The video-first shakeup of podcast hosting, analytics, and AI with Flightcast’s Roxcodes

Episode Transcript
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SPEAKER_04 (00:00):
The Pod News Weekly Review uses chapters, and so can
you.

SPEAKER_01 (00:04):
The last word in podcasting news.
This is the Pod News WeeklyReview with James Cridlin and
Sam Sethy.

SPEAKER_03 (00:12):
I'm James Cridlin, the editor of Pod News.
And I'm Sam Sethy, the CEO ofTrue Fans.

SPEAKER_00 (00:17):
Let's do the publishing and let's do the
analytics.
And I bet you we can reallystart to solve, hey, what's
working as a question.

SPEAKER_02 (00:23):
A brand new podcast host, but one with a difference.
We talk to Rox Codes fromFlightcast on the new video
first podcasting platform.
Plus, will podcasting be worththree billion dollars in the US
this year?
I think it will.
If we know what podcastingactually is.
This podcast is sponsored byBuzzSprouts with the tools,
support, and community to ensureyou keep podcasting.

(00:45):
Start podcasting, keeppodcasting with BuzzSprout.com.

SPEAKER_01 (00:49):
From your daily newsletter, the Pod News Weekly
Review.

SPEAKER_03 (00:54):
This week there's some big announcements by a
company called Flightcast.
Well, it's about hosting.
But before we get into that, Ijust want to look at some of the
data that's being pushed out byJohn Spurlock on Livewire.
It looks like the industry'sgrowing.
Tell me more.

SPEAKER_02 (01:09):
Well, it looks like the industry is certainly
consolidating.
Obviously, what John Spurlockmeasures is he measures podcast
hosts by episode share.
So the share of all of theepisodes that have been
published and what individualpodcast hosts have got for that.
So obviously uh Spotify atnumber one.

(01:31):
But there are some veryinteresting companies that are
doing really well.
BuzzProw, our sponsor, is has arecord share of 10%.
So congratulations to them.
Spreeker has also jumped to arecord.
They are on uh almost twice asmuch, 17.1%.
Now, Spreeker are the companythat Inception Point AI uses,

(01:52):
and we've already heard thatInception Point AI is publishing
3,000 episodes a week.
So clearly that's going to makea big change, you would have
thought to that.
But also record numbers fromSimplecast, from RSS.com, from
Transistor, and from Captivate.
So some really nice highnumbers, I think.

SPEAKER_03 (02:10):
You said consolidation.
So consolidation says to me thatsmaller hosting companies are
going away.
Or is this that the overallindustry size of the pie is
growing?

SPEAKER_02 (02:22):
This is, I mean, if the size of the pie grows, that
won't change these particularfigures.
So these are, you know, just ashare of the of the uh number of
episodes which are out there.
And you can actually veryclearly see.
So LiveWire has a really goodsort of set of graphs where you
can see the top three, and thetop three are so far away from
everybody else Spotify,Spreaker, and BuzzBrowt, so far

(02:46):
away from anybody else.
And then you start digging intothe other ones, and there are
lots of companies which aregoing down, particularly the
heritage brands.
So you can see Podbean goingdown, you can see interestingly,
megaphone going down.
They their high was uh in themiddle of 2023, but you can also
see a significant amount ofother people.

(03:07):
I mean, Libsin on their worstever figures, Podbean on their
worst ever figures, and so on.
So actually, there is an awfullot of smaller companies and
SoundCloud, obviously, as youwould expect, because they don't
really care about podcastsanymore.
But you can obviously see thatthere are lots of the smaller
companies who people are turningaway from.
And unfortunately, that doesinclude people like Libsin in

(03:31):
there.
So I I think it's it's it'sbasically it's a tale of two of
two sides of the industry.
One side of the industry being,you know, the the large
companies that people areconsolidating to, and the other
side really being the heritageolder companies that haven't
really been offering anythingparticularly new recently, and

(03:53):
you've seen them, you know, verymuch uh go away.

SPEAKER_03 (03:56):
Now, one of those companies that's doing very well
is Usha over in France.
What have they been doing?
Or what they've been saying, Isuppose, more to the point.

SPEAKER_02 (04:04):
Well, yes, exactly.
I mean, Ousha or Usha, dependingon how you wish to pronounce it.
I'm gonna have to be pronouncingit a lot in the Pod News Daily
podcast soon, so I can tell youthat.
But they are a under one percentpodcast host, so that's one
thing just to bear in mind.
They are relatively small.
Having said that, uh they'vejust announced that shows hosted

(04:26):
on their platform have surpassedone billion cumulative
downloads, which is quite a nicebig figure, isn't it?
So uh it certainly makes for agood a good press release
anyway.
So one billion downloads isquite a nice thing.
Buzzsprout, just to put thatinto context, does about a
hundred million downloads everymonth.

(04:47):
So it would take um ten monthsto get to one billion.
OSHA, obviously significantlysmaller, but it's it's good to
see OSHA, you know, continuingto do well, continuing to, you
know, seemingly increase in theamount of shows on that
particular platform.
So that's uh that that that's agood thing, I think.

SPEAKER_03 (05:05):
Now, Todd Cochran obviously had said many times
before in the past that he wasnot going to increase his price.
In fact, they hadn't increasedtheir price at Blueberry for 20
odd years.
They have on their own websiteannounced that they were going
to increase the prices inOctober.
I don't know if that's gonethrough yet.

(05:25):
But our sponsors and Bos Sprout,our friends, have quietly
increased their price back inAugust, James.
So is the industry now beginningto say time to increase the
price?

SPEAKER_02 (05:36):
I think quite a lot of people are changing prices.
So Todd made that decision thatthat was taken before podcast
movement.
So, you know, I've I think thatthere've been a lot of companies
that have stuck with the sameprices for 20 years, and clearly
that can't work, you know, givenhow inflation works.
So, you know, Blueberry puttingup their prices, BuzzSprout

(05:59):
changing prices for newcustomers, nothing to do with
current customers at the moment,but for new customers, quite a
change actually, moving from$12a month for the base price up to
$19 a month.
The way that BuzzSprout chargesfor its podcasts is based on
hours uploaded, which is adifferent model to many others.

(06:20):
But that was interesting to endup uh seeing.
And, you know, the there hasbeen a bunch of other of other
increases.
Perhaps what would be aninteresting article, and perhaps
one that I should go away and uhand do some research on is what
other podcast companies havedone in terms of their pricing,
because I think that there'sbeen quite a lot of changes,

(06:42):
particularly for new customers,over the last five years or so.
So it might be worthwhile havinga look at that and seeing what
the changes are in terms of uhpricing there.

SPEAKER_03 (06:53):
Now, one other thing that's going on is Transistor is
showing that the number ofdownloads appearing from web
browsers has increased by awhopping 173% since February.
Okay, James, what's going onwith web players then?

SPEAKER_02 (07:08):
Well, what is going on with web players?
Libsyn's stats have shown asignificant increase for some
time.
Buzzprout's stats also show muchthe same sort of increase that
Transistor has shown, jumping163% since February.
There's an awful lot of all of asudden web browsers appearing in
our logs, and I'm certainlyseeing that in the Pod News

(07:31):
Daily logs as well.
So is there something going on?
I think there probably issomething going on, and I don't
think it's actual real humanbeings.
I think that all of a sudden aton of these AI tools have
worked out that they can justpretend to be a web browser,
they won't get blocked, becauseif you pretend to be a web
browser, then you won't getblocked.

(07:52):
And they're then downloadingshows.
My suspicion on that is that ifwe were to look at, for example,
any IP address that is comingfrom Amazon AWS, you know,
coming from one of their EC2instances, if you were to do the
same for Google and a number ofothers, I suspect that we would

(08:13):
see quite a lot of in InverterCommas web browsers on those IP
addresses that clearly can't beweb browsers because they don't
exist that way.
So my suspicion is that uh quitea lot of this is automated
traffic, which is being countedas downloads.
Now, if you remember JanineWright the other week talking
about Inception Point AI andtalking about how if she gets

(08:35):
more than 20 downloads perepisode, then she makes a
profit.
I uh uh kind of think that 20 isthe is the amount of easily the
amount of downloads that youwill get from AI-based tools
downloading stuff and you knowdoing transcripts and all of
that kind of uh stuff.

(08:55):
We know that uh Spotify, forexample, downloads every single
show.
We know that Apple downloadsevery single show automatically,
so there's two for a start, andthere may well be other people
who are downloading every singleepisode as well.
So my my suspicion is that quitea lot of this is just noise of
automated tools running in thethe background, checking,

(09:17):
checking podcasts and all thatkind of stuff.
And I'm not entirely convincedthat all of this is real data.
So it would be interesting todive into that into that data a
little bit more and see if wecan actually work out whether or
not these web browser numbersare actually real.
Now, of course, some of thosewill be real, some of those will

(09:37):
be coming from TrueFans, whichwill turn up as if it's a web
browser in in most cases.
And the same goes for a numberof the other web apps, but my
suspicion is that there are alsoan awful lot of other ones that
really aren't those and are justyou know scraping shows for
content.

SPEAKER_03 (09:57):
Do we use the Cloudflare capability to try and
block the AI?
I mean, that's one of the thingsthat Cloudflare is trying to do.
That's what we reported on acouple of weeks ago.
Would that help here?

SPEAKER_02 (10:09):
Well, I think that one of the difficulties with
that is whenever you do that,then you end up blocking all
kinds of other people as well.
And so I wonder whether whetheror not there is a simple way of
looking at the IP ranges thatare being used by things like
EC2 and you know cloud serversin general, and going, if this
is a browser and from a EC2instance, then at least we

(10:33):
should count that as a bot.
It might still be a web browserthat is downloading it, but it's
much more likely to be a bot.
And I think it would just beinteresting for podcast hosting
companies to do that work and tojust see how many of those
downloads from inverted commasweb browsers that we're actually
seeing out there are also, youknow, are also coming from those

(10:56):
services.
And of course, you know, weshouldn't forget that there's
been a bunch of people who havebeen doing, you know, slightly
nefarious things in terms ofloading a podcast on page load,
which a big uh Spanish newspaperwas doing last year.
There's been quite a lot of thatthat's been going on, and again,
that living in a in a webbrowser may account for a

(11:17):
certain amount of downloads aswell.
But it it's just reallynoticeable, I think, in a lot of
different stats that mygoodness, there's an awful lot
of web browsers out theredownloading shows and what's
going on there.
I mean, I know that TrueFans isparticularly popular, but you
know Yeah, no, I even I can'tspin this one to say it's me,

(11:38):
mate.

SPEAKER_03 (11:38):
I tried, I was thinking, how can I get that
guy?
Even I know that's not us.

SPEAKER_02 (11:43):
No, indeed.
So interesting.
And I I would love to work withsome podcast hosting companies
that might want to actually sitand chomp through their log
files and and see if they canactually work that those kind of
numbers out as well.

SPEAKER_03 (11:57):
Now, there's a new entrant into the hosting market.
We talked about flight cast.
This is from Stephen Bartlettand Rox Codes.
Rox is the former engineer atMr.
Beast.
What's going on with this one,James?

SPEAKER_02 (12:10):
Yeah, so Rox has been at a number of big podcast
conferences over the last yearor so.
We've known that he's beenworking on flightcasts for some
time.
And uh, I think he was at thepodcast show London.
Uh, he was certainly at podcastmovement in Dallas as well, and
I think was in Chicago too.
And, you know, talking to abunch of uh different people.

(12:30):
Finally, it's launched.
It is the podcast host ofStephen Bartlett, the host and
creator of Diary of a CEO.
Lots of really interesting ideasin there, but particularly, this
is a video podcast host.
It's the first video podcasthost that exists.
It will stick your video intoYouTube and into Spotify

(12:53):
automatically, as well as be apodcast host for audio as well.

SPEAKER_03 (12:58):
Well, you know what?
I thought I'd reach out to Roxand uh ask him what is
Flightcast?

SPEAKER_00 (13:04):
Flightcast, the video first podcast hosting and
growth platform, does a wholelot of things.
Mainly lets you publish videoand audio everywhere.
So that's video to YouTube andSpotify, audio to Apple and
everywhere else.
It makes clips for you out ofyour videos.
It creates a whole clips channelwith that that kind of lets you

(13:24):
test different moments.
There's a whole buttload of AIand a whole buttload of
analytics in there.
So it's got pretty much all thestats from every platform as
deep as they go, and AI to sitwith you and analyze those stats
and really help you understandwhat's working for you and
what's not, what's growing yourshow and what's a waste of time.

SPEAKER_03 (13:43):
Let's unpack some of that, right?
So let's start off with fromwhat I can see, it's a video
first hosting platform.
Why video not audio?
Why was the decision, I assume,on the white paper when you
first met with Stephen Barlett,who's your other co-founder?
Why would you say we were goingto do video hosting first?
Because everyone else is apredominantly audio hosting

(14:03):
company.

SPEAKER_00 (14:04):
Yeah, well, that was definitely part of the reason.
I think a lot of the success ofDOAC came from the video side,
and the audio side still doesgreat, but video is where they
saw their growth.
And I worked with Steve when Iwas doing my thumbnail test
tool.
He was a very early customer, sowe worked closely together, and
I got to see their wholeoperation.

(14:24):
And my takeaway was, well, thisis kind of annoying.
This looks really not fun to do,you know, leaving computers on
overnight, giant files andeverything.
So I said, well, surely we canwe can do better than this, and
probably we can do a wholegrowth platform, because I
imagine a lot of people who aredoing this audio stuff and are
starting to do video probablydon't understand video that

(14:45):
well.
And really, I mean understandYouTube that well because
there's algorithms and all thesethings.
So it was, well, we can kill twobirds with one stone, let's do
the publishing and let's do theanalytics, and I bet you we can
really start to solve hey,what's working as a question.

SPEAKER_03 (14:58):
Now, one of the secret sources that I uh we
we've talked, as I said, forabout a year in the background,
so I'm aware, was the abilityfor you to get an API from
Spotify to directly publishvideo to them, which nobody else
has.

SPEAKER_04 (15:13):
How did that come about?
I don't know how much I'mallowed to talk about that
stuff.

SPEAKER_00 (15:18):
So I've made it no one's listening, no one's
listening.
Don't worry, just say what youlike.
I trust me, they are listening.
Spotify will hear it.
No, but I mean we we chattedwith Spotify and we've been
working closely with them to getthis over the line.
So it's all using like officialmethods, I can say, for sure.
Yeah, it was just a lot ofconversations, and they've been

(15:38):
very kind.
We've been slowly workingtowards this for quite a while,
and yeah, it's been great andworks well.

SPEAKER_03 (15:44):
Now, one of the things that you've got with the
platform is also AI.
So, first of all, give me someexamples of how people might use
AI on flightcast to help themwith their analytics.

SPEAKER_00 (15:59):
Yeah, okay.
So the biggest thing that wehave here is this really large
AI chatbot, or really I guess AIassistants, probably more
accurate, that can query intoyour entire set of data, all of
your analytics.
So you can ask very arbitraryquestions.
And it has like this entirequery language it's programmed
with to get into not just yourYouTube data, not just your

(16:20):
Spotify data, but pretty mucheverything.
So you can ask everything fromwhich episode had the most
listens in the first three hoursand 12 minutes, what topics do
the best for me in the first 48hours on YouTube.
But you can go deeper.
You can say like which episodeshad listeners that have listened
more than three times onaverage, you know, and like all
of that analysis, I mean it'llgo slower, but it does get
through it.

(16:40):
So we called this as like amulti-step, multi-function sort
of experience so that it couldanswer really tough questions
with time and it can answerpretty easy questions pretty
quickly.
And that was really kind of themagnum opus of what I wanted to
do.
Because to some extent, I'vealways wanted to build sort of
an AI YouTube consultant, Isuppose.
Because a lot of YouTubeconsulting is when you've you

(17:01):
know spent years listening tohim talk, you get a handful of
the things and you say, Allright, this is just math.
I could just do this math andgive good insights.
So I'm hopeful to really bringthat across through this.

SPEAKER_03 (17:12):
Now, what AI are you using?
Can you reveal?
Is it open AI?
Is it Gemini?
All of them.

SPEAKER_00 (17:20):
All of them.
All of your buttons.
It's genuinely all of them.
It depends on the function.
Yeah.
We we did like kind of whatcursor does where for different
things are using differentthings.

SPEAKER_03 (17:29):
Now, when you upload video, I looked at the various
pricing that you've put forwardand we'll talk about that in a
minute.
But what on the entry-levelpricing, you've got three
terabyte of storage.
So I assume that this is theupload capability because you as
Flightcast aren't actuallystoring uh the video when it's

(17:51):
distributed to other platforms.
Because if I'm uh uploadingvideo and it's then going to
Spotify, I assume that that's nolonger needed on Flightcast, for
example, because it's now storedon Spotify.
And if I do the same thing withYouTube, I'd so the original
might remain on Flightcast, butyou've actually co-distributed

(18:12):
everything over to the actualdifferent other platforms.
You're no longer hosting it.

SPEAKER_00 (18:18):
I don't have to.
I still do.
And it's a good question.
Because I could just upload itto YouTube and then functionally
delete the original MP4.
But we fell into thisrealization that Flightcast
could also be a kind of nice CMSjust in general.
And having all of those files inthere and then transcoding to
audio and then transcribing andthen adding like search

(18:38):
functionality, and you know, wehave like retention graphs from
Spotify and YouTube overlaid.
And one of the many things Iwant to make is kind of an
analysis chart for that.
Imagine D script, but foranalyzing retention.
So it's that kind of UI oftranscript video and everything.
So, you know, that's one of thelittle fun secret things we're
trying.
So a lot of reasons came up foractually it'd be pretty great if
we held on to the files.

(18:59):
Because basically, I can becomeGoogle Drive, and at scale you
can get quite quite cheapstorage.
So kind of why not?
You know, like I think 50 bucksa month and you're getting three
terabytes on top of everythingelse is like kind of nuts,
actually.
So maybe I can even get thathigher as we scale up.
But yeah, we we do hold all thevideo.
And I think a lot of it alsocame from me really wanting to
do video RSS eventually.
And if I got rid of the files, Iwouldn't be able to.

(19:21):
So I said, okay, well, we'regonna hold these, and then one
day when we want to do all this,and like video RSS gets accepted
a little bit more, we can kindof just flip a switch and say,
all right, everybody, if youwant to go video, go video.
And there you go.
You know, and then suddenlythere's a thousand video feeds
out there.

SPEAKER_03 (19:34):
Now, there's a couple of other things that you
do.
One of those is you createtranscripts, and one of those is
you create chapters.
Is this AI automated chaptersand transcripts?
And again, how are you doing it?

SPEAKER_00 (19:47):
Yeah, yeah.
You know, some version ofWhisper and then some giant AI,
right?
Like we we do put a uh uh toomuch effort into getting good
chapters and good titles andgood descriptions.
Like, I think that's one of thereally hard things to convey in
like the landing page is it'snot just this feature, it's this
feature, but I tried reallyhard.
So, like recently, like ourdescriptions used to be really

(20:07):
bad.
It took a lot of tries, probablytook maybe five or ten versions
of AI descriptions before we gotsomething that was good, similar
with titles, but now it's kindof like trained on your old
stuff, and that ended up beingpretty key.
But it costs me a lot every timeyou generate one, right?
So it's you get the higherquality, but you pay for it.
So that's a lot of why we comein at that$50 mark is to say,

(20:27):
okay, well, I'm gonna give youeverything in the best version
that I can possibly make it, butit's gonna cost me, so it has to
cost you.

SPEAKER_03 (20:34):
Yeah, yeah.
And I think people are beginningto understand there are AI
credits, and those AI creditscost real money.
It's not, you know, you can getit for free.
I think what's interesting isyou've taken the position of
including that all in one cost.
I look at Buzz Sprout, forexample, or Captivate, who will

(20:57):
break out those costs intobundles.
So they might say, our hostingis$19, but then you can add
co-host, which is our AI agent,and then you can add magic
mastering for another.
And if you aggregate all thoseup, they probably get closer to
the$50 that you were justtalking about.
So again, did did you thinkabout maybe a smaller number and

(21:21):
then bundled on, or was it adistinct decision that, yeah,
no, we're just gonna betransparent.
This is the number, these arethe features, bang.
If you can afford it, great.
If you can't, don't worry.

SPEAKER_00 (21:32):
Yeah, I I think my goal was not, you know, let me
get the absolute minimal versionat the absolute minimal dollars,
because I think it's like youknow, I I I always want to build
I've always framed it as in mycareer as a tool builder, I
build intermediate plus tools.
And to some extent, what Iwanted to say with this is like
come here if you're seriousabout it.

(21:52):
You know, like come here if youwant all the tools that can be
provided to make your lifebetter.
And that might not be theperfect take, and I get that.
But like, you know, before thisI built an A-B testing tool for
thumbnails, right?
That was like my first businesswas thumbnail test.com that did
well, and it was 20 bucks amonth, and I ended up getting a
lot of people with like hundredsof subscribers, maybe a thousand

(22:13):
subscribers.
And at that scale, A-B testingin the way I was doing it was
like kind of not very useful,right?
It was a stretch.
And I felt a lot of guilt aboutthat.
And I said, when I go to thenext one, I'm gonna make sure
that I'm really trying to say,hey, if it doesn't feel like you
can put this much in, youprobably won't get enough value
out of this anyway.
Because the people who are usingit, a lot of our customers are

(22:35):
at the highest price point.
I would say likepercentage-wise, not a lot are
at the lowest.
It is there.
I want there to be that entrypoint, I want there to be that
option for bulk, and I wantthere to be that stepping stone
for people who say, like, look,yeah, I want to do all the video
stuff, yes, I want to analyzethis data, like I want to know
what's happening, you know.
I I want to treat it as a levelup, I guess, in terms of taking
the content side more seriously.

(22:55):
So that was a lot of the theoryin there.

SPEAKER_03 (22:58):
So the last part is you've got some dynamic ad
insertion capabilities formonetization.
Have you partnered with Spotifyand Megaphone to enable this, or
is this something you're doingyourself?

SPEAKER_00 (23:11):
I have done the regular dynamic ad stuff, I
guess would be the quickest wayto word it.
Ever done not that complex of atake on dynamic, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 (23:20):
So the last bit that I was curious about in the
pricing was you have threeterabytes and you go to six
terabytes and you go to sort ofwhat they call the legend
version, which again is justmore storage and capability.
And I understand that.
Did you consider having becauseit's only one podcast per
account?
Did you consider havingmulti-podcasts within the

(23:42):
accounts as you scaled up atall?
Was that an option?

SPEAKER_00 (23:45):
Yeah, without getting too deep into it, the
aggregate of the features getsquite expensive.
To get a really good AI result,it might cost me a lot every
time you click that button.
So it was more of a I expect youto be burning a handful of
dollars on each individualfeature.
So it just adds up to be anaverage podcast uploaded weekly,
should land here-ish plusprofit, you know.

(24:09):
So that was where I landed withit.
It was definitely a toughdecision because everybody else
is doing multiple.
But I think the premiumcustomers are more price
insensitive.
When we were doing beta, therewas no entry point.
When we were doing beta, we werestarting at 250, right?
And that was no question for alot of people.
But it was because we had all ofthe things.
I don't think if we had donesome of the things that that

(24:29):
ever would have come across.
So that's really what I want todo.
I want to build the premiumproduct.

SPEAKER_03 (24:34):
We're both in a WhatsApp group which has got a
lot of hosts in there as well.
And I've seen some of thecommentary back.
There's been a lot of positivecommentary from some of your
early beta testers saying we'vebeen able to this one-click
distribute everywhere model.
How have you found the betafeedback for yourself?
What did you learn through thatprocess?

SPEAKER_00 (24:54):
That's a good question.
I think a lot of people wouldunderestimate how complex the
thing is.
A lot of people would be like,ah, just upload.
But there's a million littlethings that get weird when you
start to go to many platforms atonce, a lot of generalizations
that have to be made.
And you know, like we weretalking about before we even

(25:16):
started, UX is just so massive.
Like UX is is half of it.
And so that was also part of thereason I decided to do these
onboarding calls of the firstfew hundred customers is to just
say, hey, let's make sure thatyou get it.
And then if you have questions,then I can plug those into the
tutorial or to the guidance orwhatever, so that the next
person just gets it.
And we did a lot through beta tounderstand a lot of it, but

(25:39):
there's still so much to go.
There's still so much stuffgoing on.
So yeah, important to UX.
Is Flight Studio now all onFlightcast?
DoAct is hosted directly, fullRSS and everything.
The rest of the Flight Storyshows are using the megaphone
integration that we have, whereyou basically, you know, you can
think of it as like I post tomegaphone and YouTube at the

(26:00):
same time, and then I stillaggregate all the analytics, and
then I still have all the AI andeverything else.

SPEAKER_03 (26:05):
Now, one of the things that Diary of a CEO does,
we've interviewed them obviouslybefore, is they have this very
clever panel for clip analysis.
So from what I understood,they've got a panel of people
who listen or watch the video,and at some point where they
find it interesting, they give aspace bar or a return.

(26:27):
And what the team then at Diaryof a CEO do is then aggregate
that histogram into anaggregated view of what was
interesting through, and thenthat's where they generate the
clips.
Now, from what I've seen of theproduct feature function for
flight casts, that's one of thefeatures that you've built in.
Is that directly something thatyou took from the Diary of a CEO

(26:48):
team, I guess?

SPEAKER_00 (26:49):
Well, a fun story.
The the sort of likepre-visualization tool where you
send people an early edit is adifferent thing, but was
actually the first thing I builtwith Steve when we were
theorizing ideas.
So yeah, we built that as aninternal tool.
And I said to Steve, let's startthese as internal tools, and
then if they look good, we canupgrade them.
And it ended up being thatFlightcast itself felt a lot

(27:11):
more compelling than this earlything.
Because I thought the earlything was like, that's a really,
really premium concept.
You have to have enough fans tosend it to early.
You got to get people likescience stuff, how do you handle
content security?
There's a lot of complexitythere versus publishing
analytics, AI.
Straightforward, you got it.
The AI clip tool that we havethere is unrelated to that sort
of like pre-watch tool that wemade.
The AI clip tool that we madebasically is every time you

(27:33):
upload an episode, it will AIgenerate clips.
It makes a separate YouTubechannel for this, and then
uploads clips one or two orthree a day and just lets them
run in the YouTube algorithm.
And the basic premise is an AIclip isn't that great.
So most people don't want topost on their main channel, but
that doesn't mean that you can'tlearn from them.
So if you're posting 30 or 100of them a month on a blank

(27:55):
channel you don't care about,and one of them gets 10,000,
50,000 views, you say, Hey,okay, that's something, right?
I'm gonna take that, I'm gonnago edit that down, I'm gonna put
that on my main channel, and yousort of get this like
pre-validated content, right?
So a lot of the real dream forFlightcast in my soul is it's an
experimentation platform, andwe're taking the steps now to

(28:15):
start to get to that layer ofit, but we had to really start
as video, then move to growth,and then finally hit this like
experimentation as the method ofgrowth.
So that's the first of manysteps towards experimentation.

SPEAKER_03 (28:26):
Given that you've also offered a migration
strategy.
So on your homepage, you've gotall of the other hosts.
How did you build the migrationcapability?
Was that an easy thing to do aswell?

SPEAKER_00 (28:41):
No, it took forever.
It took forever.
I I would say genuinely one ofmy engineers has spent in the
entirety of Flightcast probably70% of his time on it.
In in various maybe, maybe,maybe 50%.
But yeah, we worked really,really, really hard on that.
And we kind of went likeplatform by platform to make
sure that we could like max outwhat we could get.
Because I think that's thebiggest hold off.

(29:01):
You know, like that's thescariest thing is hey, how easy
are you gonna make it to moveover?
And it's not just the audiofile, it's like how much of my
data can I bring with me?
You know, am I just gonna likeexport a CSV or something?
And you know, I have someaggregated download counts, but
Flightcast tries to be likereally, really granular with at
least as much of the data as wecan.
So getting as much granular dataas we can is the best.

SPEAKER_03 (29:21):
Now let's have a look a little bit about your
background, Rocks.
You famously used to work withMrBeast for those people who
don't know, one of the biggestYouTubers in the planet.
What were you doing with MrBeastand how did you get to meet
MrBeast even?

SPEAKER_00 (29:35):
Yeah, they also reached out to me actually.
I was a Twitch streamer forseveral years, sort of building
tools live on Twitch.
And I would just program foreight hours a day live on
stream.
And after doing that for awhile, I had built up some tools
for streamers, and then I builtthumbnail test, and then someone
from the Beast team basicallysaw a thumbnail test, saw me,
and they said, Hey, we want todo this thing called ViewStats,

(29:57):
but we back then it was calledsomething else, and it was Like
an internal concept.
And they said, Hey, we thinkyou're the guy to do it.
Do you want to like come talkabout it and come see what we
can do?
And so I went over there, workedwith them for a while on like
some proof of concepts for whatthey wanted to do.
But at the end of the day, theyweren't sure if they wanted to
go public with it or kind ofhold it internal.
They had a lot going on at thetime.

(30:17):
Beast burger was still a thing.
So after a while, we basicallysaid, like, hey, I love you
guys, but I want to launch abusiness.
You know, I don't want to justbe an engineer somewhere.
So like left to continuepursuing things.
Then the thumbnail test wentpretty well, ended up selling
that at the beginning of lastyear.
And then Steve had reached outand he said, Hey, let's do
something together.
And I said, Hey, perfect.
And here we are now.

SPEAKER_03 (30:39):
Okay, excellent.
Now, looking forward withFlightcast, I do want to take
it.
You and I were in Londontogether at the podcast
standards project meetings.
We've been hearing from variouspeople about supporting HLS, the
HTTP Live Services, which is theApple standard for streaming.
There's the podcasting 2.0namespace.

(31:01):
We've talked about yousupporting chapters and
transcripts, but are theyactually going to be podcasting
2.0 namespace RSS feeds thatyou're producing?
Where are you with all of this?

SPEAKER_00 (31:12):
As far as the 2.0 stuff, I have it like 85% of the
way there.
We got very, very close, butlike just barely couldn't get it
over the line before launch.
So it'll be up within like thenext probably 10 days.
So we'll we'll have all of ourtranscripts and all of our
chapters and everything inthere.
That'll be fine.
I think that's a good thing todo.
I don't want people to loseanything.
So we're still storing it all.
We don't lose it when youtransfer.
And as far as the HLS stuff, wemessed around with it, but it

(31:35):
didn't feel like it was worthpursuing on like day zero.
We're trying so many other newthings.
I didn't want to add thatcomplexity just yet.
From my perspective, you know, Iowe it to the customer to just
make the best experience forthem and worry about what's
actually happening in thebackground later.
So when people ask me for videoon Apple enough, then we'll take

(31:56):
a look at it.
When people say, hey, you know,there's a handful of apps that
are asking, or there's a dozenapps that are asking, then like
I said, we can flip a switch andturn it on.
That's why I keep all the files.
That's why I have everythingsort of ready to go with it.
But it it's not gonna be day onefrom us for sure.
So customers want YouTube, theywant Spotify, and they want
audio everywhere else, andthey're pretty happy with that.
I don't think video on Apple orvideo on the other places has

(32:17):
become an expectation yet.
So I'm gonna try and nail it asis for now.
And then when the day comes thatit's significant, we'll be right
there.
We'll we'll be one of the firstfor sure.

SPEAKER_03 (32:27):
Yeah, I think that's a good way of doing it because
as much as we think HLS might bethe way to deliver video in the
future because of bandwidthconstraints that it allows, I
think I'm I'm just surprised.
Apple don't use their owntechnology, so they don't use
HLS.
They're not even promoting videoon their own platform, although

(32:48):
it is capable.
I'm not sure that YouTubesupports HLS, I'm not even sure
Spotify support HLS at themoment.
So it is chicken and the egg.
We'd like to do this technology,but if the apps don't do it,
then I guess realistically itisn't a priority.

SPEAKER_00 (33:03):
Yeah, I I always think it's like you're your
customers first and the industrysecond.
It's all I'm gonna care aboutfor a long time is what people
are asking me for and makingsure that I'm just giving them
their money's worth and and makethat product really good.
And when that day becomes HLS,I'll be there.
But for now it's AI andanalytics and fun uploads.

SPEAKER_03 (33:22):
So last question, something must have hit the
cutting room floor as in featurethat didn't make the cut for
now.
What's on the roadmap?

SPEAKER_00 (33:31):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 (33:31):
What should I say?

SPEAKER_00 (33:33):
I'd probably say experimentation was was the big
one.
I really wanted to mess aroundwith more of the A-B testing
stuff.
I still think there's someopportunities to do that in
imperfect ways, but I'm a bigfan of imperfect systems being
better than no systems.
And I think that that would havebeen the big dream is I would
have loved to launch and beenlike, we truly do it all.
Like truly, this is playing thegame in a meaningfully different

(33:53):
way.
And I do still think we gotthere.
I think with the AI chat andeverything that we we passed the
bar that I was shooting for, butthere is a part in my soul that
just says, man, we could be somuch higher.
But we will be.
We will be.
We got the team and we got thetime now.
And people finally get to useit.
So I'm sure people will keepgiving us ideas.
Some of the coolest stuff we'vemade was just ideas that
customers had.
So maybe I'll say somethingdifferent if you ask me again in

(34:14):
six months.

SPEAKER_03 (34:15):
The one feature that I probably would ask you to add
is live.
I think one of the things I'veseen more and more, certainly on
YouTube, and I'm pretty surethat Spotify will get into it at
some point.
They're not there yet, is livepodcasting and live video
podcasting.
Is that something that you guysare gonna enable, or is that

(34:36):
you're gonna leave it to theplatforms to do?

SPEAKER_00 (34:38):
For now, definitely leave it to the platforms.
I don't know if Spotify evendoes that.
I don't know.
Yeah, you know, I know thatthere's like some magic.
Yeah.
So they bought a platform calledGreen Room and then just never
used it.
I've learned one thing, a lot ofguys buy a lot of things, you
know?
I don't put a lot of stock in itanymore.
Probably not.
And I say that as a guy who wasa live streamer for years.

(34:59):
I don't think that's like thenumber one win right now.
I think unfortunately there'sprobably 20 things that would be
bigger wins for the customers.
And yeah, I just really want tomake something where people use
it and they say, You saw thatbeta feedback?
And they're like, this is great.
And I think that's all I'll evercare about.
That's the greatest achievement.
I don't care if the whole worldsays they hate it, if all the
customers say they love it, thenwe're winning.

(35:21):
So I'm gonna lock in on that.

SPEAKER_03 (35:23):
Remind everyone, look, I where would they go to
get involved?
Is there the wait list still?
And what is the plan for openingup the wait list?

SPEAKER_00 (35:31):
No, so a wait list is off as of now.
I think I accidentally left itup for like the first 20
minutes, which was funny becauseI had the time zones wrong when
the pod news announcement wentout.
I was in the shower and I went,oh my god, and I ran out of the
shower and really quicklyupdated it.
That's not a joke.
It really happened.
It was brutal.
I hate time zones.

(35:52):
The waitlist is off, soflightcast is entirely public.
You can go in, you can sign upnow.
We're working on making it alittle bit easier to kind of
explore and poke around and geta better idea of what the whole
platform does.
Because it does a lot.
And and I think the toughestthing that we pushed up against
with this launch was the wordhosting platform being not
entirely perfect.
Because it's really a growthplatform, like it's there to

(36:13):
help you grow and understand.
And it happens to be a hostingplatform that does these other
things because that's the bestway to make a growth platform.
And so I want to give people theopportunity to dig in a little
more.
So if you jump in today, you canstill get in.
You can book an onboarding callwith me, and I will sit with
you.
I will literally tell you thewhole dang thing.
You can book a demo call also,same flow.
And probably within a week ortwo, you'll be able to just
explore and you can actuallypoke around and just see the

(36:34):
whole thing without even talkingto me.
But I'm fun to talk to.
I don't know.

SPEAKER_04 (36:36):
Talk to me.
Well, I waited a year, it wasworth it.

SPEAKER_03 (36:39):
So thank you very much, Rocks.

SPEAKER_00 (36:41):
Thank you for waiting.
I appreciate it so much, man.
Thank you so much for having me,dude.
This is a goddamn pleasure.
It's such an honor to be on thisshow.
I've listened to I've beenlistening for a year and a half.
It's I can't believe I'm here.
Thank you, man.

SPEAKER_03 (36:52):
Hey, pleasure and congratulations.
I know how hard it is to launchproducts.
So well done, mate.
Thank you, man.
I appreciate it.
So, James, that was reallyinteresting.
I've been sort of trying to getthat interview for about a year,
as Rox said.
We met we met in London when Ifirst heard of Flightcast, and
of course, it's been a while inthe making.
Couple of things that stood outto me.

(37:14):
First of all, no support forApple video.
Rock said there's no demand forit.
Do you think Apple will now turnon video having seen this
solution?

SPEAKER_02 (37:24):
I mean, Apple has video and but but it's just a
standard MP4 file that you putin your feed.
So from that point of view, youknow, I think I think it's a
case of do Apple take video moreseriously and you know, and
perhaps change some of thefunctionality that they have in
their in their player.

(37:45):
I'm sure that they are, ofcourse, considering doing that,
but you know, knowing the speedof Apple, they don't do things
first, they do things properly.
So my guess is that uh we'restill a year, a year and a half
away from that.

SPEAKER_03 (37:59):
The other thing that was interesting is although they
give you, let's say, on an entryprice point three terabyte of
storage, because it's so cheapthese days, they actually pass
through the video through toSpotify and YouTube.
So it's Spotify and YouTubeactually hosting your video,
they're not serving the videofrom Flightcast.

(38:21):
So you could delete the videolocally, but again, that's an
interesting, they're notactually hosting the video.
So the storage isn't local tothem.

SPEAKER_02 (38:30):
No, they're not hosting the video, but they are,
of course, hosting the audio.
And this is a proper podcasthosting company, it's a premium
podcast hosting company lookingat the pricing.
And uh, you know, and clearly weheard what Rox was saying there
in terms of that as well.
But I think uh yeah, it's itit's still, you know, still the
the audio downloads are going tocost quite a lot of uh money,

(38:52):
and so they need to fix thatkind of uh stuff.

SPEAKER_03 (38:55):
A couple of other things noted from the interview,
they are supporting podcasting2.0 shortly.
They've got 80% of it done, sofor trap chapters and
transcripts, which is great.
They won't be supporting HLS atany time soon, James.
So there you go.
None of that's gonna happen.
Yeah, um, but they're happy todo it if the market moves.
But I know and and I said to Roxin the interview, she heard

(39:18):
basically Spotify, Apple, andYouTube aren't supporting it, so
you know there isn't a bigdemand at the larger apps yet
for that type of technology.

SPEAKER_02 (39:28):
Yeah, I don't see that there's any reason at the
moment to support HLS if nobodyis really supporting it out
there.
And also, I don't think that thedocumentation's right yet.
I don't think that theimplementation is right yet
either, actually.
I think that we need to do alittle bit of work with the
alternate enclosure tag uh inorder that that it can work a
little bit better.

(39:48):
So I think it's too soon toexpect any of that.
But uh yeah, I mean they do havesome interesting things though
in Flightcast that I reallyliked.
There are some, so firstly, theyclearly have access to a video
publishing API at Spotify.
Spotify have told me when I'veasked them in the past that
Flightcast are not the onlypeople that have access to this,

(40:12):
that they are working with abunch of other podcast hosting
companies to make that to makethis uh API available to them as
well.
So it's nothing that uhFlightcast has that is unique to
Flightcast, although I wouldguess that they got it first,
which is potentially the othersort of side of that.
The other thing that I saw,which I th I found really

(40:33):
fascinating, was the AIanalytics, which are really
smart.
And I think certainly judging bymany of the different podcast
hosts out there, all of them aretrying to do clever things with
analytics, but actually justbeing able to talk to your
analytics and say, and say, youknow, how did I do in the last

(40:55):
10 days?
And can you show me, you know,the completion rates and blah,
blah, blah.
And you can just write that downand and it'll come back with the
answer.
I th I think that's reallythat's really smart.
And I think it's uh definitely adifferent way of doing analytics
than I've seen from whether it'sfrom Bumper or whether it's from
any of the podcast hostingcompanies as well.

(41:15):
I think that that's very, very,very clever.
So, you know, full marks onthem, but you could definitely
see Stephen Bartlett's hand inuh, you know, in uh how that bit
works.

SPEAKER_03 (41:25):
Yeah, I mean, I think voice-based interfaces are
gonna be really interesting.
I mean, this is on the creatorside, on the hosting side.
I still think, and I have saidit in the past, I think
voice-based interfaces on theapp side is also gonna be
something that we'll see in 2026because yeah, we've seen it with
Spotify with the DJX, and youknow, it's fairly rudimentary,

(41:48):
but again, it's a step one.
We're playing with a technologythat uses app, and it's really,
really cool at the moment toplay with it.
It's not ready for mainstream,but you know, in the same way,
how many episodes have I got?
What did I what was my listentime?
Lots of questions that you canask from the user side just as
well as you can from the creatorside.

SPEAKER_02 (42:09):
The big uh pain point of doing podcasting right
now is the people that aren'tusing RSS, you have to then go
to them directly and upload andfill out forms and everything
else.
And so anything that makes thateasier, whether it's um Apple
Podcasts, you know, their theirdirect stuff for you know paid

(42:30):
podcasts, or whether it's thissort of thing as well for video
as well, you you can definitelysee this saving an awful lot of
time.
So hurrah for them.

SPEAKER_03 (42:39):
Now, related to this, James, Global here in the
UK, those that run the newsagent and captivates part of it,
has launched a video firstpodcast production company named
Global Studios.
Why and what are they doing?

SPEAKER_02 (42:53):
Yeah, this is interesting.
This is this was two releases inone, because basically they've
never had.
So if you look at the newsagents, for example, they've
never had a brand nameunderneath, you know, for
they've never had a brand namefor those particular shows.
Uh, they've been kind of fromglobal, but what what do you

(43:13):
really say about them?
They've got lots of differentshows that are nothing to do
with their radio stations, butare still there.
So they now have a brand andit's called Global Studios, and
that's lovely.
And so Global Studios is now thehome to Global's award-winning
podcast slate, which is veryexciting.
But then, secondly, they'vereally pushed the fact that they

(43:36):
are doubling down on video andthey've acquired a really quite
big creator network called theFellas Studios, which uh has a
top 10 show uh in them.
So they seem to be doing reallywell.
The Fellas Studios actually hada little bit of investment not
so long ago, and you can seethat it it's it's certainly

(43:57):
worked for them.
They've they must have spentthat money, you know, quite
nicely.
They got about two milliondollars investment back in 2023,
but they seem to be doing, youknow, really well.
So Saving Grace being one oftheir top 10 shows that's been
bought by Global, and I thinkyou know, one of the things that
Global does is they're very goodat spotting talent and jumping

(44:17):
in and going, we'll have alittle bit of that.
So I think that works well.
They're a video podcastingcompany, they target 16 to 35
year olds, very much focused onYouTube, and yeah, they they
seem to be doing really well.

SPEAKER_03 (44:31):
Now, I assume the video element is done by
Captivate or is it separate?

SPEAKER_02 (44:38):
I mean, it's YouTube, so you know, so
Captivate, uh, I know Captivatehave have been involved in this
in this acquisition, but uh butin terms of how the video works,
obviously it's it's just aYouTube show.
So, I mean, you know, one oneshow, for example, that they
launched in uh in February of2024, after the first month, got

(44:59):
1.5 million audio downloads andfull episode YouTube views.
So they did pretty well in termsof uh you know, in terms of what
they're doing.
But there's nothing different tothem than pretty well anybody
else.
They're producing YouTubevideos, which are presumably
also going on Spotify.
Yes, they are, but also they'vebeen available as as audio

(45:21):
podcasts.
They were with ACAST, they arepresumably no longer with ACast,
you know, in terms of that.

SPEAKER_03 (45:28):
Well, I only ask because we just talked about
Flightcast being a one-click,you know, distribution service
to YouTube, Spotify, Apple, andother RSS feeds.
Surely Captivate will announceexactly the same feature
function set, won't they?

SPEAKER_02 (45:43):
I mean, surely that would make life easier and
quicker for their own creatorsin Global Studios.
So, yes, you I I'm I'm sure thatyou would expect that sort of
integration to be going on asquickly as they can.
I mean, Global is a fascinatingcompany.
They've got Captivate,obviously, is a podcast hosting
company, but Captivate does anawful lot of other things too.
They've also got monetizationvia Dax, which does all of the

(46:07):
all of the dynamic ad insertionand and everything else uh in
there as well.
So Global's a fascinatingcompany.
I actually went round Global acouple of weeks ago when I was
in the UK and I went into theirinto their podcast studio floor,
you know, after having a lookaround all of the Swish the the
Swish studios for, you know,Radio X and Capital and Tart and

(46:28):
all of that, then going down anduh seeing their their podcast
visualization uh studios, thoseare really smart.
They're small, they're you knowvery bijou, but they work really
well.
And that's what you see when thenews agents is being is being
filmed and everything else.
So you know, Global clearlypushing a pile of money into

(46:52):
that.
I think it's going to be hard ifyou're working at Global for the
next six months because thatentire building is being gussed
and revamped, and it's never funworking in a building site, but
I'm sure that they will get usedto it.
But yeah, you know, you can veryclearly see that they see real
expansion from spending money interms of uh podcasts and video

(47:12):
first podcasts, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 (47:15):
Bijou, James.
Were you ever an estate agent?
My God, I've never heard thatword used to.

SPEAKER_02 (47:20):
Well, you know, they are tiny little uh studios
because I was I was standingoutside one of them and I was
there going, Oh yes, this is thenews agent's studio, or this was
the the news agent's studio.
Wow, that really is small.
It's like a little cupboard.
Uh it really is, but it it worksfine.
And they've got a big mixing,you know, the the video mixing

(47:42):
console is is you know it is inthe middle of the floor, and
you've got all kinds ofdifferent, you know, different
uh studios there.
So uh yeah, no, it's a smartthing.

SPEAKER_03 (47:54):
James, if the answer is three billion, what was the
question?

SPEAKER_02 (47:58):
Well, yes, this is what Matt Chapeau reckons
podcast advertising will be in2025.
Now, who knows what he'sclassifying as podcast
advertising here?
I'm not sure that anybody knows,but uh Matt Shapeau, of course,
being the man from the IAB, hewas speaking at the IAB podcast
upfront, which was last week inNew York City.

(48:20):
And he reckons that the totalmoney, which is 2.4 billion at
the moment, will be 3 billion bywell, for for this year.
We'll need to wait until April2026, which is when the numbers
come out.
But yeah, so he reckons thatpodcasting is still growing.

I think my question would be: does that include YouTube (48:36):
undefined
videos?
Does that include advertising inthere?
What what what what's a podcast?
And I know that people get verybored when people like me say
what's a podcast, but actuallyat the end of the day, this is
why it's important.
This is why it's important forus to understand what a podcast
is, because three billiondollars of podcast advertising,

(48:59):
okay, what do you mean bypodcast advertising?
That's the important bit.
So I think from that point ofview, I I would love to know
what the IB thinks podcast is.
Because um, because otherwisethis figure will be relatively,
you know, relatively useless interms of what it actually means.
But, you know, still, there yougo.
Three billion, all awfully nice.

SPEAKER_03 (49:22):
Now, this next story has me confused, I'll be honest.
And I've titled it Why is AppleDoing This?
Because I don't know.
Yes.
Podcast cross-promotion company,we've talked about them a few
times.
Podrol has launched PodRollvideo promos in Apple Podcasts.
And I was like, Well, how arethey doing this?
What's the relationship toApple?

(49:44):
Why is Apple allowing a thirdparty to put video into it?
Why haven't they built this astheir own feature?
So, confused of Marlowe askedJames of Australia, what the
hell is Apple doing?
Because the last time they didthis, they did it with Linkfire
and I still didn't understandthat deal either.

SPEAKER_02 (50:03):
Well, what the hell is Apple doing?
Nothing.
This is nothing to do with ApplePodcasts.
All this is, is it's a companycalled Podrolle, which has
worked out that if they'reclever, they can take a
podcaster's RSS feed with theirpermission, they can then uh
mirror that RSS feed, but add anextra episode as episode number

(50:25):
two.
And if you remember, the PodNews Daily used to do this for
this very show.
We used to have a promo for thePod News Weekly Review as
episode number two in the PodNews Daily feed.
So it's much the same as that.
In this particular case, if it'sApple Podcasts asking for the
RSS feed, it shows you a videoinstead.
So you get video podcasts intoApple Podcasts, which of course

(50:48):
Apple Podcasts very happilysupports.
So there's nothing that Apple isdoing here.
I don't know whether you'vetried it.
There are a couple of examples.

SPEAKER_03 (50:59):
Yeah, did it actually actually I got nothing?
I got a blank, I got an imagewith a logo in the middle of it
and nothing actually played.

SPEAKER_02 (51:07):
Correct, because one of the things that Apple does is
when it starts playing a pieceof video in the Apple Podcast
app, it doesn't full screen it.
So it did actually play, but itwas tiny in the left-hand corner
of the of the Apple Podcasts appin the now playing bar at the
bottom.
So if you looked reallycarefully, you would have seen
it.

(51:27):
But yes, that was exactly what Isaw in there as well.
So it sounds like a really niceidea.
The reality is that virtuallynobody will see it because Apple
doesn't automatically fullscreen a video podcast.
It just assumes that any mediait gets is audio and so hides
that down in the bottom.
So I I'll be I'll be you knowfrank.

(51:48):
I I didn't think it was aparticularly good, I didn't
think it was a particularly goodpiece of work there.
It's nothing to do with PodRoll,it's the way that Apple Podcasts
plays video files.
So I think it sounds veryexciting, but the reality is
it's not a very goodimplementation.

SPEAKER_03 (52:06):
One of my predictions then for our show at
the end of the year will beApple will support eight the
HLS, their own technology.
Yeah, right.
I'll lose that better as well.
Um around the world, James.
Uh let's start off in Spain.
Spotify held a podcast livesessions event.
Why in Spain?

SPEAKER_02 (52:27):
Yes, this is good.
Oh, I mean, why in Spain?
Well, why not?
Spotify is clearly verysuccessful there, and they had
an event over the weekend with anumber of the country's biggest
podcasters in a theater doinglive shows.
One in three Spotify users inSpain consumes podcasts, so they
say the country is the ninthbiggest for global podcast

(52:50):
consumption, according toSpotify's data.
But there were some nicepictures, and uh I thought it
was quite a nice way for Spotifyto get closer to some of the
podcasts that they look after inuh Spain.
So I thought that that wasn't abad idea.

SPEAKER_03 (53:06):
iVooks has published their fourth edition of the
observatory report focusing onpodcast consumption in Spain.
They also are saying eight outof ten Spaniards listen to
podcasts.

SPEAKER_02 (53:18):
Yes, very high.
And interestingly, listeners nowspend an average of ten point
five hours listening to podcastsand six point five episodes per
week.
Now, listeners now spending anaverage of ten point five hours
isn't the same as every Americanspending whatever it was, seven
hours with podcasting, which Ithink was the figure that came

(53:39):
out of the US a while back.
But even so, that is still anice number, and six point five
episodes a week as well.
So I think you know, Ivuk'sdoing some really good work with
their stats.
It's the fourth edition, as yousay.
So you can download that if youspeak Spanish from the Pod News
website, but you can also readthe automatically translated
press release into uh English aswell.

SPEAKER_03 (54:03):
Has somebody in Spain got an award, James?

SPEAKER_02 (54:06):
Uh I I I'm sure that plenty of people in Spain have
an award, but the the one thatyou're talking about is it's a
really good.
I mean, I mean, honestly, if youwere in Spain, it's like London
buses, three big podcast events,all in much the same time.
Yeah, podcast, uh the podcastlive sessions with Spotify,
podcast days, which we'll getonto in just a minute, the URA,

(54:26):
and this this is the Podwomanevent, which is this weekend,
which is a an event specificallyfor women working in podcasting
in the uh Spanish uh language.
And Isabel Coelho has beenannounced as the recipient of
the Podwoman Award for 2025.
She put together a documentarypodcast that explores violence

(54:48):
in intimate relationships andthe recovery process of the
women who've suffered it.
But it's it's great to see goodpodcasters being welcomed there,
but also great to see, you know,there's a bunch of data which is
going to come out of thePodwoman event this weekend as
well.
You can stream, by the way, thewhole thing if you want to.
You can find uh more informationon the Podwoman website as well,

(55:11):
if you speak Spanish, of course.
And um I don't.
No, well, and you were in Spain,were you not?
You were in Madrid this timelast week.
Yes.
One person has posted a verygrainy photograph of you in
front of the biggest screen inthe world.
It was, yes.
How did that all go for you?

SPEAKER_03 (55:31):
It was great, and thank you to the organizers, uh,
Ruben and the team there.
They did a brilliant job.
The you know, they they pickedme up at the airport, they got
me there literally with like 10minutes or 15 minutes to spare
before I was rushed on stage.
But it was lovely, and the theevent was yeah, ow indeed,
especially as I got up at threeo'clock in the morning to get to

(55:53):
the airport to catch a superearly flight.
So you can imagine how knackeredI was by Friday.
Um, but it was really well done.
They had a translator who tookmy words, and then everyone had
headphones on.
So thankfully, because I do notspeak Spanish, but yeah, you had
iVooks there, ACAS was there, awhole bunch of other companies

(56:15):
that were local to the Spanishmarket were there.
I met up with Pod Squeeze, whocame over from Portugal and we
got an interview with them nextweek.
So it was lovely, and we had alovely lunch, and it, you know,
it was just a well-done event.
So congratulations to everyonethere.
I'd say that the interestingpart was I had a chat with Megan

(56:37):
Davis, who is a very smart lady.
She runs ACAS internationalbusiness, she speaks multiple
languages, and it was sofascinating watching somebody
just dropping in and out ofItalian, then back to French and
over to Spanish and then back toEnglish.
It's so clever.
Um made me feel very typicallyBritish and inadequate, as I
always do when I can't speaklanguages.

(56:59):
But yes, once again, thank youvery much for everyone for the
invite.
It was great fun demoing.
What I do realize, and I've I itdoes make me stop and think
sometimes we are so far ahead ofwhere the mainstream is.
We are just nobody.
I mean, we we demoed, I Iliterally demoed topping up a

(57:20):
wallet, streaming super.

SPEAKER_02 (57:22):
I can see, thank you for the 11 sats, Sand.

SPEAKER_03 (57:26):
Yeah, don't want to blow the budget, you know,
James.
Um but it it was and people thenwere just like, oh my god, we
didn't even know this existed,let alone it works.
And and then there were loads ofquestions about, you know, how
do I do this and what do I doand yada yada, but it just made
me realise we talk about thisstuff week in, week out.

(57:48):
I think we're two years awayfrom where the mainstream is,
maybe.

SPEAKER_02 (57:51):
Yeah, yeah.
And how how translatable is uhis the true fans interface?

SPEAKER_03 (57:57):
It is translatable.
I mean, one of the problems, andit made me realise that we I'm
so anglophiled um in mythinking, because somebody did
ask me that, and I said, Well,you can search for all the
Spanish podcasts, and I Isearched for one that they asked
and it came up, and but ofcourse, everything else was
English, so we've not done anylocalization at all.

(58:19):
And again, on on the list ofthings to do, is it is it my
highest priority?
Probably not, if I'm honest, butagain, it makes you realise when
you get out of your bubble,which uh you know I sit in quite
often, how we've got to dealwith this stuff.
So, yeah, it's a it's anotherthing on the list, but yeah, we
don't do a good job of it.

SPEAKER_02 (58:41):
Now, Sam, I don't know whether you were at uh the
cinema uh earlier on this weekin the UK, but you you you
didn't pop along, did you?

SPEAKER_03 (58:48):
Well, now I I find this very funny.
No, I didn't pop along.
Now, Dover CEO put their show anight before into cinemas, and
basically, even if even if I wasexcited, I would never go and
see one direction or TaylorSwift.

(59:09):
So, no, is the answer.
Uh, I am going to go and see uhthe ex-New Zealand Prime
Minister, Jacinda Arden, and I'mlooking forward to that one very
much, but that's a differentstory.
Now, you put in a report herewhich made me go, oh, okay.
That well, I'm looking at thedata here.
It was basically in Glasgow,about 90% of the seats are sold.

(59:33):
In Manchester, 80% of the seatsare sold.
But then some grumpy person,Nick Hilton, though, put out a
video on TikTok that said only39 people out of the whole of
the O2 in London had boughttickets.
So somebody's not got theirnumbers right.
Either this thing is sold out orthis thing is a massive flop,
and I don't know which one itis.

SPEAKER_02 (59:54):
Uh it it'll have been uh Nick Hilton not getting
it right.
He's a professional grump aboutthe industry and No, I I went to
the Cine World website, which bythe way is blocked outside of
the UK and Ireland, so thatmakes it very easy for me to
check from all the way downhere.
But uh I went to the Cine Worldwebsite and tried to book

(01:00:14):
tickets for quite a few of theshowings, and that's how I could
see how many seats were sold.
Now, this was still with 48hours to go before the showing.
And yes, and as I say, you know,in Manchester, 80% of the seats
were sold.
In London, one screen wasentirely sold out, another was

(01:00:35):
about 60% full, and then therewas a big screen that I think
cost a little bit more money,and not very many people had
booked tickets for that, andthat might have been Nick's
thing.
But yeah, I I you know, I if youwanted to go and see, if you
were a big One Direction fan andyou wanted to go and see Louis
Tomlinson, who's never reallyspoken about his private life

(01:00:58):
before, and you wanted to go andsee Stephen Butler with other
One Direction fans, then youknow, spending$20 in a ticket's
prob probably not too bad,really.
Wasn't the first in cinemas,there was there was something
not so long ago which was Ithink it was for I Sexted My
Boss, the Audio Always show thatwas also in a cinema, it was the

(01:01:22):
first in a Cineworld cinema, soStephen Butler not entirely
correct with some of his claims,but I think it was a good I
think it was a good plan.
And you mentioned Taylor Swift.
Taylor Swift had a album sort ofplay out at cinemas worldwide.
I mean, my daughter went becauseshe's a big Taylor Swift fan and

(01:01:42):
she wanted to be with otherTaylor Swift fans and she wanted
to sit in that cinema and hearthe album for the first time
with a bunch of other TaylorSwift fans.
I think there's absolutely a lotto be said for it.
So I I find it, I mean, Nick,Nick's article in the in The
Independent was an interestingarticle.
It was very focused on some ofthe other controversies that

(01:02:06):
Stephen Bartlett has had withsome of the slight quackery that
he has on his you know on hisshow and all of that.
But yeah, I I'm not I'm not I'mnot sure that any of this
showing a video podcast in acinema for money is worthy of is
is worthy of being mean about,to be honest.

SPEAKER_03 (01:02:26):
Well, I I actually have a membership to something
called Everyman, which here inthe UK is a very nice cinema
concept that came out a fewyears back, you know, nice
sofas, a little bit of wine.
Oh yes, I'm sure you do.

SPEAKER_02 (01:02:39):
Yes, yes.
Yes, very nice.

SPEAKER_03 (01:02:42):
Ban popcur popcorn, please, in cinemas.
That's my only request, says Mr.
Grumpy.
But I find I don't go to thecinema because nearly everything
that comes to the cinema isavailable within a week on the
streaming services.
So these cinemas are quiteempty.
I think this is reallyinteresting.

(01:03:02):
If people are going to get intothe idea, and I so my my point
I'm trying to say is I'm notpoo-pooing the idea.
Look, if Stephen Bartlett'staking the time, energy, and
effort to do this, and it lookslike from what you're telling me
it was nearly sold out or hasbeen sold out, that's amazing
because we've seen, you know,people from the rest is politics

(01:03:22):
being totally gobsmucked thatthey've sold out the Royal
Albert Hall, or people fromSmartless or wherever it may be.
So people coming to watch apodcast, two people on a stage
talking about politics, forexample.
So if people are willing to goto the cinema as well and pay
real money to go and watch apodcast, wow, I mean, yeah, what
does this say?
And maybe that's the future ofcinemas, right?

(01:03:44):
Maybe that's their because Iknow the Royal Opera does this
for ballet shows where you can'tget into the actual show.
They rebroadcast them across thecountry.

SPEAKER_02 (01:03:54):
Yeah, I mean, I you know, to me it comes down to
tribes, you know, communities ofcommon interest.
And you know, if you're a TaylorSwift fan or if you're a One
Direction fan, why not all gettogether and watch a film about
that in a cinema and besurrounded by your tribe?
I think that that's uh that's afine thing.

(01:04:15):
And you know, I I thinkparticularly in the world that
we're heading to where it's amuch more lonely world for most
people, I think the idea ofbeing able to get together with
other people who share the sameinterests as you do is a is a
pretty good thing.
So, you know, so I think I thinkhurrah for this.

SPEAKER_03 (01:04:34):
I'll get on the phone to the O2 to get pod news
meeting review.

SPEAKER_02 (01:04:38):
Can you imagine that?
Can you imagine that?
The nylon.

SPEAKER_03 (01:04:45):
James, let's whiz over to Ukraine.
What's going on?
Well, I don't want to ask youwhat's going on there, but
what's going on there in theworld of podcasting?

SPEAKER_02 (01:04:52):
Well, yes, exactly.
The fifth Slushno Awards, whichis Ukraine's podcast prize
ceremony.
The winners were announced uhover the weekend.
The lots of different shows.
It seems to be a really vibrantplace for podcasting.
And of course, you would expectan awful lot of comment about

(01:05:13):
the war, and uh of course, thiswas in evidence with the grand
prize, which went to a showwhich is called the terrorist
attack near the sports palace.
It's a true crime investigationfrom a uh company in Ukraine
about the 2015 Kharkiv bombing,which was back when the
Ukrainians were protestingagainst the Russians and saying,

(01:05:36):
if we're not careful, these guyswill invade.
And the and and some Russianterrorists actually uh set off a
bomb.
So all kinds of stuff, you know,of course, you know, happening
there.
But in terms of a reallyimpressive looking podcast
ceremony, you know, the picturesthat we were that we were sent,
we could only use uh some ofthose, but you know, I mean,

(01:05:58):
what a great looking event.
It's put together by a companycalled Me Gogo, which is an
international media service.
670 Ukrainian podcasts havetaken part so far, and this time
around, 168 podcasts weresubmitted, 62 podcasts made the
short list, and 20,000 voteswere cast by the audience as

(01:06:21):
well.
So really, really impressive.
So hurrah for them.
There's a full list if you speakUkrainian in the pod news
newsletter as well over theweek.

SPEAKER_03 (01:06:32):
I nearly added it to TrueFans and then was realised
we don't support Cyrillic.
Correct.
So you made me yes.

SPEAKER_02 (01:06:39):
Well, I I was going to add the full list of of the
winners and you know and do mynormal l lookups of you know how
how how the winners went andeverything else.
And then I realized that theyhad very carefully translated
all of the titles into English.
So I would then have totranslate them back to Ukrainian
and hope that they were thesame.

(01:06:59):
And I thought, no, we won't bedoing any of that.
But I thought that that was verykind of them.
So yeah, but no, really, really,really impressive.
So hurrah for them.

SPEAKER_01 (01:07:09):
People News on the Pod News Weekly Review.

SPEAKER_02 (01:07:13):
Yes, people news and shock horror, Sam.
Uh, he only joined NPR inDecember 2023.
But their big head of podcastingstrategy, Colin Campbell, has
apparently already left.
We there were there was an emailthat came around a couple of
weeks ago from NPR's chiefcontent officer, who was a

(01:07:34):
person called Edith Chapin.
She has also left NPR since.
But apparently, Colin Campbellis out.
He is, quotes, pursuing anopportunity in news a little
closer to home in California,which apparently, according to
the New York Times, is at Apple.
So maybe, maybe Colin Campbellwill know a thing or two about

(01:07:56):
HLS.
Who knows?
But changes at changes at NPR,and of course, massive changes
at the moment in terms of NPR'sfunding.
And also they've been rathermisguidedly, in my view, suing
various people because they wantto keep running satellites to
get the NPR audio out to people.

(01:08:17):
What why NPR are still usingsatellites, heaven only knows,
because you really don't need touse satellites anymore.
But anyway, so all of that goingon.
So fascinating stuff going on atuh NPR.
But as people leave, so peoplejoin.
And The Guardian in the UK uhhas a bunch of people who have
just joined The Guardian.

(01:08:39):
We've got uh presenters andproducers and senior producers
and video people and socialvideo people and all kinds of
folk.
Uh it's a it's a it's a quite acavalcade of names.
So congratulations to all ofthat.
But the Guardian definitelyseems to be rank definitely
seems to be ramping up theirpodcast uh strategy, which is

(01:09:00):
really interesting.

SPEAKER_03 (01:09:02):
Let's move on to awards and events, James.
What's going on?

SPEAKER_02 (01:09:05):
So the winners of the British Podcast Awards 2025
were announced at the 02.
If you want to hear interviewswith some of the winners, then
go and find the Media Clubpodcast with Matt Deegan, friend
of the show.
You'll also find a full list ofthe winners, of course, in the
Pod News newsletter.
Now, the podcast of the yearwent to Kill List, and Killlist

(01:09:27):
was a show that was put togetherby uh Wondery, but was also put
together by one of Wondery's uhwho was it, Novel was the
company that put that together.
Now, it's interesting thatbecause if you have a look at
the Golden Globes, whichannounced their 25 eligible
podcasts for the inauguralGolden Globe Award, all that

(01:09:50):
they did is they looked at thetop 25 podcasts in the US and
they said, those.
So therefore, any of theinteresting podcasts like Kill
List, completely ineligible toenter.
They will not be winning anyawards.
It's just the boring stuff likeJoe Rogan and the Daily from the
New York Times and blah, blah,blah, blah, blah.
So frankly, not that exciting.

(01:10:12):
Quite a lot of people quiteupset about that.
And you can kind of understandwhy.
I mean, even New Heights isn'tin there, but there's no limited
run narrative podcasts in there,in there at all.
So that was a bit of a shame tosee.
I think the Golden Globes havehave missed a trick there.
I suppose that they had to havea list of eligible podcasts, but

(01:10:33):
if you have a look at the listof eligible movies and TV shows,
well, that's really easy.
You know, has it been producedor released in this particular
place at this particular time?
Uh yes, it has, in which caseit's eligible.
But they just looked at the top25 and went, we'll have them,
which I think is a bit of amiss.

SPEAKER_03 (01:10:52):
Did someone say myopic?

SPEAKER_02 (01:10:53):
Yes, indeed.
I think that that could well bethe case.
Elsewhere going on, theIndependent Podcast Awards in
the UK, they announced their2025 shortlist.
The event is on October the 15thin London.
If you want to see Sam Sethy inthe flesh, then bring your bring
your binoculars.
And I got a binoculars.

SPEAKER_03 (01:11:13):
Two things, first of all.
Yes.
Don't put people off coming justbecause I might be there.
That's the first thing.
And secondly, yes, well, youmight need to get your
binoculars because I've lostweight.
Ah, there you go.

SPEAKER_02 (01:11:24):
Well done.
Well done.
Well uh that should be thatshould be good fun.
You and I were there last year.
It's just you this year.
But uh still, but there we are.
So have a wonderful time.
It's on aug it's on October the15th in central London.
All kinds of other finalistsbeing announced and and all
kinds of other things.
The only other one that I'mgoing to mention here is uh the

(01:11:45):
New Jersey Web Festival, whichannounced its 2025 Audio Fiction
Award winners.
And the best of the best went toHowl.
Howl is a single podcast, it'sor a single episode within a
podcast.
So don't go thinking that youhave to release 200 shows to be
eligible for one of thesethings.
If it's a great piece of audio,then that's absolutely fine.

(01:12:08):
Uh Howl is a lyrical dark fairytale for everyone who has ever
had their voice silenced.
And in terms of events, if youwant to relive podcast movement,
then you can.
Videos are now available forfree for every session from
Podcast Movement 2025 in Dallas.
They're available to everybodyon the YouTube channel.

(01:12:29):
You can also sign up withSupporting Cast and get them
straight into your podcast appas well, which is a fine and
lovely thing.
But some real gems in there, youcan go back and see me game
gamefully interviewing uh JackDavenport from Goldhanger and
various uh other things to goand take a peek at that.

SPEAKER_03 (01:12:49):
Now, James, I know the answer to this.
These are stories from thePodosphere.
I saw your response on Mastodon.
So it was Gary V says your nextpodcast co-host won't be a
human.
What was your response to that?
Who cares?
Yes.
Who cares?
And I think it was more whatGary V says.

(01:13:10):
That's what I was gonna say.
It's not who cares whether it'sgonna be human, it's who cares
what Gary V says.
Yes.

SPEAKER_02 (01:13:16):
Um that man would uh yes, say amazing things about
self self-closing envelopes ifif he if he had money in there.
Yes, no, he has been predictingthat creators will launch
podcasts with AI co-hosts thatthey fully own because he's an
idiot.
And yes, we've had all kinds ofthis kind of stuff.

(01:13:38):
Tilly Norwood is the latestthing that everybody is getting
very, very, very excited about.
She is an artificialintelligence generated
character.
She's been marketed as anactress.
She's appeared in anAI-generated comedy sketch
called AI Commissioner and invarious promotion and in various
promotional and social mediacontent.

(01:14:00):
It's all very T very tedious.
Lots of uh people have got veryupset about it, and quite
rightly so, but very, very, verydull from my point of view.
But uh, what do you think of itall?
Are you a little bit more morepositive?

SPEAKER_03 (01:14:13):
No, I'm not.
I mean, I I still think it's,you know, I I think I put up
this morning actually, I'm I'mquite saddened.
Somebody said they went to seean event with, you know, an AI
character who was answeringquestions.
And I just thought, is the goalat the end of the day for all of
this stuff for companies tobuild agentic AI so that we can

(01:14:34):
answer questions of avatars ofpeople who aren't James Cridland
but pretend to be JamesCridland?
And are we just building agenticto agentic AI e-commerce
platforms?
I'm just thinking, my god,that's a dull future that we're
building.
And it doesn't surprise me we'rebuilding that future given the
people who, like Musk andZuckerberg, who've got no

(01:14:55):
humanity and zero personality.
So I'm sort of I lovetechnology, that's not the
issue.
Uh I'm just worried that we'rejust building a world that seems
very dystopian to me.
Tilly Norwood, as an actress, isbasically taking what is the
golden mean.
It's a number where you canidentify perfect beauty.

(01:15:18):
We see it instantly as humans.
Don't know why we see it, but wedo.
It's 1.68.
And the idea is they've smashedtogether all the best bits of
female attractiveness into thisone AI character, and of course,
we as humans have recognize that1.68 golden mean number, so we
find that person attractive, andtherefore she's put into scenes,

(01:15:41):
and it's like you can see thestudios going, oh, we don't have
to pay millions to all theseactresses and do uh this, that,
and the other.
And it's like, where's thehumanity of it all?
I don't know.
I'm yeah, I've I've you know,Scott Galloway had Google build
an AI version of Scott Gallowayto answer questions, and he had
it up for 24 hours, and even hesaid, Look, kill it, I don't

(01:16:03):
like it.
I don't know.
I think we're building somethingthat we don't know where we're
gonna end up with.
And I just don't know, I'mbeginning to get a little bit
sort of anti it all.

SPEAKER_02 (01:16:13):
And and yeah, I th I I think what's interesting is
that the conversation reallyover the last couple of months
has turned from being, oh, isn'tthis interesting what AI can do
to oh my god, this is awful, andlots of people saying that sort
of thing, and the conversationbeginning to be more angry,
where you get people on oneside, Janine Wright being a

(01:16:34):
great example from InceptionPoint AI, who was very bullish
to the point of being insultingagainst people that didn't like
AI.
You know, very, very bullishabout what she what she
believed, and anybody thatdidn't believe that AI was the
future was a a lazy Luddite.
And and I think you know, if ifyou're gonna have those

(01:16:57):
conversations, then you end upit ends up being a more you
know, a more difficultconversation than it really
needs to be.
At the end of the day, if youlisten to well, one of my
favourite podcasts is The Restis Entertainment.
And version of this show thisweek, by the way.
Oh well, well there you go.
I'm looking forward to it.
And they start talking about AIan awful lot, and Richard uh

(01:17:20):
Osman's view on it is that AIwill do a lot of the beige
stuff, a lot of the dull stuff,a lot of the boring stuff.
But the real benefit for you ifyou are a human is the fact that
you are a human, the fact thatyou have human understanding and
human relationships that AIsimply doesn't understand.

(01:17:43):
And so actually, that's thebenefit that we all have as
human beings.
And we should lean more into thehuman being stuff.
And you know, it's it's one ofone of the reasons why the Pod
News newsletter has theoccasional opinion in there, it
has the occasional rather rudecomment about about people, it

(01:18:04):
has the occasional bit of humourin there, because I genuinely
believe that that is the thingthat changes a an experience
from being something which anyAI tool could do into something
which is worthwhile readingevery single day.
You know, and and and I thinkthat that's that's the main

(01:18:24):
point here.
And, you know, I absolutely, youknow, I mean, we talked about a
while back about Mamma Mia in inAustralia who had a voice called
Sam, which was a blended voiceof all of their female hosts,
and they and this blended voiceessentially does quite a lot of
the host red ads on thatnetwork.
I think that's absolutely fine.

(01:18:45):
I haven't got a problem withthat at all.
I think that if you want to useAI voices to do weather
forecasts or traffic news on aradio station, then that's
absolutely fine.
Where it crosses the line for meis when you start having actors
or or or podcast hosts, theperson that's doing the job of

(01:19:06):
the human, and you try andreplace that with AI, because
that's just not going to work.
And that's simply, you know, andwe shouldn't be doing that
anyway.

SPEAKER_03 (01:19:15):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (01:19:16):
So yeah.

SPEAKER_03 (01:19:17):
I mean, you know, let's let's be clear, we're not
AI Luddite because we you knowwe we've just applauded
Flightcast for using AI foranalytics.
We have talked in the past ofwhere AI has done a great job,
our sponsors Buzzsprout, withtranscripts and chapters.
So there is a place for AI.

(01:19:37):
I just think we are not agreeingwith Gary V on this one.
Well, we probably wouldn'tanyway, that your next podcast
co-host will be human.
But you know, that said, it maybe that we are just going
through a phase where adoptionis just, you know, people will
adopt it.
I mean, we suspend reality whenwe watch films like Lord of the

(01:19:59):
Rings, Star Wars.
We know that they aren't orcsand we know that that isn't a
flying spaceship, right?
We know that.
So can we suspend reality andknow that it's not a human, but
it has enough information thatwe take on board?
I don't know.
We'll see.

SPEAKER_02 (01:20:16):
Yeah, no, you you are you are absolutely right.
And you know, I mean the one theone thing that frustrates me is
that the Luddites weren'tagainst technology.
What the Luddites were againstwere automated things that would
make uh the quality of theproduct worse and that would
mean that people got paid less.

(01:20:36):
That's what the Luddites wereagainst.
I am there for a Luddite, andI'm very, very proud of being a
Luddite.
You're from Yorkshire now.
Because that's worse.
We're not against newtechnology.
And now the term is used forthose opposed to the
introduction of newtechnologies.
It's not really what theoriginal Luddites were there

(01:20:58):
for.
They were concerned that theproduct would get worse, and
they were concerned that workerswould get paid less because of
the because of the newtechnology which was being used,
which is a subtle difference,but we should probably not
forget that.

SPEAKER_03 (01:21:20):
Okay, so we've just smashed AI and let's do more AI
then.
Right, brilliant.
You know, just you know, who'sthe producer of this show?
Sackum, that's what I say.
Um Spotify announced a littlewhile back that they were going
to be experimenting with podcastrecommendations using AI.
This week they've announced thatthey're now going to integrate

(01:21:43):
your accounts with ChatGPT andyou can prompt it to find new
songs, artists.
But the bit that was mostinteresting was podcast episodes
as well, James.

SPEAKER_02 (01:21:53):
Yes, I I I think you can ask ChatGPT.
So I think the way that you doit is you say, ask Spotify for a
you know, a song about cheese,and then ChatGPT will uh get a
song about cheese from Spotify.
Uh yeah.
Don't don't really don't reallykind of I mean interestingly,

(01:22:15):
YouTube music has had that sortof thing for a while, where you
can type in, you know, music fora rainy day and it'll work out
what that might be and um andgive you a playlist for that.
So potentially it's Spotifyplaying catch-up against YouTube
for that.
I don't know.
But yeah, I'm I'm you know, II'm I'm certainly not
overwhelmed, I'm not evenunderwhelmed, I'm not even sure

(01:22:38):
I'm welmed at this point.

SPEAKER_03 (01:22:40):
That's Michael McIntyre once said, yes, no
one's overwhelmed.
Yes.
But I do think again, look, wewe're looking at assistant
intelligent agents here.
It's the idea of DJX probably inthe future adapting to be able
to use it where you can ask itmore questions of the music you

(01:23:00):
want or the playlists you haveor the podcast.
I don't know whether you'lleventually get to ask a question
like give me all the episodesthat James Cridlin's a guest on.
I don't know if that's a aquestion that you'll eventually
be able to extract using OpenAIand Spotify.

SPEAKER_02 (01:23:17):
Yeah, I mean, I I would imagine probably, but I
would imagine that you canprobably do that anyway.
Uh I I wouldn't have thoughtthat it it needs it needs AI for
that sort of thing.
So yeah, who knows really?
But yeah, I'm I'm you know, Imean, uh with quite a lot of
this, I think that the you knowthat this is being talked about
primarily to bump up a stockprice because the people in the

(01:23:40):
in the stock market aren'tclever enough to realise that AI
isn't a good thing.
And so I suspect that that'sreally the real reason why quite
a lot of these AI announcementsare being are being made,
because you know, investorsexpect people to be investing in
AI here because they keep onbeing told that it's the future.
Ed Zitran writes really goodposts.

(01:24:01):
You should follow him onMastodon if you're not if you're
not already, writes really goodposts about open AI, about AI in
general, and basically pointingout all of the fallacies and all
of the mistakes that uh they arecurrently making.
And uh, you know, it'sdefinitely worthwhile a read.
But yeah, I'm I'm still notparticularly taken with it.

(01:24:22):
You know, I'm I'm taken withsome of the some of the things
that Flycast has done, as youknow, as we were saying, but I
think that that's about as faras it gets.

SPEAKER_03 (01:24:29):
What's scary is 40% or more of the American GDP is
based on open AI, or not notopen AI, or based on AI
investments into data centers.

SPEAKER_02 (01:24:41):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 (01:24:41):
And a lot of the other industries that they have
are not doing so well.
This was a recent report fromthe FT, and it's scary because
if we have an AI bubble and aburst, it'll be a massive shock
to the US system.

SPEAKER_02 (01:24:56):
Yes.
Oh, it really will.
It really will.
And I'm sure that that is comingas well.
So, yes, we need to be we needto be very careful in terms of
that.

SPEAKER_01 (01:25:05):
The tech stuff on the Pod News Weekly Review.

SPEAKER_02 (01:25:10):
Yes, it's the stuff you'll find every Monday in the
Pod News newsletter.
Uh, here's where Sam talkstechnology.

SPEAKER_03 (01:25:16):
Well, a little snippet that Justin Jackson put
out.
I'm not sure he's officiallyputting it out, but we're just
sort of going to tease it.
He's created a cover artgenerator, similar to what
Headliner does, similar to whatI do using Canva.
Have you played with it yet,James?

SPEAKER_02 (01:25:32):
I've not played with it.
I've I've I've taken a quicklook at it and and and given a
little bit of feedback, but it'syeah, it's quite it's quite nice
in terms of taking the podcastperson tag, which you have to
have for this to work, and thengrabbing the images for those
people and making some nicecover art for that.

(01:25:53):
So it's very much for thatparticular use case, but seems
to work quite nicely.

SPEAKER_03 (01:25:58):
It's a bit rudimentary at the moment.
I think it'll get better.
I still use, I think Headlinerstill does a better job,
personally.
I think also the interestingpart, this is one of the other
things I just wanted to raise.
We don't seem to be using thesoundbite tag very much across
the industry.
One of the things thatBuzzSprout does is allows you to

(01:26:18):
create a soundbite, an audioclip.
It's again, I think hasn't beentouched or upgraded or improved
for at least two years.
I'm pretty sure on that.
Soundbites, a bit like coverart, where we had cover art for
episode art, was a great stepforward.
I think sound bites in ourindustry seems to have stopped

(01:26:41):
or stagnated, and yet we knowvideo clips on Reels, TikTok,
and other places generatesengagement consistently to the
full product.
And I'm not sure why we're notreally as audiophiles pushing
sound bites better than we do.
I just don't see a lot of it.

(01:27:01):
We look for it in RSS feeds allthe time, and on TrueFans, we
can't find a volume of themanywhere.
It would be lovely to create apage of sound bites on TrueFans
or at least bring them to theforefront or do something with
them to help promote podcasts,but people aren't using them.

SPEAKER_02 (01:27:19):
Yeah, yeah.
No, I I think you know, I thinkwe understand v the benefit of a
soundbite.
We also understand that actuallywe have to upload those to
TikTok and other places, and thethe middle ground there of
podcast apps using them probablyhasn't really hasn't really
appeared.

SPEAKER_03 (01:27:38):
Yeah, I mean Fountain does a good job of
creating soundbite clips rightin their own app.
We do an okay job.
I wouldn't say it's the best orworst, and I'm not sure of the
other apps, I don't really lookbut again it it feels like this
is a a part of the industrywhere it's related to promoting

(01:27:59):
and helping discover podcaststhat we're not doing anything
really around.
And I I I don't know if there'sa worthwhile conversation to be
had of how do we get more soundbites into the RSS feeds.

SPEAKER_02 (01:28:12):
Yeah, no, indeed.

SPEAKER_03 (01:28:14):
Your favourite app, James, has a new version,
Audacity.

SPEAKER_02 (01:28:20):
Yes, I'm not sure it's my favorite app, but um
they are they are doing somereally interesting work in terms
of a redesign.
So Tanta Krull, who's the manwho is now the product manager
of Audacity, has uh shared uhquite a lot of detail.
I mean, 50 minutes worth ofdetail if you want to watch it
on YouTube, about the new designfor Audacity.

(01:28:44):
But also he goes into a lot ofdetail about how people use
Audacity, what they use it for,you know, how they're actually
using it.
Most people, 80% uh plus ofpeople who are using Audacity
are really using it to top andtail audio.
So they're not using it forreally anything more than that,
which is interesting.
But it does look very, verybeautiful, so it's worth a peek.

(01:29:06):
You may find some reviews of iton YouTube.
It is available as a pre-alpha.
Pre-alphas mean that noteverything works, and uh and so
therefore I would ignore that,but I would certainly have a
look at the Tantacral YouTubepiece because uh he does go into
an awful lot of more informationin terms of that.
Other things getting benefit interms of uh new redesigns and

(01:29:28):
upgrades.
Whisper CPP, which Pod News usesfor transcriptions, and I know
that a lot of other podcasthosting companies do as well.
That has just been updated toversion 1.8.
It's got performanceimprovements in there.
For me, it's much, much, much,much, much faster again.
So that's quite nice.
Yahoo is um apparently wantingto sell AOL to Italy's bending

(01:29:54):
spoons.
Ah, that's that lovely VCcompany that in shittifies
everything for 1.4.
Billion dollars, why would youwant to buy AOL for heaven's
sake?

SPEAKER_03 (01:30:04):
Well, but anyway, I read the full report, and
fundamentally what they're doingis they're scooping up
everything.
It looks like anything that usedto be a Web 1.0 brand name
practically is going scooped upby Bending Spoons.
We're going to aggregate themtogether to then go and do an
IPO.
That's fundamentally thegameplay.

SPEAKER_02 (01:30:27):
Right.
Well, that makes sense then,doesn't it?

SPEAKER_03 (01:30:29):
None none at all.
Because who who the hell wouldyou?
I didn't even know Yahoo stillexisted, let alone AOL.
It's like somebody put themdown.

SPEAKER_02 (01:30:39):
Indeed.
Yes.
Well, there's a thing.
Yes, so watch out for that.
So so that so that's one thing.
And in terms of the Pod NewsDaily podcast, I mentioned last
week that we were now availablein HLS.
We have two streaming formatsfor audio.
You'll find that in thealternate enclosures in the RSS

(01:31:01):
feed.
You may be interested to knowhow many people have played the
version from uh Tuesday.
Sam, how many people do youthink have played that version?
Yes, correct.
Interestingly, though, we didget on the Monday, we did get
one play for that, which isnice.
And I also noticed that we gotplay on the third of on the

(01:31:26):
third of October as well, thehigh version, whereas the
version on the 1st of Octobergot both plays for the high and
the low.
So there's an exciting thing.
There appears to be somethingcalled HLS Livewire.io, which is
presumably something else thatJohn Spurlock is doing in terms
of in terms of playing back HLSpodcasts and things in there.

(01:31:48):
So I'm guessing that it it is inthere somehow.
I should go and uh take a peekat that.

SPEAKER_03 (01:31:54):
I think what you're identifying is the the two
things.
Okay.
First, is there a customcustomer demand for HLS?
And I'd say no, there isn't acustomer demand right yet.
Secondly, are people aware thatthe alternative enclosure exists
and do apps make a good job ofmaking or highlighting that

(01:32:14):
capability?
I'm I'm not saying that it'sit's the best way that we do it
right now.
I think we could improve that aswell.
But I don't think peoplenaturally would go to the
alternative enclosure when theyclick play, it just plays what's
there, right?
So it's it's that trust elementfor putting in the primary

(01:32:34):
enclosure is what we want.

SPEAKER_02 (01:32:36):
So you're putting we're not gonna that that's
that's a long, long, long wayaway.
But you can but you can well seethat for certain podcast apps,
they would they would want tochoose the primary one being HLS
because that would work betterfor them.
I think I think there are acouple of things that we need to
fix first.
One of them is to agree what theyou know how big the HLS chunks

(01:33:01):
are, because there's no realguidance in terms of that yet.
Secondly, we we need to alsomake it visible within the RSS
feed what is available in the inthe HLS master playlist.
Because if we don't do that,then we're just making it harder
for podcast apps to be able toknow what is in there.

(01:33:23):
And there is probably an easyway that we can do that without
changing anything to do with thealternate enclosure tag to make
that visible and readable fromthe RSS feed.
Of course, we need to bear inmind that the RSS feed is
probably written by somethingdifferent than is writing the
audio, so we need to bear thatbit in mind as well.
But I think that with those twothings, and we should probably

(01:33:45):
agree on what codec that we useand and the types of you know,
the types of bitrate that wemight want to support.
But I think as long as we getquite a lot of that bit fixed,
then we can then we can move on.
It's probably needs a bit of abit of work in terms of just
working out what the bestpractices are and then moving

(01:34:05):
forward.
By the way, you know, it iscompletely automatic on my on my
service, so therefore I'm justproducing HLS versions from from
here on in.
And it doesn't really cost meanything, so I'm absolutely fine
with that.
So I I don't really care ifanybody uses them or not,
because it's quite nice to havethem there.
But yeah, I think it's we arestill certainly a long, long

(01:34:27):
way.

SPEAKER_03 (01:34:27):
Yeah, I look, I think we have to take these baby
steps first, right?
Which is putting it in thealternative enclosure, not to
break the primary RSS feed forapps like Spotify, Apple, etc.
Because you know, you could putit into the primary now, and
then those would break withinthose apps.
So I think it's a good thing todo.
So, for example, you and I weretesting it with TrueFans, it

(01:34:50):
worked, it's in the alternativeenclosure, happy days.
That itself was a tick box forme that we got it to work,
right?
That we got it to play themaster manifest file, right?
And then we we could read it.
So those are wins, and I thinkonce we got those wins under our
belt, then it's beholden to thePSP, maybe, or somebody else to

(01:35:13):
knock on Ted's door at Apple andsay, Hey, come on, Apple, be the
first to support HLS, and thenmaybe the likes of Spotify and
others will follow soon.
So, you know, we we've got to beready from our side before we go
and knock on the door for Appleto say, come on then, it we're
ready.
Do the business, right?

SPEAKER_02 (01:35:34):
Yeah, no, indeed.
No, we we do need everything tobe working well, and the only
way that we will get everythingworking well is if we're
actually doing it.
So I think, you know, it's greatthat we are, you know, it's
great that I'm I'm doing it,it's great that that that
there's a bunch of of other folkplaying around with this and
certainly looking at uh whatSoundstack are doing and various
other people, you know.

(01:35:55):
I think it that that it isabsolutely right, but we do need
to make sure that everythingworks the way that we want it to
work prior to prior to going andtalking to Apple.
I think that that's a good plan.

SPEAKER_03 (01:36:06):
Lastly, I'm just asking the question has Rode run
out of road?
Road the producer seems to runout of ideas very quickly
because now the only thingthey've come up with is
different coloured mics.
Can they do anything more withmics, James?
Have we got to peak micdevelopment?

SPEAKER_02 (01:36:26):
Oh, I'm sure that uh Road will be continuing building
new and interesting things.
I mean, you know, they they seemto release new products every
couple of years that people go,oh wow, about.
The Rodcaster video, not soexciting from podcasting's point
of view, but I have seen a lotof those in various places as

(01:36:47):
I've been wandering aroundaround the world.
So the Rodecaster video seems todo incredibly well.
The Rodecaster itself, theaudio, the audio thing appears
to be in use everywhere as well.
So you can you can certainly seethat that will continue to be,
you know, changed and upgradedand so on and so forth.

(01:37:07):
I don't think that you know thatthere's anything particularly to
worry about there.
They're a very interestingcompany.
They've just integrated with yetanother company in terms of in
terms of audio stuff.
So I'm sure that you know thatthey will be surprising us once
more in the future.

SPEAKER_01 (01:37:23):
Boostigram.
Booster, boostigram, supercomments, zaps, fan mail, fan
mail, super chats, and email.
Our favorite time of the week,it's the Pod News Weekly Review
Inbox.

SPEAKER_02 (01:37:36):
Yes, so many different ways to get in touch
with us.
Fan mail by using the link inour show notes, super comments
on TrueFans, boosts everywhereelse.
You can also comment in Spotify,and you can use email weekly at
podnews.net.
If you send us any money, thenwe we share that too, just Sam
and I.
We got some boosts, haven't we,Sam?

SPEAKER_03 (01:37:55):
Well, super comments looking at it, give given it's
all true fans practically.
Nudge, nudge, wink, wink.
Right.
43 Sats from Lyceum.
Could a reply become a supercomment with a payment?
Will James see it on his radar?
Did you see this, James?

SPEAKER_02 (01:38:12):
Oh, I mean, I did see the comment.
Yes.
I I I love the idea.
I've always loved the idea ofcomments having a monetary
amount attached to them.
I think that that that that's areally interesting idea.
And this is basically what aboost is, or or a super comment
if you insist.
And so I think from that, fromthat point of view, yeah, I

(01:38:32):
think that those are very Ithink that those are very
interesting.
So yeah, yes.

SPEAKER_03 (01:38:37):
Basically.
Yes, and you got uh 43 satsreceived from Sam.
I don't know if this is me ornot.
The critical factor will be howmuch does flight yes, it is from
me, because I remember writingthis.
The critical factor will be howmuch does flight cast charge.
Sometimes you have to rememberwhat you wrote.
Yes.

SPEAKER_02 (01:38:54):
Um Well, thank you, Sam, for your 100 sats.
And by the way, it's the littlethe little number at the end
rather than my particular share.
So, yes, and we do know whatflight cast charges, and that's
all good.
Bruce, the ugly quacking duck,still there using podcast guru.
Thank you.
And also sending us somesensible amounts.
So thank you for your row ofducks, 2,222 sats.

(01:39:16):
Using AI to help is great,letting AI do it for itself is
dangerous.
I am human, thanks.
73.
Correct, totally agree.
That's exactly that's exactlyit.
I think AI as an assistant isbrilliant.
AI as a thing that takes thehuman being out is not so great.
And uh Neil Vellio commenting onsomething that I said last week.

(01:39:41):
558th SAT.
Thank you, Neil.
Absolutely, he says, talkingabout Inception AI.
I was, he agrees with me andsays there's literally no
consider there's literally noconsideration for the audience.
Bingo.
So uh excellent.
Thank you, Neil, for that.
And look what else we've got.
We've got comments in Spotify,Sam.

SPEAKER_03 (01:40:03):
Okay, come on.
This has got to be a first.

SPEAKER_02 (01:40:05):
Yeah.
Well, actually, we've had quitea few comments in Spotify.
It's just I've never beenbothered to look.
So if you go back a couple ofmonths, thank you, Dave
Campbell, who uh commented afterthe version of this show that we
did while I was in Jakarta inIndonesia, and we were talking
about hosting sites raisingtheir prices, which is exactly
what we've been talking aboutthis week as well.

(01:40:27):
Dave says if we don't need anyof the bolt-on services, there
should be a basic plan withoutall the bells and whistles.
And I would agree with that, andI would say yes, but that's what
Spotify has.
And their basic plan without allthe bells and whistles is free,
and it's called Spotify for forcreators.
And why would you spend 10 bucksa month for a basic service that

(01:40:49):
is offering you nothing thatSpotify for creators isn't
offering?
Would be my answer to that.
But I'm grateful for you leavinga comment on Spotify two months
ago, and also grateful forStrawPile, whoever Straw Pile
is, who listened to ourinterview with uh Janine Wright
uh from Inception Point AI theother week and said, Was this

(01:41:10):
interview generated by AI?
Hey! To which I replied, theinterview itself wasn't, but
actually I did use AI to fixsome audio issues.
So uh so there.
So thank you to those.
If you have to, you can leavecomments on Spotify or
presumably on YouTube as well.
My goodness, imagine that.
And uh thank you to our powersupporters as well.

(01:41:33):
These are people who are payingus with real money.
Much appreciated.
There are 23 of them, includingJohn Spurlock, but also John
McDermott, David John Clark,Mzileen Smith, and Jim James,
many others.
Thank you all so much for doingthat.
Weekly.podnews.net is where todo that.
So, what's been happening foryou this week, Sam?

SPEAKER_03 (01:41:54):
Well, as I said, podcast date in Spain nearly
killed me.
Getting up at 3 a.m.
Blimey by by Friday.
I was knacking.
But the driver I had, Rafa, wasbrilliant.
He plays Padel with the crownprince of Abu Dhabi.
It was hilarious.
Some of his stories.
He's also Mr.
Ibiza.

(01:42:15):
He he basically stocks up allthe big ships.
So he's got a concierge service.
He was a fascinating guy.
So yes, love that.
So thank you for everyone forinviting me over there.

SPEAKER_02 (01:42:26):
Gosh, well, there's a thing.
Also over there, you mentionedMegan Davies.
Uh, also over there was EricNewsom uh as well and uh many
other speakers from Spain.
Uh, presumably Well you youweren't wearing your your
ridiculous spy glasses in Spain,were you?

SPEAKER_03 (01:42:42):
I was.
I mean, as I said, being atypically yeah Anglophile Brit
with no language skills, my metasunglasses came in handy because
I have live translation on them.
So yes, work very well.
And and that and that actuallyworked.
It worked, yes.
Wow.
So I had my phone out, andbasically someone had talked to
me, I'd hear it translate, thenI'd say something and then show

(01:43:05):
them my phone.
And basically, that's the bestway we could do at lunch for
having a conversation.
Wow.
Well, there's a thing.
Uh not perfect, but not it wasbetter than nothing because it
would have been silenceotherwise.
Yes.

SPEAKER_02 (01:43:19):
Excellent.
And have you been to any anyfancy events recently?

SPEAKER_03 (01:43:23):
Well, I'm off to one.
I'm off to Ireland for a weddingthis weekend.
Uh friends, daughters gettingmarried to an Irish guy.
I'm really looking forward toit.
It's two days on the beach in alovely venue and uh drinking
proper Guinness.
So, yes.

SPEAKER_02 (01:43:38):
Where where where are you going?

SPEAKER_03 (01:43:40):
Where whereabouts?
It's about an hour north ofDublin.

SPEAKER_02 (01:43:44):
Oh, an hour north of Dublin, my goodness.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 (01:43:46):
Well, there you go.
So cool.
Um they are going swimming inthe sea on one of the days, and
I'm like, bugger that, I'm gonnabe drinking a nice little
coffee, reading the papers andchilling out.
There is no way I'm going in.

unknown (01:43:59):
Yes.

SPEAKER_02 (01:44:00):
Or playing paddle, presumably.

SPEAKER_03 (01:44:03):
Well, no, I'm playing later today, but I can't
play, I can't play over theweekend on banned.
Yes, right.

SPEAKER_05 (01:44:10):
Yes.

SPEAKER_03 (01:44:11):
And then on a technical note, we got LN
address to work, which is great.

SPEAKER_02 (01:44:16):
Oh, right, yes.
So so you can so you're nowcorrectly doing the splits in
terms of in terms of LN addressas well as as well as the other
one.
Yes, key centers.
Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 (01:44:27):
Yeah, and we also obviously support secure RSS as
well, so L402.
So yeah, it's quite nice.
So the Lightning Network we'regonna support now all three
formats.
So yeah, very pleased with that.
Very good.
Very good.
Now, the other conversation Ihad on Mastodon with Alex Gates
and Chad F was quite aninteresting one.

(01:44:48):
We created an awards page lastweek or the week before, and one
of the things we did was uhimport and export using OPML,
but we also do export using thepodcasting 2.0 playlist format.
So we would have say MediumEquals Podcast L in this case

(01:45:09):
for a playlist, and Alec caughta little bug that we had, which
is brilliant, so thank you forthat.
But it was interesting that sofew people use that medium
format for playlists, so fewpeople use, I mean, we have pod
roles, but we don't usepublisher feeds and and artist
feeds and all of these types ofdifferent things.

(01:45:31):
And then there was a wholeconversation about, well, there
are RSS feeds, these arestandalone RSS feeds, they're
fully formed, so why don't wepublish them to the podcast
index?
And we don't yet at the moment.
And I think again, we're missinga little trick here.
You know, I talked about soundbites, but I think we're also
missing a trick here with podroles, playlists, and publisher

(01:45:52):
feeds.
But I don't know what we can do.

SPEAKER_02 (01:45:55):
That's yeah, that that is really interesting.
Uh, there there is there is somuch that I wish that we could
get out of the podcast index.
One of the things that I'vebeen, you know, asking for every
now and again is an API intolocation information so that we
can begin to build all of thosemaps and things like that.
We don't quite have those yet.

(01:46:16):
Maybe there's another way intothat data.
But at the moment, in order foryou to draw a nice map of all of
of where all of the podcasts inthe world are from or where
they're all about, then you needto essentially pass every single
RSS feed that that that there isout there, which is quite hard.
And so it'd be lovely given thatthe podcast index is already

(01:46:38):
doing that.
It'd be lovely if there was away of doing that sort of uh
thing.
But yeah, no, lots of reallyinteresting things.
So yeah, it'd be nice to uh niceto move forward on uh some of
those things.

SPEAKER_03 (01:46:51):
So what's happened for you, James?

SPEAKER_02 (01:46:53):
Very little has been happening for me, which has been
very, very nice.
We we ended up we ended up overthe weekend going out to
normally we meet up with lots ofpeople from the coffee shop
every single morning, and we seethe same people at the coffee
shop every single morning.
And uh one of us thought, whydon't we meet up in the
afternoon in the bar?

(01:47:14):
So we met up in the afternoon inthe bar and we actually had
things that weren't coffee,which was very exciting.
So so I very much enjoyed that.
But apart from that, it's beennice and and and uh quiet here,
which has been which has been agood thing.
I've been spending time seeingif I can work out how to get the
Wi-Fi working better, which isalways uh always a thing.

(01:47:36):
Getting the Wi-Fi working nextto the swimming pool is is my
current job.
Not because I want the Wi-Fi towork well next to the swimming
pool, because it already does.
But what I want the Wi-Fi towork is to work next to the
filter pump, which it doesn't,because there's a big swimming
pool in the way.

(01:47:56):
So I I need an extension of theWi-Fi just to work round there
so that I can then control thepool heater and stuff like that
through the through the homeassistant.

SPEAKER_03 (01:48:05):
On your balcony, from the balcony, turn it up,
it's not warm enough yet.

SPEAKER_02 (01:48:09):
No, through through through the home assistant, damn
you, Gene Bean.
Yes, but uh yes, so that is myplan.
And uh we did also get uhsomething that was very exciting
this week from sponsors at BuzzSprout.
We have hit uh a quarter of amillion podcast downloads.
So uh hurrah, we got this thingsaying congratulations from

(01:48:31):
Buzzsprout, which was nice.
So we ended up sharing that.
So hurrah for you, uh Sam, foryour quarter of a million of
production and and all of that.
No, I think that's a good thing.

SPEAKER_03 (01:48:42):
It's amazing how many cousins I have in India.

SPEAKER_02 (01:48:45):
It's amazing having you.
Quite possibly.
So, and that's it for this week.
All of our podcast stories takenfrom the Pod News Daily
Newsletter at Podnews.net.

SPEAKER_03 (01:48:55):
You can support this show by streaming Sats.
You can give us feedback usingthe Bus Sprout thumbnail link in
our show notes, and you can sendus a super comment or a boost.
Better still, become a powersupporter like the 23andme
PowerFans at weekly.podnews.net.
PowerFans.

SPEAKER_02 (01:49:12):
Our music is from TM Studios, our voiceover's Sheila
D.
Our audio is recorded usingCleanFeed, and we edit with
Hindenburg.
And of course, we're hosted andsponsored by Buzz Sprout.
Start podcasting, keeppodcasting.

SPEAKER_01 (01:49:24):
Get updated every day.
Subscribe to our newsletter atpodnews.net.
Tell your friends and grow theshow.
Support us and support us.
The pod news weekly review willreturn next week.
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