Remembering Todd Cochrane; and Apple testing new chapters?

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Announcer (00:00):
The Pod News Weekly Review uses chapters the last
word in podcasting news.
This is the Pod News WeeklyReview with James Cridland and
Sam Sethi.

James Cridland (00:12):
I'm James Cridland, the editor of Pod News
, and I'm Sam Sethi, the CEO ofTrue Fans.

Todd Cochrane (00:17):
And by God, if I can do this and succeed anyone
can.

Todd Cochran, who died this week.
We've a look back at what hegave the world of podcasting,
plus the unsavoury world of AIpodcasts and a new power
supporter.
This podcast is sponsored byBuzzsprout, with the tools,
support and community to ensureyou keep podcasting, start
podcasting, keep podcasting withbuzzsproutcom.
From your daily newsletter, thePod News Weekly Review.

Sam Sethi (00:47):
James, we start off this show with a very sad bit of
news.
A friend of the show and we areproud to say, a friend of the
show, todd Cochran, passed awaythis week.
James, tell me more.

Yeah, he did.
He passed away very suddenly.
He's very proud of his family.
He was on a trip to see hisfamily and, yes, and very
suddenly passed away.
Obviously, our thoughts arewith his family and everybody
who knows him, all of hisfriends, and we've been carrying
posts and things from hisfriends in the Pod News

(01:24):
newsletter all week and, ofcourse, on Tuesday.
You may have noticed that weessentially cancelled everything
and it was just for him and I'mso grateful to people like our
advertisers and my sales managerwhen I basically rang her up
and I said I do not want anyadvertising because I don't

(01:44):
think it's right, and all, allof the advertisers said
absolutely no, that's, that'sabsolutely fine.
So super grateful to all ofthat.
But, yes, what a, what a shock.
And you know, and it just goesto show that you know life is,
you know life is fickle andthings, things can change.

Sam Sethi (02:01):
Yeah, it is indeed, and we'll be listening, I hope,
to a live broadcast of the newmedia show.
It will, of course, be the lastone.
Sadly it is with Rob Greenlee,with guests Adam Currie, Mike
Dell of Blueberry, of course,and Rob Walsh from Libsyn, so
you may be able to.
I'm sure you will be able tolisten back to it if you're

(02:22):
listening to this show on Friday.
Sure you will be able to listenback to it if you listen to
this show on Friday.
So I will be tuning into thatlive show.
I think it will be a verymoving and fitting memory of
Todd.

Indeed, and you know, I tell you what Rob
Greenlee and I worked on hisobituary, which you'll find in
the Pod News website, and it wasfascinating just telling some
of the stories.
Rob has since posted more ofhis own thoughts, of course, but
it was really fascinatingtelling some of the stories and
realising, you know, lots ofthings that we didn't know about

(02:53):
him.
Rob has actually worked withhim since 2005.
So it was quite a thing, and Iwas very aware that, for the
majority of people in podcasting, the first that they would have
heard about it would be from me, and you know that that it was
quite.
It was quite a stressy day, Ihave to say, quite quite apart

(03:14):
from, you know, quite apart fromkeeping it together, you know,
which I didn't do a particularlygood job of, it was just quite
a stressy day just realising howimportant this would be to
everybody and I've had a bunchof really nice emails, which was
really good.
But yeah, it's quite a week,isn't it?

Sam Sethi (03:32):
Yeah, James, you did it very well.
Mate, I'm sure Todd is lookingdown and thanking you for the
kind words that you put together.

I'm sure he's looking down and going ah, you
got that bit wrong.
I'm sure he's looking down andgoing you got that bit wrong.

Sam Sethi (03:45):
Yeah, I'm sure he is actually.
We were lucky enough tointerview Todd a few times on
this show.
One of those interviews wasback in 2023, when Todd had just
celebrated his 19th year inpodcasting, and we thought that
would be a poignant and alsowell-remembered interview,
because it gives Todd's lifestory of how he got into

(04:07):
podcasting and the journey he'sbeen on.
So I started off by asking Toddwhat his journey has been like
for those 19 years.

It's been a fun ride.
October 9th 2004, I pulled up achair to a little desk in a
hotel room in Waco, texas, andwith a 1495 microphone from a
Walmart across the street Irecorded the first episode and I
introduced it with ACDC back inblack, which you can't do that.
So episode one and two actuallywent beyond the nether

(04:38):
somewhere because I took themdown.
I was afraid I was going to gethit with a copyright violation
later on.
But yeah, that was the thing.
It caught the fever early on.

Sam Sethi (04:48):
What a great track.
To start with, those about thepodcast, we salute you.
That's right.
So, looking back over the 19years, I mean I know you said
it's a 1499 mic and it's alaptop and the internet, but
fundamentally, has anythingreally changed or is it just the
same?

Yeah, fundamentally it's changed a lot
, because you really had to be ageek in those early days and I
was running on a contentmanagement system called movable
type I remember it well Didn'tswitch to yeah, didn't switch to
WordPress until later, but wereally were trying to figure it
all out.
The biggest challenge really inthose early days was hosting,

(05:26):
because we all had to do our ownthing and by the time or before
the first hosting platform cameon the market, which was Libsyn
the first one, I was shufflingbetween like nine or 10 shared
hosting accounts.
I would move the show likeevery three days because I'd run
out of 500 gigs of bandwidthrun out of 500 gigs of bandwidth
, run out.

(05:46):
But you know, if you thinkabout it, those file sizes at
the time were small because wewere only encoding maybe 32K at
the tops in those early days.
But you know, things changedpretty rapidly.
You know 2005, apple introducedpodcast to iTunes and then we
were off to the races.
Really.
So from that perspective, no,things haven't changed that much

(06:10):
.
But you know, definitely beingearly was a it helped, you know,
from a sense.
But also I did a tech show asmy Genesis show and I still do.
There was a lot of tech shows,so it wasn't like there was.
You know, the genre of showswas narrow tech comedy and a few
others, but so there was aplethora of tech shows in those

(06:34):
early start days.
What was your?

Sam Sethi (06:35):
expectation of doing it.
I mean, what did you think youwere going to get from it?
Hey, I've got a mic.
I'm going to be the next.
You know, howard, you know whatwas it.

I am.
I I'm going to be the next.
You know Howard, you know whatwas it.
I didn't even know who HowardStern was.
Then it really started.
Years before that I did adial-up bulletin board.
I'd had that for many, manyyears and then when the modern
internet came, it ran out of it,laying a closet versus being
dial-up.
And then, when that kind ofphase of the world changed, I
had a blog and I was literally apretty bad blogger.

(07:07):
Even to this day, I pay peopleto write for my website.

Sam Sethi (07:13):
Yeah, well, now you can pay AI and it's much easier.

So it's okay.
Well, that's true too to anextent, but I think the
ultimately what I like to talk.
I like to talk about tech.
So for me it was just, and Ihad no idea.
I mean, I thought it would be afun thing to do and my first
really indication that thismight be reaching some people
was when I woke up one morningand had an email from my hosting

(07:35):
provider said hey, we've shutyour account down because you're
out of data.
I'm like well, what?
And it's like, what do I do now?
Well, let me go over and buyanother GoDaddy account or let
me buy another DreamHost accountor whatever it was.
I was trying because I had tospread the love around Right,
then associated domains to gowith it.
I mean it was crazy what we hadto do in those early days.

(07:57):
But then it really there wasthis, this idea that things
could could take off, idea thatthings could take off.
And when I went back to Hawaiiand told my wife about the show,
she just basically kind oflooked at me and she didn't have
a clue what I was doing.

Sam Sethi (08:13):
Don't say anything.
He's going into the corner totalk to himself again.
Leave him alone.

And she said how much money?
And I kind of sheepishly saidhow much money.
I think we or seven, you knowshared hosting accounts by that
point and she kind of eyes gotbig and you know, pointed her
finger at me.
She says you got two years tofigure this out, how to make
money.
So I was forced intomonetization from like episode
six, you know, and foundmonetization about 10 months
later.
But and was lucky enough to beone of the first to find that.
But you know, just a series ofthings happened the book deal

(08:44):
with Wiley then forming anetwork and then GoDaddy coming
to me.
And then GoDaddy saying hey,and really, what the genesis of
Blueberry podcasting or RawVoice is, the parent company of
Blueberry was from a gal namedChris Rudlinger.
She said Todd, do you knowanyone else would like to do
advertising with GoDaddy?
And I was like huh, yeah,there's a business here.

(09:05):
So I literally on my podcast, Isaid I need a lawyer, I need an
MBA, I need a graphics guy andI need a programmer.
Because I was none of the above.
And I had a phone call on freeconference call about 10 days
later and three of the originalfive are still with the company.
I formed it over the phone.

(09:26):
We didn't meet each other forsix months, so Raw Voice was
literally launched from myaudience.

Sam Sethi (09:32):
And GoDaddy is still your sponsor, aren't they?

Still today, yeah , 1,698 episodes in.
You know there's a break tospend an hour on how that's
possible by itself, but reallythe simple part of it is you.
You got to have new butts comein the seat or no new ears
coming into the show in order totake maintain that success,
cause I get my performance ispurely based on new customers.

Sam Sethi (09:56):
Give everyone who doesn't know what are the shows
that you do.

So I do Geek News Central.
It's a tech show twice a week,Monday and Thursday.
I record thatek News Centralit's a tech show twice a week
week, Monday and Thursday.
I record that in the evening.
On Wednesdays I do the NewMedia Show at newmediashowcom
with Rob Greenlee Him and I'vebeen doing that more than 10
years in itself, and thenthere's three of us to round
robin on the podcast Insider atBlueberry.
So we usually run a coupleepisodes a month of the company

(10:22):
podcast.
But all told, I think I totaledit up here recently.
So more than 2,300 episodes andplus 2,000 plus interviews,
some that I have received andsome that I have given, Because,
well, the majority of thoseinterviews were done, like the
Consumer Electronics Show, CESShow, part of adding content to
the tech stack for the geek show.

Sam Sethi (10:44):
Now you've got Blueberry and you've got
multiple products.
You've got WordPress products.
You've got other products we'regoing to talk about shortly.
Is the podcast a loss leader tomaking people aware of
Blueberry or is it fundamentallyits own separate entity?
Where does the podcast sitwithin the business?

its own separate entity.
Where does the podcast sitwithin the business?
Yeah, the two shows that I dofor Geek News Central and the
New Media Show are not, you know, really designed to drive.
It's not a funnel for Raw Voiceor Blueberry, or Blueberry

(11:27):
specifically.
But why I do a podcast and Iwas talking in our Facebook
group about it yesterday was ifthere's very few podcast hosting
owners, founders, team membersthat actually do podcasts.
So on my team I have a lot ofteam members that do podcasts
Barry, my CFO and legal officer,he does a travel show.
One of the guys that's on ourboard of directors does a indie

(11:51):
music show, and so it's reallymy philosophy was and has been
if I'm going to talk aboutmonetization, if I'm going to
talk about growing a show, ifI'm going to talk about
consistency, if I'm going totalk about all these things that
are important, podcasting youbetter be doing it.
Yeah eat your own dog food asthey say that's right, you
better be doing it, and ifyou're not and you're talking

(12:13):
hypothetically, be quiet.
You don't know what you'retalking about?

Sam Sethi (12:16):
I agree.
Okay, put your hat on Todd andtell me what's five years from
now and what's 19 years from now.

And tell me what's five years from now and
what's 19 years from now.
I'll give you 12.
Okay, I'll take that, becauseAI will be part of every podcast
hosting platform's offering.
Everyone's going to havesomething.
If they don't, they're notgoing to be in business three
years from now.
I think that I'm not talkingabout an AI voice creating

(12:45):
content that, no.
But here's what will happen.
As all this proliferation of AIcontent written videos, all
this stuff people are not goingto know who to trust or what to
trust.
So, people that are doingoriginal content I'll include
YouTubers as well, people thatare doing original content audio

(13:07):
podcasts, video podcasts,youtube channels where there is
a voice that you can trust theyare going to flock to those
voices and personalities,because you're not going to know
what you're reading, if it'strue or not, if it's biased, if
it's how it's been written.
Where AI is going to helppodcasters is folks that hit a

(13:31):
writer's block, or maybe they'rehaving a hard time coming with
questions for a host, or maybethey've been horrible at writing
summaries of their episodes.
That thunking work and I stolethat word from Google, by the
way that thunking work is whatAI is going to do.
It's going to help.
It's going to assist.

(13:51):
It won't be the authority.
Here's what's going to end uphappening.
We're very creative.
We're all creators.
I consider myself creative butI can't draw.
If I asked to draw something, Idraw strict things, you and me
both.
So mid-journey I'm going tohave a lot of fun, okay, but I
can visualize what I want, right, and I know the kind of things
I want to bring out in my shows.

(14:12):
So, being a creator, you're notgoing to give anything up, but
the assistance is going to comewith that.
Thunking is show notes, maybequestions, creative ideas.
That's thunking.
Work is going to be helped byAI.
And then you still have to bethe subject matter expert of
everything because you're goingto do your content.

(14:35):
You're going to be the SME, thesubject matter expert of your
content, and then you're goingto have to make sure that you're
the subject matter expert ofwhatever that AI puts out and
says this was the summary.
You know Todd talked about this, this and this and this.
He said oh no, I didn't talkabout that, it made it up.
Let me delete that from thedraft and correct that you do

(14:57):
the QA on the output and whenyou hit publish, it's still your
product because you've had toedit this, because these AIs are
they're the dumbest they'llever be right now, exactly.
But I think it's good and Ithink it's going to help the
creative types in some of thisstuff.
But in the playing field it'sgoing to be equal, because
everyone's going to be doing thesame thing.
Everyone's going to havecomprehensive notes.
But what does that do then?

(15:18):
And this is why it's going tochange the podcasting space a
lot.
You don't write for youraudience, you write for Google,
and now you're going to bewriting for language models.
So the more in-depth your shownotes are when a language model

(15:39):
comes by and indexes your page.
So Todd talked about podcasting2.0.
Sam talked about podcasting 2.0or whatever it may be.
Then, as these things evolve,then, as search changes, tell me
about podcasting 2.0.
And there's like well, here'sSam and Todd talking about this,
here's Adam, here's Dave,here's the authorities.

(16:01):
And this is not going to happenright now because it's pretty
dumb right now.
It's built on data that doesn'tshift very much between models,
but over time it will.
So the one to three years, theworld is going to change
completely for knowledge workersand I think that podcast hosts
better be.
I'm probably.
If they're not aware of it,then sorry.

(16:24):
So I think that's what's goingto happen Now.
What's going to happen forlisteners?
Well, we just want listeners toengage.
We want listeners to be.
What is the thing that mostpodcasters care about the most
besides growth, growth?
Someone's saying I love yourshow Interactivity.

Sam Sethi (16:44):
Someone's saying I hate you.

Someone's saying that sucked or that was great,
or my biggest fan that I hadyears ago was a hater, because
he coalesced my audience.
I would read every one of hishateful comments he sent to the
show and the audience wouldrally around me and I build a
stronger user base just becauseof one, sal, wherever you're at.

(17:06):
Come back to the show, brother.
So.

Sam Sethi (17:09):
Sal from Brooklyn, put them on the splits.

Exactly so.
I think you know we want thislistener engagement.
What does listener engagementdo that keeps us motivated to
create content?
Because being a content creator, being a podcaster, can be
lonely.
Thank you on behalf of theindustry for the last 19 years
of what you've done, becausebeing a content creator, being a
podcaster- can be lonely.

Sam Sethi (17:26):
Thank you on behalf of the industry for the last 19
years of what you've done.
Speak to you soon.

Announcer (17:41):
Thank you.
The Pod News Weekly Review withBuzzsprout Start podcasting,
keep podcasting.

Sam Sethi (17:49):
James, James, James, James, right Apple.
Is Apple turning over a newchapter?

I see what you did there.
Very good, well done.
Yes, because Apple Podcasts, itseems, is getting ready to
support the Podcasting 2.0 JSONchapters feature, that's, the
podcast chapters tag in RSS.
They added documentation to itsRSS specification page which
was fascinating to watch them do, even more fascinating as soon
as somebody noticed I think itwas Nathan Gathright.
Actually, as soon as somebodynoticed, it was very quickly

(18:23):
removed, so taken straight offagain.
But yeah, I was reallyinterested in sort of digging
around this.
The Apple Podcasts app, at thetime of recording at least,
isn't supporting the podcastchapters.
You know the JSON chaptersstuff.
But I have definitely checkedand the Apple systems are

(18:46):
downloading the JSON chaptersfiles.
So I can actually see, ofcourse, because I self-host, I
can see exactly who's doing what.
So last week's show of the PodNews Weekly Review is actually
in PodClock as a little bit of atest, with lots of different
variants of chapters, and youcan see it being grabbed by

(19:07):
Apple Podcasts and used.
So that's going to beinteresting.
So, yeah, I'm not quite surewhat they're doing here.
Sam, have you got any ideas?

Sam Sethi (19:16):
I'm clueless, but actually you wrote a nice little
blog post where you surmisedwhat you think they might be
doing.

Well, yes, and this is just a guess and we'll
probably find out soon enough.
Obviously, they didn't mentionpodcasting at all in the big
iPhone reveal this week.
Of course, and why would they?
But perhaps Apple plans, Ithink, to add chapters for every
podcast using its AI technology, Chapters we know are really

(19:42):
useful, and there are lots ofpeople out there now who are
automatically putting chaptersin Buzzsprout our sponsor will
do that for you if you want themto.
So perhaps what Apple is doingis it wants to offer podcast
creators the option of optingout of AI-generated chapters by
producing their own, just inexactly the same way as they do

(20:05):
transcripts.
So perhaps that's why they'vemade JSON chapters available as
well as ID3 chapters, which isthe other chapter format that
they support, really just toensure that any podcaster can do
that.
There are some podcast hostingcompanies out there, like Acast
particularly, who will removeyour ID3 chapters altogether.

(20:26):
I think Omni Studio does thatas well, and that's probably not
a very good thing, but it'salso probably built into how ads
work and everything else, andso I think what's going on here
is that Apple Podcasts is addingchapters for everyone, and this
is their plan to allow podcastcreators the option of producing

(20:46):
their own chapters instead.
That's my hunch.

Sam Sethi (20:52):
I think it's a good one as well, I think, based on
what they did with transcripts.
Now I think there is no excusenow for any podcasting 2.0 host
not to support chapters andtranscripts.
Thankfully, I can't think ofany one of the important
podcasting hosts that don'tsupport it.
But you said it just twominutes ago it's optional.

(21:13):
Buzzsprout makes it optional,captify makes it optional,
rsscom, etc.
Blueberry why don't they makeit mandatory?
Why are we having transcriptsand chapters now, not as a
mandatory downloadable feature?

Well, I mean, I guess the reason for that is
that it's difficult.
It's another thing for us tothink about.
You know that, and location andthe people tag and the funding
tag and everything else.
There is a you know, there'sobviously an issue in
essentially giving podcastersyet more work to do, so.

(21:48):
I quite like the idea of AIgenerated chapters.
Buzzsprout's tool does a prettygood job of those, if you want
Buzzsprout's tool to do that,and so perhaps that, from a
point of view of you know howthey work, is probably the plan.

Sam Sethi (22:03):
Well, we'll see in a few weeks.
Now I'm going to ask you,because I'm sure you didn't
watch the Apple iPhoneannouncement what do you think
they announced?
James?

Now, not only have I not watched it, I've sat.
I was at the gym this morning,I was in the coffee shop
afterwards, but I was chattingto some of the regulars in there
.
I've not actually had time yet.
We're recording slightly earlyon a Wednesday because I'm on a
flight tomorrow.
I haven't actually had time yetto sit and read up what Apple

(22:35):
have announced, so I literallyknow nothing.
So what do I think they'veannounced?
I think they've announcediPhone 17.
Yeah, which?
What?

new feature, because there must be a new
feature.

I have no, I don't know a more powerful
notification buzzer.
I don't know, nope, nope.

Sam Sethi (23:02):
So the normal rinse and repeat better camera, better
battery and a thinner phone,that's it.

Well, because they've made a thinner phone,
haven't they?
Which I know is separate, theiPhone Air.
I know that they've made acheaper phone and they've, or
rather the iPhone 17 and thenthe iPhone 17 Pro, but that is
literally it.
There's nothing actually new.

Sam Sethi (23:26):
No, I mean they've nicked the design from the
Google Pixel for the camerastructure and actually iPhone 16
Pro Max camera telephoto lensis better than the 17 in reviews
.
But when you've got the newiPhone Air, iphone Air, which is
their super thin one, and thenyou put a battery pack on the

(23:48):
back of it because you need one,because it won't last all day,
it then becomes a fat phoneagain.

So sort of self-defeating.

Sam Sethi (23:56):
And then they've got an orange phone, but when you
put your own case on it youwon't see the orange phone.
So I'm not quite sure what'sgoing on there.

I had an orange phone in 1988.

Sam Sethi (24:06):
Yes, so I'm not quite sure what's going on there.
I had an orange phone in 1988.
Yes, but that's the company.
No, nothing useful, I think.
For me the thing that was mostexciting was probably the AirPod
3, which has got livetranslation on it.
But again, I don't travelenough you might.
Oh, right, yes, yes.
But the other person has tohave an AirPod 3 if they want to
do person-to-personconversation.

Really.

Sam Sethi (24:29):
Yeah, well, what it does is it will listen and then
use your phone to broadcast yourvoice.
But if you both have AirPod 3s,then you can sit at a dinner
table and literally translate inreal time between the two of
you.
I don't know how real time realtime is, but yeah.

I mean Google's Pixel Buds five years ago had
automatic translation, so youcould just stick them in and you
could listen to somebody elsetalking to you and it would
translate automatically.
Of course, an A I never triedit and B I bet it wouldn't work.
It was, you know, google and Ibet it doesn't work.
I bet it doesn't do thatanymore.
But no well, very nice, verynice.

(25:06):
Do you need brand new AirPodsfor that?

Sam Sethi (25:10):
Yeah, you do yeah.

Of course you do .
Of course you do.

Sam Sethi (25:12):
Brand new AirPods.
You need a brand new phone.
You need brand new, brand new,brand new, brand new.

I do understand that there's also a new Apple
Watch, which literally hasslightly better glass and it
supports five gigahertz wifi, asif that's going to make any
difference to anybody yeah, andit's got a sleep app that you
can track which ring did yearsago.
Yeah, right, well, I mean, butthe but, the but the I watch

(25:41):
already has one of those, so no,they've updated it or made it a
better one, or something.

Sam Sethi (25:45):
I can't remember I was.
I tuned out.
Yeah, I tuned out a bit.
I mean be honest with you.
It was like and we have madethis thinner and faster and
lighter and yes, anyway, therewe go apple, um, anyway now, but
going back to what they weredoing with chapters, although I
should.

I should just say, for reasons that you and I
both know, I love Apple.
I think Apple's a brilliantbrilliant company.

Sam Sethi (26:12):
Anyway, yes, moving on.
Did anyone say shilling Rightnow, moving fast forward.
Daniel J Lewis has last weektalked about at the end of last
week's his new product that'scoming to market.
It's in beta, still called podchapters, which is timely given
that apple are doing chapters aswell.
What are pod chapters, james?

well.
So pod chapters is a it's aigenerated, if you want it to be.
It's a smart, fast and easy wayto add engaging chapters to
your podcast episodes, and itwill export all of the chapter
formats for you, which is nice.
It will produce transcripts aswell.
It'll add them to the ID3 tags,which is nice, and it'll also

(26:57):
obviously produce, you know, aJSON chapter file that you can
do nothing with, because if yourpodcast hosting company doesn't
support JSON chapters anyway,then you're not going to be able
to upload a JSON chapters file.
So I'm not quite sure how thatbit is going to work.
You can upload Podlove.
You know it'll give you thecode for Podlove simple chapters

(27:17):
but again, unless you'rehosting yourself, you won't be
able to do much with it.
But the nice thing is it willdeal with your ID3 tags and
perhaps that's the mostimportant thing here and it all
works in a browser, which isnice.
There are a few programs at themoment which you can download,
one from Marco Arment calledForecast, but this is, I believe

(27:38):
, one of the only tools thatallows you to set chapters in
the browser, apart, of course,from the one produced by our
sponsor, buzzsproutcom.
But yeah, so I think it's anice tool.
I wonder how big the audienceis for it.
I wonder whether it's a veryniche tool that only

(27:58):
self-hosters are going to beable to actually use.
But it looks like a nice tool.
It certainly looks pretty andsmart.
Daniel seems to have certainlygot the UX looking really nice,
so yeah.

Sam Sethi (28:11):
Yeah, no, I was wondering whether Daniel was
going to produce an API for itso that apps or hosts could hook
into it as a service.

Ah well, maybe that's an interesting plan.
I'm sure that that's somethingthat he will be thinking about.

Sam Sethi (28:26):
Well, we'll try and get him on the show in a couple
of weeks, he said, when theproduct's out of beta.
So we'll see whether Daniel'son the show then.

Well, I think that makes perfect sense, and
maybe when he's actuallyregistered his trademark, daniel
Jason Lewis Patreon.

Sam Sethi (28:45):
Now, patreon, as you know, is something that I think
is worth watching very closely.
You have them on Pod News Daily.
I've taken this from your pagePatreon earned over $472 million
from over 6.7 million paidmemberships in the last year
alone.

(29:05):
So that's something that Ilifted directly from Pod News
Daily, and they've just updatedtheir creator pages.
Now, I'm a long time advocate ofthe belief that we are going
back to portals An old term cameout of the 1980s, but it's
coming back in fashion, I think,and we are moving towards

(29:27):
creator portals.
Now you see it with Substack,and I think Patreon have now
followed suit and decided topush hard.
You know you've got things likePodpage, but Podpage is a
standalone application on itsown.
I think Patreon itself has allof the components, which is both
freemium and premium content,and now they're giving creators

(29:49):
the ability to customize theirUI, create customized domains,
and I think this is the wayforward.
I think, when people talk to meabout YouTube and Spotify and
worry about those platforms, Ifeel like they're they're not
the destination, but they're theroad bumps on the road to the

(30:09):
destination, in the same waythat tiktok is.
I think they're great and Ithink you need to be on those
platforms if that's what youwant to do, audio video because
of the algorithms that willhighlight your podcast
potentially to a new audience.
But I think if you want tocreate community and aggregate
people around your content, thenI think you need to use sites

(30:31):
like Substack or Patreon,because those are the places
where, in the words of ToddCochran, you will own your own
dot com.

Yeah, no, I think owning your own dot com is
a massively important thing.
I'm still really surprised whythere are so many companies out
there that don't Justbuyyourowncom and then connect
your existing podcast page to it.
Buzzsprout will let you do thatfor free, or you can use
something like Podpage, you know, which is a really good tool as

(31:02):
well If you're a subscriber tothe Pod News newsletter.
By the way, you can get somemoney off Podpage as well if you
go to podnewsnet slash extras.
But I'm super confused as towhy quite a lot of very big
podcasts that I see areperfectly happy to link over to
you know their page on you knowpodbean or something, and you're

(31:23):
there thinking you're notgetting the best out of the
podcast that you have yeah, I.

Sam Sethi (31:28):
I mean, I've been watching this, obviously closely
for personal reasons, with TrueFans, but the thing I've seen
is like the newsagents this weekfrom Global created a sub-stack
page.
I mean, I've talked aboutZateocom being another one.
There are quite a few people, Ithink, beginning to wake up to
having a merch store, blog,podcast video all aggregated

(31:51):
under one brand, under their owndomain, and I think that seems
to be the path I believe in 2026, most podcasters should be
taking.
Now one sidestep, just veryquickly.
It was very funny a couple ofweeks ago.
Adam Curry was talking abouthow potentially we could use RSS
and I sent him a comment intothe podcast index show saying

(32:12):
that actually the originalconcept of RSS was a data
transport layer to a podcast, toa portal, and that's what
Netscape originally invented RSSfor.
It was actually slow internet,so they used RSS to aggregate
sports news, weather fromdifferent sites into one portal

(32:33):
page.
I think we've come full circle.
I just feel RSS is coming backto its original goals.

Yeah, and I think you know it's interesting.
So Ramanathan Guha published0.9 of RSS, dan Libby published
0.91, both at Netscape, and thenDave Weiner jumped in and
published another version of0.91, which is very confusing,

(33:00):
and has since obviously takenthat forward.
I find it interesting to seethat the only thing that Dave
Weiner is currently talkingabout is that ActivityPub is all
wrong and that social mediashould really work through RSS
feeds.
I mean, he's not coded anything.
He's not shown how it mightwork.
The only thing that he appearsto be doing is just throwing

(33:23):
stones at ActivityPub and atBlue Sky and at various other
people for not supporting RSS.
By the way, they both have RSSfeeds.

Sam Sethi (33:33):
Does he not understand the history of
ActivityPub from RSS?
Does he not understand the paththat led to?

it.
I don't think he's interested.
I don't think he's interestedin working with people, to be
honest with you.
I think he's more interested in, you know, doing his own thing
thing, and you know, and and youknow, fair enough, if that's
what you want to do, then fine.
But you know, throwing throwingstones, and you know, and you
know having a grump about thingsis is probably not the right,

(34:03):
the right way, but you know, Imean, you know, up to him if he
wants to end up doing that.
But yeah, it's a shame to seeDave so fixated on technology
over anything else, you know interms of that.
And ActivityPub, you know, foryes, it's complicated.
There are good reasons why it'sthat complicated, but yes, it's

(34:23):
complicated.
And RSS feeds, yeah, they'renice, but unless you can
actually code a fully workingsocial network, which I'm not
sure you can actually with, justwith flat RSS, then you know,
I'm not, I'm not sure where they, you know where, where anybody
wins from that conversation.

Sam Sethi (34:41):
Well, the reason that Atom if you remember, atom 1.0,
which was an alternative to RSS2.0, evolved was because Dave
Weiner wouldn't work with anyone.
He wouldn't allow RSS to becustomised.
There was no namespaceextension at the time.
So people said, ok, screw you,dave Weiner, we'll create Atom
1.0.
And there was websites all thetime that have to have the RSS

(35:06):
2.0 icon and the Atom 1.0 icon.
And the Atom 1.0 evolved intoactivity streams.
That evolved into ActivityPub.
So that is the history of howwe got to ActivityPub because of
Dave Weiner's lack of communityintegration with other people
and collaboration.

(35:27):
So when Dave Weiner's moaningagain about Activity Pub, it has
a history of 20 years of DaveWeiner.

Well, and on that bombshell, let's move on
from that to something thatnobody has anything bad to say
about YouTube.

Sam Sethi (35:44):
YouTube yes, the lovely YouTube, they're not a
sponsor.
Now YouTube live video.
They've announced that they aregoing to broadcast their first
exclusive NFL game, and they'vedone that to 17 million global
viewers.
I'm not sure how global thatwould have been, but anyway.
That's an interesting thing,though, that they've gone down

(36:07):
this content route of gettinglive American football.
Amazon's been doing it for awhile.
They've been averaging 13.2million.
Amazon actually, in the UK, hasa lot of the Premier League
football.
This is all on the back of thefact that Spotify this week
claimed that sports is thefastest growing video podcast

(36:28):
category.
James, why or how do they saythat?

Well.
So Spotify bless them, and I amlooking forward to speaking to
somebody from Spotify in thenext couple of days as well.
But Spotify bless them.
They are remarkablyentertaining with the way that
they do some of their talking.
So, for example, they didn'tsend a press release out on this

(36:53):
, they just sent an email andone of their emails says sports
video podcast consumption onSpotify is up more than four
times year on year, with liftsacross the ringer titles.
And I just like to stop thereand go OK, so it's up 4% year on
year and the Ringer has seen atleast 4% increase in video

(37:17):
podcasts.
Ah, yes, that was because thistime last year the Ringer had
zero, zero, none, zero videos onSpotify.
If you remember the Ringer,even after the big launch of
video on Spotify, the Ringerstill wasn't actually doing any
video on Spotify.
If you remember the Ringer,even after the big launch of
video on Spotify, the Ringerstill wasn't actually doing any
video on Spotify until we kickedup a bit of a fuss about it.

(37:37):
So yes, of course it's up morethan four times year on year
because the Ringer wasn't evendoing any.
So it's all a little bit of anonsense.
That said, it is up 53% quarteron quarter, which is at least
something, so I think we canhave a look at that.
That said, it is up 53% quarteron quarter, which is at least
something, so I think we canhave a look at that.
But yeah, I mean, you knowSpotify very clearly wanting to
make a name for themselves inthe video space.

(37:59):
I'm not sure that they are, butwanting to make a deal for
themselves in the video space.
I think from YouTube's point ofview, youtube is more and more
now like a Netflix or like acable company.
They want access to as muchcontent as possible and they are
going to buy some of thatcontent.
I'm a YouTube premiumsubscriber and there is content

(38:20):
that I can stream that nobodyelse can, for example.
So of course, you're going tosee.
You know a bunch of that.
But yeah, you know, live videois one thing.
Is it much to do withpodcasting?
Well, kind of yes and kind ofno, because right now I can
imagine, not that you or I woulddo this, sam, but I would

(38:53):
imagine that there will be noshortage of young ladies who
will be very keen to stream livein various states of undress,
and that's probably a bad thingtoo.

Sam Sethi (39:03):
Yes, yes, Moving on then, James, from that, One
interesting story you wroteabout and I found it interesting
because of our background inradio was a company called
Xenomedia that's launchedXenopass, an AI powered toolkit
for radio and podcasting.

I thought this was really interesting.
They have produced basicallylots of different tools that you
feed a radio station into andit will automatically split
those up into podcasts using AI.
It removes ads automatically,it inserts the programmatic ad
markers automatically, it'llcreate transcripts, seo friendly

(39:41):
titles, it'll trim interviews,it'll add intros and outros all
of that kind of stuff, which isnice.
But then you can add AI on-airtalent, as they call it so you
can add the latest weather orthe latest news or sports news,
so that when a listenerdownloads this stuff, then they

(40:02):
can actually get a full packagealong with it.
They produce apps for you andeverything else, and, of course,
they also give you a ton ofanalytics as well.
So I think it looks a veryinteresting set of tools.
Not something that most radiostations haven't built for
themselves, but I think that youknow.
For some of the smaller ones,then Xeno Plus might be for them

(40:25):
.
But yeah, quite a nice tool,xeno.
In case you don't know of them,their main job is in Africa,
where they have worked out avery clever way of streaming
live radio via a telephonenumber, because it turns out
that in most African countriesyou get free telephone calls and
so, but the data, the cost ofdata, is massive.

(40:46):
And so the way that, forexample, you can listen to the
BBC World Service in I'd like tosay Nigeria, I think it might
be is by ringing a number andit's as simple as that and you
can listen to that radio stationas long as you like.
And actually they make moneyfrom that.
Zeno make money from thatbecause they get some
interconnect fees.
Costs the listener nothing.

(41:07):
It's very good on battery powerand everything else.
So it's quite a nice idea.
So they're quite a cleverlittle, clever little
organisation.

Sam Sethi (41:15):
They call themselves the Shopify of radio on their
website.
Sadly, there's no prices ontheir website.
I couldn't find one.
When I did River Radio, we useda similar service from the
French company Radio King, whichwas owned by Usha at one point.
Usha then sold it, which Ithink at the time I did say to
them I thought was the weirdestthing.

(41:37):
I thought, when the aggregationof podcasting and radio was
coming forward, that they weregetting rid of that part, but
anyway they did.
There's a company in Manchestercalled Radioco that does
something similar, but actuallywhen I looked at the services
that you described just now fromZeno Plus, if I was starting
River Radio again today, I thinkI'd start to look at using them
Again, price determined.

(41:57):
But yeah, they've got somereally interesting tools.

Yeah, no, I think it looks very smart, so
well done to them.

Sam Sethi (42:05):
Now going back to YouTube, a story you covered,
james.
Youtube appears to be havingtrouble importing RSS feeds.
What are they doing?

Yes, so earlier on in the week I think they've
fixed it now, but earlier on inthe week their RSS feed thing
broke again, so individual showsweren't being imported into the
YouTube platform.
If you just use their YouTubeRSS ingestion tool, I'm not sure
how successful that's being forthem.
I'll be honest with you I don'tnecessarily see a ton of

(42:37):
success coming from justaudio-only shows.
Nobody really talks about themand the figures that I see are
relatively dismal in terms ofthe total shows from that shows
you know from that so I'm notnecessarily sure that it's such
a great thing.
For example, we upload thisshow to YouTube.

(42:59):
Would you like to take a guesshow many views we have had in
the last week?

Sam Sethi (43:06):
I'm going for a number between zero and one.

No, no, we're quite, we are, we are quite
popular, you know.
Oh, okay, yeah, five, Okay,retirement plan in place.
Yes, that is, that is literallyit, and we're not just uploading
a static graphic.
We're uploading at least a nicesort of bouncy headliner video
with some information there andsome transcripts and everything

(43:34):
else, and even that isn't doingparticularly well.
My guess is that they don'tcare about it too much, to be
honest.
But anyway, if you were havingproblems earlier on in the week,
they fixed it now.
So that's all good.
But YouTube does appear to bedoing something weird, because
not only have they been havingfun doing that, also there have

(43:54):
been a ton of content creatorsthose content creators that
would normally talk about thissort of thing saying that quite
a lot of their traffic is down,linus Media Group saying that
25% of their views have gone,and a number of other people
saying that their numbers arealso quite low.
So you know, everybody'sblaming it on the algorithm for

(44:18):
some way shape or you know.
I don't know whether that'sfair or whether there's
something else at play here.
Somebody else, I think, claimedthat it was something to do
with restricted mode, and thereare more people using restricted
mode these days, and perhapsthat's got something to do with
it.
But anyway, I mean it all comesdown to a wise man once saying

(44:38):
get your owncom and make surethat your podcasts are as open
as you can possibly be, becauseYouTube can very easily turn
things off.

Sam Sethi (44:48):
Yeah, I mean we've seen it with the Google search,
when they've changed thealgorithm and everyone's
scrambled, I mean you know, andpeople go oh my God, you can't
do that, I've lost all mytraffic.
I mean, Jason Calacanisfamously had a website that
would do things to aggregatecontent and then SEO from
Google's algorithm changed andthis whole business died.
But you know, maybe that's whatthey've done.

(45:09):
They've just changed thealgorithm and not told anyone
about it and the consequence isyou've lost traffic.

Well, maybe that's how it works.
Maybe it's a bit of a pushagainst the amount of people who
are now producing AI andtalking about that.
Oh my goodness.
So I got this very.

Sam Sethi (45:30):
Sorry, sorry, can you hold on a sec?
I'm just going to grab a cup oftea while you do this bit, go
for it.

So, oh my goodness, I got this very, very
smug email from somebody at anetwork called Quiet Please.
I wish they would.
It's from a company calledInception Point AI.
It's headed up by formerWondery COO, janine Wright, who
I've met and seemed quite niceand pleasant to me.
But anyway, what they haveworked out is they've worked out

(46:00):
that if they get AI to generatea load of podcasts, they're
producing 3,000 new episodes perweek, which is about 1% of all
new podcasts.
If they can get AI to justgenerate all of this stuff and
automatically publish it andthey can call their shows clever

(46:22):
enough titles in terms of SEO,then all they essentially need
is about 20 listeners, becauseabout 20 listeners will earn you
about a dollar in terms of adrevenue.
So if you about manage that 20or 30 listeners, if you about
manage that, then you're makingprofit.

(46:42):
And so this company, inceptionPoint AI, is deeply excited
about the fact that they areproducing AI-generated content.
They say, or rather, janineWright says, that I think that
people who are still referringto all AI-generated content as
AI slop are probably lazyLuddites.
Well, a, that means that shedoesn't understand what Luddites

(47:05):
actually means and what theywere actually talking about,
because they weren't fightingagainst technology.
They were fighting againstsomething completely different.
And also, secondly, if that'sthe case, I'm proudly lazy.
So if you would like to listento some AI slop, go and find
Knitting, which is a podcastwhich has been carefully SEO
titled.
It's hosted by Lila CraftyWalker, and Lila Crafty Walker

(47:29):
is, of course, ai, althoughyou'd never know, because
there's no disclosure and it's asix part series on knitting and
it says nothing.
It literally says nothing, andif this is the future of
podcasting, then I think it'stime to retire and go off and
find something else to do,because my goodness me, maybe

(47:50):
some knitting.

Sam Sethi (47:51):
James, you can do some knitting mate.

And I know that similar is going on on YouTube
as well.
So people are throwing showsout on YouTube and making them
in terms of AI.
But, of course, the downside ofbeing completely open and
completely you know, find yourpodcast, you know wherever you
get your podcast and completelyyou know, find your podcast, you
know wherever you get yourpodcast the downside of that is

(48:18):
that it's going to be quitedifficult for podcast apps and
for podcast platforms to weedsome of this crap out and you
know.
But I mean, is this really ourfuture?

Sam Sethi (48:25):
Yeah, well, yes and no, Okay.
So two things here, james.
First of all, I need to go andwrite it, but I, as CEO of
TrueFans, we have an AIindicator within our dashboard
for creators to say this was thevoice or the host is an AI, and
we also have in the usersettings the ability, like we

(48:45):
have with the explicit tag, tothen block those out.
So that's something that Ithink apps and hosts can do.
We haven't adopted that like.
We have the explicit tag in thesame way, and I know that
people won't have to self-report, so they could just ignore it.
But that's the same argument assaying they don't have to
self-report explicit, but peopledo report themselves as an

(49:08):
explicit.
So that's not an argument Itake on board.
But the second part of this is,while there is a monetary
benefit to putting out masses ofcontent which is what Jason
Calacanis was doing when Googlechanged the algorithm so that he
couldn't put out post afterpost after post on websites,
that would just generate adrevenue for him.

(49:30):
In the same way, this is thesame example where you know, you
know, be damned with thequality, it's the quantity right
, and if he can get enough, asyou just said then they will,
they have a business.
Now it's up to YouTube which Ithink they are doing to restrict
AI content.
Spotify need to do the same andI throw it back.

(49:52):
How do we in the podcastingworld deal with?

this?
Yeah, how do we?
How do we?
Because I'm not sure thatthere's a very easy way of doing
that other than companies likeListen Notes automatically
marking stuff.
As you know, ai generated, Ihave to say.
This company hosts all of theirshows on Spreaker, which is
probably why we can nowunderstand why Spreaker is doing

(50:17):
so well in John Spurlock'scharts, because all of a sudden,
they're being flooded with AIslot such as this, and so, from
that point of view, yes, theyspreaker.

Sam Sethi (50:31):
I mean, I don't know do the right.

I mean spreaker could turn around, but why?

Sam Sethi (50:36):
no, no, I'm not saying they should stop it.
If they want to take it, right,have it.
It's their choice, right.
But at least if we as anindustry created some podcast
tag that said you, just as wehave the block tag, the location
tag and the explicit tag, havean ai tag, and then spreaker
could, and the explicit tag havean AI tag, and then Spreaker
could mark it.
It's then down to me as alistener.
Do I want to receive thiscontent?

(50:56):
Yeah, I'm happy with AI content.
Great.
Well, stick it out there thenand let me listen to it, or I
don't like it.

Let me filter it out.
Yeah, and I think we need tounderstand well what are we
marking there as AI and you know, and all of that, and I think
it's something which has beenwholly generated by ai.
Apparently, there are spotchecks done on some of these
podcasts, but you can see thatactually, quite a lot of them
are just being producedautomatically, are being

(51:23):
published automatically withoutany human being involved.
It's not not a great.
Not a great move.
Close them down.

Sam Sethi (51:31):
I say Well, you know it's people choice, but I think
we should have the ability tomark them and then allow people
to choose them as well.
But anyway, we'll see.
I'm sure it's not the last timewe'll talk about it, that's for
certain.
Now, whizzing around the world,the New York Times is to close
its audio app.
Bye, bye.

Yes, goodbye.
Yes, the app was launched inApril 2023 for iPhone users.
If you are an Android user,then tough.
You never even got one, andinstead they're moving the audio
into the main news app, which Ithink makes the most amount of
sense.
And they have also, of course,the New York Times have made
much more of their audioavailable to everybody, not just

(52:15):
to a subscriber.
So the New York Times headlinesis, I think, one of the ones
that I would point to, whichseems to do very well.
Let's take a look at some jobsPodimo are hiring.
Apparently, they're hiring fora VP of people and culture.
That's a sign of a companywhich has grown to a certain
size, isn't it?
How big do you need to be tohave a VP people and culture?

Sam Sethi (52:38):
I don't know, because I guess I don't know.
A couple of hundred people,yeah exactly, I would guess.

I mean, you wouldn't be doing that if you
were only five people, would you?
So I think that goes to showeverything.
So well done for Podimo foryour growth.
And lots of horror stories, ofcourse, going on in the US
following the cuts in federalfunding for public media PBS
cutting 100 jobs.
Houston Public Mediaeliminating nine staff positions

(53:07):
.
Ket laying off 36 staff.
Kusc reportedly cutting eightstaff.
See how many different ways Ican say people losing their jobs
in that particular paragraph.
But yes, if you know peopleworking in the public media
sphere in the US, it is not funfor them right now, so go and

(53:28):
give them a hug.

Sam Sethi (53:31):
Yes, go and give them a hug indeed.
Now awards and events.
James, you were out in Asiarecently.
The Asia Podcast Awards werepublished.

You're very British, aren't you the?

Sam Sethi (53:42):
way that you say Asia Says the Indian-born man yes,
yes, but you can tell them, thepublic school got to me.
Yes, exactly, asia, okay, butyou can tell them, the public
school got to me.
Yes, exactly, yes, asia, okay.
What are you wanting, uncle G?
Asian public awards.

Go for it.
Asia, as Mike Russell calls ityes, the full winners of the
Asia podcast awards I'm going tocall it have been published.
Those were given out in alavish ceremony with about eight
blow-up balloons at Podcast DayAsia.
It was great fun.

(54:15):
What is always fun with thoseawards is that it's done in the
middle of a conference and stillpeople who are up for the
awards just turn up and we'vegot no idea whether or not
they've actually turned up andall of a sudden they pop up on
stage and they say, yes, this ismine, and so that was great.
There's a full list on theradioinfoasia website.

(54:36):
Crimecon in Denver alsoannounced the winners of the
2025 Clue Awards, which is awhole awards about true crime.
Hooray to awards for podcastsin there.
Events podcast days in Spain iswell.
It's less than a month away.
It's about three weeks away now.
The event this year includesEric Newsom, megan Davies and

(54:58):
you, sam Sethi.
It's in Madrid in October.
In Spain, the Ivux podcastawards have been open for
registrations and if you win,you get a nice physical trophy
and you also get a year of freevisibility on the ivux platform,
which is probably worth rathermore if you speak spanish.
There is more information thereand the all ireland podcast

(55:20):
awards are happening in ireland,along with a new two-day
podcast summit called sound wave.
It's in adair I hope I'vepronounced that right.
Apparently it's Ireland'sprettiest village in County
Limerick, and we will chat withDylan Haskins from that event in
the next couple of weeks hereon the Pod News Weekly Review.

(55:40):
What else is going on?

Sam Sethi (55:42):
Well, let's look across the podosphere Buzzcast,
which is one of the podcasts Ido listen to regularly.
They had a really interestingshow.
I don't know if they've come tothe party late or they're just
recycling something, but thereality of monetisation in the
streaming era is the title ofthe episode and they begin to
talk about the struggles ofmusic artists.

(56:04):
This is something thatobviously the podcasting 2.0
community has been talking aboutfor a few years now and more
and more artists are beginningto, you know, either boycott
Spotify, A because Daniel X isinvesting in AI drones or, B,
they're not getting paid enoughor, C, they're just looking for
other opportunities.

(56:25):
But it's a really interestinglisten and again it comes back
down to, I think, the slightfailure of the podcasting
community to get value for valueright.
We haven't got the streamingpayments completely right.
I think artists would benefitfrom having direct to fan

(56:45):
payment from platforms like youknow fountain, true fans,
podverse, etc.
But we haven't sold the messagecorrectly.
We haven't got the informationacross.
Wavelake seems to havedisappeared off the horizon.
Rss Blue is focused on music,but again I'm not hearing much.
So the whole jamboree ofexcitement around music in

(57:07):
podcasting, which we had twoyears ago, seems to have gone
flat, but there is a marketplacestill and artists are looking
for a place to go away fromSpotify.

Yeah, now I think both that and the whole
streaming payments thing.
Of course, value for value issomething different, but the
whole streaming payments thinghas gone very, very quiet
recently and you know we wereonly mentioning it on
podcastindexsocial a couple ofdays ago.
What's nice is that after a fewmessages and things from Oscar

(57:42):
and from Eric PP and from others, we can actually see that there
is now a bit of renewedinterest in this and a bit of
renewed interest inunderstanding what Fountain is
doing, what is going on withsome of the ways that you can
get the metadata along with yourpayment and all of that, and so
hopefully there's a bit moreinterest in that bit coming back

(58:03):
again, because it would bereally nice to see that you know
coming back too.

Sam Sethi (58:07):
Well, albie have just done an update to their hub to
support Bolt 12 and added backlightning address payment.
Sorry, lightning address toyour wallet, so for sub wallets.
So again there is movement.
It is slow and I think you knowwe had to take two steps back
to go one step forward, but Ithink it is coming again.

No, I think so.
One other thing to cover is1000, not Out.
Dave Jackson has published his1000th episode of the School of
Podcasting.
Congratulations, dave.
The show contains expert tipsfor launching and growing your
podcast, and the topic inepisode 1000 was how to grow

(58:50):
your podcast.
He says that maybe your showisn't growing because it's not
very good, which I'm presuming.
He's talking about some othershow and not this one.

Sam Sethi (58:59):
Hopefully, yeah, we'll get him on the show.
If he was talking about us.

Yes, it's the stuff you'll find every Monday
in the Pod News newsletter.
Here's where Sam talkstechnology.
What's going on?

Sam Sethi (59:13):
Sam, this one is a techie one.
There is a we talked about itearlier right, we talked about
RSS and we talked about theevolution towards activity
streams and activity pub, and Idon't think people really
understand that yet.
But there is some work going on, because one of the biggest
problems in the social web isthat you now have two protocols

(59:36):
activity pub and the appprotocol and even if you then
add Nost as a protocol.

Who uses that blue sky?
Ah?

Sam Sethi (59:47):
there you go.
Uh, I think, if you add intothis debate a third protocol,
which is the noster protocol.
So the social web, or theindependent social web, is
basically split between threedifferent factions and Never the
Twain currently seem to bemeeting.
In fact, there's quite a heateddebate between all of the

(01:00:07):
various different stakeholdersabout mine's better than yours,
so that's causing a lot of angst, but I do believe they're now
trying to merge the protocols.
I do believe they're now tryingto merge the protocols.
Now there is a very interestingcompany.
They originally createdsomething called BridgyFed which
was a bridge between theActivityPub and the At protocol,

(01:00:27):
so Blue Sky and Mastodon, forexample and they are now
promoting or pushing forward anew protocol.
God, we need another one calledbounce.
It's now open in beta and theidea is that bounce would allow
you to bridge seamlessly betweenall the different protocols so

(01:00:47):
that you have a social graph,your friends graph, that you can
migrate.
That's the biggest thing thatlocks out migration between any.
You know, if you wanted to gofrom Twitter or X to threads, it
was oh God, do I have to createmy social graph again?
Well, now Bounce is a migrationtool service that allows you to
migrate your social graph, andthey're also using Bridgifed to

(01:01:12):
now allow you to also bridgemessages between the two
platforms as well.
The goal is to centralisewithout centralising.
I can't quite get my headaround it.
It's very early, but if you'reinterested in all this stuff,
then yes, have a look atsomething called Bounce and
there's a really interestingpodcast called wedistributeorg.
They did an interview with thedevelopers from both sides.

(01:01:34):
Worth a listen if you'reinterested in that stuff.

James Cridland (01:01:37):
Yes, I would just like, I'd like me to be
able to have a handle on BlueSky and a handle on Mastodon,
but I want them to be nicehandles, not weird ones at
bridgiefedbizarreyou know.
Whatever it might be, we're notquite there yet, but I'm
imagining that at some pointwe'll be able to do that bit too

(01:02:01):
.
So that would be nice if that'spossible.

Sam Sethi (01:02:04):
Yeah, I mean again data portability for social
graphs.
One thing, a question for you,james if you wanted to move from
one podcast app to another andI mean you've got all of your,
let's say, playlists on Fountainand maybe you want to go to
Podcast Guru how would you do it?

Well, that's an interesting question, isn't it?
The only real way is OPMLimport and export, assuming that
both of your podcast apps dealwith OPML and deal with that
particular flavor of opml, butthere's no way in terms of play
or comment activity.
There's no way of you knowanything else, really, other
than here are the podcasts I'msubscribed to, so you, you can't

(01:02:49):
even see which which episodesof that podcast I have listened
to exactly, and I I do feel thatyou know, am I being ignored?

Sam Sethi (01:03:01):
possibly I've talked about activity streams.
Yeah, no, I genuinely think Iam being ignored by the group in
the industry, because I thinkactivity streams have been
around from the w3c and they arerooted in rss and they have a
history and we are ignoring it.
I mean, okay, my own platformsupports it, but I don't think
any other platform supports it.

(01:03:22):
And that does give you all ofthat information who I follow,
what podcasts I listen to, howlong I listen to, what comments
are attached to it.
All of that is XML data that wecan export and we have that
feature and function.
We can import it as well.
Opml is, I think, a historicaldata point and it's very good

(01:03:45):
for just very limited movementof podcasts, but it's not about
moving your I, I guess, yourlisten time, your your your
social graph of people youfollow, all of the other bits
that make your podcast appinteresting.
I don't know when we will getto the point where others start
to look at this.
Maybe never, but I do worrythat we are missing a trick here

(01:04:09):
, because migrating from onepodcast app to another, just as
migrating from one social webapplication to another is tricky
and I don't think we have ananswer, but there is one out
there and I think it is calledactivity streams.
Yeah, anyway, moving on, jamespod match, who we had on a
couple of weeks ago, alex sanfelipo, has finally released

(01:04:31):
after 17 months of work.
He says well, it's not finallyreleased, alex, it's in final
beta.
It's Well, it's not finallyreleased, alex, it's in final
beta.
Yeah, technically, it's notreleased 17 months.
This must be brilliant.

What is it?

Sam Sethi (01:04:44):
It's a podcast booking agency application.
There you go.

Ah, okay, so if you're a podcast booking agency,
you can use this as software tohelp you from doing that.
That's very smart.
It's in beta.
If you want to be part of that,if you're a podcast booking
agency or an independent podcastbooking agent, then you can get

(01:05:09):
in for free right now, and sothat's nice, isn't it?
You'll doubtless find moreinformation at Podmatch if you
go hunting through the latestposts and all that kind of stuff
.
So well done to Alex Sanfilippofor that.
Other quick things going on atthe moment Wunder, which is
Wundercraft's AI creation tool.
Talking about AI creationearlier, anyway, the video

(01:05:34):
version of that will beavailable on October, the 15th,
so see if you can get in on that.
That might be nice.
Microsoft has a thing calledVibe Voice which, if you could
use it, you'd find that it was athing like Google's Notebook LM
.
It can generate up to fourvoices from some text that you
upload it, or at least it wouldhave done, but people got it

(01:05:55):
doing naughty things, so they'veremoved it.
Quotes until we are confidentthat out-of-scope use is no
longer possible.
Oh dear.

Sam Sethi (01:06:03):
Will they ever learn?
They released an AI in Japanand it was pleasant, polite and
people asked it sensiblequestions.
They released it on Twitter andit was a Nazi within about 24
hours.

Yes, I know.
Will they ever learn?
No is clearly the answer.
What else is going on PocketCasts?
Our friend at Pocket Casts?
If you use Pocket Casts forfree, then you might get ads in
the app from here on in.
There are certainly ads thatare now appearing trying to get
you to upgrade to Pocket CastsPremium, but will you get other
apps in there as well, who knows?

(01:06:37):
But anyway, the new version ofPocket Casts which is coming out
includes that in it.
There's a very smart little APIfrom PodEngine which they've
just launched.
It allows you to grab podcastdata like transcripts, social
media metrics, youtube datacharts, reviews and all kinds of
stuff, and the API looks quitedecent decent, so maybe worth a

(01:06:59):
peek if you're interested inthat sort of thing.
Oh, sam sethy, what's podster?

Sam Sethi (01:07:05):
well, don't ask me.
I mean, I'm only reporting onit, right?
So podster combines podcasting2.0 and nosta.
No, it's not fountain, it'sanother app.
Oh great, yes, you know morethe merrier.
Does it work the same way?
Well, I'm not quite sure.
So I looked at it.
It's from Heather Larson, who'sthe marketing director at

(01:07:27):
Soapbox Technology, the peoplewho produce it.
It's open source, it's free.
They've used it with an AIplatform tool that they call
MKStack, so you can vibe codeyour podcast solution to be the
app I'm sure that Adam Curry isgoing to love this one because
he likes his vibe coding.

It's got Adam Curry's name all over this,
hasn't it?

Sam Sethi (01:07:48):
Yeah, no, I can see him.

In fact, it really does, because not only
will MKStack help you createcustom social platforms and
applications with their flexibleframework, not only that, you
can also build in minutes, editwith Dork AI and deploy
instantly what's.

Sam Sethi (01:08:08):
Dork AI, I have no idea and I wasn't going to go
down that rabbit hole.

but that's what they use to edit it.

Sam Sethi (01:08:14):
I mean yes because that's the big problem with vibe
coding is debugging it.

Yes, that's the problem a developer, their
developer relations person iscalled derrick.
Nothing against people calledderrick, but goodness me so, yes
, wow, what a thing it does.
Though, say, at the bottom ofthis blog post, the podcast
still goes to all of the podcastapps we're used to I'm not
quite sure I understand that bitand the podcasting 2.0 apps run

(01:08:41):
by our friends at fountain andtrue fans.
Well, so so you must have beeninvolved in this no, I had zero
involvement.

Sam Sethi (01:08:50):
No, I had nothing to do.
The only reason that I got anice kindly mention was because
we support payments and wesupport all the tags.
So it's the podcasting 2.0 part.
But actually, nick molster,oscar mary and davidas from
fountain did help them a lot and, again, if you're into the
world of nosta, this is going tobe something.

(01:09:12):
If you want to roll your ownpodcast out, then this is
probably something you mightwant to look at.
You know, we talked to Barrylast week about why did Podhome
launch an app, given thatthey're a host, and he said well
, we didn't quite have an appthat worked the way that we
wanted it to work, so we builtour own app, which took them,
you know, over a year.
Well, in theory, if this worksthe way that it's been promoted,

(01:09:35):
you could roll your ownpodcasting out.
You know, matt Medeiros, if youremember, did that a little
while back.
He vibe coded his own podcastapp.
I don't know where that went to, if he's just had it as a test
and then he's binned it.
But again, you know, if you'reinto the world of NOSTA,
payments and micropayments andpodcasting 2.0 and you want to

(01:09:55):
do your own thing, give it a go,I suppose.

Well, my word, there we are.
What more can you ask for?
And you get to use Dork AI, sothat's always a benefit.
Yes, thank you for bringingthat to me, sam.

Sam Sethi (01:10:15):
I can see you after dinner getting your sleeves
rolled up.
I can just see it now.

Announcer (01:10:18):
Boostergram, boostergram, boostergram,
boostergram.
Super, super comments, zaps,fan mail, fan mail, super chats
and email.
Our favourite time of the week,it's the Pod News Weekly Review
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Inbox, inbox.

So many different ways to get in touch
with us Fan mail by using thelink in our show notes, super
comments on True Fans, or boostseverywhere else, or email.
We share all of the money thatwe make, too.
A couple of boosts, which isvery kind.
One from Seth 454 sats.
Thank you, seth.
Using True Fans Love thecoverage of all of the
conferences.

(01:10:53):
James, you've got to beexhausted.
You have no idea, seth,particularly since I'm off on an
aeroplane tomorrow.
Oh good.
One from Lyceum 1,701 sats.
Lyceum, of course, our latestpower supporter.
I am pushing for taking backthe leader position as a true
fan on the leaderboard.
David John Clark, aka the latebloomer actor, is an avid

(01:11:15):
listener to podcasts.
See you in cyberspace.
So your, your gamification isworking well there, sam.
Yeah, so that is so.
That is excellent.
Thank you to martin for that.
Talking actually about himbeing usurped as the, as the, as
the fan of our show in truefans, he's also usurped as the

(01:11:36):
as our latest power supporterbecause we have another one.
Do we not drum roll?

Sam Sethi (01:11:43):
well, it's the famous john spurlock.
Yes, he's joined.
How exciting.
I looked up the bingo call for23, which is the and me.
The and me is, you know I'm notsure that really rings too well
with power supporters.
But there you go.

Well, people do wear 23 on their sports jerseys,
do they not?
I seem to remember DavidBeckham wearing.
I don't remember David Beckham.

Sam Sethi (01:12:10):
I was going to say, really, really, the man who
doesn't watch football, it saysit in the script that you've
just written.

So I seem to remember David Beckham wearing
number 23, and also the cricketbowler Shane Warnes, good
Australian.
Any other people who have wornnumber 23?

Sam Sethi (01:12:24):
Well, the most famous of all is Michael Jordan, and
then, most recently, is LeBronJames.
So if you're into yourbasketball James, of course you
know both those people very well.

John Spurlock, thank you so much.
He's the brightest techie inpodcasting today, with the
possible exception of Dave Jones.
John, thank you so much.
Really appreciate that.
That's very kind of you.
Thank you also to MartinLinderskog, or Lyceum as we also
call him, and to our many otherpower supporters Brian
Entsminger, star Tempest andWill Clark, to name but three.

(01:12:57):
If you would like to join, john, then please do.
You can head toweeklypodnewsnet and that will
be an excellent thing.
And thank you.

Sam Sethi (01:13:11):
So what's happened for you this week?
Sam, I've got the grumps, james, I've got the grumps.
Yeah, who's Podglomerate?

James.
Ah, the Podglomerate.
Yes, so they produced a list ofpodcast pros to follow on
social media.
Such a good list, it was.
It links to me on X and if yougo onto X my username on X it
says I do not use this anymore,go somewhere else.
And that was posted a year anda half ago.
So it's an excellent list.

(01:13:35):
I get the feeling, though, sam,I'm on it, but I get the
feeling, though, sam, you maynot be.
Is that right?

Sam Sethi (01:13:44):
No, not even a footnote in your section.
I mean, come on, you know howdo I feel.
Let's think the Lone Ranger andTonto maybe I think maybe
you're the horse?
Maybe the horse?
You're not even going tomention all that.
Yeah, yeah, no.
I was like, oh great, you knowwhat do I have to do?
So I was going to put a pictureof me actually dressed as a red

(01:14:05):
Indian in here, but I thought,no, no let's not go that far.
No, I did actually do that idea,but that's another story.
But, in all seriousness,congratulations to some people
that we know very well AndreaKoskaj, ariel Nissenblatt,
ashley Carman, dane CardielElsie Escobar, greg Wasserman,
imran Ahmed, lauren Purcell,liam Hefferman and Norm Jean

(01:14:28):
Belengi, who we had on recently.
I would follow all those peoplebecause they are very good and
worth following Excellent, thankyou.
So, james, did you get a chanceyou might not have done to
listen to last week's Podcast2.0 board meeting with Adam and
Dave?

I have read the last two podcasts.
I was on, I was in a car and Ithought it was a little bit rude
and also I just, I just like tofind out what Adam and Dave
have ended up saying.
So I read them on on their ontheir transcripts.
So I'd like to correct Adam onone thing he says that my swanky
new Rodecaster was sent to meby Rode.

(01:15:04):
That is not the case, adam.
I did a swap.
I was sent a nice microphone bysomebody that I haven't
actually used and so I swappedthe nice microphone with this
version one of the RodeProcaster, the nice microphone
with this version one of theRode of the Rode Procaster.
So Rode are still unaware of myexistence, but thank you for
that.
Why?

(01:15:24):
What did they end up saying,sam?
Well, dave.

Sam Sethi (01:15:27):
Dave's going to do an experiment today, on Friday,
which, if you listen live, he'sactually going to video
broadcast the show as well,using it.
I'm sure that Adam's delighted.
Video broadcast the show aswell, using it.
I'm sure that adam's delighted.
Oh, adam was over the moon.
Um, yeah, could not.
Could not wait, but they'regoing to be doing a peer tube
instance using hls.

(01:15:47):
So alex gates, a few weeks back, actually updated the rss feeds
for all of the peer tube feedswith support for hls and, I'm
glad to say, we tested it astrue fans and it worked.
And so Dave is now decidingthat he wants to do a video
broadcast of the live show usingthe alternative tag.

(01:16:11):
Wow, what could go wrong?
So the alternative tag willhave the video feed from a Pe
peer tube instance running hlsgosh well.

Good luck to everybody involved in that car
crash.

Sam Sethi (01:16:28):
Yes, talk to me about wallet ledgers, sam well, we
talked about earlier micropayments and v4v.
You know having a slowdown, butactually, on on true fans, I'm
V4V.
You know having a slowdown, butactually on TrueFans, I'm very
pleased to say we aren't havinga slowdown.
People get a wallet instantly,they can top it up with one
click Apple Pay, google Pay, viaStripe and they can withdraw

(01:16:50):
their money in the same way.
So money in, money out and onthe platform.
You know we use activitystreams and each of those have a
method of micropayment aroundthem, from streaming to boosting
, to becoming a fan.
But what we realised was all ofthose payments were all over the
place.
You could find them, but youhad to sort of hunt in one area

(01:17:13):
or another.
So we've just released a walletledger, which now is in the
creator's dashboard and onlyvisible to you in your profile,
which will show you all of thepayments in and out that you've
received, and when you click oneach payment, it will show you
where or how or why you receivedthat payment as well.

(01:17:33):
So we thought we'd justaggregate it all in one page.
Well, that's very nice.

Excellent, it looks more smart.
Thank you very much, james.
What's happened for you?
Well, so I have flown back fromJakarta, obviously, so that's
nice.
I don't know if anybody noticedlast week, but I managed to
record the entire audio for thisshow, again on my laptop
microphone.
The good news is, though, thatI shoved it through Orphonic and

(01:17:57):
no one would have noticed.
So that was nice, using theproper microphone.
Now, and that's good news,isn't it?
Next week, I will be in London,and in fact, I should have gone
off on a flight tomorrowmorning at 11, which my airline
has cancelled.
They sent me a flurry of textssaying we're trying to find you
another flight.
Then another one texts sayingwe're trying to find you another

(01:18:18):
flight, then another one sayingwe're still trying to find you
another flight.
Then one more saying, yeah,we're having problems finding
you another flight.
Could you get in touch with us?
So I then ring up the airlineand I say hi, you've asked me to
get in touch, and they said ah,yes, so what happens with this
is you just need to wait untilwe found you another flight?
And I said yeah, but you'vetold me to get in touch with you

(01:18:41):
.
Yeah, but you know you'll justget another flight.
And I said, yeah, but you'vejust told me to contact you, so
that's what I'm doing.
Are you telling me to ignorethat bit?
And then they went away andthey had a thought and then came
back and have booked me somealternative flights.
So that's nice.
So I am finally coming toLondon anyway is the upshot of
all of this, and as a specialthing for you, listening this

(01:19:05):
long.
Dear listener, if you're inLondon next week and you want a
beer, then you're more thanwelcome to buy Sam and I a beer.
That would be absolutely great.
We will be at the YorkshireGrey in Langham Street.
Yes, it's a Sam Smith's pub.
Yes, I know, we will be thereon Tuesday, the 16th of
September, between 5 and well,at least 7pm.

(01:19:27):
The Yorkshire Grey in LanghamStreet is just around the corner
from Broadcasting Heist and,yes, if you would like to pop by
then, that would be excellent.
I'll be the jet-lagged bloke inthe corner, so that would be
good.
The benefit of the YorkshireGrey is that we can spill out
onto the street if we need to.
The downside of the YorkshireGrey is that it's Sam Smith's
pub and therefore only sells SamSmith's.

(01:19:48):
If you want KP Peanuts?
No.
If you want Jack Daniels andCoke, then oh no, you don't get
Jack Daniels and Coke, sam.
You get Sam Smith's ScintillaCola and Sam Smith's Bourbon.
Why does that sound like sodisturbing?
Yeah, it's a peculiar one, butit's quite fun.

(01:20:13):
So if you fancy a pint of manin the box, you'll understand
what I mean when you get there.
Then the Yorkshire Grey inLangham Street is where I'll be
next Tuesday from five tillseven.
Yes, and see you there.

Sam Sethi (01:20:25):
Yes, we'll raise a glass to Todd and if you feel
like it, it's also my 59thbirthday On that day.
No, well, two days after the18th.
Oh, that week, yes.
That week, yes, excellent.
Well, two days after the 18th.

Oh, that week, yes, that week.
Excellent, well, very nice.
Your birthday's on the 18th ofSeptember, my birthday's on the
18th of March.
There we go.
It's like a marriage made inheaven, except we're not married
, except we are both married,obviously no, I'm not actually.

Sam Sethi (01:20:51):
No, what?
No, I'm not married.

Todd Cochrane (01:20:54):
No, why I'm not married.
No, why?
Why have?

Sam Sethi (01:21:01):
you not been together ?
Been together 31 years?
No, not, not really, that'swhat everyone keeps saying, but
no, I like to try it.
Try it.
So you know the currentgirlfriend current girlfriend
yeah anyway, uh, I got, I gotaway until she never listens to
this podcast.

So I'm okay, I got away with that for 10 years
and that was about as much asI've managed.

Sam Sethi (01:21:19):
Just tell them that you're going to take them up the
temple.
That'll be fine.
They'll never marry you.
I've got no idea what you'retalking about now.

Anyway, let's move on.
That's it for this week.
All of our podcast storiestaken from the Pod News Daily
newsletter at podnewsnet.

Sam Sethi (01:21:33):
You can support this show by streaming so that you
can give us feedback using theBuzzsprout fun mail link in our
show notes.
You can send us a super commentor a boost and become even more
important by becoming a powersupporter Like the 20,.
What are we now?
Three Gosh, update the script.
Mr Seffi, 23 people atweeklypodnewsnet.

Yes, our music is from TM Studios.
Our voiceover is Sheila D, ouraudio is recorded using Clean
Feed, we edit with Hindenburgand we're hosted and sponsored
by Buzzsprout.
Start podcasting, keeppodcasting.
Get updated every day.
Subscribe to our newsletter atpodnewsnet.

Todd Cochrane (01:22:12):
Tell your friends and grow the show and support
us, and support us.
The Pod News Weekly Review willreturn next week.
Keep listening.

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