AI, Co‑Hosts, and Keeping It Human

Dave Jackson: 00:00
Ask the Podcast Coach from October 11th, 2025. Let's get ready to podcast. There it is. It's that music that means it is Saturday morning. It is time for Ask the Podcast Coach where you get your podcast questions answered live. I'm Dave Jackson from theschoolofodcasting.com, and joining me right over there is the one and only Jim Cullis from theAverageGuy.tv doing the Detroit lean. Jim, how's it going, buddy?

Jim Collison: 00:33
Greetings, Dave. Happy Saturday morning to you. A better week from last week if you're a regular listener. I've got having some nerve issues going on in my back. I don't know if I can make a full 90 minutes sitting up straight. I did get a podcast in this week sitting up straight. I was hurting by the end. So I thought, 90 minutes, we'll go back to the Detroit lean. It worked last week, right? I mean, it worked. Tilted the camera a little bit. So forgive my laid-backness.

Dave Jackson: 00:57
That's that's all right. We're here to chill and have fun and talk podcasting and answer your questions and all that. And uh one thing we always do to get our engines running, of course, is the morning coffee pour. And uh that coffee pour is brought to you by our good friend Mark over at podcastbranding.co because, you know, they're gonna see you before they hear you. So what you want to do is go over to podcastbranding.co. I've had Mark make many of my own pieces of uh artwork. And if you need a whole website, man, he does that too. I mean, he he's got you covered head to toe, whatever you need to get in front of the public. He's done hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of different pieces of artwork for podcasts and likewise for websites. It's all there. He's been uh podcasting for years as well, and that's really the bonus. You don't have to explain to him what a podcast is, and he's gonna sit down with you one-on-one, find out what your show's about so that your brand matches your content. And again, that can go from the artwork, and then if you need a website to match the artwork, he can do that as well. He's a really great guy, and I don't know that I've ever had to go back and say, can you redo this again? He usually gets it right on the first time, but that's me. But check him out, podcastbranding.co. Tell him Dave and Jim sent you.

Coffee Jingle: 02:21
See me.

Jim Collison: 02:26
And of course, a big thanks to our good friend Dan Lefebvre over there, based on a true story, based on two storypodcast.com. Dave, remember Project Blue Book when we were kids and the search for UFOs? I think they're everything. Oh, yeah. I think the government's like, oh yeah, they're there's I'm actually a UFO, I'm actually an alien.

Dave Jackson: 02:44
That's um I'm gonna come out on this episode. I was wondering why you were so weird.

Jim Collison: 02:51
Check it out. Uh Dan has got that uh story on that this week based on a true story project blue book. So I was always fascinated by UFOs as a kid. Dan's covering it this week. You can check it out today. Based on a true story at based on a true story podcast.com. And Dan, thanks for your sponsorship.

Dave Jackson: 03:09
Yeah, I can we the chat room is all saying, yes, we can all relate to back problems because they suck. And my favorite is I I once bent over, because I used to think it was when I was picking up things that were heavy, and I once bent over to pick up a guitar pick, and my back just went and I was like, okay, it's not the heaviness, it's there's something wrong with my back.

Jim Collison: 03:32
But no, no, yeah. I'm gonna do I've been doing a lot of stretching, been doing a lot of you know, a lot of a lot of Pilates. No, I know we're not supposed to admit that, but a lot of Pilates, a lot of that kind of stuff.

Dave Jackson: 03:44
Yeah. Yeah. I Ralph says, Are you gray, Dave? Yes, I think that's what it's yeah, it's called getting old. And it is always the fun of that. We're still here on Saturday, we're still making it happen. So that's it. Buckle up. Here we go. If you want to jump into the call, it's just at the top here of the screen. It says ask the podcastcoach.com slash question. If you want to jump in, also we are I I'm we remember how David Letterman used to have the world's most dangerous band was the name of Paul Schaefer's band. And I'm trying to come up with a name for the chat room because I can't call it, you know, I think I called it today the funnest chat room on the internet.

Jim Collison: 04:24
Okay, there I think I think that's pretty accurate. They're they do they do pretty well. Yeah.

Dave Jackson: 04:30
Well, here's the the question that uh came up, and I was like, maybe we'll open with this one. Have you heard what Gary V has said? Because you know, did it have the F-word in it? Or uh probably back to last week. Yeah. No, Gary V is not because you know, Gary V is a podcast uh guru, and he's you know he knows everything about everything. Oh sure. Yeah, he says the next kind of crop of podcasters will have an AI co-host. No, yeah, I I I almost agree with that in some ways. You can't do that. I could see it being done. The question is, does anybody want to hear that? And I think it's a little bit like audiograms, where at first it'll be like, oh, this is different. Look, he's he's got a you know, AI co-host, and then when everybody has an AI co-host, we'll all kind of go, eh, I'd rather just hear him talk to a person. I don't know.

Jim Collison: 05:22
What do you think? Uh I think there'll become a time you won't be able to tell, to be honest. If either or the whole group. You know, it may make you know, AI hosts might make round table discussions tolerable. Because you know, there's always that round table where there's the one guy, and that was usually me, who talked too much and didn't give anybody else the right amount of time in the round table. Or, you know, I I I think there could there could be a day when we we don't see the difference. I'm I think we're really, really close. I mean, you know, I talk to AI every day. It's a it's a debrief session. I do it. A lot of people think I'm weird, and I kind of am, but I do it because I want to see, I want to see where the AI is at. Like I I keep wanting to try, so I've I've tried the you know, the Googles and the Perplexities and the Rock and Copilot and Chat GPT. I try them all the time. And the voice pieces on them continue to get better, Dave. I I don't like I said, I I think I think that's a very I I've thought about that. I mean I I went solo this week and I thought, oh maybe this is another week I bring in, you know, I call him Mick, my my co-host. Maybe, maybe Mick joins me tonight. I I'm I'm gonna do it. I would have to get the the the Rodcaster Pro if I was gonna do it right. You showed me how that that's just drop dead simple. So I think for what I'm gonna do, I'd have to get some equipment to do it. Yeah, I think I think there's a day. What I'm uh not a big fan of, and I want you to respond to this one, is the L the notebook LLM stuff. Yeah. Where you give it, you give it some content and then it makes a podcast for you. That doesn't have any spontaneity, doesn't have any feel of humans, there's no breathing, there's no and then they're I think they're adding some of that stuff in it. There's no it's it's too predictable. It's too that's why I think one human co-host or one human host is kind of the way to go. So you at least to have some, you know, uh what would you call it? Spontaneity, I guess.

Dave Jackson: 07:26
Yeah. Well, there's there's also a little bit of I wonder what it's going to say to it. If a listener knows that the co-host is is AI and you're like, well, what do you think? What was the thing on Buck Rogers? Remember I had that weird little thing that would go beep beep bee. Tweaky. Tweaky. What do you think? Tweaky? I don't know. Tweaky, I thought was the beta, beta, bitter, beta, beta. That one? Yeah. Yeah, that one. It was Tweaky. Tweaky sounds like a nickname for that guy on Coke at the end of the street. You know, it's like but uh anyway, you know, it was always you have that aspect of I wonder what the robot's gonna say. Tweak. Danny Yeah. Twiggy was a she was in the 60s on Laughing. I'm sure it was Tweaky. Maybe it was Twiggy. Yeah, I think it was. No, I think it was Tweaky.

Coffee Jingle: 08:20
Yeah.

Dave Jackson: 08:20
I'm gonna look it up. You keep talking, I'm gonna look it up. Well, Danny Brown says some people might prefer AI co-host as opposed to some of the podcast gurus in quotation marks peddling their crud. Yeah, there's I heard a discussion. They were who was I listening to? That they were saying, Oh, it was podcasting 2.0, yes. Chris from castahead.net, bitty bitty, bitty, biddy. Yes, of course.

Jim Collison: 08:43
And there's a heat it is tweaky, by the way. Tweak W I K.

Dave Jackson: 08:47
T-K-I, yeah, there we go. Jeff C says, I would love loved uh notebook LM in college. I'm an audio learner, so having a personalized podcast to study with would have been awesome. I I've used that in the past. I remember once I had an interview and I hadn't read the person's book yet, and I was like, oh, great, because I always like to read the book first. And so they'd given me a PDF of the book, so I just uploaded to it, and it wasn't so much the Kyle and Sheila show that I listened to, but it came up with questions, it summarized it, so I felt like I, you know, obviously I hadn't read the book, but I had a pretty good gist of what it was, and I could ask the questions that my audience would want me to ask from this author. So as a research tool, I was like, man, that just saved me just a boatload of time. Danny says, why do we even have to consider AI taking part in everything? Creativity is human emotion. AI has its place for solutions, but I can't see true human emotion ever being replicated. That's a good point. You know, there are some things like do we have to put AI in everything? I I I think it was last week and I mentioned that you know, we put AI into Canva and the price went up. We put AI into script and it did the price went up. And it's like, you know, AI is not cheap. That's one of the things that they're when I listened to No Agenda, they talk, they are or no, it was podcasting 2.0. They're talking about all the power it takes to power these data centers is kind of turning into a problem. And so that was kind of their their part was like, do we do we really need to stick AI in everything? You know, Frosted Flakes, not with AI. And Dan from Based on a True Story Podcast, uh, in my honest opinion, human listeners will connect to human emotion. So there should be at least one human host for that connection. Yeah, that's yeah, it it I think it depends on.

Jim Collison: 10:51
I've been talking to them longer. I think they're getting I listen, I wouldn't say it's human like, but I think they're understanding how to relate at least from a conversational level, how they're how they're you know, they're they're just relating a little bit better. And and I think that even that will eventually go away. Like I I there's gonna I think at some point there's gonna come a time, and we're close, but it'll be hard to differentiate. Like you'll just be like, was that was that real? Who is that a real thing? Yeah. You know, it's gonna get it's gonna get more difficult. We're not there today, but yeah, we're getting closer for sure.

Dave Jackson: 11:29
Rich Graham points out, I forgot about this. You can interrupt uh Notebook LM, you know, good old Kyle and Sheila, and ask them a question. And it's kind of funny because if you keep doing it, they start to sound a little annoyed. Like, hey, we're we're talking here. Hey, could you stop bothering us? Yeah. Ralph says, I recently started taking my podcast daily plan and putting it into you know LLM and listen to it as prep. Yeah, I've I've done that in the past. I I fed it a episode and said, What could we have done better? And it it and so again, not so much on an emotional level, but on a technical level, it's like, hey, you guys use a lot of jargon. And I was like, Well, yeah, that's a good point. But for our target audience, that's not jargon, that's just the way we talk. So you have to kind of you know do that whole nine yards. Yeah. Ralph says, I just released a show about that very AI, oh it thing, AI topic last week. And so far on YouTube I've had 110,000 views. There you go. So some people seem to agree with you. Yeah, it's it's it's gonna be tricky to see what happens. I know somebody came up they took like you know, i i they took every 13-year-old boy's dream and said, Hey, if you could design a female, what would it look like? And it's Tilly somebody, uh this AI person, and I guess they're I I think somebody said she has an agent and she wants to be an actress, but it's an AI person. And I was like, uh I don't know. John Jamay. Now this I gotta see. I just saw Mr. Rogers and Tupac sitting on a couch talking to each other, and it looked very real.

Jim Collison: 13:10
Yeah. So yeah. Yeah, we're gonna have a hard time in the future, we're gonna have a hard time figuring it out. I mean, it's that's it's gonna be this will be a crisis at some point. This identity, this idea of identity. This I this idea of what is actually real. You know, we when the matrix came out in 1999, I mean that's like the premise, right? Like what's real and what's not. And you know, if you if you if you're always in a dream and you can't wake up from it, is it any different than reality? I mean, that's kind of the concept of the matrix. Yeah. And so if you're if your whole world is based on AI, is it could could you could you tell the difference? Right? And so I think uh we're we're we've got a lot more excess existential conversations to have about this. What I think some of the interesting things, you know, I think Elon is working on some connectables to your to our bodies, to our brains that you can plug some things in and and you know, get a digital assist. That could be interesting because you know what what makes us what makes us great human beings doesn't necessarily make us the best fastest thinkers, right? Like the way our brains are made, or they're not designed necessarily to be to think straight logically or however like computers think and speed. They also we also don't have the ability to consume calories to speed them up like computers do. I think this is a lot of you know a lot of folks don't realize. Like you you need, I mean, those computers, they're not doing this for free. They're burning, you know, they're burning calories, so to speak. And we can't continue to replace things in our body that allow us to go faster because we don't have the physical plant. You know, our body isn't a physical plant. But imagine if we could strap on a battery, right? And on our back and then have implants that help us do some of that, speed up some because that's what would have to happen, right? You can't get you can't get something for nothing or your chicks for free. I mean, you just can't, you can't do that. Now you're gonna have sting in your head all afternoon. You're welcome. Yeah. So it's so it's just uh I we're gonna have to solve for for us and thinking and some of those things for human evol as we evolve in that, we're gonna have to fix an energy problem, which is yeah, you know, with computers, we just keep adding more power to them, but the human body can't do that. Right. So we're gonna have to solve for that problem as well.

Dave Jackson: 15:41
Yeah, Ralph says, if you want to have some fun, ask AI to give you their best answers, then ask them to tell you why their answers suck. He said, I did that and it was funny. Some other AI things here. Randy said, My favorite has been WWE AI videos people have been making where it's big boss versus Mr. Rogers and a table and ladders and chairs match. That looks interesting. Stephen Hawking on the half pipe at the X Games is hilarious. Rich Graham says, I'm playing with the Sora app. Yeah, that that came out and immediately people are like, wait, you're using copyrighted things that it said it wasn't gonna do. To which Danny says, Yeah, nope. Yeah, Dan has a great point. Humans have to learn to talk to each other more to have those conversations, though. We're getting worse and worse at that as a society. And I can say when I was at Lipson, one of the reasons I got promoted was I know how to talk. And, you know, we had other people on our tech support team, which are great and they're very knowledgeable and they're really great at tech support, but they also play a ton of video games, and that doesn't mean, you know, but what I mean by that is they don't spend a lot of time talking to people. Not that if you're a video game, you don't know how to talk. Yeah, and then Jason's like, no, no, that was dire straits. It wasn't Sting, but it was Sting going, I want my MTV in the back of that.

Jim Collison: 17:04
Well, and he sang the money for nothing. He's the feature on that song. Yeah, that's the I mean that's the amazing thing on that song. He he made that song.

Dave Jackson: 17:11
Yeah, yeah, and then Danny says, Yeah, we used to learn from each other, lived experiences, now we push that off to a bot, you know, a week old. Yeah, it's it's gonna be interesting to see. Yeah, I see here.

Jim Collison: 17:23
But it's not a week old. Here's the thing I mean, it has collective experiences, yeah, right. I mean, it has millions of collective experiences that it's taken from us. That's the thing, right? You know, it's it's been trained on all the stuff that we put out there, so it's not like it's a baby. I mean, it's got a lot, it has a lot of knowledge, a lot of a lot of shared experiences, and a lot of opinions.

Coffee Jingle: 17:48
Yeah.

Dave Jackson: 17:48
I mean, um yeah, so it has been established. Sting sung the hook, to which Jason Bryant says, Look, man, I was six when that song came out. But this, I thought this was a mistake. Dan Lefebv says, Robin Williams' daughter publicly asked people to stop making her dad in AI. It's too heartbreaking for her to see. And I'm like, man, you don't know how internet trolls work. You just basically said to the world, please make AI things. And I was like, oh, yeah. Well, speaking of that, I got troll, not so much trolled. Well, yeah, kind of trolled. And this is where I always tell people, don't feed the trolls. And on Reddit, this guy, I for even forget what his question was. Oh, my show has gotten big enough to where I can get big guests, but these big guests want to have interviews when I'm working during the day at my day job. To which I originally said, Well, this is why I do solo shows. To which he said, That's not helpful. And I was like, you know what? You're right, I'm sorry. Here's what I used to do. I would take a microphone to work and interview people on my lunch, to which he then came back and said, That sounded very copied and pasted. You're not very helpful, blah, blah, blah. He just kept being a dick. And I I here's the problem. If you have an educational brain, you think everything can be fixed with education. For sure. And it looks like you're trying to get the last word. And what it is, is I think, oh, uh, he just needs to hear this. And then the light bulb will come on, and we will both see the errors of both our ways, and and communication will happen. And I would throw it out. And even the last one, this went back like three or four times, and I was like, he doesn't feel heard. Like, okay, that's the problem. So I replied and I said, you know, it sucks that you've worked this hard to get the show this big. And that and that nobody that that you're now being hindered by your day job, that's got to be really frustrating and blah, blah, blah. You know, and I just wish you all the best in whatever you do. And I so that was it. I didn't even say what to do. I just said, hey, that sucks. I'm right. And his reply was, please quit replying. I'm not even reading these. And I was like, oh, this now that is troll. That's like you hear you like oh yeah, that's that's and I was just and that at that point, and he said, please quit responding. And it took everything I had, because then I was triggered to not put gladly, just so I could get the last. And I was like, no, no, this guy doesn't so don't yeah, don't feed the trolls, and also not everything can be fixed because some people don't want to be educated.

Jim Collison: 20:27
Well, we have this in in our podcast, we have this where you know we've talked about this with you with uh listener feedback, and you know, you'll get uh you'll get a listener who really wants to turn your show into their show. And it's like so you keep getting advice from them, hey, could you do this, could you do that? I'm gonna do that. And at some point you're like, you know, no, I'm not gonna. And it's okay. Like, it's okay if you go. You know, we don't we don't all have to be it, you know, if you're even as a listener of some things, if you're if you're doing something and it's not like what you want, go do something different, friends. Right, yeah, go find someone who is meeting. Doing that, yeah. Yeah, those kinds of things. But it it's a it's a weird, uh, weird's the wrong word. It's an interesting dynamic that we have. That this is back to the AI and the humanness of it. This is definitely a human thing that we do. It's like, no, but I want you to listen to me. Like, and then you're like, I am listening. And then at that point there's a rift, and it doesn't nobody's listening to anybody anymore, you know, kind of thing. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, AI would definitely not do that to you. AI would have said, Of course, Dave, I love everything. Everything you're doing. Yes, it's amazing. For being you, you had me at hello, Jerry McGuire.

Dave Jackson: 21:45
Going back to everybody's favorite song, what is the name of that song? Money for nothing, I guess. Money for nothing. Yeah, money for nothing. Sting was vacation, coincidentally, at the Caribbean island where Dire Straits was recording. He showed up and Mark Knoffler asked him to sing I Want My MTV with the same melody as the with the same melody as the police, Don't Stand So Close to Me. Oh, yeah. I never knew that.

Jim Collison: 22:09
That might have put Dire Straits back on the map, by the way. Oh, I think that's the one. They were right, they they were on the way out, right, for for the most part, and that song probably brought them back.

Dave Jackson: 22:16
Well, they had some song about Roller Skate Girl or something, I forget what it was. And I just know because I at that time in my life, it was Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Ozzie Osborne, and here comes along Mark Knoffler, and his sound is so clean, and he doesn't even use a pick, and I was he's actually a really good guitar player, but at the time I didn't see it. I just know it wasn't people, you know, singing like they just got, you know, bit by a pit pull, so I wasn't into it.

Jim Collison: 22:43
Well, it's it from a podcasting standpoint, it is a good point that you there may be a time you have to kind of keep your your head on a swivel with your guests. Like there may be a moment where you get this opportunity to interview or to yeah, to interview someone or have somebody on your show and they're out of your league. Right. Right. Or they they are they're the new and the the the better the better analogy is probably they're the up and coming because at that point dire straits was on their way out and and the police and Sting were on their way in for sure, right? And so it would have been easy for the old guys, so to speak, to be like, oh these young kids, I don't know about these kids singing this new fangled music, you know, and and in some I mean like that was a that was I mean, there's some yeah, that was amazing.

Dave Jackson: 23:35
Well, the the king of that is Carlos Santana. Carlos Santana was you know famous in the 70s at Woodstock and things like that, but later he teamed up with the guy from Matchbox 20 and did that thing, and then for a while he just kept uh Madonna's another one that's done duets. Right now, it's funny they're calling it Aerosmith, but apparently it's just Steven Tyler and Joe Perry from Aerosmith just did a song with this guy named Youngblood, what his nickname is Youngblood, his real name is Dom something, who got a big boost because it turns out he was friends with Ozzie Osborne and got to sing at his last event. And here's a fun thing nobody announced him. I was just watching an interview about that. He goes, the guy before you is supposed to announce the guy coming on, whoever it is. So it's like, ladies and gentlemen, hailstorm, and ladies and gentlemen, Metallica, whoever. And he goes, the guy just waved his hands and walked off, and he goes, and I'm going on at three o'clock in the afternoon, and he goes, Oh, and I'm singing a ballad. And he's like, So, and I went back and re-watched that, and he really took that song and kind of made it his own. In fact, towards the end, he he kind of made up his own little melody, and everybody's like, Who is this guy? And it's interesting because whoever does his PR is going like they're like, Okay, we got to strike while the iron's hot. Like, I just saw him on like Good Morning Sunday or something, you know what I mean? It's like one of those, and I'm like, he was on Bill Maher, and I finally went and listened to his music, and I'm like, well, nobody's playing. Usually they'll be like, you know, and I was on tour and I was doing this, and then they'll play a clip of him singing something. Nobody's doing that. I'm like, do you not want to have to pay to play the 10-second clip of his song? And he's not bad, but I just thought uh I was like, oh, there's the Aerosmith doing the Carlos Santana thing with hey, we're not relevant anymore. Let's find because he has like two billion people on Instagram or something. It's some ridiculous Santana? No, this Youngblood. This Youngblood clid, yeah. So yeah. Yeah. But listen, Carlo.

Jim Collison: 25:48
Go ahead.

Dave Jackson: 25:49
Go ahead. So yeah, Jeff says every guest I have is on my league. And then Youngblood, Danny Brown says, is super talented. Yeah, that's what I'm finding out. And he seems to be wiser than his 28 years. He seems to understand that this this is this whole thing that I'm in right now is probably gonna chew me up and spit me out, but I'm gonna do my best to ride the wave I have. So and he's already gotten, you know, the minute he I guess he was on the MTV music awards, and then people were saying he was just riding Ozzy's coattails, and it's like, you know, anytime you get up in the top, all the other crabs are gonna try to pull you down, and it was interesting.

Jim Collison: 26:28
So but Carlos Santana's an interesting guy because he I think he's had a hit in every decade for the last four decades, right? And he's a guy who he refuses to to change his who he is. Like yet he's he he has in these four decades, he's created hits that have been very, very different, but he's still Carlos Santana. Like I listen, the the only reason like this is obscure, but we have I have a Pandora channel that's just Santana stuff. Wow. And yeah, it's his guitar playing is amazing. Yeah, and it makes the greatest deck music. Like, you know, if you're sitting there, oh I bet it's it's it's the most amazing music. So and whenever we're out, when the kids are over and around on the deck and we're enjoying, you know, enjoying time together. Oftentimes Santana's playing in the background, and he's got such a variety, and yet you always know when he's playing the guitar, you know it's Santana. Like you're like, that's Carlos for sure.

Dave Jackson: 27:31
That to me is the sign of a great guitar player. I was listening to some channel once, and this guy comes on, never heard of him, and I go, Man, somebody is doing a really good Neil Schoen, who is the guitar player for Journey, who got his start at the age of 15 in what band? Santana. But and I'm like, somebody's doing a really good Neil Schoen imitation. And so I go over and I'm like, who is this band? And I look at it, blah, blah, blah. And oh, by the way, special appearance by Neil Schoen. And I'm like, it wasn't an imitation, it was him. And I was like, Man, that's that's when you know you've got your own thing going on.

Jim Collison: 28:07
Well, but this is there's a there's a principle here, right? And and when you find your thing, go for it. Like lean into it, use it to your advantage, like become known for it. Uh, don't don't shy away from it. Don't, you know, oh, podcasting's moving in this direction, so I need to change. Well, you need to change some, right? But you you do the best of you all the time. You be to be honest, uh to be honest, there we go. I had a little stroke there for a second. To be honest, that's what your audience, sorry, that's what your audience is waiting for. They're waiting for you. That's why they're there. They want you, they want the authentic you. They don't want some, you know, somebody with a radio voice, or they don't want, unless you do that all the time. They don't want somebody, you know, some goofball when you're not really a goofball. Like they want you, be the authentic you. And all these, all these really talented folks, you know, there's a lot of the key to their success for long term is they were just they they continue to be true to who they were. And so be true to who you are.

Dave Jackson: 29:10
That's it. And continuing on with the six games or six, what how's that six degrees of separation from Rich Graham says, My wife's uncle married Santana's sister back in the 60s. Carlos played the wedding, and the wife's dad bartended. That would be awesome.

Jim Collison: 29:29
Yeah, that would be dream come true to have Santana just play at any event would be would be that'd be great.

Dave Jackson: 29:37
So uh here's a here's a counterpoint. So what you're saying, Ralph says, people always tell me that I'm an a-hole, so I will just lean into being an authentic a-hole. Gotta be known for something. I mean, that that was Howard Stern for many years.

Jim Collison: 29:50
For sure. For sure. You know, and he just and Yeah, just be ready for the backlash. Right, you know, this is this is some of the, you know, when when we take a controversial opinion or when we take you know when we go that route. I mean this is I I don't like like who's the money guy? Why am I Dave Ramsey? Dave Ramsey. Dave Ramsey's kind of gotten a little cremogeny.

Dave Jackson: 30:15
Yeah. I don't I don't I'm losing my patience with you. You're about as dumb as a box of yeah.

Jim Collison: 30:22
That's just not my style, right? I I kind of quit listening to him because of that. So don't don't expect you know everybody's gonna love that. But yeah, I mean if that's what you want to do. I know you're joking Ralph but or maybe not. I mean if that's what you want to do, uh jump in the pool. Just know what you're getting yourself into. You know if you're gonna a lot of folks want to be a troll on the internet but don't want to be trolled. You ever trolled a troll? That never goes well. Like they lose their collective stuff, right?

Dave Jackson: 30:51
I I was you know I was tempted the guy that trolled me I had copied his question for this show and I was like oh there's his name I forgot what his name was and I was tempted to go follow him and I'm like you know what there are better things to do with your time. Dan Lefebv says Gordon Ramsay right there's a guy not known for his patience and subtleties right and so if you want somebody to yell at you Gordon Ramsay if he's not available Simon Cow you know these are people that Gordon Ramsey's an act I think he's actually a fairly nice guy.

Jim Collison: 31:25
Like I've seen him in just regular interviews and he's just normal I think he's figured out this persona to that uh to be this way. Now I don't know I could be wrong.

Dave Jackson: 31:36
Right but but you know Danny Danny Brown says being Scottish helps you're expected to be a grumpy a-hole if it's not a Scottish it was crap remember this language was designed to be angry I'm pretty sure it was first used just to be angry. Morton Downey Jr had a late night show where people loved him and he was a real jerk but it seems to yeah yeah and then after a while it's funny because what makes you you you're gonna get your audience and there'll be a time when you go to grow your audience and the people that like that stuff have found you and that's it. Like you either like me or you don't you kind of drew I remember when Leo Laporte like one of the earliest podcasters and one of the first big waves was tech shows because you had to be a nerd to to make them that was me. I came in and those days no I was listening to Leo back in the day and then there came a point where Leo was like hey I I think podcasting isn't growing well no Leo you're not growing like all the nerds have found you and they love you and you've got this audience but then came the serials and all the other the comedians and all that and it continued to boom right but like Leo I think everybody who's gonna find you has has found you at that point. So that's the the thing about that I mean Andrew Dice Clay is another guy right that you either loved him or you hated him but he was offensive if you didn't like him and he was amazing if you know you weren't so well and mark mark Barron is a good example of this too right and I think he's he's call he's calling it right but he he's made his run that's it you know he's done his thing it's it at some point too you're kind of like I've kind of done my thing.

Jim Collison: 33:20
Unless you know even at some point you know Carson went said okay I think I I think I'm done here. Now he's he's an example of a he he picked a format he was he definitely Carson definitely had a persona that he was on the air like so this this is probably this is probably an example where it kind of proves me wrong. Carson on air and Carson in person are two different people right I mean they're similar for but they're pretty different. I mean he was he was pretty clean and he was pretty not controversial at all and you know pretty mainstream and that's what he chose to be for his persona. His personal life was not necessarily no that clean not known for that clean that sober and and kind of an a-hole yeah amazing he could keep that going as long as he did right because usually that doesn't that doesn't work.

Dave Jackson: 34:14
No social media back then for sure yeah for sure so yeah well you mentioned Mark Marin you didn't even know this was one of the questions so thanks for the teeing this up you're you're welcome. Is it time to quit 200 episodes later I have a parenting podcast that I started in February 2022. So he's been going a little over you know three years. It's almost at 200 episodes and I'm discouraged by the lack of growth in downloads. On average there are about 1700 downloads monthly about 250 per episode so he's above average about 28K listeners all time I know that the podcast brings in some new clients but mostly it's a resource for my current clients as a tool for reinforcing the parent uh the parenting approach I teach. So it's it's got a purpose the format is primarily a 30 minute lesson on a topic with a practical strategies to apply about once a month I have a guest the interviews don't do better or worse than the non-interviews I get a lot of interview requests. Yes welcome to podcasting with the with the market saturated that's the one I'm like okay especially in my niche of parenting I wonder if it's time to let it go and so number one I'm not buying the saturated thing I I don't know it's maybe right because I know there's a lot I mean a lot of golf podcasts and I remember a guy once at Libson that started a show about golfing he launched it he built a website and then wanted to know when he went to Google and typed in golf he wasn't the number one result. And that my friends is a whole other episode on how SEO works and just because you're on the internet doesn't mean oh look Jim's the the last person that that published something about golf he should go right to the top I'm like that is not how that works but everybody kind of said I I went over to that Reddit and I kind of said the same thing. I'm like wait a minute is it if it's bringing you clients like why are you doing this? That's really the the thing because anytime somebody says should I quit I'm like what was the purpose of the show and if they go I don't know I just everybody thought I should start a podcast okay that's not really a reason to start you know but like how are you measuring your success but everybody said look if if you don't want to do this anymore like if you're not having fun stop you know so but to me the fact that it's bringing him clients he's got you know 250 people an episode that's uh I don't know 15 something like that uh classrooms you know it's a lot of people you know that's one of those where you want to go to a theater that holds 300 and like I was in a theater last night I went to the movies and that probably held I don't know probably 300 maybe that that's a lot of people that are there but if you're not having fun then yeah then either take a break and let people know you're coming back in two months or something like that. But why haven't you quit Jim let's go that route like with home gadget geeks you've had oh man you you had some spells there where where you know your co-hosts and everything you had some really you know sad situations and things like that. What what what keeps you going?

Jim Collison: 37:33
That's a good question. I I don't know I don't want to I get to the point where I'm like I think we're done here and then I can't do it. I can't pull the trigger to stop. I'm like we record another episode or somebody contacts me and says hey I'd love to you know I'd love to come on and talk about this or I mean the other night my you know Christian Johnson was on and we just had a really great episode and I'm like this is what I love about podcasting.

Dave Jackson: 37:59
Right.

Jim Collison: 37:60
You know and I just get reminded how much fun it is for me the joy is in the is in the interview not in all the production stuff. And so I mean I do it because I have to but honestly some points I'd like to just be able to do an interview and just leave it. Like not do any any production any podcast stuff just leave it on YouTube. It's fine. I don't really care about that stuff. I did it for the interview now the guests expect a little bit of promotion. So you know you got to do some of that. But yeah it's a good it's a good question Dave I I I keep questioning myself it's been 15 years I've done everything that needs to be done but then I look like I I look at a franchise like CSI and you're like they've done everything they've that could be done and yet they still continue right I mean there's still these CSI crime shows keep popping up and people keep consuming them. You know and you're like well okay the the key is I think is I do it because I love I mean I love the interview. I love to do that part. The other things I just do because that's that's the that's part of the business. But you know and I'm I listen I'm there's some it's interesting at work I'm doing 2026 I'll do less podcasting at work than I've done in the past. But the podcast style of what I do is not going away we're just deploying it into a different into a different medium that won't technically be podcasting. But it's still me doing that work which is me interviewing people. That's what I love to do. I mean I just love to have conversations with people. So it's why it's why you and I get along so well is because I love to have these conversations with you on Saturday mornings. I mean you know I just I I love it. So anyways I I think the short answer is I still love to do it.

Dave Jackson: 39:42
Yeah that's it. Well that's it.

Jim Collison: 39:43
When you don't like doing it then you know no thank you you know it's never it things are never perfect.

Dave Jackson: 39:51
You're not ever gonna love the whole process right no there's always gonna right there's gonna be some time when something you like some people love to talk into the mic other people well hopefully they love to talk into the mic but then other people like I'm weird. I love editing I think it's fun I think it's creative other weird that is weird other people are like no thank you you know so that's why this show works because I hate editing and you do all the editing. That's it. Well and now Buzzsprout is doing a lot of the editing I'm I turned on their automatic um removal thing. Okay. So yeah Danny says one of the best advantages or biggest advantages of being an indie podcaster no major stakeholders yes to satisfy I don't know that I ever want to work for another publicly traded company. So if something isn't working quit and go again with no pressure to return a money of brand investment. And then later he said he's so tired of hearing there are too many podcasts do people think there are too many books, movies and TV shows? Yeah that's where I'm like go look at blogs kids go see how many blogs are on the internet and nobody says well I was going to start a I was going to write a blog today but there are too many. Nobody says that so why is it that we think you know and I realize there's a study that came out that said the average listener listens to has like a shelf they called it a shelf of podcast of around three shows. So like you might listen to five episodes a week but it's coming from these three shows. And I'm like well okay but A one of those shows is going to quit eventually and so you know in the same way that people still you know played the position of quarterback when Tom Brady was still playing it's like well I can't play because I'm never going to be Tom Brady well you're not gonna be anything if you don't play you know so yeah I I think because if you think about it how many fitness books are being scrubbed right now right that they're working on the final thing because in three months they're gonna release a book on how you can not change the way you eat and not exercise and lose weight that is coming because it comes every January it's the whatever it's the it's the jerky diet just eat beef jerky you will drop weight you don't have to exercise you don't have the only thing you have to do is eat beef jerky and that it's you know and every year people buy those so I'm with Danny there's still you know I can I hot take hot take oh here we go for this again do we have do we have music I don't think music no I thought you were I was looking I was I was like I got I got rim shot I'm like that doesn't really fit in yeah we go the hot take horn we'll figure it out yeah the hot take horn I think there are too many books and I do think there are too many podcasts but yes I said that I think there's too many podcasts but it not from a sense of of like we shouldn't stop doing it.

Jim Collison: 42:60
You need we need we need as many people doing what they're talented at doing it to get some of those to rise up right and there's listen there's value in the turkey diet but there really isn't so the the you know the the we we need everybody doing their passion and some of those things will rise up to be popular. Now popularity is not always the the the best we I've talked about that a lot before like if you get a popular podcast you have a whole new host of problems that come in with that you better be ready for that right but but there are for for the space what I think and the reason I say too many books and too many podcasts is I think the average podcaster comes in and says if I create a podcast all my dreams are going to come true and that's just that's just not the case. I I work with a lot of folks who write a lot of books and they you know they have these high hopes for these books and then they sell a hundred and they're like yeah but you know if they're lucky yeah if they're lucky oh I got oh okay I can't I can't show that I can't show that on TV the the so you yes we're we're we're there are a lot and there are too many but we need that many out there and the expectations of people writing books or creating podcasts need to be set accordingly is strive for your best see what you can do see how far you can go a few of us are going to hit the magic you know the get on the magic road of success I'm putting that in air quotes whatever that is but the sheer volume of what's out there is going to guarantee that most of us are just going to be average right we're just gonna have you know a hundred to a thousand downloads and and that's just the way it is like you can't we couldn't have a hundred thousand shows all like Joe Rogan that just doesn't happen. It's just it's not gonna work the the the media doesn't work that way. So but I think it's good that everybody's trying right this is the thing you know continue we still need everybody using their talents to make great stuff because you never know remember when uh I'll go back to CSI remember when the first CSI came out and it was just amazing the things like the the way they would solve crimes in 15 minutes and they had all these cool tools and like it was it was incredible right and then was that the guy with with the sunglasses no that's Miami that was CSI Miami remember the one he'd be like I'd call that a hole in one and then the who would come on it's like you know yes yes I forget his name but but we we we need that kind of creativity because we didn't have crime shows like that up until that point right listen the the the crime no true crime right the true crime genre didn't take off until we got cereal yeah right we needed serial but we needed thousands of people trying to create that that that bright spot in the space to to lead the way so others could be oh oh okay this is now a genre right we needed a Leo Laporte who would start a podcast in a bar right and and found the Twit network to really get some of this going. Even before that we needed John C. Dvorak on make creating cranky geeks I don't know yeah nobody remembers cranky geeks for the most part but yeah him and and Patrick Norton and you know and he would lead these things and have these guests on that goes way back right but we needed John C Dvorak to be doing those kinds of things so I never want to discourage anybody from getting into this just know your know your place in this in this world you may listen you may be the next thing but we wouldn't know that if you didn't try so you gotta try yeah Chris from castahead.net says this guy named Dave Jackson once said on my podcast anyone can make a podcast not everyone can make a good podcast which is still true I believe good even even listen even good I don't think Rogan's podcast is good. No I don't I don't either I I I don't I don't find it like a good podcast. Now there's some interesting moments in it.

Dave Jackson: 47:21
That's it and that's why he does really good on YouTube. I don't watch his show because the bet here's the thing I don't think people are realizing and I gotta find this study because James Cridlin said that there's a study that shows this that if if you do a three hour show and out of that you pull three clips that are each nine minutes long. So now we've got a half hour you know show of clips I kind of it's like how many times have you seen a movie trailer then you see the movie and you're like oh crap the best parts were in the trailer I didn't really need to see the movie. So I don't really listen to Joe unless it's somebody I really want to hear every word coming out of their mouth because most of the time the good stuff's in the clips and even that I don't they just you know occasionally YouTube will throw it at me but yeah Chris says I don't think we needed CSI Chattanooga. That's they didn't make CSI Omaha I was so hoping we would get CSI Omaha I thought it was just going around the country CSI Portland that's right CSI Newark you know it's like Newark my dad referred to Newark as the armpit of America and I'm like excellent yeah Craig from AI Goes to College don't forget about the intrinsic rewards of podcasting to put that in a less geeky way something making the podcast make sometimes making the podcast is the payoff yeah I was sure they made a big point of that at the Charlotte event I went to the empowered podcasting conference they said sometimes we get so focused on the downloads like that's our goal I need more downloads that we forget to enjoy the journey like that was one of their points like no like look you're you know you're enriching people's lives you're growing your network you're having fun you're being creative and you kind of skip all that because you're too busy going oh it only went up by you know I always love the and at in the pod page Facebook group if you don't agree to the terms you don't get into the group and it's kind of a bummer every week I have to do a report on how do we do on YouTube and how do we do on this and I always go Facebook. We add whatever it is you know X amount of people and this week we still have X amount of people we have people sign up but they don't agree to the terms and every time I do I let them in because hey they've been on Facebook for four years they look like a real person you know within weeks they're spamming the group so if you don't do the terms but you know but so why do we still have a Facebook group? Because part of it's really fun and it's you know it's not all about the numbers. Danny says a quick way to reduce the too many podcasters ask celebs to do all the research production and editing yeah he made a great point he said a lot of the the kind of where'd it go popularity in podcasting is very skewed towards the not the best yeah so there you go. Yeah I I I go kind of crazy when I watch Joe Rogan and it's not very often is because the whole time I'm going why why is this still in here? Like why did they you know when my favorite is I just watched one where they oh it was Lionel Ritchie talking about Michael Jackson growing up and he and it was weird because he said you know here's when things started getting weird and I was like ooh I didn't expect Lionel Richie to to say anything negative about Michael Jackson and they were showing a video and for some reason they couldn't show the video or parts of it so there's a lot of the show where they're like you hear Lionel Ritchie going watch he's gonna spin here watch yeah that's okay that's and like if you're not seeing that and even when I was watching it they weren't showing the video I was like why is this in here? And then finally he explained that his brothers did something where they because he was the little kid and they had told him that girls were coming to get him and so he would run and hide and that's when Lionel's like that's when things got a little weird he's like when the you know like you find him in a closet like why are you in the closet? He's like because the girls are coming and it's like okay well what's wrong with girls my brother said that they're coming to get me I'm like okay John Jamango who's from New Jersey says I call New Jersey the skin tag of the United States I can't I can say that because I'm bored and living in in New Jersey. Craig from AI Goes to College Steve Jobs he thinks said the journey is the reward yeah although I'm pretty sure he got that saying from others then also he had you know billions in the bank that's that I think that's been said for a hundred yeah a hundred thousand years right from that standpoint.

Jim Collison: 51:56
It it is listen there is a great there's great value and great benefit into the process of things right and it it always boils down to expectations what do you what are you trying to do here and what are you you know if if if we take Hollywood as the example you fail more than you succeed. Oh that's just the and then sometimes you get hot right you know back to CSI real quick Jerry Breckheimer is that how he pronounces it Breckheimer that guy. Like that guy everything he touches for a while everything he touched turned to gold right and so you know you just he was just a talent I mean he worked super hard during those during you know the 2000 90s too I mean he the the dude's been amazing but he you know you just and you just never know and there's lots of failures in there. And for every CSI there's 17 shows that never made it that were probably just as good but for whatever reasons that didn't have the right money didn't have the couldn't didn't have the right people to grease the skids didn't have you know weren't it was the wrong time you know you you you start to think like for things that weren't ready you know you it's just sometimes that's just luck you know so there is a mod of that that is just luck in some ways.

Dave Jackson: 53:18
For sure for sure you know let me see here. We did that I'm trying to catch up with the uh chat room here. Yeah Danny says his podcasters will never know whose life was made better at a time when they needed it you know just by something we said that's our legacy and the success right there. Very much true. Chrissy from creating great grooming dogs says uh researching an episode is an excellent for personal development. Yeah absolutely that's half the fun in my book.

Jim Collison: 53:49
Yeah and for us old guys it staves off dementia. So you know there's that's it exactly there's that in there. So gentlemen keep your podcasting going we we want you to remember who we are so you could show up on Saturdays.

Dave Jackson: 54:02
That's right and for the old people it also helps stems off dementia get it okay and also it helps stems off dementia. Okay so I mentioned it stems off dementia you know who doesn't have dementia our awesome supporters they're awesome we love them you can see them by going to ask the podcastcoach.com slash dementia slash dementia wave okay that wasn't even on purpose um oh boy we'll do all right then it's awesome people like these are people that don't have dementia yeah are these people I've never seen this slide before are they new it's like do you remember Tom Hanks did the short Mr Short Term Memory on Saturday Night Live? We should probably thank our awesome supporters yes there we go all right well also the show is brought to you by the schoolofpodcasting dot com where you can get courses coaching and an awesome community use the coupon code Dementia no I'm just kidding use the coupon coach coupon code coach and that will save you on your first actually it saves you on all the months by the way that's not a that's like you get whatever it is 20% off and that's for like the life of that subscription. So it's not just the first month. And speaking if you have a podcast and you need some honest feedback check out podcasthotseat.com you could be next and if you go to ask the podcastcoach.com you're looking at podpage and if you want a tripod page go to tripodpage.com want to learn pod page and see what it's all about go to learnpodpage.com and the fun part of working for podpage is you have to learn really quickly how to not pop your peas because there's two in the name of your company if you need more Jim Collison and hey who doesn't well then just head on over to theaverage guy dot TV and check out his show home gadget geeks and it's time for the wheel o names so if we go over to that who will it be will it be Ross Brand will it be the girls over at the Flame Alive show will it be Chris over at Castahead will it be Ralph from the financially confident Christian we're gonna spin the wheel and it looks like it's gonna be John John Munz if you want to check him out j-o-h n un tz dot com john thanks for being an awesome supporter and again you can be an awesome supporter by simply going over to ask the podcastcoach.com slash awesome and if you're like why would I do that well maybe we saved you some time or saved you some money or made you think about getting a cognitive test maybe later tomorrow maybe we saved you a headache or keep you educated just go over to ask the podcastcoach.com slash awesome and you can be an awesome supporter today and if you let's let's talk we haven't talked about this where hey before before before we move on let me let me just preemptive preempt this and say hey listen my my father suffered from dementia oh yes we've tri if listen if we've triggered some things for you maybe you've had some family member or and it's a serious like that that's a serious thing and I know we made fun of it and we made light of it and if we offended you in some way sorry like it the intention was not was not that and we know people suffer from that as well and it's it's a horrible disease yeah my dad had it my the I I got very lucky it sounds weird the last time I saw my dad he thought I was my brother that's hard and then looked at at me who he thought was Doug and said how about that David and my sister started to laugh and I just went Mike shut up and I'm like yeah how about him and he just gushed about me and I was like where's this been for the last 40 years so yeah it's it's it's it's a real thing and for some some for some folks it's really hard.

Jim Collison: 58:13
A gentleman in our space there's been a lot of talk health wise about how do you how do you there are things you can do to prevent that as you get older in in so there's a lot of conversation about that as well. But if we if we did offend you we we apologize for that that's it's a very serious thing.

Dave Jackson: 58:28
Yeah anyway I heard eating McDonald's helps fend off the is that not true?

Jim Collison: 58:32
No I don't think that's true at all God it tastes it tastes good for like 15 seconds. It's instant regret like if you ever wanted to feel instant regret Big Mac.

Dave Jackson: 58:44
That's it that's why the word big is in there. It's a big regret it's a big regret big regard I think I think we're still on season one episode 500 I think this is 548 if I remember right because somebody asked here hey all I'm transitioning my podcast to seasons I have about 60 episodes published can you share your experience doing this what do I need to keep in mind I'm thinking of my first 60 episodes will be season one and the next batch will be season two. So to this I always ask why like what is the benefit of seasons and if we go back you brought up serial we've talked about it before that was really the first show I know of where they said you know we're taking a break and they had a team of like 19 people that was flying all over the world and so consequently they're like we need a break and so I get it that's why they made seasons and if if the idea is I need a break, okay I get it. But I just I'm of the weird thing that I never take a break. I just plan ahead. So if like when we were when I was in Charlotte I just well actually on this show we do take a break but on the school of podcasting I haven't And I think part of that is ego, and part of that is it's fun to say I've never missed an episode in a thousand and five or whatever I'm up to.

Jim Collison: 01:00:07
Crazy Dave Jackson. That is crazy. Yeah. So a thousand episodes and you've never missed a week.

Dave Jackson: 01:00:12
No. And I think part of it too is like I listened to Podcasting 2.0, although I I think I will still listen to that show, but it doesn't do what it did in the early days. I still love Dave and Adam, but it's more the let's talk programming show now, not so much podcasting 2.0. And I'm just not getting much out of it because I'm not a programmer. But every Friday I go to Walmart to grocery shop, and that's the show I listened to because they released on Friday. That's one of the few shows that, hey, it's out, I'm going to listen to it right now. And when they like they weren't, there was no show last weekend. Well, did I not grocery shop? Did I somehow, you know, no? I just found another show to listen to. And so to me, if that show is better than the show I'm listening to, they might, going back to that reference, they might take your spot on the shelf. Like, not that I'm never going to listen to that show again, but I might, that might not be my first string go-to anymore because you gave them a chance to fill your spot. So that's what one of the reasons why I try not to miss, because it's not like, well, I I would listen to Dave in the car on the way to work, but there's nothing here. So I'm just going to listen in silence. So that might just be my own insecurity of being replaced or what, but no, I think you have good reasons.

Jim Collison: 01:01:35
Your show is thematic in the sense that you're always talking about podcasting. And I think where seasons make sense, uh, one of them is themes. So you know, we have at Gallup, we have this Clipton Strengths tool. It has 34 themes. We've created podcasts about each one of those themes each year for the last 10 years. And so it gives me an opportunity to say, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Hey, in season three of Theme Thursday, we covered this topic for all themes. And it just makes it easier to break down, you know, we created theme pages for each one of those, where it was like season or season pages, season three, season four, season five. It broke down similar content to to to into logical order. So I think there's some moments or some kinds of podcasts where seasons are are very applicable and they make they make sense. I don't think you need them to take a break, friends. I mean, just take a break. I mean, if you want to do it that way, that's fine. If you want to say, hey, this is the I'm ending season one, I'm gonna take a break for two months and come back for season two. If that makes sense for you and for your audience, by all means, but you can take a break without having to change your seasons. You can just take a break, just tell your audience we're gonna be gone for a while, we'll be back in November. Like whatever. But they're the seasons are really good. I mean, we've taken advantage of them. Also, Dave, you know, we've been podcasting, you know, we had we've had enough podcast at Gallup for 12 years. And uh, and back through, you know, at season or year three, I thought, you know, we better start breaking these down by something. Otherwise, it's just gonna be one big giant pool of podcasts. So we began, we went back and re-seasoned everything, a little salt and pepper, re-seasoned it and and put put them together in seasons. And it also gave the ability for me, because we didn't use episode numbers, to to have something to identify for me to quickly identify that podcast. Oh, that's season 12 episode. Well, we did use episode numbers, but they were in the seasons, so you could say season 12, episode 8. I kind of knew where that was in the mix. So there's another reason, you know, to to use seasons if you if you think you're you're going to. It's not hard to do, and you just have to decide, do you want to do it? The hardest part for me sometimes was not remembering to put the season information in the podcast when we published it, right? You know, you're like, oh yeah, that's right. This one's got seasons. So I think there's some I think there's some logical and some beneficial reasons to use seasons for you. It doesn't, you're you're that's not I love that you have a thousand episodes. Like we have uh we're probably six or seven hundred in over those 12 years, and it'd be great to say, yeah, here's 800. So you you definitely use not having seasons to your advantage by saying, I have a thousand episodes.

Dave Jackson: 01:04:28
Yeah, right.

Dave Jackson: 01:04:29
Well, Danny says, as I did more podcasting and recording, I learned to make certain shows in seasons due to the research needed, guest booking and recordings. And he says it's so nice to be able to switch off, unwind, and see what's working and what's not. I'm waiting for the next episode of In and Around Podcasting or anything featuring Mark Asquith. I love Danny's oh crap. It's something one-minute podcasting tips. I think I got that right. I just it's to me, it's the Danny short show, which is getting longer. I I know he said he was going to start doing that, but yeah. So tell Mr. Asquith he has missed. I always uh enjoy hearing his take because he's just got a a wide range of history that uh and he usually is uh he's another kind of without being an a-hole, a very much a straight shooter kind of guy. Yeah, Chris says, uh I'm realizing that I have a few favorite shows and a bunch of backup shows that I listen to. Yeah, I have my first string, and this is why I usually was not a fan of podcast apps that made a cue, but I now have I'm using Pocket Cast. And if you're kind of a first string, it it automatically adds you to the queue. So I just keep listening and it's and then if I go in and I'm like, oh, this is my last one, then I'll actually go in and I'll go into my marketing shows and I'm like, oh, and then that this is where titles really come into play. And I'll like, oh, okay, that looks good. Add it to the queue, add it to the queue. So I kind of have my do you do you have any of that like that, Jim? First string and second string podcasts, or oh, for sure.

Jim Collison: 01:06:02
Yeah, no, for sure I do. But lately I've only been able to get with the time restraints, I've just been able to get to two of them. You know, one of them are 15-minute podcasts daily. So those are the quick ones I listen to every day. It's news related. And then I've got a long form one that takes up the rest of the time. And so I don't get, I don't necessarily get a lot of time to listen to other podcasts in that way. But it's just kind of based on my now, maybe that now that I have these new AirPods, maybe at work. I couldn't, I don't know about you. I can't work and listen to podcasts at the same time. That's frustrates me, right? I get I get frustrated because I'm trying to, you're trying to do two things at once, and then all of a sudden you realize, you know, I haven't been listening to this thing for like 25 minutes. Yeah. I have no idea what they're saying because I was concentrating on something else. Contrary to belief, you we don't multitask very well, right? Especially in that kind of situation.

Dave Jackson: 01:06:52
Yeah, I thought at Pod Page I might be able to, because there are some things that I don't really need to think too much to do, but it's it's like you said, we think we're multitasking, we're not.

Jim Collison: 01:07:03
No, it's okay. It's background stuff. It works, it just frustrated me. When I used to run, I ran a lot in my 40s. I couldn't listen to music when I ran. I was because running was so hard for me, I had to really concentrate on it. Yeah. And the music just threw that off for some reason. I know I'm weird. It just was the way it is.

Dave Jackson: 01:07:20
Well, my problem, I'd I'd probably want to run to the beat. So all of a sudden Metallica would come on and I'd have a heart attack.

Jim Collison: 01:07:26
Yeah. Yeah. I always loved running with other people. I'd kind of do podcasts while I was running. Like I'd run with other people, and all I do is ask them questions. You know, hey, so what's you know, tell me a little bit about this, and then they talk and I would be dying. But I kept running with them because I wanted to, you know, wanted to be in that crowd. Yeah. Um, and so yeah, it was it was a it yeah, it's it's just I I do like cues. Like I I use those pretty heavily. And then every once in a while, maybe the long form one I'm listening to, they're uh they're like, oh, I've heard too much of them. They they actually are like us, they repeat the same things over and over again. So I'm like, okay, I've had enough of this. I'm gonna go down to the third string and pull pull one in that I haven't listened to in a while.

Dave Jackson: 01:08:11
Yeah, Danny brings up a point. Something I don't see often now is the, and we will just say Lexi, Lexi flash briefing being used for latest episode feeds. Is that still a thing? It still is. Mine is set up to kick off the weather and acronym. There's like a daily Bible verse, and then it's James Cridlin. I used to listen to the newsworthy, but she quit doing it because something you something to do with her advertising. But she quit it. I'm here to tell you Lexi is getting less and less useful. Because I used to be able to go, hey, open up Pocket Cast, and she'd say, Do you want to listen to the latest episode? And I get I would. And then it's kind of funny. She would say the whole name of the show. So playing the latest episode of Home Gadget Geeks, tagline, tagline, tagline, tagline, tagline, tagline, tagline, episode number it's like just go, you know? And I don't know what's going on. I she told me, well, first of all, it's now Lexi Plus. You gotta pay to get her to be bubbly and fun.

Jim Collison: 01:09:20
Well, it's included, isn't it? It's included in the prime.

Dave Jackson: 01:09:23
In Prime, right. So if you have Prime, and but it just seems like there are times like the other day, I'm literally standing from me to the teleprompter here, and I said, Hey, play 92.3 the fan, because that's a sports station I listened to. And she played it from the living room. And I was like, Hey, why did you play that from the living room? I'm standing right here. And then the only thing I can think of is it's under the cupboards, and maybe the acoustics weren't great or what, but I just it just seems like there's more and more. The only thing I use it for is my grocery list and to tell me what time it is when my hands are busy.

Jim Collison: 01:09:58
I don't know. Are you do you use yours as much as you used to? Oh, use it all the time, yeah. But mostly timers and music, like it's a cooking, it's a cooking aid, you know, when we're in the kitchen and you're like, you know, hey, set a timer for seven minutes. Or the the the really nice thing, like so on on Saturday mornings, I get the coffee going upstairs, you know, this this for the coffee pour. And then I set a brew timer and I and I put the timer uh from it's I say it from the kitchen, but I put the timer on this device right behind me. You just say, hey, set a timer for seven minutes, put on the studio show. And so then it comes down here and the alarm comes off, it goes off down here. So some helpful, those are some helpful pieces. I just upgraded to the plus. You know, I kind of held off. Yeah. I don't know why, but I kind of held off. So we're still kind of figuring out some of those some of those pieces. I don't find it a particularly good home automation assistant. Home assistant, the the application home assistant is much better at that. But yeah, it has its place. I mean, there's some things that I can do. If you're an Amazon Prime subscriber, you might as well. Right. Um you know, it's it's it's it has its place, right? It's one of those things that has its place. For some, I can see it, you know, very, very handy. If I had home automation for shades, you know, in your if you're if you're if you're in your home, if the shades were home automated, you could say, hey, bring the shades down 50% or the lights. We use it a ton for lights, right? You know, turn turn this on. All the studio lights here, everything, almost everything is on there. Um my shed power is on there, so I can say, hey, turn on the shed power, and it'll it'll turn that on out there. So yeah, there's it's it can be helpful.

Dave Jackson: 01:11:44
It's great, Rich points out, until the internet goes out. Or nothing works. Yeah, I got home last night and my my the ATT was having a bad day, and all of a sudden I was like, I went and I'm watching YouTube in the living room, but it's on like 480, like like the the lowest like DPI possible. And I'm like, what is going on? And then I pulled it up and I could see where it was like I had a stream, but it wasn't much of a signal, so I rebooted my router and it came back on. Speaking of fun toys and not you know, hardware, you have a new piece of hardware.

Jim Collison: 01:12:21
Yeah, a couple couple new pieces. I think I talked about last week. Uh I picked up the the iPod Pro, no, Air AirPod. AirPods, there we go. AirPods Pro 3, uh, so the newest version of this. I bought them because I wanted, they're not that much different than the two, but they do have some enhanced translation abilities, right? So put them in your ears, turn on the live app on your phone, the live translation app on your phone, and Bob's your uncle, you're off to doing translations. The the bummer thing was, and last week I realized you have to have a phone with Apple Intelligence for that thing to work. And I've been nursing my iPhone 12 along. I've I like that, I loved that phone, and it worked perfectly for me. And I was gonna hold on to that thing till it's death. Like I was gonna nurse that thing along and and get another six years out of it, probably, but I was gonna get uh nurse that thing along. Well, this encouraged me to make the upgrade to 17, and I went with just a regular 17, so two, two cameras, 256, not orange, it's black. You know, the new the pros are like orange and gray, some weird colors from that standpoint. If you're certainly if you're thinking about making an upgrade, the 17 Pro is a nice, nice rig. You'll pay 1300 bucks for it. But yeah, they're they've this is this is real money now. When your phone is more expensive than your computer, like my my phone was more expensive than the Mac Mini, like you're like, oh man, it's just didn't used to be that way, but it is it is now. But this week, so what was cool about this, Dave? So put the earbuds in, and then at work I use the Audio Technica uh uh T T P oh what's the the one to TRS? No, I've said this a thousand times, and for whatever reason, it's the over-the-ear headphones. I I have over-the-ear headphones that have the big mic. Yeah. BPH1. There we go. BPH1 from Audio Technica. So earbuds in, live translations on headphones over the the earbuds. And then I called two friends, one who speaks Portuguese in Brazil and one who speaks Spanish out of Mexico City. And I just surprised him and said, Hey, let's have a conversation. I don't want any English. And they were like, You sure? Like, yeah, let's do this thing. And Dave, that's kind of a life-changing experience from a translation standpoint. Like, still not, this is not Star Trek universal translator stuff, right? But go ahead.

Dave Jackson: 01:14:53
Well, so the this is where one guy was in Portugal, the other guy was where?

Jim Collison: 01:14:58
One one in Brazil speaking Portuguese, okay, and then one in Mexico City speaking Spanish.

Dave Jackson: 01:15:04
And they all can understand each other.

Jim Collison: 01:15:06
No, no, no. We these were separate. These were separate.

Dave Jackson: 01:15:09
Oh, okay. Oh, I see. But nonetheless, you can understand them.

Jim Collison: 01:15:12
They're speaking to me in Portuguese or Spanish. I'm replying in English, but they both know English, right? Obviously. If they're they were calling me, they they knew some English. They could have done it the other way on this. Right. One of the interesting things about this, so it's not Star Trek Universal Translator good yet. Like it's not like you're speaking and then all of a sudden it kicks in, right? It translates on your phone. So I put the phone up in a place where I could see it and watch the written translations first. And those are those are pretty good. There's it's right now Apple Intelligence is supporting five languages by the end of the month. So it mostly like Portuguese, Spanish, French, German, and English. And then at the end of the month, I think we're gonna get Mandarin, Chinese or Mandarin, Japanese, Korean, Thai, something along those lines at the end of the month here. So some some pretty big languages. And then what was interesting, you can download little hints to your phone so your phone can process it a little bit little bit faster. The written translation's pretty good. And and then it starts speaking it to you in your ears, which is super cool. Now, Apple's not the first to do this. Okay, so you can if you're not an Apple fan, you can do this. I think you can do this on the latest Google ones or Bows or whatever. This they're not the first, but I'm just saying it was pretty good. The Dave, the interesting thing, and I was telling you this in in pre-show, the interesting thing is not that it can do it, but it's interesting how our brain shifts to listening differently when we do this. So as they were talking, I was reading um what they first started saying. So you would see the translation come across. By the way, about 15 minutes into the conversation, they totally forgot we were doing this and they just started talking. Like it was not, you know, it was not, they weren't trying, you know. Sometimes you know, when you're you know you're being translated, you slow down, you speak more clearly, you write those kinds of things. They're just they were they kind of forgot, and we were just talking. But in a in my in in our my brain, what would happen is I'd read their sentence coming in, and generally we get the gist of what they're saying in the first part of the sentence. So I still I would start thinking about what I was gonna say back. When they ended, I could start saying something, and the last part of their sentence was being played in my ears. So I could hear kind of what they said in the last sentence, and then I it it that odd, awkward translation problem that sometimes we have where you're there's this silence, right? It's like the the satellite communications, you know, the old news guys that just stand there for a second waiting, you know, the weather guys that are out in the storm. Tell us how it is, Bob.

Coffee Jingle: 01:17:57
Yeah.

Jim Collison: 01:17:59
And then Bob's just staring at the camera, and then he's like, Oh, hey, Nancy, you know, and it's like it's just this long, awkward pause. That kind of broke the awkward pause to be able to have those conversations in two two conversations, about 45 minutes long. We had some interesting, I mean, it was not just you know, the the canary is yellow. No, I mean, these were like long conversations about significant things, them only in Spanish or in Portuguese and me only in English, and it seemed to work out pretty well. So, some really cool technology coming. I think this is gonna fit in the podcasting space somewhere. And I and I think like you know, for most of us today, we can only interview people in our own language for the most part. And imagine when this gets a little bit better, the the ability to, you know, you you could be interviewing somebody in Spanish. And you know, imagine being able to have a couple different tracks. Like, so you could have a track where you're in English and they're in Spanish. Let's say it's a Spanish person, you're in English, they're in Spanish. And for people who know both languages, they could get that track. For people who want the Spanish, you're in Spanish and they're in Spanish. For people who are in English, you're in English and they're in English. Like, imagine how cool that could be. Now, there's a little bit of this going on on YouTube, right? There's a new, if you haven't noticed, there's a new language option inside of YouTube. So if you go to YouTube videos, most channels I think have been enabled for it now. Instead of subtitles, it's now called languages. You can click on that and they're dubbing, and it used to be 13. I was looking at my account this morning. It's like 20 some now, 20 some dubbed languages that are out there. I think we're getting super close to this being very, very functional across languages. But how cool would that be?

Dave Jackson: 01:19:45
Richard wants to know does it give you does it give you text so you can reply in their language?

Jim Collison: 01:19:52
Yeah, wait, let's see. I if I knew it, I could. It does, it does in a tran in the in the app, it does translate what I'm saying back to them in their language. So I think it's like a messaging app. So I think they could go in and be watching what you're saying, and because this is the whole idea, right? The whole idea is they didn't make these for podcasting. They didn't weren't thinking about podcasting. They were thinking about you're out in, you know, you're out, you meet somebody IRL, and you've got these things in, and you can have this conversation, and you could both be looking at the phone and it would translate you for them and them for you, right? But this is a kind of an interesting hack on the podcasting.

Dave Jackson: 01:20:29
Well, then eventually it'll be in that person's voice. So it'll be going in equilibrios tiempos instead of back in the day. Yeah, no, right. Very good, Dave Jackson. That was nice. Thank you. Thank you, Google Translate. Otherwise, I'd be like, I don't know how to say back in the day in Spanish.

Jim Collison: 01:20:48
Well, and the dubbing things too on YouTube, eventually they're saying will be our voices. Today there it's somebody, it's you know, it's a it's a voice actor, so to speak, right? Well, but eventually they'll take samples and it will be our voices being dubbed.

Dave Jackson: 01:21:01
Yeah. Todd wants to know is Siri and Apple Intelligence, is that two different things? Or he said, I'll ask Siri for stuff and thought it was integrated.

Jim Collison: 01:21:10
Oh, I don't know. I don't know the answer to that question. I know the app. I know the app, when you go into the settings, it says Siri and Apple Intelligence. So they're governed by the same thing. I I I think Siri is using some Apple Intelligence stuff, you know, not well. Siri's not very good, to be honest. But no, she's not. This part of it is get is good and getting better. And then I think Jeff mentioned that there's a firmware update coming for older iPod pros. It'll work if you have Apple Intelligence on your phone. So 15 plus on your phones. If you have an iPhone 15 plus, the 15s won't work. It's got to be 15 plus or newer. So 15 plus, 16 series, 17 series, the new 17 series just came out a couple weeks ago. Certainly not, if you're not doing this, not a reason to upgrade. I wasn't going to, but I wanted to, I wanted to use this. I'm gonna use the heck out of it. Yeah, but imagine being able to go to a conference in Spanish and put them in and hear everything.

Dave Jackson: 01:22:09
Where is Jeff said that he did that and he said he was able where did it go? But he said he basically did that. He said it wasn't perfect, but he was able to kind of, yeah. I just used the translation feature for a Spanish-only speaking gig I just did in Orlando, not perfect, but it allowed me to follow along decently. So for sure it does.

Jim Collison: 01:22:29
Yeah, and you could read or listen. I would recommend you don't do both because your brain is super confusing to your brain to be reading and and listening at the same time. Although I think it's one of those things that the more you do this, the better you'll get at it. Like I'm interested in continuing to try this out in certain situations. I mean, if I could have any superpower, it would be to speak all languages. I I don't need strength or speed or whatever those things are. See-through walls. I want a superpower of all languages. That would be awesome.

Dave Jackson: 01:23:02
Yeah, Uncle Marv says Apple Intelligence is separate. It's a separate background, but upgrades how Siri works.

Jim Collison: 01:23:09
Yeah, so Siri's taking advantage of it.

Dave Jackson: 01:23:12
Yeah. I know when they came out with the latest phone or whatever, they've been saying Apple Intelligence is coming, is coming, is coming. And I I've yet to install it on my phone. I kind of don't really care. Like, I what do you have?

Jim Collison: 01:23:25
What's your phone?

Dave Jackson: 01:23:26
A 16. Yeah, okay. And I'm like, I've not heard anybody going, oh, you have to install this.

Jim Collison: 01:23:32
I would install it because I think it makes it could make Siri a little bit better. Uh, because Siri will use it, and you could download it. And if you haven't, it might have already been downloaded, to be honest. You may have it not even it's there. Check it, go in in the general settings, and there's a Sirius of Sirian Apple Intelligence. You can check it out and see if it's there. I'd have it just on an iPhone, just because I think it's gonna make the iPhone for those kinds of things a little bit better. So some interesting, and I'll be excited to see the new updates at the end of the month. We also have I also have partners in Korean and in Japanese, and that's like Mandarin, that I'm excited to try this with. Those the the English to Asian language transfers is hard. That's uh, you know, German, which is you know, German and English, were derived from the same language. So, you know, Dutch and German and English, all of those very, very similar. That's a little bit easier. Uh French, French, a little bit different, right, from that perspective. But when we get into the Asian languages, those are much harder translation problems to solve. So it'll be interesting to see how well they do in that space.

Dave Jackson: 01:24:43
Danny said he's still waiting for something that can handle a Scottish brogue. That's uh they haven't figured that out yet.

Jim Collison: 01:24:49
You know what? Beer, beer handles that really well. Just drink a whole bunch of beer and then just laugh a lot. That's that's the way you handle Scottish. Yeah.

Dave Jackson: 01:24:59
Randy Black says the full version of Apple Intelligence is coming, but isn't really here yet. They've delayed repeatedly their new voice assistant that is fully AI powered. Yeah. So PowerPoint will translate through captioning. Yep. Let me do a presentation to Mexican academics who didn't speak English. You already mentioned YouTube is dubbing. So pretty soon we'll just be able to talk to everybody about everything, and that'll be uh that'll be wild. Be interesting to see.

Jim Collison: 01:25:26
Yeah, the days of the universal translator are coming. I mean, we saw that in the 60s and in Star Trek, right? And you'd be like, oh, that's kind of cool. And it's taken us a long time to get there.

Jim Collison: 01:25:36
Yeah.

Jim Collison: 01:25:37
Last five years for translations have been big. Mike, the Microsoft translator on your phone is pretty good. You set it down, hit play. It's got, you know, it's like the old, it's like table tennis. On one side is you and the other side is them, and it's listening in both languages, and you know, so you could put your phone across. Some of them assume, you know, you're gonna hold that phone up and look at it. The smart ones are like, hey, I'm gonna lay my phone down on the table, and the person's gonna sit across from me and we're gonna have this conversation and read it. Some of them are playing back audio too. You can turn on the audio part of it and say, play the audio in this language or whatever. We had a Japanese foreign exchange student here, a high school student a month ago, and we almost exclusively use the translator. Like it was pretty amazing. For podcasting, this could be uh it needs to be faster for podcasters. Like imagine if you and I were doing this. But and I don't actually I don't know why we haven't seen a podcast service do this yet. Why we haven't seen StreamYard or uh Ecamm or OBS or whatever, where they offer in-ear translations on based on channels. So, you know, say I speak Spanish, why couldn't why can't that be embedded in this where you're hearing me back in English? You could turn that on, and I'm hearing you in Spanish when I turn when I enable that and turn it on. I I think that's got to be the next thing in podcasting. I mean that opens so many doors to so much today. Listen, the not not to listen, today the podcast world is dominated by English. It just is. Now I know there's some it's getting bigger in other areas and you know in Spanish space and in in in Mandarin and and you know, some of those kinds of things, but it's so dominated by English. Dave, imagine the world that could open to you if you could have guests that didn't speak English.

Dave Jackson: 01:27:27
I mean, yeah, that would be cool. Randy says, Is anyone headed to Pod Indy? I did not know Pod Indy was going on this year. That's weird. I know Brad. I would have helped promote. Really weird. Okay. I'm not at this point. It's a month away. I got a month. I might go. Wow, that's really weird. I've not heard a peep about Pod Indy. Um I never remember this one. Boomcaster. I know Danny uses Boomcaster for live streaming. Does live closed captioning, not sure if it's multilingual, but the option is there. So yeah, because I always I've never tried Boomcaster, and I know Danny uses it and loves it. I tried Riverside this week at Podpage. It kicked me out of the at at minute one and a half, and then halfway through, the guy I was talking to, whose video just got really soft and then turned to Zzz. That was it. So he jumped out, jumped back in, and we were able to finish. He was on his built-in mic, which was a bummer, but to their credit, I was able to go into their text editor and remove all the stuff where it messed up, and then I was able to I had to apply their what in Descript is called studio sound, so their AI editing polishing tool, because it it made his when he was using the built-in microphone, it made his stuff sound much more presentable, but then I wasn't using the AI stuff to polish my sound because it sounded okay, but it made him much louder than I was, and I went to export and say, hey, level out the volume on this stuff, and it said we can't because you're using the you know audio polishing on the guest. So I then had to go into my track and polish my audio, even though it didn't need polishing, just to make it as loud as he was. So in the end, it worked, but I have used Riverside. Now, also keep in mind they just rolled out new features. That now you can say, like, remove the boring parts of this show and it will do it for you. And I was like, Oh, I always say that. As soon as they roll out new new features, what is followed is called bugs. And that's what I had. And so give them another two weeks, they'll probably work out the bugs. And I also need to email them and say, hey, this was not. handy to have people kicking me out and that whole nine yards. So yeah. So Yay Riverside, I love the technique it was like I say, their technology helped clean it up, but it was not when yet it and that was for PodPage. So you know your your crappy you know technology makes my brand look not great. And you know, luckily Brandon was like, no, as long as we were able to get through it. But anyway, what is coming up on Home Gadget Geeks?

Jim Collison: 01:30:26
Yeah, you got a little you got a little preview of it here just a second ago. So we talked about the the the uh the AirPods we talked about the 17 and I moved from T-Mobile to visible. I never thought I'd go on one of those you know visible as a Verizon sub I don't know what you call them right say cricket some of those other things. So I made that switch from from T-Mobile to visible which the remember the old days of switching phones Dave when it was like a whole day. Oh yeah right not so much anymore. Anyways we'll talk about that if you like that kind of stuff homegadgetgeeks.com it's available for you right now.

Dave Jackson: 01:31:04
I see I went over to podindie.com he's calling it AI for content creators which is why Craig is there. Craig does AI goes to college um yeah it's all AI. So it's not really pod indie although it kind of is but uh if Craig's gonna be talking all day I might go listen to that because if I'm gonna listen to somebody talk about AI it's going to be Dr. Craig van Sleyke. Very cool. On the school of podcasting it's question of the month time I totally forgot that last week was the last week of the month and totally forgot it. But uh we were talking about how long did it take you to go from idea to launched podcast and I have yet to even hear the answers so uh I'll be doing that later on this afternoon. And uh of course we're here every Saturday 1030 Eastern ask the podcastcoach.com slash live I if I get brave I might try Riverside for this one week just to it's you know the live streaming part was pretty easy but on the other hand if it ain't broke uh don't fix it so uh and I'll just do all my things that are driving me crazy on the pod page side but who knows but uh thanks as always to the chat room to uh Mark over at podcastbranding.co and based on a true storypodcast dot com we'll see you next week