Are You Ready for the Shift from RSS to API in Podcasting?

Introduction and Greetings

SPEAKER_00 0:20

Ask the Podcast Coach for May 9th, 2026. 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 the School of Podcasting.com, and joining me right over there is the one and only Jim Cullison from theaverage guy.tv. Jim, how's it going, buddy?

SPEAKER_02 0:46

Greetings, Dave. Happy Saturday to you. Uh Mother's Day weekend. So happy Mother's Day to all those mothers out there. Appreciate them. Especially mine. No longer with us. Yeah.

Mother's Day Tributes and Casual Chat

SPEAKER_00 0:58

Yeah, that's the part that gets kind of tough. Got a got a got a favorite mom story?

SPEAKER_01 1:05

My mom always used to say, we say this all the time. She always, when something didn't go right, she'd go, oof. And we just we made endless oofah. We made endless fun of that.

SPEAKER_02 1:16

So it's super good. I had a great mom and uh and very, very much appreciate all that she did. She kind of gave me this skill. She would, she would, she knew everybody. Like if she didn't know you, she knew you in three minutes. Like she had questions, and she would always try to make a connection back to like she tried to find someone that you knew that she knew. That was her goal. Like, how to so where'd you go to school? Where'd you do this? Where'd you do that? Anyways, everybody was my mom's friend.

SPEAKER_00 1:47

I would come home from work and my friends would be in my living room. I'm like, what are you guys doing? And they're like, Oh, we're just hanging out with your mom. And I was like, because we had we were like the fun house. We had a ping-pong table. My favorite mom story. It's not a something she did, it's just the like, how how do moms know what to do all the time? So it is 1972, kids, and for the price of$7, you could go see the Osmonds at the bottom of my street. We had a little football stadium that held about 40,000 people, and 20,000 people showed up to watch the Osmonds. Long story short, they shot tear gas into the audience to get the guys out because they wouldn't let them leave. And that tear gas floated up the street into my house where all of our windows are open because we didn't. And my mom, we're just sitting there watching, I don't know, the Waltons or whatever. And all of a sudden, my mom gets up, goes to the bathroom, grabs a bunch of wash rags, gets them wet, comes back out, not panicking at all, and just goes here, breathe through this. And I was like, is that like in the mom manual, like page 37? In the event that your house gets tear gassed, go to the bathroom and get some wash rags. So yes, heck.

Sponsor:PodcastBranding.co

SPEAKER_02 2:56

Moms are the best. They're the best. The coffee pour is because of my mom. This was I'm not saying her coffee maker, but this is how she made coffee. And I remember going one day to see them and say, You want a cup of coffee? I was a frou-fru guy, you know, I like the cream and sugar. You want some coffee? And she said, I said, yeah, she poured just like this. Here, we'll do the coffee pour it. That's why we have the coffee pour on Ask the Podcast video.

Sponsor: Based On a True Story Podcast

SPEAKER_00 3:22

There you go. And that coffee pour is brought to you by our good friend Mark over at podcastbranding.co. Uh, he does artwork, he does websites, he does PDFs, he does business cards, anything that you want to look good in front of your audience. Well, again, podcastbranding.co. He's done hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of artwork for people. But like I said, if you need a whole website or anything that's gonna look good, Mark has been uh podcasting a long time and has been doing graphic arts longer than that. And what I love about it is I'll give him an idea of kind of what the show is about. I think the last one I did, I gave him a clip of the show just so he can get an idea of the vibe that's going on. And then he gave me a couple examples. Like I brought them on here. We all kind of said, Yeah, we kind of like this one and that one. And what I love is if, like in in my case, I was like, hey, can we change this one color to black? And he was like, sure. And the next thing you know, I had exactly what I wanted, and it looked amazing. It looked definitely better than anything I was gonna do in Canva. So when you're ready to look good, podcastbranding.co.

Spotify API, Video Podcasts, and RSS Future

SPEAKER_02 4:36

And of course, big thanks to our good friend Dan Lefebvre over there, based on a true story, based on a true storypodcast.com. Dan is in the chat this morning. He said, Good morning, everyone. Setting up to finally record a new episode as soon as Ask the Podcast Coach is over. Great. So if you haven't checked it out yet, head out to based on a true story, based on true storypodcast.com. Our live folks obviously won't be there, but Dan will be recording it. New episode coming out. If you haven't listened to it, you want to. Always does a great job. Always based on a true story.

SPEAKER_00 5:07

He says recording a new episode right after Ask the Podcast Coach is over.

SPEAKER_02 5:12

Yeah. So Dan, thanks for as always, thanks for your sponsorship.

Standing Out in the AI Era

SPEAKER_00 5:16

Yeah. Based on a true storypodcast.com. Well, I was checking the chat room to see if they had any questions before we jump into this. I think it's a big deal, and part of it is a big deal because we don't know the answer to the question, and that is what happens, let's say I'm just going to use Libson because they announced that they have now set it up to where you can submit a video. So you upload a video to Libson and then they submit it to Spotify for you. And Dave Jones over at you know podcasting 2.0 and the podcast index, he said, hey, if you distribute a video to Spotify, their new system is now served from your RSS and has to be managed exclusively from hosting on their platform. In other words, if I'm on Libsin and later move from Libsin, I'm stuck on Spotify with Libsin. Like you can't change it. And there the thing is, if I zoom in on this, we can't really see. He's got this one clip. He went down and said, look, this is even worse. And I think these are, yeah, I understand that enabling Spotify video will permanently replace my existing Spotify RSS feed with an API-based distribution. This cannot be undone. And I believe this is from Podigy. That's the thing. We're trying to figure out where these are coming from. I understand that my Spotify podcast will be exclusively managed through whoever your media host is and won't automatically transfer to another hosting provider, and that this cannot be undone. And so you're kind of locked into your media host. And I I when I was looking at this, James Cridlin said there was like 3,500 podcasters changed media host last year, or last I think it was it might have even been last month. It was a lot. Danny from Captivate says Spotify did clarify that they still do the manual update on the RSS feed for videos, saying it takes a manual work on both sides. So yeah, if you decide later I want to be RSS-based, not API based, they will do it, but it's a manual thing. And so that could be an issue. I I hate relying on any media host to uh give me back my show because there's not a lot of incentive. Like, hey, I'm leaving you. Well, not really, but I just it's it's interesting, and just the fact that the more I looked into this, everybody's like, so what happens if I do this? And with RSS, we we knew what happened. Oh, you just put in a redirect and all this, and yeah, Ralph says they had Rob Greenley on and discussed how some of the big players are moving to this API model. This may very well easy for me to say, it may cause a break in traditional RSS. Yeah, then this is my worry that they're just slowly because I I I've said it before, big companies like control. They just do, and that's why they're big companies, because they can get away with doing that. And so for me, I just worry that okay, you know, YouTube has their own little YouTube thing, and now Spotify has got this API thing. And the the problem is with that, with RSS, if Spotify kicks you out, great, you still got an RSS feed, and your audience can can keep listening. But if the only way your audience could get to you was via this API thing, and then they go, No soup for you. Well, now you better have a website, you'd better have been promoting your own website and a newsletter, because you just got cut off from your audience, and everybody's like, Ah, Dave, what are you worried about? I'm like, eh. It just, you know, there's a reason why there's no money in the music business right now. I've seen so many articles on this where people like I just listened to a thing about the Black Keys and how their drummer is like a really outspoken guy. Why? Because he's not making any money now that they're big, he is. And he's like, but I remember what it was like when I was a struggling musician. He goes, There's no money in the music business. So the bigger an industry gets, the less they take care of the people that are actually making the content. And I don't, I don't know. Yeah, Danny says from Captivate, the API is primarily for videos. Spotify has always used API to publish on their own platform. Interesting. RSS is still primary, and the alternative enclosure overcomes any issues with needing API for video. Yeah, and that's where I've seen like Buzz Sprout, there are a couple James has a list on his website of pricing and who does what. And not everybody's embracing the alternate enclosure, which would be in the feed where you go, hey, here's the link to the audio. This this is what I kind of don't get. I'm not sure why people aren't doing that. I don't understand why apps aren't doing this. I don't everybody, you know, here again, Apple's doing their own special thingy. If you want to switch between Apple and or uh audio and video, you know, you have to do it our way. Whereas if everybody just embraced the alternative enclosure, then everybody would be doing it the exact same way. And all the apps, Pocket Cast and Overcast, all these people could go, oh, here's the button to watch the video, here's the button to watch the audio. And I'm I don't understand why companies aren't embracing that. Most of them say they are, it's coming, but it's just weird that, you know, once again, Spotify is not really embracing that. And I'm like, yeah, but that's that was the whole thing. And then we could go see podcasting 2.0. There's a third thing that we came up with that everybody said, it's a good idea. And it's just uh a mighty slow adoption.

SPEAKER_02 11:02

And I'm like, you know, you can't listen, you can't rely on an open platform, you cannot rely on people to do the right things. They just don't. Right? I mean, we when we think of I mean RSS had its run, uh and it's still having its run. Let's just be really clear. I mean, it's still uh we talk like nobody's using it. Uh and of course that's not true. But you know, it it anytime you rely on an open standard or for the community to do things, it just doesn't really work. Like you gotta follow the money on everything that's that you do. You gotta follow the money. And you know, this would be this would be like whining about vinyl records when cassettes came out, or then CDs came out, and oh the cassette, it's over, nobody, you know. Yeah, friends, things move on. Like it we're we're in that, we're in that move on phase, right? We're gonna need to move on from this a little bit and figure out these are spaces that these companies are gonna put money into to grow their gardens. If we're gonna call them walled gardens, that's fine. But they're gonna do things to grow those gardens. They're gonna try to attract people and bring them in, they're gonna do big marketing things you could never do. And so, but they're not ever gonna do this for free. They're for-profit companies, friends. That's their job. They have they have people who've bought stock and in it, and they are they're beholden to their stockholders and they're beholden or to their founders, right? I think I think sometimes we it gets ridiculous at what we think some of these companies should and shouldn't do. And you know, certainly they're just they do wrong things. I get all that, right? But this is this is the next thing. These this is these are CDs that are replacing vinyl. And yes, and I'd love, I love the purest, the purest in all of us is oh god bless RSS, you know, it's just the best thing ever. It's still there, but there are these companies that want to make money in this space, are gonna they're going to develop their own way of doing it. And I I just I think we gotta get over it and just embrace embrace it for what it is. If you don't want to do it, don't. If you do want to do it, which most of you will, even though you'll say, Ah, I don't know, I don't like them, you're gonna do it because you don't want to be left out, right?

SPEAKER_00 13:29

Oh so you're gonna do it. I I know when you said that I I told Danny last night, I said, I'm gonna jump in the pool just because I want to play with. You have to I'm basically gonna and it's funny because I was gonna take stuff from my YouTube channel, but that has the little school of podcasting jingle on it, and I'm gonna do some sort of podcasting tip. I was going through my domains last night. I actually own how to podcast.com. I'm like, that sounds like the name of a video podcast, and I'm just gonna put it on Apple just to play, you know. So I I told him, I'm like, normally it's like, oh, you add, you know, whatever it is, 12 bucks to a show on Captivate to make it ready for video. And I'm like, I'm just gonna add a new show and add the$12, you know, so I'll add it that way. Danny says it depends on the demand. Very few podcasters were asked asked us for supporting it. Yeah. And we tend to be specific on features we support as opposed to just adding a tick in the box. Yeah. I I interviewed Justin Jackson, this is my next episode on the School of Podcasting, and Albin from Buzz Sprout, and they did say they had a fair amount of people, like hundreds, not thousands, but hundreds of people that said, we want to do this. So yeah, Dan is helping us out if we're all going, what does API stand for? All presidents incest? No, that's not it. Uh AP API means application programming interface. It's just the way two apps talk to each other. RSS could be one of those ways, so that's not mutually exclusive, yeah. Yeah, it's and so Ralph has already submitted his show. He's doing it via Captivate. He's now you've got to wait, and it's like the good old days. You've got to wait for Apple to approve you, which I hear can take up to two weeks. Now, Albin said he's had people like more like two days. It's so it's but as more and more people jump on this, it's gonna take longer to you know get approved. And I'm sure that's just for the porn factor. They just want to make sure you know so it'll be but and they're you know, back in the day, the that's the way it was with Apple. You people go, Oh, I want to launch on Monday and it's Friday. You're like, no, you're not. You're like, you gotta, it's gonna take a week or two to get approved. So yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:50

Yeah, they'll they'll come up with a process to auto-approve. This will get better over time, right? They'll they they always do, but they want to figure out okay, what what's how is this gonna work? How how what's the uptick in it? And then they'll provide some resources to make this go a lot faster. Remember when it was instant then? Like for a long time you'd wait a couple days, no, yeah, it was maybe a week, and then it was a couple days. And then I remember submitting a podcast from Gallup, and it was nearly instant. Like I submitted it, and then boom, you're approved.

SPEAKER_00 16:18

And I would I would walk somebody through it, we'd submit their RSS feed, and then we'd go and submit it to Amazon or any other place that needed it. And by the time we're done submitting these four or five other places, we'd go back to Apple and your link was ready. Now you weren't searchable yet, but you had the link to Apple Podcasts. So Chris Stone says, the cassette, the worst musical configuration of all time, steps down from his soapbox. No, actually, and I found some of these in my basement, eight-track tapes are the words. My favorite about eight-track tapes, and I don't know who who said, Oh, this is a good idea. So you're listening to Neil Diamond, you know, I am said the chair, right? And in the middle of the song, it would fade out and go, and then it would fade. And it is just like like you never couldn't believe that.

SPEAKER_02 17:06

But hey, quality, though. Great quality.

SPEAKER_00 17:09

Especially when you took you took the matchbook and wedged it under the eight trap to make sure it wasn't playing.

SPEAKER_02 17:15

Got it. Yeah, to get it, to get it all. But good, good quality and portable. We have to remember that was a portable format that didn't exist before, you know. You had vinyl, couldn't put vinyl in your car. Like that wasn't gonna that wasn't gonna happen. You weren't gonna get it.

SPEAKER_00 17:31

You might skip a little when you hit a book.

AI Slop, Addiction, and Regulation Concerns

SPEAKER_02 17:33

You know, A-Track. And then of course the cassettes changed all of that, right? A A-Track only had its its time in the sun. You know, I it's funny, it's you know, I was I did a little research before the show talking about topics for this week, and this is a big topic. Every everybody's thinking about video and where's RSS going. I think when we look, when we think about the what will happen to podcasting on RSS, just follow the blog story, right? Who's blogging anymore? Now, can you blog? Sure. Yeah, you can still like it all still works, right? But all the mechanisms for it, all remember all the blogger and blog feeds and alert, right? Now, can you still do that? You still can, right? It's still available, but nobody's developing for it, right? Nobody's and and I think when if we think about RSS and and its its usage, I think what'll happen is all the podcast players that we have, when they start going over to whatever's new from that perspective, and people stop developing for RSS, you can't kill it. Like it's not gonna die, it's an open standard. Like it's the what what kills it is when people stop using it. Or people like we just don't blogs are just not a thing anymore. Oh, I I nobody talks about them.

SPEAKER_00 18:56

They're there. Well, they don't talk about them, and I definitely do them on a I mean my show notes are basically a blog because I'm in a land of Google, you know. Gotta give them something.

SPEAKER_02 19:07

But we don't talk about it that much anymore. No, we don't you know when Google shut down our their readers, everybody was like, ah, and then we just found new ways to do things, right?

SPEAKER_00 19:16

In a reader feedly. Shocking that Google would have something that was very, very popular and then shut it down. I know. Yeah, in terms of getting improved, Danny from Captivate, the two-week thing is is the max. If you already have an approved API key for something like delegated delivery for your podcast, you're pretty much approved right away. If RSS dies, what will Podpage do? That's a good question. Uh we would go whatever the next thing is. Yeah, whatever the next thing is, we'll then you put your API key into Podpage and Yeah, right, right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:53

Yeah, yeah. By the way, I'm getting some feedback on the blogging comment, right? Listen, we still write plenty of content that makes its way to the to the internet and you can call it blogging or whatever. But that that that has left the consciousness of people like I'm a blogger, right? That's that's that doesn't happen anymore for the most part. It I'm not saying it's completely gone, right?

SPEAKER_00 20:16

Well, the other thing is focus on that anymore. Here's another thing where we've changed the word, right? Because podcasting means, you know, my this this this windscreen now is a podcast. You know, look at this podcast, it's black and spongy. A lot of times now people call what do they call a blog? They call it a substack.

SPEAKER_02 20:35

And what is it? Yeah, yeah. Yep, it's not a substack. Well, I mean, they're not we're not podcasters anymore, we're influencers, right? That is begun, right? That's kind of entered the consciousness of of thought and what people are saying. It's like, oh no, yeah, you're influencers, because it's not just podcasting. You might do community management, you might be writing and doing blog and doing the blogging or the sub stacking or whatever you want to. What could you imagine if Substack had come along first and we were substackers?

SPEAKER_00 21:02

I'm a stacker, man. Yeah. Nikki Nikki says every media on the internet is a podcast, yep, and every video game is Nintendo.

SPEAKER_03 21:11

Uh yeah, useless to argue new ones.

SPEAKER_00 21:14

Oh, I argue anyway, though. I will, you know, that's it. Because somebody said, Well, if it's delivered via API, is it a podcast?

SPEAKER_01 21:21

Go, go.

SPEAKER_00 21:22

In in my book, you know, it's like, no, it's not.

SPEAKER_02 21:27

Does it matter though? Does it matter? I don't think it's a good idea.

SPEAKER_00 21:30

It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter yet until they start taking people down because we elected somebody that said, Well, you can't say booger anymore on a podcast, and there goes your money, and you know, it's uh you gotta you gotta go for that worst case scenario, which makes you sound very tinfoil hatty, but you know, I hope we don't move away. Because here's the thing like so let's say this thing with them, the video on Spotify. Well, there is a solution, just upload the video to Spotify yourself. It takes all of five minutes, you've already got your show now, it's just copy and paste. But I mean, Jim, you've done this with other platforms where you would upload to like five different places, and you got us, you know, you got some downloads from that, but I I don't want to go to like, oh, I have to upload it to Apple and now Spotify, and here's my thing for iHeart, and here's my thing for Amazon. Amazon and Overcast and Pocket Cast and you know everywhere a cast cast, you know. So you know, we'll we'll see. It's it's gonna be interesting. So Ralph wants to know in the age of AI, how do we stand out stand out as ourselves and maintain trust with our audience? Here's a novel idea. Don't use it. Seems like AI is slowly taking over, and we got to find a way to stand out amongst the slop. Yeah, I always say I go back to Adele. You know, I love Demi Lovato, Christina Aguilera, even Jessica Simpson. If you watch those ladies, very all of them very talented, they were all by the end of the song singing in their underwear. Uh almost every show they were on. It's like they started off with a jacket, and by the third chorus, the jacket was off, you know, and that's just the way it was. And Adele came out with this amazing voice, not really any better or worse than Demi Lovato. Demi Vlot Lovato is one of my favorite singers. But and Adele came out, she didn't dance, she just stood at a microphone, she went the Mariah Carey route and just stood at a microphone and sang and had really, really good songs that resonated with people. And that's how she stood out was by not doing what everybody else is doing. So if everybody's doing AI slop, lean into being human. Although I did I there was a 134-page report put out by the mayor of Akron about they they had an independent study of our police because our policemen have a bad habit of shooting the citizens. And it turns out it's only like 0.02%. But those 0.02% get a lot of headlines every time they shoot somebody. But I'm like, I'm not reading 134 pages. So I threw it in to Google Notebook. So good old Kyle and Sheila. And here's the interesting thing about Kyle and Sheila, they now say Oh, nice. Because Gary is like, Well, if you look at this, they're really digging into the uh and I was like, Wait, Gary just said or Kyle or whatever. I was like, it's and they did. They insert ums now, and I was like, that's new. So again, they're trying to sound human, and of course they are.

Websites, Own Your Platform, and Video Shift

SPEAKER_02 24:31

So I listen, this this term AI slop is super interesting, and I think it's a little bit of a human reaction to being one-upped. And I think because AI content tends to be now, especially now, it's getting better all the time, tends to be a little tighter, tends to be a little bit better, tends to be have the words spelled correctly in most cases, tends to have much better grammar than most of us do. And we call it slop, but it it actually now is probably better than what most people would make, most humans would make on their own. Now, listen, I I I creatives, I get it. You're smarter, I get all I get that, I get all that stuff. But we we've listened we've democratized content. It's now the AI can create any kind of content we want, right? As this was first coming out a couple years ago, and everybody was like, oh, content, content, content. What what do you do in a world where all the content is basically the same, which is which is where we are with AI in a lot of ways. Not not the same, exactly the same content, but you can get to it, have access to it, create it, do it any way you want, as fast as you want, and make as much as you want, right? So now we just have more information that's out there about it. The interesting thing is we're using AI to create content, and then we're using AI to take that same content and distill it down for our small brains so that we can, so we don't have to read, you know, we don't want to read, you just you just admit it to it. You didn't want to read 132 pages, you're not interested in that. So you have so AI is blowing out all this documentation, all this, all the words, it's blown out. Then it's then we're having to use the AI again to to bring it down. I I don't know if it's I to be honest with you, I don't know if it's changed that much. Like I don't, I don't know. It's helpful in some areas, it's not helpful in others. Guess what? Humans, helpful in some areas, not helpful in others, right? And so it's just added as as we think of about this, it's just added another tool for us to use to kind of get to whatever we're trying to figure out from that standpoint. For some, you know, I I I think it's here, friends. I it's not going away. Yeah, this is this is here. The cassette is here, it's taking over HRAC tape, right? And so we've we've got to figure out some ways to kind of embrace it and work with it. It's gonna have it's gonna have light, it's gonna have uh regulation models that got to be built in and some of those kinds of things to it. But friends, it's here, like and it's it's pretty awesome if you use it as a tool. But if it's a hammer and you're trying to use it to open windows, well, then yeah, you're probably gonna break a few, right?

Clip Tools, AI Costs, and Local Models

SPEAKER_00 27:16

Well, that's it. I I use it sometimes on my images. I know at Podpage, I often use it. I I will write, we do a newsletter every Monday, and I will write the blurb, I will throw it into Chat GPT where Brendan has set up kind of a the way he wants things to look and the the voice of Pod Page, and it will change a little bit of what I said to match the voice of Podpage, and also find out that there's a typo. I just put out a substack Wednesday, and I was, I don't know why, but I was in a hurry, and I put it out. And this anytime I make this mistake, I go, you did it. This is probably the fourth time I've done this in about five years. I don't spell check the in this case, it was a subtitle. I'm all super just you know, going through a comb on everything in the newsletter, but the actual title and subtitle, and it should have been, and I'm going to do something, whatever it was. And instead it said, and I going to do something. I did, I left off the M and I was like, oh, you idiot. And that's where I'm like, well, if you know, I didn't have AI check that part. So it's uh again, the right tool for the right job. We had the Z-Man had a question. He goes, Maybe it's just me, but it seems like this podcast space might be headed towards websites and website access alone. Website access alone, no. You you definitely need a website because it helps you get found. I mean, everybody's like, how do I get found? Do you have a website? No. Well, that would be step one. Some place that you can have keywords and you know, everybody's like, oh, but AI. Well, AI is kind of behind the scenes using search engines, and if you're not in a search engine, you're probably not going to be there. But I think when you say websites alone, I think if if programmatic ads continue to be crappy, you know, three, five dollars, I I see more people doing the crowdfunding, you know, give me five dollars instead of having to get a thousand downloads for that, and I'll give you a bonus episode or you know, what's the no cussing, a clean version? Oh, speaking of that, remember when I I played the so so do I think it's going website only? No. I I see premium content might be behind a paywall, but that's not really a website. That's our good friend RSS via Buzz Sprout or Captivate or Patreon, or we use Supercast, you know, so that's the the beauty of that. But you need a website. That's uh I I see here's something I see so much, and I go, oh, you're just missing the boat. And that's where most media hosts give you what I call a jukebox, where you can have you copy this code and it will show the last 10 episodes of your show. And it's so great because you just copy, you paste it, and you set it and forget it. Except there is zero, as in no SEO for that. Zero. Not every episode should be a blog. Think of it like a blog post with a player, and that's where you know, pod page, WordPress, all these things do that. You can set it up to do it automatically, and you know, it's I just if you know you're in the world of Google, you need words, and that little box has no words. In fact, technically, that little box is not even on your website. It's like somebody cut a hole in your website and they just stuck this little thing to fill the hole. So there's no RS, there's no too many, I was gonna say there's no RSS for that. There's no SEO for that, too many anagrams here, but yeah. Let's see, let's see, where are we going here?

unknown 30:51

St.

SPEAKER_00 30:51

Clinton says RSS feeds are used for more than just podcasts. When I first started using RSS feeds, it was for news sites, yep. Blogs and other things. I remember, was it was yeah, well, there was blogger, but there was another one. But yeah, I know Google Reader. Now there's Feedly. I use NO Reader. Danny says, Can 100% confirm Dave will argue regardless. Met podcast movement in Washington. He was adamant we were in debt. Yeah. So Ralph says, I honestly feel like we've moved past the word podcast, and now we have shows. That's what I always say, which are delivered via a platform or platforms you choose. I guess I don't see the argument of the word podcast. The only thing I've I've said before about the word podcast is I just saw somebody say, in fact, Alvin did. He said, Well, we've been seeing where video podcasts are on the rise. And I go, I'm like, hmm, 92% sure that if we peeled back that report, what it really shows is that YouTube videos are on the rise, which we know is true. YouTube is taking over the living room. So it's not video podcasts, it's YouTube, and that's all I want. Break out YouTube and video podcasts, because they are technically two different things. And then we might find out that, hey, you know what? Video podcasting isn't on the rise, YouTube is. And then we could go, oh, we should be on YouTube then, not creating APIs for people to watch on Apple Podcasts. That's the only reason I care about that, is the stats get all wonky. And then when you're trying to make decisions moving forward, and you're like, well, when they say podcast, do they mean like an actual podcast, or are they talking about Hulu, which is not a podcast? It's a show. I agree. And the other thing that's happening, I've already heard it, and this is a lot, for people that are jumping that used to be audio only. In fact, I did it earlier, and I realized after I did it, I'm like, oh, you just fell into your own trap. And that is when you show something on the screen and you talk about it. When I was showing that screenshot, and I think I said, you'll see here. And the minute you say, you'll see here, and somebody is listening to the show, they go, Oh, he's not really talking to me. And so, or, you know, up here in the upper right hand corner, you'll see, see how that is? Yeah, that's not gonna work. Well, the the listening audience just went, I have no idea what he's talking about. I can't see in the upper right hand corner. And when I was interviewing Justin Jackson, I had to cut out some stuff because we were on video. So we shared his screen, and I said, Okay, but we'll just have to describe. And there was something we did and we didn't describe it. So it's gonna take if we're gonna do this whole I'm doing both thing, A, it's not welcome to the podcast anymore, it's welcome to the show. And or welcome, you know, instead of welcome to the channel, welcome to the show. Show is very, you know, can mean a lot of things, and we're gonna have to be careful when we're doing things on screen. It should be it should be used to be the icing on the cake of the words you're saying, not so much here is the content and I'm going to talk about it. Like you should say, you know, and this guy had a cake and it was completely smashed. As you put a picture of a cake that was completely smashed, I think that would be the way to do it. Because otherwise you're gonna just have you're either a purposely trying to drive people to YouTube. Uh, there's a show I listened to, Joe Pulitzi, and oh, I forget the other guy's name, but it's called This Old Marketing. And they are openly saying now, hey, please follow us on YouTube. Like, no, not in Apple Spot, like follow us on YouTube. And in the middle of it, they are making an AI commercial where it's making Joe and I forget the other guy's name. I I want to say Joe as well or John, but anyway, they're dancing around and they they've styled it like this. The one right now, it's funky. The one before that, it was in the style of ABBA, and it's a commercial because I didn't get it. And if you're because it's long, it's like a good minute and a half, and towards the end, they finally talk about the sponsor. But if you're just listening, it's kind of bad AI music and those guys laughing at each other because it's Joe with a giant 70s fro or something like that, that just does not work via audio. So when they say, hey, it's time to pay some bills, I just hit skip because that content's not made for me. So that's something I think we're gonna have to get used to. If we're all gonna jump into video, we gotta learn how to talk. Platform agnostic, is that the right word for that? I don't know.

Mic Recommendations for Zoom Calls

SPEAKER_02 35:47

So I don't I don't use either of those terms, to be honest. What I'm talking, I don't I don't call it a show or a podcast. They're there it's welcome to home gadget geeks. Like this is where you're at, right? This is the brand. And so, you know, I I don't say I'm driving my Subaru car. I just say I'm driving my Subaru. So we have to we have to stop mixing up modes and brands, right? Stop there's no need for you to call it a podcast. There's no need, honestly, to call it a show. Right. Like duh. They know like they know where they're at. Stop worrying about the mode, right? Get the brand right in this. You it's your show is the uh the you know, it's the name of it what you're doing. Don't worry about the mode. Get it out there, make it modeless in the sense that you can put it on any of these platforms, and it's not like oh, it's on YouTube and I'm calling it a podcast. Who the who cares?

SPEAKER_00 36:51

I need a bleat button. Oh, I started to go down that road. Remember the the guy that wrote wrote the thing that removes the curses? I emailed him and I said, Hey, you know, thanks, but and and I'm like, what's the point? He said, Because some sponsors won't sponsor you if you have a bunch of cursing in it, so you can use this thing to take out the cursing. And I again thought, or you could just not curse, but that was and I was like, oh, that that makes sense why people would want to bleep them out. And I gave him a great idea. I don't know if he's done it or not, but there's a video on YouTube by YouTube talking about what constitutes too much cursing, and the guy is doing it in such what's that one thing, ISO 9000 compliant. And he's just like, so if you say, and then he drops the F bomb and he goes, that would be bad. Or if you say MF F word, that would be excessive. But if you just say D or S or Hell or something, it's so funny to watch this guy in Deadpan just start dropping major curse words. And I said, You should take that video and you know, run it through your system and use that as an advertisement. Dan from Based on a True Story Podcast said AI takes so much processing power that I think there will be a bubble burst. AI access is cheap now, but it won't be as readily available forever. That's my biggest worry. As all these companies, you know, they they hitch their wagon to AI. Okay, that's great, because you know, the first one's free, everybody's doing it, and then everybody gets connected to it, and then Anthropic goes, Oh, by the way, we're doubling our prices because we're not making any money.

SPEAKER_02 38:38

Friends, there's a reckoning coming. There's a reckoning coming.

SPEAKER_00 38:41

Yeah, and that's when it will be interesting to see if we go from using hosted AI that's expensive to localizing it and watching those companies then go, oh, oops, we didn't mean to raise our price that much. And so that's the part that I go, are we gonna end up because you're running a bunch of local stuff. We podpage has an alpha, not a beta, an alpha. We're we're setting up this thing where if you're using cloud compute, and I don't this is where I was like, I think it's time for Dave to get into Cloud Compute, because there's this alpha thing going on at Podpage where you can somehow adjust your pod page from your desktop. And I don't for sure. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 39:25

So yeah, that that's the next, like the next round, right? We're we're seeing agentic AI uh show up in on in a cloud, the cloud-based stuff. But this comes right back around OpenClaw, right? Open claw, and we're gonna see a thousand of these open claw clones come out. Hermes is already one of them, right? Where we get agentic AI locally, right? That means it's on your computer doing things locally for you. That's the next step in this. Uh, Microsoft's already talking about doing a lot of it inside of Windows, right? And so you would you would you would just say, hey, change a setting or whatever, and it would it would do it on there. And so the the next round of this is local. That it's hard. This is not an average guy thing. Listen, I've been I've been working on this for four, five, six weeks now, and it's still not ready for the average guy, but that's it's coming. The here's listen, I've I've even considered buying one of these Spark devices, they're like four thousand bucks. They're local AI, you can run big models. Because I'm not sure when this AI bubble bursts, I think it's gonna get super expensive. And friends, there's gonna be a reckoning on all this. You know, we were talking a little bit about we're we're making the assumption today that because everybody for the most part, everybody has access to free AI for the most part, right? And then some of us are paying as much as$20 whole dollars, which my daughter calls an adult dollar, right?$20 adult dollar, right? And and we're we're not really nobody's really paying for this thing. It's a giant sucking money hole that all this money is flowing into. That can't last forever, unless you're the US government. But it can't last forever. You can't just spend forever on this thing. Eventually there'll be a reckoning, it'll come back and they're gonna be like, hey, your free access is over. What happens when everybody's free access becomes over? Like, no, no, we're just not gonna, they're gonna change the models, they're gonna be like, nope, you don't you don't get this anymore, you gotta pay for it. And the$20 planes aren't gonna do what they used to do for you, and you're gonna have to go API access, and then it's gonna cost you a lot. And this is this day is coming, friends. So I'm kind of thinking, I've been spending a lot of time thinking, like, what do I need to do to get some local AI running so I can kind of manage the costs associated with some of this stuff, right? We gotta be thinking about some of those stuff.

SPEAKER_00 41:55

I think that's where it's gonna go. I think all these data centers are gonna end up going. Wait, we maybe we didn't need to build this? We'll see.

SPEAKER_02 42:02

Yeah. I like the plans. I love the AI plans that are$20 or$200 to sell. It's like, I think that's open AI. I don't, there's nothing in between. It's$20 or$200, or maybe that's clawed for it. So yeah, the day's coming.

SPEAKER_00 42:16

Craig from the Ingleius Podcast, are we at the stage yet where we can't tell the difference between a real voice and an AI voice? I think we are pretty close. We're pretty close. Yeah, because I was listening to something the other day, and it wasn't until it'd be like them saying David Bowie instead of David Bowie. Like it's when they mispronounce the name, and then you're then I'm mad. I'm like, oh, you I've been watching this for three minutes and I'm watching AI, you know.

SPEAKER_02 42:44

Humans do that too, though. Humans do that too.

SPEAKER_00 42:48

Rich says, I don't get all the pushback about brands from AI video. To me, it's just the same as using CJI effects for video. Riverside just had an interesting ad on LinkedIn where it's all these people in a waiting room, and one of them is a guy, and he's he's clearly pregnant, and they're all waiting to birth their podcast, and they're all waiting. So it was kind of cute, but it was obviously AI. But I was like, oh, that was that's kind of funny. Uh, here we go from AIGOS to college.com. Here's my long-term prediction. Just like e-commerce, AI will be everywhere, but we won't think of it as something special. It will just be the way things are.

SPEAKER_02 43:26

We don't think about spell check anymore. No, like that was magical in the 90s, right? When we got all this spell check and like, hey, you're not using spell check. Like, and some of us still don't. But you know, the the it was magical. We don't that's a layer we don't even we don't even think about anymore. Of course it's gonna change. It's of course it's gonna fix the spelling. Of course it's gonna do that. Yeah, I I think there's gonna be a spot where we don't even recognize it anymore.

Descript Updates and Editing Debates

SPEAKER_00 43:54

Well, the interesting thing, both Danny and Ralph brought this up. James over at PodNews.net reported that Inception Point, uh or as we like to call them, in sloption point, have stopped auto publishing and ads seem to have been removed. Could this be something, you know, is that's about to end? And they say, Oh no, we're moving forward in a new direction and blah, blah, blah. But uh that was when I was like, Oh, interesting. That there's their shows and and they're using Spreaker, and Spreaker will monetize anything is, you know, I don't know if they chose to turn off the ads, but there's something going on over. So this is one of those where I'm sure James is on it that we'll we'll see what's going on. Man, the chat room is going crazy. Yeah, they're a little verbose.

SPEAKER_02 44:43

A little verbose this morning.

SPEAKER_00 44:48

They're making like a thousand new episodes in some cases, we'll say a week, but I know it might have even been a day. It was a ton. And so John Dremango says, I have the fifty dollar month limit on what I'm willing to pay for with AI. If prices go up, I'll go through a withdrawal, but I won't be able to afford it. Yeah. Open AI from Craig Overt. AI goes to college, added a hundred dollar per month plan to match Claude's plans. So and then Todd the Gator. I'm not addicted to AI. I I only do it on the weekends, man. No, I learn how to do things first, but saving time for a part-time content creator makes life so much easier. And if I had to go back, I'm fine with that too. Yeah, that's I I wish I had pulled this clip. There's a show on HBO that I like called Hacks. And the the story is it's female comedian, so think Joan Rivers. I think it's kind of rough, loosely based on her. And it's the blonde from designing women. I wish I could remember her name, but she's the main star. And then she's the kind of old, crutchety, you know, you know how grandma gets away with saying words that you're not supposed to. Okay, so she's that kind of character, out of touch with, you know, today's lingo. And then she's got a very young bisexual writer, and so that's the whole fun thing, is these two, and so she's like, no, like, and they were talking about AI, and this guy was offering her a lot of money, and it was funny because they'd already trained the AI system on her jokes that were available online, and the guy said, and she's like, Well, I'm not sure I'm really down with this. And the the younger, and I'm just I don't mean this completely, but you know, the the kind of younger woke person was like, Wait, these data centers are bad. They're sucking up all the water in cities and blah, blah, blah. And the owner of this AI tool said, Well, everybody's already using AI. You should. He goes, Are you gonna tell me that if you're working on a joke, you wouldn't want to just type this into this and have it let you type the joke out? And the old comedian is like, No. And he goes, Why not? And he goes, She goes, Because I'm a comedian. And she goes, The reason the joke is funny on the special is because I've tried it hundreds of times in front of audiences, and I learned from every single one. It's part of being human, it's part of being a comedian. And the guy's like, Yeah, but why wouldn't you take the shortcut? And I was like, That is the dilemma right there. It's like, what do you want to do? Do you want the shortcut or do you want to hone your own skills so that in the event, you know.

SPEAKER_02 47:26

If the shortcut is funny, does it matter? Like, you know, that's the thing. The most again, we we get stuck on the mode, right? We get stuck on the it's all about the results in a lot of ways. And if you know, hey, if AI can't make funny jokes, don't use it. But if you could role play or you could, you know, you could if you had an AI agent or a model or whatever you want to call it that would you could feed your jokes into and it would give you some kind of funny rating on it to be like, yeah, that's actually really funny. Or to say, hey, I've got this kind of audience in this city and these kinds of things doing it this way. I'm gonna use these sets of jokes. What's gonna land? Why wouldn't you take a first pass? Maybe it's not the final pass. Why would you not use a tool like that to take a first pass to get some ideas? And then listen, there's humor's so interesting. You can have some of the I've watched some of the best comedians in the world. Same jokes, they've used them every night. Get up there, it doesn't get delivered just right, or it's a weird night and nobody laughs, right? And so even that's not perfect. Even, you know, oh my audience, oh, I I know I'm a you know what? No, no, no. Sometimes it just doesn't sometimes it just doesn't work. So, you know, it's a tool, friends. It's just a tool. Right? Just use it appropriately for where it's best.

SPEAKER_00 48:56

Dan Daniel brings up a good point. I might have said this wrong. They didn't stop publishing new they stopped publishing new podcasts, but they're still publishing episodes. So in sloption point is, yeah, they're still publishing. But the thing was they somehow the monetization has been turned off. And that's when I was like, wait, they're on Spreaker, they'll monetize anything. So they just said that I I James had it. And if you listen to Pod News Weekly Review, they actually, because he, James being James, had AI create the voice of whatever her name is over there at Inception Point. And they're they're saying they're going in a new direction. And I was like, hmm, can't wait to see what that's gonna be. But it's gonna be fun. Anyway, you slice it. Let me scroll down here through the chat room on a different topic. Any shotgun mic recommendations.

SPEAKER_01 49:48

Oh god.

SPEAKER_00 49:52

My desk makes it awkward to use my ATR 2100 on a routine basis. The thing, if you add a shotgun mic, if you're gonna be kind of picky about the audio, enjoy. You might want to check out Accent, or I think Craig uses the script. You're gonna need a little studio sound because even though it's meant to be out of shot and pick up here, it's gonna pick up some room. That's just it's that's the way it is. I don't the any model numbers off the top of my head. I know they can get extremely expensive. I have not within reach. I've bought a couple, and every time I use them, I go, you know what, I'm gonna put the camera in the shot. But you can get, I know Road has a couple. If you go over, look at Tom Buck on YouTube. He's a a good guy, or Bandrew Scott is another guy that does a lot of mic reviews on YouTube, and I really trust both those guys. They'll they'll let you know. In fact, I'm trying to get Tom on the show. Tom has a really good he has a thing on his website. Like, here's the deal. If you give me a microphone, I reserve the right to say bad things about it. And I, you know, and it's just got a whole thing. Like, you know, you can't pay me, and no, you can't pay me to write a review, and no, he's just like, no, I'm not like I have integrity. I'm not going to take that.

SPEAKER_02 51:15

Um Yeah, I wouldn't use I wouldn't use shotgun for live. Like I just, it's just too, it's it's that's yeah. It it you want to take the room noise out of it, right? You can do some amazing things with it from a you know, like Auphonic has gotten crazy good on this room noise thing. Like I had some seriously bad audio that we had grabbed from this series we'd done back in March, and it was horrible. And I gave it to Auphonic and said, get that D, you know, get to get the D there or deverb it. And I I see I'm I'm breaking up a little bit. We'll give it a second, come back. But so Auphonic does that really well. I just wouldn't be a shotgun for live. That that would be I wouldn't do it that way.

AI as Force Multiplier vs. Dependency

SPEAKER_00 52:02

Yeah, the Danny has suggested the uh Sennheiser, which already makes it sound expensive, the MKE600 shotgun condenser microphone going for, and this is why uh we're having problems because they opened up a new browser, 350 bucks. They're not cheap. I know the the couple that I've worked at. If I do they have if I just go in here to Sweetwater and just go shotgun microphone, and now we'll probably get delisted on YouTube because we said the word shotgun. Yeah, here's the one I had. The video mic was 150 Audio Technica, but if we go, let's let's just do this live. If we go to YouTube, I'm a big fan of Tom Buck. Also, if you like dad jokes, you will love Tom Buck because he's very, very dad jokey, if there is such a thing. So here's Tom Buck's channel, and I will go here and I will type in shotgun and the best shotgun mic for YouTube and streaming. And and I think he's probably gonna recommend the Danny the Yep, the MKH50. Okay, so we'll run back to Sweetwater. Am I freaking out the the am I breaking up a lot, Jim? I can't hear Jim. I think that answers my question. No, you're doing okay so far. Okay, MKH 50. And survey says, Oh, it's only 1500 bucks. Holy shnikes! Or, in the words of Jim's mom, oofa! Like, holy, are you kidding me? Yeah, maybe, maybe not that one. That's a little crazy. Wow. Um yeah. Ufa is a word I've used. I like that word. It's fun, it's it's it's not a typical kind of word, but yeah, my Ralph, I think, used shotgun for a while. So that's something to uh think about. Would you pay money, Craig wants to know, to see an AI robot comedian who was funny? No. I would here here's my thing. When I watch LeBron James, who's 41, and oh, and by just a quick 10-second tangent, enjoy watching the Cleveland team just melt off in the playoffs. They're into the second round, they will lose now. It's just a tradition that we do. But LeBron James is 41. He's still playing basketball, he's playing basketball with his son at a professional level, and yes, he can, you know, block shots and he can shoot and things like that. The thing that I always loved about LeBron James, and you didn't know it until you saw him live, his passes are insane, and if I tried to catch one, I would break a finger. But when I see him do that now, I connect on a human level that hey, this dude is not 22 anymore, and he's still performing like somebody who is. And as a human, I connect with that. Whereas if you had a robot running up and down the court and you know making these great passes, I don't think I would connect. But Jim, you're saying, well, if it's funny, it's funny.

SPEAKER_02 55:21

Yeah, well, you're connecting, you're trying to connect two different modes of of this sport, right? And thinking about why would you have robots play a human game? It doesn't make any sense, right? The the there, of course, they're gonna well, maybe not today, but it we're getting to that point. They're gonna play it better, they're gonna be flawless. Although robots versus robots gets really interesting then, right? Because now you've got them, the the skill level has has improved, and it may be just as competitive. And so if it if why do we watch it, right? Why do we watch sports? Why do we watch why do we go to comedy? You know, we we watch sports to be we want what are the best parts of sports? It's the collisions or it's the amazing shots that shouldn't have worked, right? Kind of deal. And so if the I I think if the if the robots, the machines can be competitive and not repetitive, and it's it it has this element of surprise. That's what we're looking for in both comedy and in sports, is an element of surprise. We want to see something that surprises us. We laugh at a joke because it surprises us. It's it's funny. That's what funny is, right? This we didn't expect it, and then you said it, and for whatever reason, we find that funny, right? If the if the machines can do that, I w why wouldn't, why wouldn't we? There was this these show on PBS, I think, where they'd put robots against each other and they'd have to make these right and they'd they'd have battle bots battle bots, right? That's interesting all of a sudden, right? You know, because you're you're like, okay, now there's some skill involved in this, and w we we want to be surprised on some of that. And it was cool, right? So I don't I don't think if the if the humor, if it surprises us, if it genuinely surprises us, and it's funny, why wouldn't we?

Closing Remarks and Farewells

SPEAKER_00 57:26

Yeah, it's it's because it just dawned on me. Now they got the the pant suit off them, but somebody took all of George Carlin's material and then had him write a thing, and it sounded like George, and they had some AI graphics of George, and the account of George Carlin said no. But I got to hear it, and parts of it were funny. A lot of it was like, you know what, that's what George would have said, because it was one of those things that it's I'll give you an example. My sister says she doesn't like killbasi, right? And I said, It tastes pretty similar to sausage. So one night I was cooking and she goes, What's for dinner? And I said, Sausage. Now behind the scenes, it was killbasi. So I vet it to her, she was eating it, she liked it. She was down to like the last two bites, and I said, How was your sausage? And she said, Great. And I go, Great, it's kilbasi. And of course, she spit it out of her mouth. And it's one of those things I think I I hear this another example. I don't know why. Wolfgang Van Halen is an amazing musician. Like, just hold and if Spotify starts to play Wolfgang, I'll be like, man, who is this band? And I'll go over and it's Mammoth. And all of a sudden my brain goes, Yeah, but he doesn't sound like his dad. Well, of course he doesn't. Nobody's gonna sound like his dad. But it's weird how the mental perception can change how you feel about content. So that's that may be just me going, I'm not gonna laugh because it's a robot. Robots aren't funny. So, you know, that will be Yeah, it's it's gonna be again, we're gonna have to wait and see. We have another microphone suggestion from Ralph. He uses the SE 6160. It was about 500 bucks. Everybody is saying the same thing in the room. You're gonna get room noise with a mic. And if you want to sound better on a Zoom call, either A, I mean, I could if I wanted to, I could move this mic out of the shot, and it would still sound better than a built-in microphone on a laptop, because everything sounds better than a built-in mic on a on a laptop. So that's something to do.

SPEAKER_02 59:39

Uh well, and all those services have gotten pretty good about in-process processing. So as you're talking, it's taking some of those out. But the noise cancellation has gotten ridiculous on Zoom. Like it is I was I was chatting with somebody who was at home and their dog was just barking their heads off, couldn't hear anything. It had completely taken that out, right? And so the the real-time processing that is going. I think we may get to a point. We we may be there already, but I think this whole uh the the verb the room sound, I I would hope, I'd love to get to a point where that's taken out in real time, you know, where we're not it's it we're not having to take it out post. I I don't think we're the 100% there yet, but I th I think we'll get there eventually.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:26

Where we're close. There was a service for Skype, I think it was, that you could use, and it was I forget the name of it, but you added it and it took out background noise. So um and Craig is saying, look, I'm just this is just for Zoom calls, not for the podcast. Would just need to be better than the built-in camera mic. Well, anything is better than the built-in camera mic.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:47

100%. The sensors on those things are so tiny, there's no diaphragm on the it's literally 100% digital. So, you know, you're just like you say, anything's anything is better than that. And listen, I've heard some really I've got a developer at work who's got a fairly inexpensive mic that he just sets on his desk that it's just it's better, it's just better than the camera mic, and he actually sounds pretty good. I think actually we may live in a day where in the first like these some of these services in the first three minutes, we're talking and it gets a voice print, and then from there on out it's just using the voice print to digitally represent what we're saying.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:26

There you go.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:26

As we're saying it. Yeah, why why wouldn't we? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:29

Tim has a question. Am I attending Descripts Town Hall type thing? Didn't know there was one, where they will take suggestions about improving the script and write the code right there. What would you like them to see to improve?

SPEAKER_03 1:01:41

Well, to answer that question, it's time for a power random.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:46

I would like them to stop writing code. I would like them to come up with an interface that they like and name the things they want it to be named and then leave it alone so that I can actually go learn their software and not log in and go, wait, this looks completely different than it did 15 minutes ago. I keep trying to learn. That's one of the things I had on my list this weekend was like, I was gonna email their support and go, look, I haven't used your product in about a month and a half. It's changed a lot since the last time I was there. Where is the video that walks me through the entire software? I want to walk through. Please don't send me to YouTube where it says, look, you change the text and it changes the audio because they have about 47 videos that say that. Yeah, we get it. You change the text. Where can I walk through the whole thing? Where can you show me how to fade in music and fade out music and all like give me a full walkthrough? And the reason they don't have one is because you can't make one because they keep changing the interface every 10 minutes. It's like I need one that's like, and that was a power thing. It's like so that's what I would like to see them. I mean, I like Descript, they need to add a way to schedule a room. If you're gonna get rid of the other thing, Squadcast, then give me a way to schedule a room in descript rooms, because I was gonna use that to interview Jordan from Buzz Sprout, and you can't schedule a room ahead of time. I'm like, well, that's not gonna work. So yeah. So anyway, you know what's not gonna make me wait a minute. Everybody's they're still talking microphones.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:29

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Getting Feedback on My Podcast: Questions

SPEAKER_00 1:03:31

That is, it's time to thank our awesome supporters, and we are talking if you can be an awesome supporter by going over to Asthepodcastcoach.com slash awesome, and you could be people like oh, castahead.net. Yep, yep, yep, podcast.com is a thing. Horseradio network.com, content creators accountant.com, resourceful designer. That's uh Mark's that and you know, we're also brought to you by the School of Podcasting, and the 27th of this month, we are having Rocks Codes come in from uh Flightcast. That is the media host that was started by Stephen Bartlett and ROX Codes, and it's free to attend that. But you gotta be a member, and you can be a member for free. Go over to school of podcasting.com and click on sign up, and you'll see where it's gonna ask you to sign up for the, I believe right now, the quarterly version. Just click on the change button and you can become a free member and attend our expert talks. And if you want to sign up to be an actual paying member, use the coupon code COOCH and get access to our courses, our coaching, and our community. And if you need some honest feedback on your show, check out podcasthotseat.com. And if you want to check out Podpage, we saw a cool thing. We just had a town hall. And if you are doing YouTube and audio and you spend an hour on your YouTube thumbnail, you can go into Podpage and say, hey, when you're listing the episodes, use the thumbnail from YouTube, not from whoever your media host is. And it looks a whole lot better because a lot of people have just the same artwork over and over and over and over, and yet they have individual thumbnails for YouTube, so you cannot use those on your website. And if you need more Jim Cullison, and hey, who doesn't need more Jim Cullison? Then go visit him over at theaveregeguy.tv and check out his show, Home Gadget Geeks. And now it's time for the supporter of the week. And for that, we go to the wheel of names. Will it be Bourbon Barrel Podcasting? Will it be Ralph over at askralph.com or Craig at AIGosToCollege? Well, we're gonna spin the wheel as soon as I find my mouse. There we go. And it goes round and round. And it's going to land on ooh, will it be Chris or Ralph? It's still slowly moving. It is Chris Stone from Castahead.net. If you're tired of producing your show and you need somebody to make shorts, or you need a producer to run your live event, or you just need an editor, he does it all. Chris Stone over at castahead.net. Chris, thanks for being an awesome supporter. And again, you could be an awesome supporter. You don't have to do the$20 a month thing. You could do as little as five, or if you want, you can do a one time domain. donation, just go over to AsthePodcastcoach.com slash awesome because maybe you're like, hey, you know, these guys, they kept us educated. We avoided some headaches. Maybe we saved you some money or time. Well go over and give some of that value back by going again over to Asthepodcastcoach.com slash awesome. So we did have a question on Reddit that I had. Here we go. Jim, the guy's asking, he's looking for feedback on his podcast journey. And he says one thing I don't want is for everything to feel overly optimized or artificial. So he's he's kind of torn between do we keep it conversational or should I edit it? I still want the content to feel natural and creator focused while also making it engaging enough for newer audiences. So he asks what makes you continue listening to a podcast and I have one word for that value. Like when you give me something that either makes me better or makes me I always say laugh, cry, think, groan, educate, entertain, save me some time, save me some money, you know, or if you're just entertaining, that's in there too, right? Do you prefer highly edited episodes or more natural conversations? I prefer conversations where the boring parts have been removed. Like don't just get get the stuff that does know who I am and give me what I want. What instantly makes you click away from a podcast clip? Three minutes of ads at the beginning or obviously AI or really bad volume levels. Are shorter clips actually helping podcasts grow or do they sometimes hurt the long form experience? That's a good question. For me, I have people that I only like their shorts. So yeah you are hurting your long form because it's not as to the point and entertaining as your long stuff. What's one thing you wish more indie podcasters understood that it takes lots of time longer than you think it's more work than you think to grow an audience. So Jim do you want to take a crack at any of these questions? Why do you listen to a podcast?

SPEAKER_02 1:08:34

Well it's mostly for while I'm driving it's entertaining right you know so I want to be entertained while I'm whatever. And that can be learning that can be new information. I love to you know listen to podcasts about technology that helps me stay on the know. We used to say on the Gallup podcast, you know, recapture that time you're in a train on a plane in a car. Right. That's what we'd say it all the time. Because you know it it does give you the opportunity to catch some things that I don't like it to be detailed. But again it's it's the mode like I'm in a car mode. So I I don't want to listen to anything that's too detailed that I need to take notes on because I can't right I I want it to be and I want it to be interesting. I get frustrated I do listen to some podcasts lately where they've they they want to live in the old days. You know they're like well back you know 25 years ago and then you know they they spend you know I'm like look I've heard all your stories. I I I know what it was like 25 years ago but they tend to keep going back to that you know they want to get they they want to do a big retrospective but I find you know this is a super personal question. And I also think that you attract listeners who are looking for you right they found you if they've stayed they've found you and stayed for you. And so don't jack them around with moving moving their cheese every week like they they they came back because they liked what you did last time. So do it again. Right if they didn't like it they'd be gone. So stop trying to chase the the the the audience so to speak now there's a there's a time when you're trying to figure out or trying to gather that audience that you can do some testing. You can try some things out I'm not saying you do it exactly the same way but oftentimes you attract those kinds of people who wanted to listen to you. So don't move their cheese all the time. Don't don't try you know don't and me personally I don't like to be embarrassed. I don't like other people being embarrassed. Like I don't want to watch I won't watch the you know what was the guy who would you know do all kinds of crazy things and hurt himself and oh Steve uh Steve O. Yeah yeah Steve O. Like I I that's not my favorite thing to do. I don't like that kind of Meet the Falkers I could not watch that movie. Like too much embarrassment in it. Right. That's me.

People Hate Bad Editing

No One has the Right to an Audience

Listener Parties at the School of Podcasting

SPEAKER_00 1:10:51

There's some people stapling your genitals to something yes that's Steve O. He he was from Jackass and he did all sorts of weird stuff. Here's a great one too many people think editing all of a sudden makes it unnatural. Bad editing does that good editing makes a good conversation a great conversation. Danny says if a clip has a thumbnail of Stephen Bartlett, I'm out. And this one is amazing the one and only Tom Webster. No one has the right to an audience. One of my favorite quotes out of his book The Audience is listening a little guide to a big podcast by Tom Webster is he's talking about, you know, there's quantity and quality and he goes in podcasting there is only quality. So the person's like I'm going to grow my downloads by doing a daily show when I only do a show every other week you're like no that's no nobody's you know if if if the podcast was somebody going for 20 minutes and you're like I know I'm going to do that daily. I don't know that too many people like oh I was hoping I could get more of that. Yes. Danny says you shut your dirty mouth Tom Webster yeah that's that's a t-shirt right there. It is a t-shirt I'm gonna have to do that. It's uh yeah now Uncle Marv says now I know why you don't listen to my show. Yeah so Chris says I love this podcast so much because it's edited so well and sounds amazing says no one ever yeah if it's if it's you know edited properly you shouldn't hear the edits. That's the whole point. We uh we do these things at the school of podcasting called listener parties where and I I just stole the idea from Ron Howard like you think your podcast is good. One way to know is watch someone listen to your podcast and because you know when they're supposed to laugh or smile or laugh or think or whatever and I'm here to tell you nine times out of ten, what we're seeing is people over editing to where not that they're what they're cutting out are things like breaths and space for your brain to think. So if somebody says something brilliant like you know having a what was the one that Tom just said having a podcast having an audience is not a right or you don't have a right I need to go get that because I'm putting that on a t-shirt but you know when you drop something like that that you go huh you need to leave time for your audience to go huh I never thought of it that way. And when it's like here is words of wisdom followed immediately by something else you're like no no no let your audience give them a half a second to think about that. And I see people do that and it's not just me. Everybody's like yeah you you could have let that breathe a little bit and then moved on to your point. And I really think as much as I I hate boring stuff I do like good stuff that allows a half a second to breathe every now and then and and if you want to change subjects throw in a little you know here's a little sound that lets you know we're moving to the new topic or whatever it is. I I wish I could do that live. I probably could if I really wanted to but yeah there you go and look at this Dan is leaving early to greet his guest this is how you do a great interview show right go out there thanks for a great show and a great chat always great Jan so keep that in mind. What was Tom's quote? I got to scroll back and see that now it was amazing because you know Tom Webster here it is no one has the right to an audience. Yeah I saw somebody today and it was on Reddit and it was my dad and I have started a podcast and I think she said we do it every day on TikTok and that again is where I go this is why I somewhat get a little perturbed that we've made the word podcast mean this cup. This cup is now a podcast because they think they're doing a they're doing a TikTok show I guess we're calling it but they were just saying they're not getting any listeners and I'm like well are you in Apple are you in Spotify I I did a show purposely to be bad and I got 10 downloads every episode and I would tell the audience I'd go why are you listening to this you're an idiot you know and I was trying to get them to tune out and I still got 10 people who would just tune in to hear me yell at them so if if you're not getting any downloads I think she said two then I'm like you know find somebody who's doing a podcast get yourself a coach do find something but you know yeah now Ralph says about the good editing is that human editing or AI editing in the end if it's good editing I don't think it matters. Now the question is is AI editing you know like is AI gonna know that Tom just said something that was brilliant you know is that some because does AI know that it like because there are things people say and you're like ooh wow that that hit me. That's I never thought of it that way. I don't know you're gonna get that from AI. You know they might think well he he had the word like in there twice so we have to remove it and it's gone. I don't know what do you think Jim is I think we're getting closer I think we're getting closer to it.

Who is Doing the Editing

SPEAKER_02 1:16:13

Like I think the ability for AI to go in and you know do do that job. It at the end of the day, right, I mean it's not magic. It's it's it's just doing its job to to try to pull things out see what's relevant you know compare that to some things and say this is a really well constructed sentence let's let's expose this right listen that the the comment that that Tom Webster just made impacts me differently than it impacts you right it's that's the that's the the nature of this thing. So it may pull it out and you're like Dave God that's the best quote ever and I'm like meh you know okay that's but but that's how that's how we respond to things I think we think it's gotta be perfect out the door in it's just a tool right I mean we it's just it's just it's the ability to pull some things out and do some stuff. Ideally if you have if you're using it as an assistant then you would be reviewing everything that it puts out so you could you could then determine again that's your biases then right now we have HI, the human intelligence factor coming in and you may F it up to worse than the AI did right so then that's on you.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:27

I tried something because I interviewed Albin from Buzz Sprout and Justin Jackson from Transistor.fm about HLS and I was like oh let's do this so I put both the interviews you know back to back and I threw it into Otter and Otter transcribed it and I said great this is an interview with Justin Jackson and Albin Brooke. I go I asked them the same question in some cases please uh find their answers and give me timestamps so that I could say you know Justin said this bing and it would make the editing a whole lot easier and the timestamps weren't exactly accurate and in the end I was like forget it I'm just gonna listen to this the old fashioned way and when I find something good I'm gonna clip it which is what I did. So AI is not always you know a time saver. I use that a lot if I'm trying to find somebody's somebody said something and I want to go back and find it I'll just throw it into otter transcribe it and go, at what point did they say this? And that's saved my bacon multiple times instead of having to listen to a 45 minute podcast to find out that they said it at the 41 minute mark. I'm like okay that just saved me a ton of time so that's always fun. John says Mr. Jamango if I can hear the edit it's a bad edit. Yep human or AI and I occasionally will leave in a bad edit because I really want what somebody said but they went way left of center so I I cut out the left of center and there are times when and again this comes down to a lot of times is pacing where someone is talking like this and then all of a sudden in the middle they talk like that because you cut out a bunch of breaths or whatever and all of a sudden there's this thing and they're making their point and then all of a sudden and then like wait hold on and I I get it because they probably said I think it might be this and you've gone through to cut that out but you you didn't you lost kind of the tempo of the way they talk and that's when you go wait what was up with that they don't normally talk like that. It's like so that's that's yeah that's an edit that you go we probably should have gone back and and tweaked that one a little bit I listened to the Wall Street Journal podcast uh what's news I think is what it's called.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:39

I don't even you know what I'm not sure that's the name of it and it doesn't matter because I still listen to it twice. I listen they they interview people and it's super obvious that they are making quick edits it's very obvious that they interviewed this person for 10 minutes and they pull the three or four best clips out of it right it's obvious because they get cut off mid-sentence you know and you hear that in the the inflection of the the words they're saying you you know you know they got cut off. Would I like that to make more sense? Yes. Are these two podcasts a day that they're putting together as quickly as they can to get you the most relevant information that they think is necessary for you to hear and do I forgive the edits because they're going so fast? Yes I do. I'm not worried about the voice inflection doesn't need to be perfect because they would need to spend you know hours trying to get that figured out in the interview. They just they're journalists they just don't have time to get that I'd rather get the information you know in that form and so I forgive them for their edits because I understand what they what they have to do to get this done. So that's a situation where edits don't need to be perfect I don't think edits don't have to be the it doesn't have to be this you know miracle angel singing oh that was such a great edit I am willing to forgive them because I know what they're up against. And for me I'd rather get the information than worry about oh they cut that off mid-sentence that wasn't very good. Like no maybe that doesn't work for you and if it doesn't work for you then you're not going to listen to that podcast. That's fine.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:20

That's okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:21

Right? So you know again that's the case they keep me as a listener because I'm okay with what they're doing. You know and I'm again it gives me the news that I want to hear it gives it to me in a way I get you know a 15 minute news brief twice a day if I want to listen to it. That's what I like. So I listen to it.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:39

Yeah Nikki's got a great question she says as an interviewer do you ask the guest to repeat what they just said in hopes they speak more clearly the second time what you can do here is when they answer the first question they didn't answer and you're like, oh that's very interesting. Could you give me an example of that and why or just you ask a more specific question. We could blame the guest for not giving you specifics but maybe you didn't ask the question right. And when they give you the better second answer later you are probably maybe going to be able to take the second answer and use it as the first answer and get rid of the first one that didn't deliver any value. But yeah it's uh realize there there is a kind of a performance there and just ask the question well you know you could say well I was always wondering I know some people do this and some people do this how would you do blah blah like pin them to the wall how do what whatever you were looking for ask for it. Don't say hey I was looking for more specifics can you answer that again now just just sound like you're oh okay great and in your head you're thinking that's going on the editing floor but yeah ask them again can you give me an example of that you know something like that to get them specific and then on AI Tom has a great point let's be frank AI does the work that the indie podcaster doesn't have time or take time to do right then in most cases yeah you can't complain about AI if you didn't do the things the AI did do all the work and then complain.

Getting a Clear Answer

Is AI Making Us Lazy? Dumber?

SPEAKER_02 1:23:09

Yeah I mean it's it's kind of like saying spell check ruined all of us no nobody had to spell anymore. And you know what it just helped those of us who couldn't spell and the folks that can still spell just fine right I mean it's it's it's a little I think it's a little ridiculous to say it makes us worse. In some cases and I know for me it's making me better I'm thinking more now than I've ever thought because I'm thinking about AI orchestration all the time I'm thinking like oh how do I take these tools and make them you know it's it's like telling a carpenter oh you know what that that pneumatic nailer that you have now or that battery operated nailer makes you a worse carpenter. No, it makes you a faster carpenter right and so I I get a little I get a I know there's some folks that are worried about this like oh we'll stop thinking friends I'm thinking more than I've ever thought with AI than I ever have because I'm thinking about how it can do better things for me that I couldn't do before how it can help me do some things that I don't I don't have the talent to do right and so I wouldn't I don't I wouldn't worry about that. I think it can make us if used in the right way right I mean there's always abuses right but I think it can always make us better.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:32

Chris says the calculator ruined math yeah I have no nobody in our math anymore.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:38

No there's plenty of people who still know how to do math.

Is Capcut Safe?

Wrap Up

SPEAKER_00 1:24:40

I have a a quick question. I signed up for a course about video because of course you know video but the guy was recommending using Cap Cut and I'm like wait I think that's owned by the same people like ByteDance that own TikTok and the last I heard they were shall we say more aggressive about getting some personal information off your computer and that's where I'm like well that's that's from the news and I don't always trust the news I always try to get my news from a really left leaning news and a really right leaning news and then try to figure out what the truth is. Jim do you have any insight on like if I put this are they going to somehow going to start texting me messages about you know whatever or I just thought it was interesting because this guy built himself as this you know thought leader. I've worked on Marvel movies and I know all these special effects and I'm gonna teach you how to do videos but he needed something that people could use that was free so he went to Cap Cut and I was like I've always heard I shouldn't load Cap Cut or TikTok but yet TikTok has a bazillion people using it every day. Have you heard any like is this just yeah I'm like so is this a case where all the cool kids are doing it and just load Cap Cut and shut up so yeah yeah Rich says it's pretty sure that's about Cap Cut. What I don't know is if it's you know you know are they gonna email all my friends? I don't know. It just I don't think anything's that crazy but uh it might be something I he he said it's really powerful for a free program and I was like well maybe I'll try Da Vinci Resolve because it too is also free and it's owned by a company called Black Magic so there can't be anything wrong wrong with that. I'm sure some people hate that it's oh I see somehow we're talking about food now in the chat room Worcestershire sauce so um but at any rate so I'll have to play with Cap Cut but it's I I'm I'm I have Camtasia but I'm trying to find a free program because people if we're gonna jump into video I'm gonna need a free source to teach people how to edit video because you know nobody wants to pay for anything which is understandable Camtasia's like 200 bucks and so and then when you get into Adobe and all these other editing suites it it gets up there so I'm sure people are going to want the audacity of video. CapCut used to have a good free version most of the cool tools are now paid only well the that actually makes me feel better in a weird way. So but Jim what is coming up on home gadget gigs? Yeah it took another week off a lot of uh busy time at work and uh you know why because I couldn't great about podcasting because I could take it off and so uh the two weeks we're back again this Thursday I think uncle Marf from the chat room I think is joining me this next week but you can check out all the back episodes home gadget geeks.com and on the school of podcasting I brought on Justin Jackson because he was giddy giddy I tell you about HLS where I was very like meh I don't quite get it and so I wanted his opinion and then Alvin emailed me later in the week so I got his opinion so we're talking HLS but we're also talking about is really the biggest thing about Apple is just the fact that it's going to be a better experience. Like you'd actually go over and see things that you said I want to see this where YouTube is like oh here's 50 million things that you can watch and away down in the bottom left hand corner of the subscriptions Is Apple gonna win this game by just providing a better experience? Because you know what? Uh theaters are going out of business. Why? Because going to the movies was a pain in the butt. You came home with sticky shoes, you watched a half hour of ads before the movie started, and maybe it's just a better experience at home. Oh, and the other thing is the content wasn't very good. The movies were awful. So we're talking about that on the School of Podcasting. So it's a a little um yes, HLS is insane, is uh maybe that's the episode of the of the next uh episode of the School of Podcasting. But thanks to everyone for coming out uh every Saturday. We are here Asthepodcastcoach.com slash live. If you ever want to jump in, uh it is Asthepodcastcoach.com slash question. And speaking of a question, if you're listening to the show later, now would be a great time to go to Asthepodcastcoach.com slash voicemail and leave us a question and we'll answer it next week. Take care, everybody.