like if they could come up to our booth and they could get stickers that were their podcast artwork or something. And we've looked at, you know, printers that could print stickers and stuff quickly, but we've never been able to find a solution that would be portable enough to bring to a conference, that would be fast enough that would cut all the stickers out and have them all ready. This is the closest thing that we found to being able to pull it off, so we're going to try it. It does take probably I don't know somewhere between two and three minutes per keychain.
Jodan :Oh, wow.
Alban:So I don't know what's the math on.
Kevin:If it takes two minutes per keychain, what if we get at two minutes? Can we do a hundred a day? I don't really think it's two minutes, but if it's 200 minutes, then that's like three and a half hours, yeah, and we have like six or seven hours of expo hall time a day.
Alban:Yeah, I think if you're pulling off 30 of these an hour, I'm going to be pretty impressed. I'm going to be working really quick.
Kevin:But I did find a workflow between you know, quickly finding their podcast artwork, selecting the parts of it That'll look good on a key chain, throwing it into the laser engraving software. And then Alban made a jig on the laser engraver so you can just drop the key chain into the jig and it's already all lined up. And then we hit start lasering or whatever the button says, and it burns it really quickly. That only takes like 20 seconds.
Alban:It is a lot of fun. We had our Apple cards. We laser engraved those. We were laser engraving wood. We cut some balsa wood with it. Oh my gosh, All sorts of stuff. I mean I think that this is going to be like a fun toy for years. It will be.
Kevin:And we also have the settings dialed in on like AirPod cases. So if you have AirPods and you want something engraved on your air pods case, you could bring that by Now. Alban going to have like a liability release form that you have to sign that says, if we mess up your air pods case, we're not going to get you a new one, but if you want to roll the dice with us, I love that.
Alban:The whole time I was like we could let people engrave all sorts of stuff and Kevin's like, no, not taking on the liability of this. No, absolutely not. That was the last conversation we had. The next one is us recording live. Kevin's like we're doing all of it, anything you bring by, bring by a puppy or laser engraving.
Kevin:No puppies, no laptops, nothing super expensive, but I do feel confident on the AirPod cases.
Jodan :I happen to bring my AirPods on this trip, so I'm very excited to get.
Kevin:Yeah, do something on your AirPods. Yeah, I did my own AirPods. I came out great. I did my wife's AirPods. They're good so I feel good.
Alban:I've already done two, so I'm good to do everybody's we laser engraved one of my credit cards and then I went and I used it somewhere and she's like I don't know why, but it is not going to swipe, it's not swiping right. She's like the chip doesn't work, the tap isn't going, and I'm like, oh no, try it again. Like, oh great, this is broken, ended up working. But maybe don't do the credit cards if you need them.
Jodan :Don't do anything important.
Kevin:So we like this idea because this is another way to share your podcast. So the concept is it's a keychain. You could use it for your keychain. Or, if you don't carry keys around, maybe you just throw it on your purse or your bag or whatever your backpack, whatever you carry on a regular basis, and you always have something that people can just quickly scan to be able to share your podcast. So on the front it says the name of your podcast. You flip it over, there's QR code. You can share your podcast quickly and easily with anybody, and I think that's so much better than typical podcast conference swag. That is like a stress ball. I mean, the t-shirts and stuff are cool. People love coming up and getting Buzzsprout t-shirts, but again, that's Buzzsprout stuff. It's not their stuff for their podcast.
Kevin:So, I'm excited. This is our first attempt at giving people something at a podcast conference that's customized for their podcast.
Alban:Yeah, and after we talked for however, long about all these different in-person marketing strategies that all basically go back to a QR code. Qr codes are just like the best way to go from the real world to something digital, to giving people a URL, and we kept talking about that, and so this will be a nice way for people to have something that looks decent, that they can carry around and they're like, oh, scan this, and now that people are listening to your show, and now that people are listening to your show.
Jodan :So on our last episode, we had sort of teased a topic that I want to talk about, which is AI's role in podcasting. Do you want to be the one to kind of spearhead this?
Alban:Yeah, I have a few prefaces to start this, but the first is, when we say AI, I think we're just talking about some level of technology. There's a lot of companies that used to do things and then they started rebranding it as AI, because AI sounds like cool right now. Mostly we're probably talking about LLMs, all the like, the chat interface things, but overall we're just talking about there's some level of technology that is now starting to come into play that is automating big chunks of podcast workflows. I just want to talk through it One so that if people are trying to find a part of their workflow to eliminate, that, we might give them a good idea for a tool. But what I really want them to think about is what part of this workflow is important to you, because we've now seen things like Notebook LM from Google, where it's like a bunch of sources can be picked up on the web. Those sources could be turned into a script. The script can be turned into a podcast sounding recording and that could be distributed. That's the entire workflow of podcasting that could be distributed. That's the entire workflow of podcasting. You could create an infinite number of junk shows by just throwing money and compute at it. So what part of this is really important to you the podcaster listening to this that you're going to say I'm not going to let the podcasting workflow, this piece of it, I'm not going to let that ever be given away to some type of technology. I want that to be mine. That's where my creativity is part of it. We can talk through all of the things that you know the tools that are out there but I really want to focus on what part is special to us and do we want to keep so.
Alban:I started kind of breaking up all these tools into different segments. There's tools around brainstorming and script generation. There's other tools that aren't really AI, but we'll just collect sources. I mean, so I would use RSS feeds for that, like an RSS feed reader, where I'm just collecting lots of blog posts around a topic. There's tools for audio cleanup and enhancement. There's editing tools. There's transcription tools, show notes, marketing, guest research. There's tons of stuff out there. Which pieces are you not willing to give up?
Jodan :Yeah, and I think it's important, especially for the people who are really just against AI, to understand that there are some use cases in which AI really improves the podcasting experience, especially for somebody that struggles with certain areas in their podcasting. So if you have somebody that struggles with organizing all their ideas into a cohesive outline, then it's really good for them to use AI to kind of like assist with that. Getting past like writer's block, project management, you know, editing their audio, things like that, and then also creating versions of the show with multilingual translations. There's so many use cases for podcasting where it actually really does enrich the podcaster's experience and also listeners experience in some ways. But I think that it's kind of has that like taboo around it for a lot of people.
Kevin:So so here we are in person, and you two are just looking at me. Now it's my turn to talk. Jordan was looking at me while I was talking and I was feeling uncomfortable.
Jodan :I know it's a little weird.
Kevin:I can tell you that one of the things I am finding that I do not like to use AI to do is any creative task. I find that AI makes me less creative If I'm brainstorming or if I'm trying to come up with an idea. It's not like hard physical work, but it does like wear out my brain. It's hard to stay and force yourself to have the discipline to stay in this place where you're trying to think of creative ideas for a long period of time and anytime I've turned to AI in those circumstances like, oh, what's a creative gift to give to somebody, or what's a creative idea to solve this problem or something, and I ask that to chat GPT, it'll spit out, you know, 10 ideas that are not great, and then I might say, oh, yeah, you're kind of getting close like a little bit more. Like this, I'll give a different prompt and it will come back with 10 more, and I find myself not super impressed with any of the ideas that it comes up with. But it's such an easy thing to do. It's so tempting to just be like, oh, I could just take one of these and move on and then the task would be done and staying in the creative space, where you're pushing yourself to come up with something great, is so hard that I feel like it's too easy to take one of these mediocre suggestions and then just say, oh, that's good enough and move out of that space. And so, for me, I'm really trying to discipline myself to not use these AI tools when I'm trying to solve a problem, when I'm trying to come up with something creative, because the tools are not good at creativity. The tools are really good at figuring out.
Kevin:We scoured the web and found tons of blog posts that are what are good, 10-year employment, anniversaries for people, gifts that companies give, but all of them are kind of like. None of them are novel, none of them are super creative, none of them are like oh, no one's done that before or no one would be expecting that. It's just the same thing as if you're like you know, I have to buy a gift for my wife for our 10-year anniversary. What should I get her? Well, it's just going to spit out a bunch of stuff that people have done over and over. You may as well just go to Amazon and click on the gift section and say under $50. And then you can just look on Amazon and find a bunch of garbage that nobody really wants.
Alban:Hopefully over $50 for a 10-year anniversary gift.
Kevin:I don't know, but when you're super desperate, the idea doesn't have to be that good to convince you to say, okay, I'm just going to go with this one.
Alban:Yeah, gift giving is one that is, I think, maybe one of the worst times to use Google searches or AI, because the only real benefit of a gift is someone showing you I know you, I care about you, I know what you enjoy, and I put some real thought into it and I came up with this gift. It may not be expensive, but it shows knowledge and care.
Alban:And sometimes you get those gifts that are just like oh, it's money, but you have no knowledge of who I am, or else you wouldn't have gotten me this shirt.
Kevin:Right, but it's the same thing. If you're thinking about like, well, how do I what's a new way or a new creative way to market a podcast, if you ask that to an AI engine, it's not going to give you a new creative way to market a podcast. It's going to give you the results that it found from a blog post that said, here are some new and creative ways to market a podcast, and it's going to find a hundred of those and it's going to summarize them into 10 and give that to you. Now, none of those are actually new or creative. Those are probably just people who are just trying to get some search engine juice, you know, to their page where they talk about, you know, how to market a podcast, but in and of themselves, those ideas aren't great. It's just a shortcut and I don't think it's helpful because you're taking something hard. You're giving me a mediocre answer and then that's a way for me to be like I don't know, to not push myself, to stay in the creative problem.
Jodan :Yeah, I don't think it's beneficial for both creators and the consumers of content because, like you said, it's just, it's basically just regurgitating the same information over and over. It's recycling it, and so pretty soon all of the sites and databases and spaces and you know just the Internet is completely filled up with all the same crap over and over again. It's just the same recycled ideas. With all the same crap over and over again, it's just the same recycled ideas. And so when you try to use AI for original content or like creative processes, it really doesn't help that much, Like it can help get some blockage out of the way. But you also have to do a little bit of work because otherwise it's just gonna be you putting out the same stuff that you know a hundred other creators are putting out.
Alban:Well, let's talk about a few ideas where I use AI and I really like it and I think it's really valuable for podcast creation. So I think when we're trying to write our show outlines, it's often very helpful. I wrote a prompt that was like I, you know, I want a list of all of the podcast AI tools that are out there. I want you to actually search the web, pull them all back, all of the podcast AI tools that are out there. I want you to actually search the web, pull them all back. Then I want you to organize them as name, link to the URL in a one sentence description of what that tool does. And then I want you to organize them by the part of the podcasting process that they help with so ideation, finding guests, recording, editing, promotion, etc.
Alban:And then I got the answer back and then I notice there's this new task and I go oh well, now I know a few tools you missed. So I say, add these in. And then I see a new idea and I go oh, some tools are actually in multiple categories, so split them up if they're in multiple categories. So maybe Riverside helps you with the recording. So it ends up in the recording section. But the AI stuff that they're doing is really more around promotion or editing, but the AI stuff that they're doing is really more around promotion or editing.
Alban:So split them into those two categories.
Jodan :Yeah.
Alban:Those are the kind of tasks that would have maybe taken me a couple hours of research. I'd have pulled them together. I already know this area, so it was nice to get it to come back with all these answers. I delete the ones. I'm like, yeah, those are really just not good tools. I don't want to talk about them, but it's a nice organized way for us all to be on the same page when we're recording. That's a huge use case that, I think, probably saves me a couple hours a week now.
Jodan :Yeah, I think about some of the guests that we've had that you know didn't have optimal audio right, like I think it happens to everyone.
Jodan :But sometimes we'll have a guest and it sounds OK when we're in the recording and then you get it into like the actual editing software and you go, oh, this is a lot nastier than I thought it was when we were recording because I wasn't hearing all these like little nuances that are underlying in the audio AI has helped so much with is when I am able to kind of do like audio restoration with it. I can't do that by myself. I'm not like some audio engineer, like I know how to edit audio but I don't know how to like restore it and I can't do all this kind of stuff. And so being able to just quickly run it through, you know, like a phonic or like the Adobe podcast voice enhance, and it just sort of like fixes the audio to actually be palatable, it saves me literally hours of just painstaking work and so I know for me like that is probably my favorite use for it.
Kevin:I think that is going to be a huge thing over the next couple of years and I think it's going to start in the audio space. Like Jordan's saying, those tools are a little bit easier for the technologists to get working, but it's also going to come to video as well. But I don't think we're too far off from. We saw the beginnings of this a few years ago when Descript first hit the scene and they had I can't remember the marketing term they put around it like overdub, I think, is that what it was called yeah yeah, where, if you had a little mess up in your audio, you said the wrong word. You wanted to correct the word. It could just correct that word for you.
Kevin:The next evolution of that technology is that, instead of you know, if we talk about voice cloning and the potential to use voice cloning to create an entire podcast, that's not a great use case. But there is a great use case where the voice cloning technology can transcribe the entire episode and then re-record it for you in your voice, with no background noise. That's a great use, right? And so it's not coming up with the things that you are saying. It's using what you said, but it's re-recording it automatically for you without all the background noise. So if you want to record at a podcast conference, for example it's a very noisy environment Well, you could have AI create a very clean recording automatically using your voice, with the same things that you just said.
Alban:So when it transcribes my name as Alban now both of you are going to be re-recorded in your natural voices calling me Alban, that's right.
Jodan :There was actually an episode of Conan O'Brien. He's a friend and he had a couple who have a podcast together on there and the husband he had actually been like diagnosed with some sort of like degenerative disease and so they were able to take all of the podcast episodes and clone his voice and so, as he was unable to like actually just speak, they were able to take his voice and put it into those computer systems and so when he speaks it sounds like his voice talking when he speaks through the computer. So for things like that, I mean it's amazing.
Kevin:Yeah, and it turns out the best way to clean up audio files is not by always taking the original recording and trying to remove the stuff that you don't want.
Kevin:Sometimes a better way to clean up audio is to create a whole new version that just doesn't have that stuff in it from the beginning.
Kevin:And so I really think we're on the precipice of seeing some really huge technological leaps and being able to get clean audio out of things, and that's exciting because we've been wondering for a long time. Like on mobile devices, they continue to make huge advancements in the camera systems, and the photographs that you can take with the camera right now are unbelievable Like they're almost as good as like SLR cameras and high-end professional cameras that you can just take from your phone. And we have been asking ourselves, like when are we going to get to the point when we think we're going to be able to record audio, high quality audio, just on a mobile device? And I think this technology is going to lead the way in being able to do that. Again, it might not be because the microphones in these portable devices get a ton better, but the technology like the filtering, or the device itself being able to create a new recording based on what it just thought you said is going to be a really high quality audio recording at the end of the day.
Alban:Yeah, that's an interesting way of thinking about it. 11 labs is the ones who are doing all the voice cloning, which is really cool.
Kevin:What.
Alban:I've seen people do is they're writing scripts and then they use 11 labs to read it in their voice. What I don't like about that is you write very differently than you speak.
Alban:And that's appropriate because written content is more dense. It allows people to go back and reread pieces that they don't understand exactly. You're much more precise in written content and when people speak. We've got quite a bit of redundancy built into our language, which is a good thing, because people are listening to it and they don't have the chance to skip back as easily. So when you write something, you recorded the 11 labs. You're ending up with a much more dense thing, and if people miss it like they now are trying to hit the back button and go back and re-listen, not really getting it.
Alban:Some of what I love about podcasting is like we're working through things in real time and you I mean, hear it on this podcast all the time. Where we're? We throw out an idea, we go, oh no, actually what I just said is wrong, and we kind of double back and we figure it out. That's not really available. If I'm just writing and I'm deleting all of the parts, I go, oh, that's not exactly what I mean. You're only getting the finished product, and the finished product sometimes is it's more concise, it's more clear, it's more straightforward, and yet there's something missing that I think is valuable, which is the kind of longer meandering conversation where we're working through the issues.
Jodan :Yeah, you get that a lot with like the AI audio editing, where it's actually doing like the content editing or, you know, removing filler words and things like that. Sometimes you just need that stuff. You can't take all of it out because it removes the humanity from it. It sounds robotic and kind of weird. We had someone in the Facebook group was talking about how his company is trying to do a podcast and when they were running it through like the AI stuff, it was just removing any pauses, all the fillers, and it just it felt very like compressed and I imagine that it just sort of sounds like okay, and now we're going through this thing and we're moving on to this topic. And then we're moving on this topic and there's not really like any space like you have to give space and breath for people to, you know, have these thoughts. I think that there was. There was a podcaster that will just leave in like 30 seconds of silence for people to ruminate on what he just said, and I'm trying to think it's a famous one.
Alban:I have no idea. Malcolm Gladwell 30 seconds of Malcolm Gladwell rumination. I don't know.
Jodan :I'm probably wrong and I'm not going to look it up because I'm being lazy today, but it was one of those bigger podcasters. But he just he leaves like 10 to you know, maybe I don't know 30, 15 seconds, whatever. He leaves that space for people to just really ruminate and I don't think that AI would be able to make that kind of like creative decision to do that kind of thing.
Alban:Well, you do get people who they think to clean this podcast up is to remove all filler words, and that is a thing that we can do with a lot of editing software now, and so I think everyone imagines that's what I'm supposed to be doing but, you can end up with a very choppy episode that feels robotic, it feels overly polished and often what I'm looking for in a podcast.
Alban:Kevin and I have talked about the Whoop podcast before. You know this is just a product that I like and you know there's some CEO out there, I'm sure, but I wouldn't have known who it was and then he does this podcast and you kind of feel a little more connected to the brand because you're getting this authentic in the moment, working through stuff, connection to the person who's running this company. If they were to remove all of the figuring it out piece and all of the filler words and the stumbles and the miscues, then it just feels like the way that they would do video content or the way they'd write a press release. It's very polished, everything's figured out, there's no come along for the journey.
Alban:And now I've removed what I'm enjoying about podcasting. You've taken away the authentic connection and you've replaced it with a highly bubble wrapped or it's like saran wrapped. It's like in the cellophane coating, like it's like what am I talking about? Cellophane wrap? Like shrink wrapped. It's been shrink wrapped. It's like packaged now and it's being sold to me. It's not like we're building this together and we're figuring it out, and that's what I really like. We're getting a bit more authentic, we're getting the working through the process. We're seeing a little bit behind the curtain what's going into this product, not the final version on the shelf, and if I lose that in podcasting, all I'm getting is an audio version of video or an audio press release. I have no interest in listening to those. I'm not reading press releases on my own, not because it's written content and I'd rather audio. I'm not reading them because they're always the same, they're formulaic and they're boring and there's nothing interesting ever there.
Jodan :Yeah.
Kevin:I'm going to try to drop an analogy here, because I feel like this is a very normal life cycle for technology, like emerging technology. So let me see if this analogy works. But do you guys remember? I guess it was probably 2005 to 2010. Is that about when digital cameras were starting to become mainstream?
Jodan :Yeah, I think so.
Kevin:Okay. So around that time digital cameras are starting to hit the scenes. They're starting to become affordable for like anybody, to be able to run to whatever Best Buy and pick up a digital camera. Right A couple hundred dollars you can get whatever your little power shot. Two megapixel digital camera, yeah. And so this is the first time also that the idea of being able to edit a photograph digitally is starting to emerge. So now I took a picture and I'm looking at it and you're like, oh, the sky's a little blown out or that the faces are a little bit dark. And I can click this button in my software and it automatically makes it look better.
Jodan :Yeah.
Kevin:Right and, at least initially, all of those filters were highly tuned to like make the photos look way oversaturated, like they just didn't look real. Yeah Right, but they looked better than what you had, but they almost looked so good that it was like not a real photograph.
Jodan :Yeah.
Kevin:Right, but this was you know. We were like, yeah, just click the magic wand every time I see a photo and they look so great, right, but we all get addicted to it. And then, whatever Instagram comes out, and everybody who's posting on Instagram all has like there's filters on all of their pictures, right. And so that happens for a little while, but then everyone is sick of it and everyone's like I don't want to see these over-filtered pictures. And so then the trend starts to become posting pictures with the hashtag no filter, right, this is a good picture that I took with no filter, and you're really not cool if you use filters anymore.
Kevin:Anyway, I don't know how far this analogy can go, but I feel like we're kind of there with the audio stuff. Like, how much AI are we going to use to process our audio, to clean up our audio, to take out filler words, to put in or to correct a word that I might have misspoken, but now I can easily correct it to like just on my computer real quick. All that kind of stuff. It only can go so far before the backlash is going to start where people are. Like I don't like that Right Before the backlash is going to start where people are like I don't like that, right, it doesn't feel authentic anymore, it doesn't feel real. And to circle back on this analogy, like now the trend at least I'm hearing from my kids like my daughter for Christmas wanted a digital camera. I'm like you have the best digital camera in the world on your phone and she's like no, those pictures, they're too like, lifelike, they're too real. I want an old digital camera that takes crappy pictures. Yes, because that's what they think is cool now.
Kevin:Yeah, Like they almost want it to go the other way. And so we're again years down the road. But I mean, I'm sure at some point, like five years down the road, people are going to be like, no, that microphone you can get. I don't know that it's going to happen, but it just feels like there's technology that gets introduced. People, like you know, immediately take it too far, to the extreme. Then there's a backlash against it, then there's sort of people start to accept it and it starts to become normalized. And then people want, like the retro version, to like go way back to the analog stuff.
Alban:I've been on a big retro kick lately. I bought an old digital camera. I've been using it a lot. I love it. I bought a TV VHS combo recently set it up in my office. I've got a couple VHS tapes and something about using it. You get nostalgia for all of the flaws.
Kevin:And.
Alban:I'm like, oh, I forgot. When, like the tracking's off and like you're getting this craniness, my daughter was watching and she goes like is this supposed to look like this? And I'm like, no, this isn't. It's not supposed to look like this at all. We got to fix it.
Jodan :I think you're right, kevin, because I feel like Gen Z is going straight this way. I think it was like this year we had talked about all the major podcasters that are doing their podcasts like video podcasts on Spotify, in their pajamas, like in bed, you remember? This and they're holding their microphones, which drives me crazy because they're not even holding like a Q2U or a dynamic mic that you would normally hold. They're like holding their SM7B by, like, the base, which is not how it's supposed to be used.
Alban:You know what that is? It's the equivalent of putting the no filter hashtag on an image with a filter which wasn't a thing for a long time it would be like no filter and you're like there's definitely a filter on this picture. I can tell Right.
Jodan :Exactly, yeah, these girls like they're. They're full makeup, but they're in their pajamas, yeah.
Alban:Yeah, it's the like authentically inauthentic or something like it's. You get it all cleaned up so it looks good, but then you're like we're trying to make it look authentic. I think you just got to go all the way. Except the crackles in the audio, except a little bit of the flaws. To me what it resonates like. Oh, this reminds me more of real life, just talking with my friends, and it would be nice if I had a few friends who are just as much into whatever books that I just read. It's nice to be able to pull up a book and pull up the author and it's like they've got an interview out there with somebody who's pretty smart and you listen to it and it's not perfect. And so you're kind of like, oh, it's almost like I got to run into the author and ask them about the book that I just finished for 30 minutes. What a really cool experience. But if I was just listening to a polished them talking about the book in a very press release way, I'd go.
Jodan :Like on a late night show or something.
Alban:Yeah, like where there's no depth and there's no nuance and there's nothing exciting could come out of this. It's going to have been run through a PR and a marketing and a legal team and so by the end of it it's just watered down slop.
Jodan :There's something like there's this trend going on, and I don't want to say it's like a newer trend, I just think that it's something that's starting to become more prevalent and so more people are doing it Whenever there's like a press release or like a press junket sort of thing, I'm seeing all these like celebrities and musicians and you know whatever going on.
Jodan :Shows like Hot Ones, where they're eating hot wings. They're in like kind of an embarrassing situation if they can't handle the hot wings. And there's another one where they go to like a chicken dinner, like it's a similar thing, like I think it's another YouTube channel and it's like they go sit down at a diner and they have like a chicken dinner with this girl. And then there's another podcast where they like are eating dinner together and they're recording literally like with knives and forks in their hands. And to me it just seems gross, like I wouldn't want someone like eating food into the microphone. But it's such a weird trend that we're going into and I wonder if it's just like going against this really polished, or comedians in cars getting coffee.
Alban:Yes, the idea just being oh, we've set up cameras, now you and I are just hanging out for a little bit and people can look in on what it was like for us to hang out.
Kevin:Yeah, yeah you know, I think a lot of that stuff. This is a real time thought, so tell me if I'm terribly off, but I feel like you're talking about a video series. Yeah, yeah, I think video has all these problems, that you have to be doing something visually interesting to hold people's attention while you're talking, because even if the audio portion of what you're sharing is very interesting, if I'm watching it as well. I have to be stimulated in both ways, or I will lose focus and I won't pay attention and I'll move on to something else, and I think that's one of the problems with video that not a lot of people talk about.
Kevin:When you're doing an audio only production, you really only have to hold the audio portion of their attention. You got to make sure the audio is interesting, but the assumption is that people are doing something else to simulate the other part of their brain. They're out walking their dog or they're driving in their car or they're doing something else. So like that part of their brain is already entertained, is already has a task to be focused on. All you have to do is create compelling audio content, and I think it's a little bit easier. But all these little gimmicks whether you're going to a restaurant or you're sitting in a bed or comedians in cars getting coffee and you're you're also talking about a car and showing a cool car and then you're in a cool diner, like all that other stuff is because you have to demand their full attention, to hold it, or else they will move on to something else.
Alban:Yeah, my biggest joy is when I'm doing something like physically demanding, like it could be running, which is like a little bit more demanding, but sometimes it could just be like playing chess, like some part of my brain has to be focused to play chess, but there's still half, like a portion of my brain, that's not utilized at all and so I can listen to something at the same time and it's like 100% focus now is demanded to do these two tasks simultaneously. Or if I'm cooking especially if it's a meal I have not cooked many times if I'm cooking and listening to a podcast, I'm at 100% maxed out and it's such an enjoyable feeling. And I almost never am 100% focused on any video content. Maybe if I'm in a theater opening night watching Dune 2, am I fully locked into the movie. But besides that, I almost never can get that with just video content. I need something else, and audio works perfectly for me.
Jodan :Well, that's exactly what these shorts apps like YouTube, tiktok, instagram are trying to accomplish. We had talked a few episodes ago about how there's like this new trend with these TikTok videos and it's like split screen. You know you're watching someone cut sand or like clean something or make noodles.
Kevin:And then there's a talking head on the other side.
Jodan :There's a talking hand on the other side and it's like they're trying to like, recreate that.
Alban:That's right. It's what Kevin's saying. They realize that the little clip from the talking head podcast video isn't enough.
Jodan :Yeah.
Alban:And so then they put in some kid playing Fortnite on the bottom. And so you kind of are watching these two videos at once, which I guess lock you in enough to enjoy the short. I find short form video to never be satisfying anymore, I think now when I pay attention to how I feel after it. I always feel bad every single time.
Jodan :I do, because it'll be like 10 o'clock at night and Josh will be like all right, I'm going to bed and I'll be like yeah, me too. And then I open Instagram and then suddenly it's like 1130. I'm like, oh God, what have I done? Just so I don't feel good either, like ever, if I open it.
Kevin:Yeah, this stuff, this technology, is definitely breaking our brains. I was watching a little bit of football yesterday and I couldn't even hold my attention on the football game. Which is it? My attention on the football game, which is? It's hard to imagine something like more visually stimulating and entertaining than a football game. It's always stuff going on and I found myself like swiped out of the YouTube TV app. So now I have the picture in a picture and I'm reading Twitter or X. At the same time I'm watching this football game. I'm like I need both of these things to like. My brain is totally broken at this point, and so I don't know. To bring this back to podcasting, to think that an amateur podcaster could create video content that in and of itself is entertaining enough to fully capture people's attention at scale, I think, is insurmountable tasks Like you'd probably be better showing a video of somebody power washing a carpet with your talking over it than you would trying to, you know, create a podcast studio that's compelling or whatever, enough to fully encapsulate somebody's attention.
Alban:There's something so strange about this world of everything has been hyper optimized and the like. The pinnacle is carpets being power washed, people playing stupid video games, uh, soap getting cut, like. These are all the things that are apparently so focusing of our attention, and it's somehow also so unsatisfying. I can listen to a lot of podcasts and at the end of it be like, man, I learned something interesting, I shared it with a friend and now we're connecting over the content that we both listen to, and I never, ever get that. With short form video. It always feels like even if I send it to a friend, I always feel embarrassed. I'm like, yeah, they don't really want this. They've got their own endless supply of junk videos and they don't really want the junk video that I sent them.
Alban:I think everyone has to decide this for themselves. What part of podcasting attracts you to it and why are you becoming a podcast creator? Why are you in this game and don't automate that piece of it? Yeah, for me it is. It's a little bit messy.
Alban:And for Buzzsprout and Buzzcast like, one of the really nice things is this is real time the product side of Buzzsprout, which is Kevin, and the marketing side of Buzzsprout that's me figuring stuff out, and sometimes the way we talk about on Buzzcast will not be the way that we talk about it publicly in our newsletter or other places, because we did figure it out here. And there's something I really enjoy about it's a little bit raw, it's a little bit off, and we fix it by the end. We figure it out on little bit off and we fix it by the end. We figure it out on the end. We are doing it all the time. I don't really want to lose that. We could do more prep and this be more polished, and that would kill the thing that I like that we're doing. It might actually be a better show, it might get more listeners and it wouldn't be the thing that I'd want to be doing.
Jodan :I was reading an article that was in PodNews by Amplify Media, and it was about, like just some of the coolest tech, or like the takeaways to come out of the CES 2025. And they said that AI is poised to revolutionize execution, automating tasks with speed and precision that humans can't match. And sure, this is great for factories, but it's also impactful for creators. Whether you are editing a video, generating a report or crafting a marketing copy, ai frees up creators to focus on what truly matters creativity. I think that's really important is like let's allow AI to automate the things that maybe we don't enjoy about podcasting, and it'll help you to keep podcasting. It'll keep you in it. Maybe things that you struggle with, like it should be assisting you, not taking over the process for you, and so you have to allow there to be space for you to actually, you know, make sure that you are achieving your vision and your creative goal with your podcast.
Kevin:I don't disagree with that. I just want to circle back to just a quick reminder that we are like on V1 of all these tools.
Jodan :Yeah.
Kevin:And so, just like the analogy I said earlier with, like the early versions of, you know, enhance, my photo button just made the photos actually worse. Like it seemed magical in that moment for that short time. But as everybody was doing it, we all realized these actually aren't a bit. It's not a better way to treat photos. Like all photos shouldn't have the same stock filter applied to them. If we're doing this stuff with our audio, like if we're saying, hey, every time I process audio, I want you to make the levels perfect, I want you to remove all the filler words, any dead space I want you to pull out. Well, that's what, like V1 of these tools are going to do.
Kevin:Now, over time, these tools are going to get better, they're going to get smarter and they're going to. The algorithms are going to advance to the point where they say, hey, if I remove every filler word, it's not going to, it's not going to sound very natural. So I have to figure out which ones should I leave in and which ones should I take out, and how much. How much dead space is an awkward dead space and I'll pull that out, but I'll leave the natural dead space. The tools will get better, but right now we're in V1. And so just be cautious.
Kevin:If you're using any automated software to help you with editing and stuff like that, recognize that it's not great yet. It will get better. And if you don't like editing like the time is coming when the tools you will probably be able to click one button and it will be pretty darn good. But we're not quite there yet and, as Jordan said and Alban said, these are not creativity solutions. They're workflow enhancers. They definitely can speed some manual, like repetitory tasks up. They can help you maybe with the brainstorming, but ultimately the end creative idea and solution you need to focus on creating for yourself or you're not going to end up with something that you really love and is really unique to you.
Kevin:And that's why people are going to listen to you.
Alban:Yeah, I think you need to get more and more in touch with what do you like, what is your taste, what feels right to you, because you could now generate 500 gift ideas for your spouse, and 500 ideas are only useful if you are in touch with what feels and sounds right to me, and so the more options are only useful. In that context. I read a good book last year by Ethan Mollick about using AI. He's a professor, I think, at Wharton, and when he talked about it he's like there's always you want to have a human in the loop, at least where we are right now. Have some tool doing things for you, but you be the human that's engaging with it and pick out what works and what doesn't.
Alban:If you use magic mastering and it comes back with something that's significantly worse, feel comfortable saying oh, I think that was significantly worse. It's rare that that happens, but it's good for there to be a person there. If you use co-host AI and you go I actually liked the title I came up with more. Feel confident to use the title that you came up with rather than just relying on the AI. Same goes for every one of these other tools. You've got podcast guesting solutions. If it's recommending a guest and you're like I don't want to talk to that person, that's a good thing for you to notice. You need to be the human who's utilizing your own personal taste to decide which of these options that it presented do I like.
Jodan :I think that would actually be a really great sound off question for our next big episode.
Alban:This actually makes me remember we've just gone through this period with a lot of big YouTubers who started, like eight years ago, making videos about them burning out and quitting YouTube or scaling back their teams or changing everything up.
Alban:And it's happened with a lot of YouTubers all around the same period, and what it looks like is that they all scaled up and they went oh, I can make money doing this thing that I love and I hire a team. And they what they all did was that they automated away the part they loved, and they didn't do it with AI tools. They did it with other people they hired, and so what they ended up being was the personality for a channel that they didn't really like, and all the fun work was given away, and then they told people how to do it and they all burned out. You might have this opportunity to automate away a lot of your podcasting journey, whether it be human or AI. What part are you not going to give up? Because that's the part that is giving you joy, and if you gave it away, it wouldn't feel enjoyable to do it anyway.
Jodan :I love it. All right, so let's head into SoundOff. So first up, we got a message from Ish from the Not so Breakfast show, and Ish had listened back to one of their episodes. We had asked for homework, like a few episodes back, and so they finally did that and they said that the one thing that they want to improve is sound quality. I've now spent time improving my setup and learning some audio voice mastering techniques and audacity. We'd love to grow our show into the top 10%. Yeah, top 10%. It's achievable, it's not out of reach.
Kevin:Well, it is for 90% of people. 90%, hey.
Alban:but you know it's a moving target.
Jodan :Yeah. But you know what? I would say that a good chunk of that 90% aren't really working on their show very much.
Alban:Tom is giving a talk at Podfest about lots of different statistics around podcasting, and one of the things he shared with us at lunch today was that active podcasts only half of shows of all podcasts that are active are older than a year old. I really butchered the way to say this.
Kevin:Let me try to say it a different way. Say it a different way. It's pretty common industry lore, but pretty accepted, that there's about 400,000 active podcasts that exist in the world. According to our numbers, like if you would extrapolate those out to all the 400,000 shows, only about half of them, about 200,000 of those active 400,000 shows, were started last year.
Jodan :Wow.
Kevin:So there's only 200,000 shows that are still active and have been going for more than a year, and so you could really quickly rise up in the percentages if you just commit to.
Alban:I'm gonna stay active for a couple of years, and so many of the podcasts that were really big in 2014 were the ones that had started in 2008. And I remember people being like wow, I mean, they started all the way back in 2008. There's no way I could get there now, yeah, and since 2014, we've had like every other big show launch. Very few have been around that long and if you just stick with it for a few years, a few years from now, 2025 is going to sound like man. That was a really smart time to start doing pretty much anything.
Alban:You start anything and you continue for a decade. People are going to be pretty impressed that you've stuck around with it for that long, absolutely so. Last week we asked what are you most proud of in 2024 with your podcast, and we got a lot of answers. So I'll start with the first one. Jasper Indiana said I'm most proud of being consistent and using it as a fun way to learn about AI. Hey, maybe, jasper Indiana, reach out to us and tell us what part of podcast you're not going to automate with AI. We'd like to hear from you.
Jodan :Devin from Kingdom Animalia podcast. 2024 wasn't my best year for the podcast, since I didn't release that many episodes, but what I'm most proud of is the progress I made between episodes. My podcast releases monthly and each episode keeps getting better than the last, whether it's adding more music, perfecting the volume or refining the humor. The improvements with every episode are what I'm most proud of, not just for 2024, but for my podcast overall. Yeah, I think that this is precisely the reason. Like this is exactly the case in which we say it's so important to keep podcasting, and this is why because in between every single thing, even if you just put out an episode, like once a month, you can improve your podcast so much by just keeping at it.
Kevin:Festival Sounds in the UK wrote in and said we're most proud of reaching number one in the music podcast charts in the UK. Thanks for all of your help. It's invaluable.
Alban:Remy Roy from Driven Introvert Podcast. Notice the name the Driven Introvert. I released four solo episodes this year, which really helped me build confidence in my skills as a podcaster. Now I'm starting to get opportunities to speak about podcasting for entrepreneurs. In fact, I have a talk coming up at the University Entrepreneurship Center this February. Remy Roy from the Driven Introvert so introvert releasing solo episodes and now is going to be doing public speaking.
Kevin:Public speaking.
Alban:Very very cool. I love hearing those stories.
Jodan :Yeah, that's awesome. All right, David John Clark of Late Bloomer Actor said I'm really proud of my end of year special episode where I reached out to 12 hosts of my favorite podcasts, including the wonderful James Cridland, sam Sethi, oh, and me Buzzsprout's own Jordan Blair. Pulling off 12 interviews back to back with fellow podcast peers I admire so much was no small task, especially with the tech challenges of such an ambitious project, but everything went off without a hitch. Very proud podcast moment. Yeah, this project. So since I was a part of it, I got a glimpse into it. It was no joke. David hopped on a Riverside with me for about 20 minutes and then he's like all right, I got to go because I've got another one and he was podcasting for hours with all these people. So I commend him as well.
Kevin:Sparkling D wrote in and said committing to getting 1% better with every upload has been a goal that she'd been working on, and I also celebrated my first year pod-aversary.
Alban:I didn't quit, good job D, steph from Geopats podcast for 2024. I'm most proud of breathing new life into my longest running yet sunsetted podcast by turning it into a static image YouTube channel. Adding static image for YouTube shorts along with strong episode titles has been a game changer, helping new audiences discover the content. Steph, we would like to learn more, so send in a little bit more information about this. What did you do for the static image YouTube shorts? What are we talking about? As far as getting a new audience, I'd be interested to hear how it's gone.
Jodan :Andrew from the Family Histories podcast said I'm proud that I hit my highest monthly download figure ever in November at the release of season eight and then beat that monthly number in December. Wow, that's awesome. So Andrew's really hitting his stride here.
Kevin:Ed from the Super Anime Podcast wrote in and said one thing I'm really proud of is getting some high-profile guests on the show. While it doesn't necessarily increase our download numbers by much, it's an amazing sign of social proof. And I'm especially proud because I know how hard it is to book these guests, especially high-end ones.
Alban:Alex from Gonzo Del Rey Podcast. The thing I'm most proud of is doing 32 episodes this year. I hope to have the numbers increase this year. Yeah, 32 is extremely high. That's a great number. Keep up the solid work and in a few years you're just going to be blown away by how those numbers add up. Numbers go up, keep going up. And you know, with Buzzcast, we look and we're like I just feel like whenever I look and I'm like we're at 200 episodes, it doesn't feel like we've done that many.
Jodan :Yeah.
Alban:And then a little while later I look back and we're like 20 episodes further down the line. The number keeps impressing me.
Jodan :Yeah, I thought you were talking about our download numbers. I was like those can vary.
Alban:Those can fluctuate.
Jodan :Oh yeah, All right. And so for our next episode, just a reminder. We want to know what part of your podcasting process would you not automate with AI? You want your own special touch on that, so let us know. Tap the text button in the show notes to send us a response. And until next time, keep podcasting.
Kevin:So did you guys have a good time this weekend?
Jodan :I had a great time Did you really.
Kevin:Oh yeah, I had a blast. What was your highlight?
Jodan :My highlight was the party I threw. So we all got credits to our room to do whatever we wanted and I used mine to throw a watch party for the season three of the Traitors coming out and I convinced a whole bunch of people from the company to come to my watch party and I put together a PowerPoint presentation to catch them up to speed on the TV show before we watched it. And I ordered like way too many appetizers and drinks and it was a blast and I think I indoctrinated everyone into my like why I love this TV show. So that was a big highlight for me. So now I have people to talk about it with.
Alban:We had the whole company down in Ponte Vedra beach and I was out playing golf and then I started seeing all of these images get uploaded and Jordan is running a full like PowerPoint presentation for half the company for a Netflix TV show that I've never heard of, and then a bunch of people say like this was the best part of my entire weekend. So what is this show, jordan?
Jodan :So it's hosted by Alan Cumming and it is a celebrity reality competition show in which they are basically stuck in a murder mystery castle in Scotland and some celebrities get murdered each night and then they have to figure out who the murderer is and they try to banish people from the castle. But sometimes they banish like innocent people and then some people just keep getting murdered and it is campy and hilarious like they just really lean into the like murder mystery aspect of it and people get so into it. It's like when you go into like an escape room and everyone's just kind of panicking and a little paranoid and like getting way too into it. It's like that for the entire season.
Alban:And it's hilarious. It's like the game Mafia then.
Jodan :Yes, it's exactly like Mafia, but with a bunch of reality stars.
Kevin:And so you caught everybody up, because this is season three. Yes, so you caught everybody up with your PowerPoint presentation. Yeah, and then did you just watch one episode.
Jodan :We were going I I said we were just going to watch one episode and then the episode ended and I was like thanks, guys, and everyone's like no, we got to watch episode two now, and so we watched episode two. So I was I had rented the room for two hours and we were in there for like three and a half, I think.
Kevin:So it went a little late. That's awesome, and did you watch it straight through, or did you guys like pause it and say like, oh, we have to talk about this part?
Jodan :I finally paused it for like a bathroom break and intermission at like one point, but other than that, we just watched it straight through and it was it was a blast.
Kevin:Did you all debrief afterwards?
Jodan :Yeah, there through and it was. It was a blast. Did y'all debrief afterwards? Yeah, there was a lot of conversations going on. Um, I'm still getting messages about it in the company-based camp, so yeah, I'm seeing a lot of chatter.
Kevin:I was not.
Jodan :I was not available to attend myself, but I heard I missed a wonderful event well, the funny thing was it was literally just supposed to be priscilla and I in my hotel room, like I was opening the invitation to other people, but I was like no one's gonna come, it'll just be me and priscilla and I in my hotel room, like I was opening the invitation to other people but I was like no one's going to come, it'll just be me and Priscilla. And then it just like snowballed and pretty soon I'm like renting a room and then I have to get like 20 chairs and I need six more chairs because more people are SVPing, like right before the party. And then it turns into we have like bartenders and servers coming through and getting drink orders throughout the party. It was just like it was ridiculous.
Kevin:Well, it makes me think that we are about to go to Orlando for PodFest, and I feel like you already have the PowerPoint presentation. I got it Ready to go. Maybe you should host the Traders Watch Party at PodFest as well.
Jodan :So here's the funny thing is, episode four comes out the night that we're doing the Buzzsprout meetup, and so after the Buzzsprout meetup, a bunch of us are going to get together and watch episode four.
Kevin:Is that an open invite to?
Jodan :anybody who's listening Sure.
Alban:Yeah, especially since this is coming out after we have that event. Yeah, that's true.
Kevin:It drops.
Jodan :Friday yeah, this is what happens. That's true. That's true, but yeah, that was my highlight. What about you, Alban Kevin? But yeah, that was my highlight. What about you, Alban?
Alban:Kevin and I were in a golf competition and we play the full 18 holes. We're on different teams and, due to a clerical error, possibly by me, we thought that my team had won.
Kevin:A clerical error In sports that's usually called cheating.
Alban:No, no, no, it's the opposite of cheating, because we went into the final hole thinking we were up by a stroke and we were like, okay, so if we tie, we win. And we're all there around the big circle everyone watching the final putt. It's close enough, we tap it in, we win, we think. And then we get back and I'm pulling the card off and I'm like we said we were this far under par. And I start doing the math and I go, huh, that's wrong. And then I do the math again and I'm like we're tied. And so Kevin, I think, went and talked to one of the people there and he's like, hey, let us go back out on one. This is a we got to have a playoff hole, yeah, expensive golf course. And apparently they're just like well, you paid for eight people. I guess we'll let you go.
Alban:And so we go play the first hole All of us again Big championship playoff hole and tie. And we come up with another game and we tie. And then the final one, Kevin's just like it's closest to the pin Chip from here. Yeah, from here, whoever it is is the winner, and my team didn't pull it out. Kevin's did it. Kevin's won I think it might have been Kevin's shot. Was it your shot? That was the winner.
Kevin:It wasn't, I was second closest. It looked like mine was going to win. And then another guy on my team actually went inside of me a little bit.
Jodan :Oh man, I was seeing some stuff. Did you guys play for like money, or was this?
Kevin:just a little bit of money, a little bit Nothing. It wasn't a high stakes.
Alban:I was getting reminders to send the five dollars that I owed to John to John, I was like, hey, I'm going to do that. Five bucks.
Jodan :Yeah, you're trying to get Josh in on that. He would have been broke by the end of it. He's not good at golf. You left that detail out.
Alban:I always find these funny when people are like we're gambling but the money is like five bucks. And so there's not. It's almost like there's less anxiety because it's only about you're like, oh, it's all about the money, but it's a small enough money that no one really cares.
Kevin:Yeah.
Alban:So it's just for fun.
Kevin:You know I'm thinking about your clerical era. Did you know that the back nine of that course is only a par 35? It's not 36. Is that where you messed up?
Alban:No, I think it was just that we knew we were a little bit over par and then we had four birdies in a row, but really it was three birdies in a row, not four. And so we were like, oh, we have four, so we're good, and now we're two under. And then we went into the final hole, say we're two under, and you said, went into it saying you're one under. We were actually one under.
Kevin:So it happened to also be like the coldest day in Florida that we've had probably in the last two years. It was overcast. It was like by the time we were done it was probably in the high 30s or something, and we'd been out there for like five or six hours. So we were shivering. None of us can make a shot to save our lives. It was not typical Florida golf.
Alban:It was definitely. Your hands are cold. You miss hit at all and your hands are just like ringing when they're just. They hurt so much more because it's cold, but I had a blast. It's always good to be out at the beach. It's always good to play golf. It's good to see people in different environments.
Jodan :Yeah, oh. And the other thing that happened this weekend was it was Kevin's birthday, and so we all got to celebrate together and there was a huge Boston cream pie at a party what the heck did they do with the rest of that thing?
Kevin:I don't know, it was like a giant, like full sheet cake size thing, yeah, and I think people ate like five pieces because everyone had already had dessert by the time they brought it out?
Jodan :Yeah, because there was a whole dessert table and then they brought out that and I got to tell you I have never had Boston cream pie before. Yeah, and I think Josh even told you this. You know, he tried it and he was just like oh, I think this is my new favorite cake as well.
Kevin:It's good. I could only have a little bit because, again, I'd already eaten dessert, but yeah, it was good.
Jodan :It was so good.
Alban:I had a Boston cream donut before that.
Kevin:Never a cake. Yeah, typically it's a like oh, a Boston cream pie, Like that's. You know, you don't see them everywhere, they're very rare and I think they're very tasty. Somehow that information got to Marshall and Marshall got the hotel to make a whole Boston cream style cake, which I've never seen before.
Jodan :It was for like 50 people. It was huge, it was a monster.
Kevin:I'm pretty sure everyone who works at the hotel probably took some home, because we certainly didn't no yeah, anyway good times.
