It's Friday the 24th of March 2023. Here goes. The last word in podcasting news. This is the Pod News Weekly Review with James Cridland and Sam Suthey. I'm James Cridland, the editor of Pod News. And I'm Sam Suthey, the CEO of PodFans. In the chapters today, YouTube podcasting is sort of go, we guess. PodX acquires another podcast company, why Spotify spent less than 10% of its $100 million diversity fund, and Mastodon hits 10 million users. And hey, this is Mark Asquith, MD and co-founder here at Capt ivate. And I'll be around later to discuss podcasting 2.0 and our most recent feature release. He will. This podcast is sponsored and hosted by Buzzsprout. Last week, 4,736 people started a podcast with Buzzsprout. Podcast hosting made easy with powerful tools and remarkable customer support. And now you can turn your listeners into supporters with Buzzsprout subscriptions. From your daily newsletter, the Pod News Weekly Review. So James, let's kick off. Podcasts are go. I couldn't help but think of Thunderbirds, FAB YouTube. Yes. English reference. YouTubers announced that podcasts are go and a tweet. And we think that the podcast tools are available for everyone. Come on, James. Is it available? Is it not available? Are we go or are we sort of just get on with it but stop before it really goes? Where are we? So the YouTube's PR person sent a thing a couple of weeks ago saying, we're rolling out these tools and linked to a blog post which was described as a test. And those tools are both analytics and also adding podcasts for yourself on YouTube Studio. They're still talked about as a test. But the tweet says podcasts are go and apparently that means that podcasts are now available for any creator to put into YouTube. So that's a lovely thing. Podcasts still aren't though visible in YouTube music for anybody yet. And only one country will actually get YouTube music podcasts or whatever it is that they're going to be calling it anyway at launch. So yes, it's very confusing. Just not understanding what's going on. And I contacted YouTube's PR and I said, you know, what does this mean? Does this mean that it's rolled out fully? And they said, yeah, it's rolled out fully like we said. And I said, no, you didn't. And you're still calling it a test. So it's a good job that they know what's going on. Well, Todd Cocker and friend of the show did his review of it as well. And I just love his line. YouTube podcast, a big nothing burger was basically what he said. The total cluster, I can't say the word. Oh, you can. You can. We can add the bleep. Go for it. Oh, right. I'm not Courtney Kosak. I can't say those words. Total cluster over YouTube. Yes. He basically thinks it's a waste of time. They've just bastardized sorry for the language. Podcast support through a playlist. So yeah, no, I don't think Todd Cochran is impressed. Yeah. I mean, the fact that they've yet to talk to any podcast hosting companies, all of the podcast hosting companies are going, we don't know what's going on either, is a bit weird. YouTube's creator insider has produced a video with a very generously bearded Irish man who has announced the company's new podcast features and metrics, except in that video, they say that they haven't rolled out yet and that they're rolling out this week. Both features will be rolling out to all creators this week. Again, not quite sure what's going on there. But yes, their podcast specific analytics, which I've managed to have a look at, they are distinct from current analytics offered, but they bear no resemblance to anything that podcasters would be used to seeing. They basically look like YouTube stats, but for a channel rather than for individual videos. So again, not quite sure what's going on with all of that. It just seems to me such a missed opportunity by Google to actually be able to talk to podcast creators and go, this is what we're doing. This is what we'd like you to do. Let's do it. But they're just not communicating seemingly with anyone. So at least I don't feel as if it's just me. Well, I saw a brilliant tweet. It's not directly related, but it was from a guy called Bud Elliott. He said, this is some musical chair stuff. YouTube is getting into podcasts. TikTok is trying to be YouTube and Spotify wants to be TikTok. I thought that summed up the world very well. I think you're right. I think that's absolutely it. And of course, we have seen other people launching this sort of thing in the past. YouTube, of course, launching podcasts in YouTube music only in the US. There was a company that launched podcasts only in the US as well, and that was last year, wasn't it? Yeah, good old Facebook. It launched, we thought actually at the time, to be fair, we thought that this was a good step forward and we thought, welcome to the party. But it turns out Facebook is shutting down its audio channels in groups. It's the last bit of the company's former push into social audio. It launched podcasts in 2021 and it closed it a year later. There you go. Over the last 24 hours, I've noticed that there's now some podcast specific UI in the main YouTube video app. So if you listen to this very show in YouTube, then you will see explore the podcast appearing in there. And you'll see a big transcript, which we've had nothing to do with. It's just YouTube's transcripts, but you can see that on the page as well. And there's various other things. So, you know, they're clearly doing stuff, but I'm there thinking, do I really need to cover YouTube in every single newsletter that I write every single day? Because I'm beginning to get a little bit bored of it. And, you know, and all of it is just guesswork. So if I'm not careful, I'm just going to look a bit stupid. So, yeah, I don't really know what to do with it. What should I be doing? Sam, should I be breathlessly reporting everything that YouTube is doing? I suppose I should, shouldn't I? No, no, no. I think you're fine. You can just report about LinkedIn's move into podcasting instead. That'll be much more fun for you. Yes. The LinkedIn Podcast Academy. It's a six month incubator pilot for 19 shows. And yes, that is brilliant. That's what we need LinkedIn to be involved in podcasting. The bunch of people that they're paying to make some shows, including Esprit de Vora, who I think has been on this show, hasn't she? Have I just made that up? Anyway, she was... I think we have. I can't remember. Yeah, well, there you go. She was one of the faces of Clubhouse. Back when Clubhouse was incredibly popular and people were using it, she produces a podcast called The Women in Tech Podcast. And that's one of the 19 that they are going to be mentoring and connecting people with and everything else. Whoopee, great LinkedIn. I know you're a big fan of LinkedIn, Sam, so I don't want to do it down too much. I know that's your favourite social media network. Yeah, my faith... I'm on it daily. I'm just... That's it. My first reader of the day is LinkedIn. No, let's move on. That's enough of YouTube and LinkedIn and anyone else. Next one up is Spotify and NPR are detailing their new... Spotify, brilliant. Exactly. Their new partnership in a post highlighting how the two companies are forging a new partnership focused on diversification and discoverability. Sorry, before I get to the end of the sentence and fall asleep, tell me more. Well, this is actually a pretty big deal. This is NPR, which of course is one of the largest podcast companies in the US and they have forged a new partnership with Spotify, which basically means that as far as I understand it, Megaphone will be selling or rather the Spotify audience network, will be selling NPR's advertising or advertising within the NPR podcast. Gina Garubo, who is the big boss at National Public Media, she is very excited about a partnership with Spotify because Spotify obviously has access to young people, Gen Zers, which NPR's radio stations don't particularly. NPR's radio stations are mostly listened to by old folk. And so there's some real opportunity that they see there. And I can kind of see that. I think it's exciting. It's very unlike NPR though. I mean, NPR has been very much pro open podcasting and all of that stuff. And so actually seeing NPR jumping into bed with Spotify that has not been exactly pro open podcasting is an interesting move from them, I think. Oh, well, maybe it's a bigger story than I thought. Now, Spotify has though done something quite interesting. They announced obviously their audio books a little while back. They've announced the availability of Spotify in Canada now for audio books, but more importantly in English and French, James. Yes. So if you speak the old fashioned French that they speak in Quebec, then you will be able to get audio books presumably in French in Spotify as well, which is the first time that Spotify has launched audio books into a non English speaking country, stroke province. So that's exciting. So Spotify now has audio books in Canada as well as the US, the UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand, which should be good. I haven't actually played with it here. Maybe I should do. Yeah, I haven't played with it either, to be honest. Isn't it still the jump out by jump back in hoop that they have to go through to buy an audio book? I would have thought so. Yes, I would have thought that that is definitely part of the part of the thing. So yeah, it's not not not not going to be as easy as it could be, but of course Spotify is busy working on making that a little bit easier. But they end up having to basically put an awful lot of pressure onto both Apple and Google to in order to actually do that. But one assumes that some of the conversations going on with the EU will actually fix some of that as well. Now, Ashley Carman, friend of the show from Bloomberg, put out a report yesterday that Spotify spent less than 10 percent of its 100 million dollar diversity fund. After its biggest star, Joe Rog an was caught using racial slur. Spotify said it would spend 100 million dollars to support creators from marginalized communities. But it seems words are bigger than actions in this case. Yes. And it's one of the things that Spotify is very good at doing is announcing something and then not actually following through. And this is a particular follow through in terms of the Creator Equity Fund, which was designed to promote diversity in music and podcasts all after Joe Rogan was saying some dreadful things. And yeah, and they've not bothered to spend all of that money at all. And it comes as no real surprise, to be honest. It's just, you know, one of those one of those things, I guess. So, yeah, another announcement from Spotify that hasn't actually gone anywhere. Shall we apply for some, you know, diversity? Oh, yeah, maybe. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, why not? We're not both white men, so that's OK. I cover that box. We've got that. Although this podcast, I mean, it wasn't last week, but this week is very, very male dominated. And a little less sex talk. Yeah, but there you go. Smutty. Smutty was the word. That was the word. I believe was the phrase. Yes. Anyway, talking about Smutty, those Scandinavians, what are they doing? Well, once they get out the sauna, anything's possible. No, PodX, the group out of Scandinavia, has been acquiring more companies. They've acquired Sumerman Podcast Media, Finland's largest podcast company. In 2022, PodX Group made acquis itions in France. They've also made acquisitions in Argentina, the United Kingdom, Sweden, and the Netherlands. So they've been a very active group. I mean, I remember when they first were announced, we were a little bit skeptical because of the deal requirement. I think it was like a 50% requirement in any purchase. But it seems that they're successfully growing, James. Yeah, it does. It seems as if they are doing some really interesting things. I think one of the things about PodX Group is that we don't know very much about them. We know that they're there to get IP in podcasts that they can then use in other means as well. But they seem to be buying up a bunch of people. They bought some UK company or a UK company last year. They seem to be buying up all kinds of people. This is the second Scandinavian company that they have bought. So they seem to be doing some really interesting things. It would be lovely to learn a little bit more about what they're doing. Well, your wish is my command, sir. I've reached out to a Frederick said and Stefan Russell, the co-founders, and they've said they'll be on the show hopefully either next week or the week after. I think it's interesting that Frederick was former head of market expansion at Acast, and Stefan was the CEO of Bauer Sweden. So they've got a really strong record in the industry. You know, when they first started PodX, we didn't really look or I didn't look, let's say, who the founders really were. But having done a little bit of digging, I think they've got a really strong track record. So it'll be interesting to see what their plans are. Yeah, indeed. Bauer, of course, being a big multinational radio and magazine group, which owns an awful lot of stations, particularly in the UK, but also in Scandinavia. And of course, Acast, we all know who Acast is. So yeah, well, that's a great booking. So excellent. I'm looking forward to that in a couple of weeks time. Now, moving on, talking of A cast, Mark Maron and Brenda McDonald have talked about how they work with Acast on sponsor ad campaigns on this show. Tell me more. Yes, their show WTF, which is everybody knows stands for What's That For? In my favourite Peter Serofino vic joke that I am a particular fan of that. So yes, they've written a blog post at Acast, basically saying how they've worked with particular advertisers and everything else. And they showcase some of the reads as well. Of course, Adam Curry has said the ad market is now so bad A cast has had to roll out Mark Maron to pitch for them, which I think is a little bit mean, not entirely convinced about that. Adam said something else on Mastered On as well, replying to Pod News, which is on Mastered On. Update@podnews.net is what you want to search for to find us there. And he said, "Too long, didn't read. Ads work. Look how well they work for me. Use Acast for ads. Win valuable prizes." Paraphrasing, of course. Yes, absolutely. I think my response to Adam was that, frankly, yesterday, which is when I covered it as we record, I rather needed something that wasn't just YouTube again as the lead story and there happened to be a nice photograph of Mark Maron and his producer, which I could actually take and use as the main story, which is why it got there so high. And it just goes to show if you send photographs along with your stories, much more likely to make it as a big story on any internet website. So, yes, that was a thing. But it's an interesting piece, none of that. We'll find out more because I've asked Lizzie Pollitt, who's the SVP of Brand Marketing at Acast to come on the show. So I'm meeting up with her in London next week and she's going to come on the show and tell us more about what their plans are. Excellent. I'm actually quite excited for Acast. The conversational marketing bit that they're doing, I think, is really smart. I've said this before. They're transcribing every podcast, which is a cost to them. They're then looking at the conversation by aggregating all of that together and using machine learning to come up with where they should place outs within non-specific podcasts in a category. And I think that's a really clever way of finding about what the conversation is and using advertising around the words that people are saying, rather than the categories that are quite limiting, to be honest, anyway. Yeah, no, I think it's a very clever plan. So one of the things that I'm doing later on this week is I will be in Prague in Czechia on Sunday and I am doing a whole hour on data and targeting and programmatic advertising and all of that kind of stuff. And one of the examples I give is exactly that, is convers ational targeting rather than individual targeting, which is a good thing. I'm still not quite sure how I'm going to fill the hour, but we'll soon see, won't we? But yeah, so looking forward to hearing from LP. Apparently we all have to call her LP now, that's her name. Oh, right, okay. According to A-casters that I've spoken to. So looking forward to hearing from LP a little bit later on in the month. Indeed. Well, let's move on. Let's go to the People News. There's lots of people news, surprising people news. Julie Shapiro moving on from novel looking for new opportunities. She only joined novel in June of last year. Dawn Ostrov is to join the Paramount Global Board. She had been Chief Content and Advertising Business Officer at Spotify until leaving in January 2023 with a three- quarter of a million dollar handshake in terms of cash and significant amounts of equity as well. Exit package also included a non-compete clause, which probably means that Paramount won't be vying for any podcasting anytime soon. But who knows? Maya Prohovnik is looking for a Director of Product on her team at Spotify. She of course is the new Michael McNano. She will hate being called that. And Michael will probably hate Maya being called that. But still, there we are. So if you fancy working for a Spotify, then you should probably jump for that. Ari Shapiro, who hosts NPR's All Things Considered, has a new book out. Adam Schein has signed a new four-year deal with SiriusXM. And he's doing a show. He's a sports broadcaster and he's doing a show called Rise and Shine. I see what he's done there. And if you're looking for a job, Pod News has podcasting jobs across the industry and across the world. And they're free to post as well. It'll just take two minutes to add a new one at podnews.net/jo bs. So, James, let's move on. Captivate a couple of weeks ago announced that they have jumped into the party and added a whole bunch of new tags for Captivate, which was really cool. What do you think of their announcement? Yes, a whole bunch of new tags for the podcasting 2.0 or podcasting namespace or whatever it is that we're supposed to be calling it or not calling it these days. He says checking Dave Weiner's Twitter feed. But yes, I'm really pleased to see Captivate doing this. I was very keen on them supporting a lot of the podcast ing 2.0 namespace while I was an advisor to them. And that took quite a lot of convincing. And I'm not sure that I succeeded, but great to end up seeing them doing a bunch of that. And you ended up catching up, didn't you, with Mark Asquith? Yeah, and asking what took him so long was the first question. We've always supported the index. You know, we were one of the earliest people to integrate with it. I don't want to say the first. I think we were like about 15 minutes after the first. So we've always been a big supporter of that and being on Adam's show and Dave's show, both Cure and I have done that. And I think it's from our perspective, because of where Captivate is in the market and a very purposeful set of positioning that we've put together, the way that I am as a personal brand, the way that Captivate is as a brand, as an extension of that, and now part of the bigger sort of industry. It's been a very measured approach to it. You know, we've supported things like transcripts for a heck of a long time. And I think anyone that knows Captivate knows two things about us. You know, we're very straight talking. We've got a responsibility to our users at the end of the day. And we don't really half bake stuff. We don't want to stick stuff on a feature list and only half implement it, which would be easy to do as we've seen, I think in the past with so many other people. That's not us. We don't have a model that is like that. So we're in a fortunate position that we can implement things how we want to. And we can implement things well and take the time to do them properly. And I think the timing was right for it for everyone. And we'll talk about that, I'm sure, in a second. But yeah, it's something that we've always been passionate about. Like you may have been in podcasting for such a long time now that I'm almost becoming Todd and Rob. Someone said to me the other day, you're a veteran. I was like, oh, man. So I'm almost becoming like the person that just layers pragmat ism over excitement. So it's a very interesting position to be in. You're not quite the goat yet. Nor am I, but we'll leave that to James. We'll get there then. So just to go through some of the quick ones. The episode and season was great, locked funding, license, podcast, TXT, which is the removal of email within your RSS feed. But the biggest one that certainly got me excited was you added the podcast value tag. Value for value. A, first of all, why did you add it? And B, secondly, how are you going to get this message across to your podcasters? So we added it, frankly, just to test it. I'm firmly a believer in innovation and next generation and early adoption, but I'm also a believer in our audience and our podcasters and the podcasting industry, which is very largely made up of people that don't really care about the technology. It's why Anker did so well and why they continue to do so well. So I think for me, this is a very pragmatic implementation. And I love tech. Like I'm the tech geek of the family. You know the deal, man. We're all the same. We wouldn't be doing what we do without this. So for me, it's very much how do we make sure that people are aware of new options when it comes to audience growth, when it comes to monet ization and revenue generation? But how do we, and this ties into the education as well as the implementation, how do we make sure that people who are already under a heck of a lot of time pressure with this thing that they love? How do we make sure that they don't feel pressured to do something without number one, fully understanding it? And also, how do we stop them feeling that pressure? Whereas they don't jump on something. If they don't implement the value for value sort of feature set right away, they don't feel like they're missing out. So for me, this is a responsibility that I've got. So I'm the founder. And we became part of global 15, 16 months ago, but I'm still the founder and I'm still very much one of the core faces of Captivate. And I say that only because we're highlighting more of our faces now, Danny, Sarah, Ben and so on. For me, the responsibility is I've got to look after the pod caster as well as lending a hand to further the industry. Right. That's the thing. Now my natural personal prop ensity, if I'm writing this as Mark Asquith, if I'm doing some of this Mark Asquith, the British podcast guy, the person that got into this 10 years ago because he loved podcasting, I'm all in with that sort of stuff. And it was sort of back to that comment earlier as well. You sort of said, you know, almost late to the party. Well, that's actually not the case. It was more of a case of, like I said, do we want to implement things in a half-baked manner just so we get a bit of press? Actually, no, we're not interested because our responsibility is with the users. We get enough press by not doing it. Now that we do things like this, it's with an air of responsibility. So the value tag, the value for value side of things is very much about diversity and monetization. Do I believe that V for V and crypto is the future? No, I don't. I believe it is part of the future. Just like I believe every other piece of technology, chat GPT, whisper. I believe that they are all part of a future and we can choose the bits that we want. None of these pieces of technology will solve the problem. Just like not all of these tags that we implement, all of these features for one of a better word within the podcasting 2.0 ecosystem, not all of those will stick. Maybe 20% of them will because that is technology and that's the way it works. So that's the kind of value question and why we implemented it. It is purely because I want to bring that tech to our user in a responsible way and then help them to understand what this is. Because I think that's one thing that us on the bleeding edge sometimes forget is that most of the users really do not care about this. If my friend over on the other side of the penines with her knitting podcast, she loves podcasting. Is she really interested in 2.0 and new features? Probably not because she's still got the kids to handle with her husband and she's still got work and she's still got things going on, which means that one hour she gets to produce an episode, that's a real treat. So it's, I think to sum it up, it's all about balance when it comes to the way that captivate approaches things like not only the value tag, but emerging tech overall. And the education is a huge part of it. You know what I'm like. I'm pretty straight talking when we did our reveal event. I said very much the same sort of stuff. I said, look, not all of this is going to stick. Do I believe that value for value is the future? No, I believe it's part of the future and it's a strong part that we should be looking at very seriously and we should consider. And when it comes to the education of that and the way that even captiv ates UI speaks to the education, it's all done in a very simple look. Here's the basic way that this works. Here's some of the potential benefits if you have the time to really put that effort in in order to reap those benefits. And if you don't stress it because I would rather you kept podcasting and when time opened up later, you spent more time on this particular aspect of podcasting. So the education very much focuses on that. It's very much about here we are using this. Here we are, we've got a nerd podcast network. I've got a Star Wars podcast and a movie podcast and all sorts. So we can implement those things on our own shows and we can do this. So it's always interesting, I think, to find that balance. Trying to be on the bleeding edge whilst also catering for the people that we want to keep podcasting. Let's just take a step back. You're now inside of global. How's that been different for you? What's it been like? Oh, it's been a fun transition. You know, Sammy, it's been nice to sleep at night now. Hey rolls covered. So that's good. That's right. And I think what's been interesting with that is that it's captivated because of the model was always profitable. Like from we've switched the thing on and it was in profit and paying our salaries. And as we grew and grew, it was the growth was never the problem because we had a lot of time invested in the industry. We'd been around for such a long time. We'd done every event. We've been at every podcast movement. We've been there with Jared and Dan. We've been there with Chris at Podfest. We've been at the rain events. We knew a lot of people and we know a lot of people. So the growths came on the back of the personal brands to start with and also the approach that captivate had for the serious podcast. Do we give hours and vouchers out? That's crazy. Of course we don't. Do we do long free trials or freemium? Honestly, cool model, but not for us. We are very focused on one subset of the podcasting industry, which is the serious podcast. And we don't say if you're a new podcaster or if you're a veteran, we just say, if you say to yourself, I am serious about this craft, we're a good option for you. So that model protected the growth. We've not seen any drop offs in signups. We've not. We've seen a lot of in the industry fewer podcasts, theoretically starting up. And I know a lot of hosting companies are slightly concerned about that. We kept it continues to grow. Now, the problem that we had as founders was that that's the thing that stops you sleeping. All right. So back to the 2.0 implementation. We genuinely lost sleep before we were part of global about you guys. How is the news media in podcasting going to cover Capt ivate because they're like me as a person, they are on the bleeding edge. But if Captivate doesn't instantly implement something, what are they going to say? And that's true. It's like with Apple, are you one of the first to get this new Apple feature or this Spotify feature? And if you're not, oh my word. What does that do for your brand? So it's very easy for someone and a team to put in a heck of a lot of years to build a brand up slow and steady. And then one bit of coverage that you didn't do this thing or you didn't to remove two years of that work. It's very easy. That's the thing that kept us up, honestly. And so when we became part of global, what we found was that we were working normal hours. We didn't have to work the 17, 18 hours. And that sounds like sort of hyperbole. Like they can't possibly have been working that amount of time. When you work in a UK business that is primarily focused on selling to the US, you do work those hours. There's a heck of a lot of hours that go into that. And I think the other thing that it's done for us is it's given us an integral look at the cross section of the industry, which sort of again leads back to this 2.0 conversation. Because as much as we love Ind ies and we are all about the Ind ies, there are other aspects of the industry. There are the big, the deals that go on where the Spotify are putting MRGs in place, minimum revenue guarantees in place and A-Cast were doing the same. And everything's about actually ads, brands, partners, results, results. That's a very different side of the business. So it's been good to get that cross section. It's been nice to work more normal hours. And frankly, it's been nice to be able to step back from the worry of what the industry will say if we do or don't do something. Because we've been able to control the way that we get signups much more than having to just chase the next bit of PR, which sometimes as a startup, you have to do to keep that up. So it's quite a nuanced feeling, if that makes sense. It's been quite a journey, but users have really benefited from it. Access to much more, I suppose, much more of a brand when it comes to global. We've been able to be much more focused on impactful, meaningful features as opposed to balancing feature set with almost having to constantly be in the news for your marketing. So it's been a very subtle shift in the way that we do business, but it's benefited everyone. And it's been fun. It's been fun. We get to go to Leicester Square and look out the windows as well. So it's cute. So one of the biggest podcasts that Global has got is the news agent, which is hosted with Captivate, 10 million downloads in the first three months. I don't know what the numbers are now. They must be through the roof. It's my daily listen. But one of the things I was talking to Rob Lonethal from W ushka when they got acquired by Spotify, and we've seen it with Mike Miniano, and we've seen it with a few others. They get acquired into the Spotify Borg. They live there for three years, and then they do an earn out. It feels very different from the way you've just described the Captivate relationship with Global. It feels like Captivate is still an independent company under the Global brand, as opposed to it's been subs umed into Global. Would that be fair? Absolutely, Sammy. I think that's a really good way of articulating that. One of the interesting things, I think when we last spoke about this acquisition, we weren't seeking an acquisition, which I think is a very fortunate place to be acquired from, because Captivate has always been very profitable because of the model, and we were able to put that back into things like, let's increase the download tiers for all of our users. Almost excessively give downloads away on each tier, because actually, we don't need to suck all those profits out of it. So because of that, we weren't seeking the acquisition. And what happens, and we've seen it a couple of times in my startup past, when acquisitions happen under that basis, it becomes much more of a partnership. One of the big things that really attract to, I think Global to Captivate, but also Keir and I to Global, was the fact that we, yes, we're autonomous within Global. Yes, we still like an independent startup. Yes, the team has not changed. It literally is the same team. And what that's enabled us to do, and the fun part about that is that we were brought in as much for our personal brands, as much for our voices, as much for us doing this, as we were for Captivate the tech and Captivate the revenue. Because you've got to understand, Global is a multi, multi, multi, multi, multi, eight-figure business. It's huge, a nine-figure business even, and it's got that many revenue streams and does that much good stuff that Captivate is just one part of it. And that's why it was such a good fit, because we knew we would just be doing the same thing. And I think what a lot of people don't get, which we spoke about a while ago as well, is that as a founder, especially in an emerging market like podcasting, which it still is, even though we work in it every day, my mom's friends don't know, my mom does, but my mom's friends don't know about it. So in an emerging market, as a founder, the whole risk is with you. Granted, we were fortunate to be profitable, but my mortgage is based on Captivate. So is Kieran's, which means my sleep patterns are based on what happens with Captivate, which means that my kid's future is based on what happens with Captivate, which means that the way that we live our lives is based on that. When you remove that risk and you have the autonomy that we've got, you have the independence, the product just gets better. And it becomes better to work on, it becomes more interesting. And we almost get rejuvenated. We get an extra 50% of our willingness to want to work on it on top of what we already had, because actually the risks remove. We can really do the good stuff. Now, I've seen that many a time once you've got that, it's the Maslow hierarchy of need. Once you've got that basic need covered, water, security and everything else, you can get onto the other bits. So the question is, who is Mr. Podcast or Mrs. Podcast in global? Is that you now? Who's leading? They're a radio group. They're an advertising group. They're an outdoor billboard group, right? Clear channel. So who's helping drive what they do next? You know, who's saying, right, we bring DAX into it, or this is the next podcast we bring into the portfolio. Who's doing that? Is that you, Mark? I think there's such a great team. In fact, what I did literally before this chat, we have our weekly SMT sort of meeting. So I think because the business is so big and broad, there are so many people responsible for different elements of podcasting. And I think this is what's interesting to a lot of people, is that we often see, especially through Captivates user base and the circles that we move in, a podcast is two or three people or one person very often, more often than not. Whereas with global, they see the other side of the business, where it's a multifaceted piece of IP. Like the news agents, it's a big piece of IP and there's a production team there. That's why it sounds so good. And it's so well researched. And Lewis and John and Emily do such a great job because they can. And so when you, I think when you were to sort, if you were to cross analyze that and were to take that apart as an example, it couldn't be run by one person. I'm responsible and I run the Captivate element of global. And we do a great job of that. And we work directly with DAX, you know, we monetize through DAX on a lot of our shows. But I couldn't head the sales. I couldn't head the production. I couldn't head the acquis itions. I couldn't head any of that sort of stuff because it is such a business. It's not podcasting as we know it. It's as you just rightly pointed out, it's media. So the team are fantastic. We've got some amazing people. We've got people like James H ickman running the global player strand. We've got a fantastic data team. We've got Andrea and the DAX team. We've got Megan Wastilow who runs the undenoperated content, which is fantastic. So we've got a range of talent and everyone works together so well. And this has been frankly one of the big benefits of a personal benefit. If you like, I love podcasting. I would podcast even if I didn't work in podcasting. That's how I got into podcast ing. So to see and to be a part of the day to day of how the other aspects of the business work and the other parts of the podcast industry work for me, it's like a bit of a nerd moment. I'm pretty good with that. So I quite enjoy that. So the team is really good, mate. This week, James is flying out to Prague for Radio Days Europe. And I'm beginning to see, you know, I own a radio station and I'm beginning to see this merger between podcasting and radio much more. You look at BBC with BBC sounds. Very often the shows that I listen to from the BBC happen to be podcast first. So I didn't even realize where a radio show originally that would turn into a podcast. In terms of the news agent, and I know you don't have an influencer, but it's quite interesting that they've not turned that into a live show, given Emily Maitlis and John So aple's Newsnight background. But one of the things going back to what we started this conversation on, which was the podcasting index 2.0 tags, one of the new tags is called Lit, the live item tag. And it's the ability to fundamentally take a podcast like we're doing now, but I could then press another button, which would then broadcast it to a live server. And then people could be watching what we're doing now if they wanted. Do you see that as the next step for Captivate, maybe adding that sort of functionality, and then bring something like the news agent in and other live radio shows from global? Because that feels like where you merge radio and podcasting into one thing. Yeah, interesting view and one that I share there. It was probably two parts of that. First and foremost, I think the roadmap for Captivate is very specific this year. And there's some very big features that we're about to drop. Our approach internally is how do we implement something that hasn't been implemented before, or if something has been implemented by other people before, how do we make sure the interface and the experience is better than has been done before for the podcasters? So that's a general ethos with Captivate. So we do have some big releases pertaining to this, but also to another few things as well. But funny thing about this, I totally agree with all of that. And we pulled the live item tag out of the 2.0 release that we did a day before we released it. It was in there. Right. And the reason we pulled it out was twofold. Number one, we thought there was added complexity for users in understanding how they use that and how to give them the best experience. And we could have put it in and we could have got another check in a box. We could have easily done that. But we chose not to because we want, whenever we implement something, we want it to be user-friendly. That's the main part of that. The second reason that we didn't do it was just because we weren't sure that the support was wide enough. That was part of the catalyst for, not the catalyst, but one of the things that we considered in our podcast in 2. 0 journey was, when do we believe support is wide enough to implement a range of these features? Where, when a user uses it, they aren't disappointed if 90% of the places they see their podcast don't look like they support it. Because you only get one first impression. And if the first impression from my knitting friend over the penines is that these podcast in 2.0 features, well, no one uses them. So I'm not going to bother. It's dead. That might be wrong. But if that's their first impression, it's damaging to the 2.0 brand. So we pulled the live item out for that reason as well. Because I just don't think there's that much support for it. I forget who supports it. Maybe good pods. But it's a wonderful initiative and I'm a real fan of this because we're here using squadcast. We use Riverside. We've used pretty much every part of this ecosystem to build a podcast now. And we do that for our Star Wars shows. We do it for our Nerd shows. We do it for our Captivate shows. We want to go live. We want to do this. And I think when you really kind of extrapolate the thinking out as well on this one, you know, I'm a big fan of, like I said, the V for V idea and the notion. But where that sits within a diverse range of monetization options for a podcast. And one of those might be actually you can pay to come to this live session if you so wish, whatever. And or you can come to the live session, but you pay for the podcast replay. So I think that that is one of the standout features and ideas for 2.0 is that we can do something to enhance the experience. For me, that's the underlying goal of podcasting 2.0 is to enhance the experience, not just for you and I, the creators and the tech geeks and so on, but for the listeners and the audience. And in particular, for the fans. And now I think that whole aspect. So for River Radio, my radio station, we were podcasting, well, we were broadcasting shows for an hour, pushing those to W ushka. Wushka was then converting the live feed into a podcast for us. Taking the RMTP signal. Very geeky. Sorry about that. But I love the whole concept and giving your unique position with global. I think you have an amazing opportunity to probably be one of the main drivers behind this. Linking, as you said, live with podcasting, with value for value payments. That's where I think the most excitement is. One of the other tags that I just wanted to touch on was, and James and I talked about in the show this week, is called the alternative enclosure. And this is the idea of being able to have multiple audio streams within your RSS feed. High definition, medium, low definition for some people. But also being able to add video. That's another aspect to it. With all of the YouTube stuff coming about and the noise about video being the next, I don't know, what do you want to call it, the next stage of podcasting? I don't see it giving it myself. But would video, given that the news agency's video broadcast as well, would that be something that captivate, would support, aid the alternative enclosure and be the move to video? The alternative enclosure, I think is a very useful tag. I think you can do a lot with that. I think you can provide not only, I don't want to say lower quality, but let's call it what it is, lower quality for lower bandwidth areas. But I think you can do so much more paid, not paid ads, not ads, whatever. However we want to cut this, it's a good thing because it's, I like features that allow us to evolve without being mandatory. So like alternative enclosure is a brilliant example. That's always live item. We can use those things to enhance the experience, but if we don't use them, it doesn't degrade the experience. So I think that's a general rule of thumb that I'm a big fan of. The move to video, you're absolutely right. News agency is a prime example of something that would do well with video and that does do well when it's filmed and when it is shared in short form across different media and different platforms. The video is interesting and this is probably like a rabbit hole we could spend a lot of time on. So I'm an excited pragmatist, all right, and a technical geek. I love tech, I like what we talked about. Now, I bloody love video. There's a camera in the background of what we're talking here. I absolutely love video. And I think as people who are in fortunate enough positions to be able to influence a small piece of an industry podcasting, we, you and I and other hosting companies and other people who have strong voices in the industry have got to have a little pragmatism with video. All right, so there's two layers to this in my view, two aspects to it. There's the video is great. Who cares whether it's a podcast or not? Who's the audience? Is it right? Is it my mom? Right. What does she know how to search YouTube and Google? Right, cool. If I can be easily found there, then if it's a video, brilliant. Because let's assume I want to sell sponsorships. I want to sell whatever that is only going to be good for me, the creator. All right. And then there's the other train of thought, which is it's not pure podcasting and I'm, you know, it's not delivered via RSS. Dude, like 2018, I wrote a piece, Spotify is not the villain in podcasting. And I've posited in there that Spotify, whilst they did at that time, they don't have to use RSS. They could use API pushes and they could do more with that because they could build all the end points that they needed. And I got hammered. A lot of people hit me hard for that. Literally, I would be called an idiot. I was being called naive. I would be called stupid. And this is from people in the industry that you would recognize. And I thought, that's fine. That's cool. And guess what? Spotify now submits via API for so many shows. Because why would you not? Right. So with those two things in mind, a video over here is this kind of be everywhere. If you want to sell sponsors hips, if you want to sell ad partnerships, if you want to sell your own stuff, just videos are great thing. Podcasting on the other side of thing, it's not podcasting if it's not delivered via RSS. That is such a weird place to be. Because now have a look at the podcast movement group on Facebook, right? Every other post is, oh, I've got 50 views on my podcast. And what's that word they're using? Views. And I'm going to start my podcast on YouTube. And no one's going, it's not a podcast if it's not RSS. It's not like podcast movement community going, why are you in this group? It's not a podcast if it's not RSS. So you've got this weird middle ground where we've got to build and cultivate and protect this open ecosystem, which is R SS and it should be and it is and it's open. And there's a massive vast majority of people that will always do that. And then there's media and there's creator and it's creator economy. If someone says to me, look, you can use value for value, but you can only use it on audio. You can't use it on video. But I primarily create through video and I just call that a podcast. That's cool, whatever. Value for value isn't going to get what it needs to take off. So you've, there's this weird juxtaposition. Now for me, there's a middle ground. We have to be sensible about it as an industry. And we have to say, look, video is brilliant. And whether that's video podcasting via RSS, which is cool, captivate may move into that, it may not move into that. I simply genuinely do not know. And that is one part of it. But if you want to create on YouTube and you want to call it a podcast and YouTube has a few of these features, whether it's delivered via RSS, or not, we should probably support that as well. Just because creators want to create. So one day I'm going to want to do something that's audio, even if I start a video because videos are hassle. So I'm probably going to want to talk about the thing that I love, but I haven't got time to do the video. So I'll just do the audio. So it's in all ships rise circumstance. I mean, I think we're going to be careful not to add gate keepers on either side. And do I think video via RSS, again, is the future? No, it's a potential part of the future. So I think that's a long-winded answer. But I think just to summarize, I think a pragmatic approach. I think we can't, we can't get keep for one or for the other. Video is good, video is bad, or it's not podcasting. If it's not RSS, I just don't think that the industry can flourish under that guys. I don't think we can keep moving in the direction that we want. If we stop people whose mind is almost already made up because that's their perception. I think video isn't for everyone. I think if we were doing this as a video, no offense to you or I, but talking heads is not an exactly exciting video medium, right? And so that wouldn't work. But I think when you have a big podcast like the news agent where you've got people who are used to doing TV, I suppose, more than radio, who have a studio set up and it's professionally done, I think that adds value. Oh, look, it'll be interesting. YouTube say it's ready to go. And most hosts have never been contacted by YouTube. Most people aren't getting on board with it because it's not available outside the US. So we'll see. Six months from now, we'll all know better. Mark, so just last question, really 2023, big year, you just announced something that you may step into the London podcast show because you're getting married. Congratulations. But apart from that wonderful news, what else does 23 hold for you? Well, thank you very much, mate. Yeah, I will be at the podcast show. And if Sam is listening, that's probably the first she's hearing of that, but she'll be fine. It'll be all right. She'll be all right. No, I'll be back. I'll be back. It works out all right, actually, because we've got, I think I can get back on the Thursday and I've sort of a Friday ready for the wedding on Saturday, so it'll work out nicely. So I'll be at the podcast show. We'll be speaking globally. We've got a booth over there as normal and Captivate. We've got our booth as well. So really looking forward to that, looking forward to seeing you and everyone really. Captivate will be at podcast movement in Denver. I will probably be there, like we were saying off air. Things land on like family birthdays and stuff for me. So podcast movement has done it again. So I'm hoping to be there if I can swing that because I'm missing that. And then it's really going to be a head down, mate. We've got a busy dev schedule. We've got a big feature set that where are we in the March now? We're going to be announcing up probably in the next three weeks, which is really big. That's going to be very interesting. And then we've got quite a big roadmap that we want to get through by the end of 2023. So a lot of it is going to be head down. And do you know what as well? If for Captivate, it's going to be a lot of getting other people in front of the camera a little bit. I've been conscious. I got a little bit burnt out like back end of I think the year we got acquired. Just around the back end of that, I was a little bit burnt out on content. So some of the other people have been stepping in and doing a lot of content. And I think it's going to be more of that. You know, they're excelling at it and they're better than me at it. So I think just it'll be a lot of that spotlight for them, which is quite nice. And one of the other things, and I have to thank you for it as well. I made it that tweet, let's come to Manchester. Let's take the mountain to Mohammed and you jumped on board straight away. So thank you, Mark, to say that you'd be part of the Manchester event. So pod news live. And I'm really excited because we've got the guys from Crowd Networks. We've got Voiceworks. We've got a whole bunch of people up there in Manchester who are going to be doing it. So we're looking forward to that on the 13th of June. I still got to come up with an agenda, but maybe we'll talk about that. That'll be done on the 12th of June, Sam. We know how events go. That'll be the 12th of June. Well, I'll do that when your best man's done his speech, right? The night before as well. So I think you might beat him to it, friend. I think you might be into it. Do you know, I didn't know if I was allowed to mention that either. I didn't know if it was like, " Oh, we are right to mention the event." I'm excited for that, mate. Again, that's a very business to business. It's not a B to C and it's very much industry focused about what's going on. So no, that'll be great. Look, Mark, thank you so much for your time. Congratulations on the updates. I'm glad you've settled into global, got your feet under the table now. Good luck with the wedding. I'll see you in London. There will be a drinks, so we will see you there for the drinks. Mark, thank you so much. Everything you do for the industry. Oh, it's a pleasure. Thank you for having me and thanks for all you do and everyone else on the team as well. It's a credit to the industry that we've got you guys that are doing the job. So thank you, guys. Mark Asquith from Captive 80 will be one of the speakers at Pod News Live in Salford in Manchester in June. On June the 13th, you can book your tickets and find out more information at podnews.net/live. The tech stuff on the Pod News Weekly Review. Yes, it's the stuff you'll find every Monday in the Pod News newsletter. Here's where we do all of the tech talk. And firstly, I've already mentioned Mastodon already. And there are now 10 million accounts on Mastodon, which still makes it a fraction of the size of Twitter. But nevertheless, it's all pretty good and pretty exciting. You can follow me on Mastodon just by searching for my email address. James@cred.land will find me. And you can find Pod News there as well. Just search for updates@podnews.net. And that's a good thing you're on, Mastodon, but you don't really use it that much, do you, Sam? I hate the UI. I really hate the UI. And I've tried Iverine. I've tried. There's a new version of Mamm oth, 1.3 years out. Yeah. Look, the audience on there for what we do here is brilliant. I mean, most of the people we talk to are over there. And I really should do more over there. But I just struggle with trying to follow the conversation. I think the threaded conversation, for me, doesn't seem to work in the way I'd like it to. But hey, I'll give it another shot. Yeah. There's also Ice Cubes as well, which is a good iOS app, which I am running on my MacBook, because I can run iOS apps on my MacBook now, which is all very exciting. So yes. And the other thing I worry about Mastodon, this thing called Nostra, which, you know, I know we sort of dismiss it and park it as a future thing. But it is built with the Lightning Network in mind. It does have SaaS as its payment mechanism. And that's something that Act ivity Pub doesn't seem to support right now. And so I do have a keep drifting back into looking at what the other federated platform for communication is doing. And it seems to have a lot of momentum behind it as well. Yes. Well, it's always good to have a look at other things. I've tried using Nostra and it did drive me a bit mad. But you can, again, search for me there, James@Crid.Land. Talking about SaaS and things like that, CurioCaster has added support for the Albi wallet, or is adding support for the Al bi wallet, as Stephen Bell has said. So you'll be able to create or log into your Albi wallet and easily transfer your SaaS in or out. So that's an exciting thing too. Yeah, that's great. Dave Jones has started working a GUID resolver. Go on then, James, explain what a GUID resolver is. Oh, well, I'll explain what a GUID is, which is it's a unique ID for any podcast out there, even if it changes host. That little GUID, that unique ID, sticks with your podcast. More and more people should be supporting that, because it really is where the future is. Because the amount of podcasts, for example, called Let's Talk, or Real Talk, or any of those things are huge. And so you really do need a unique ID to be able to talk about individual podcasts. What the initial GUID resolver was, was just you feed this thing, the unique ID of a podcast, and you get back the RSS feed. I think Dave Jones is busy re working that slightly, so that it may work the other way round as well. There's some interesting talk going on with him, and Chris Isini, and various other people. So yeah, worth taking a peek at. What else is going on? There's Kevin Finn from Buzzspr out has said something, hasn't he? Well, he's come up with a really nice idea. It's called a pod roll. He sort of rolled it back to when we all were bloggers, and we had a blog roll on the side of things that we would recommend. There were just links out, and he suggested that maybe a pod roll would be quite nice. And actually, talking of GUID, he suggested that using the GU ID within the pod roll, like an OPML file, would be a really good way of doing it. And I thought, ah, Dave Jones, GUID resolver, Kevin Finn, pod rolls, maybe the two could come together. Yes, and if you think about this from the Apple point of view, this of course is the equivalent of a channel. And you can, for example, make your own channel of individual shows so that people can actually see the other shows that you do, or the other shows that you are recommending. I think it's a really smart idea, and well worth having a look at. Of course, it's dived deep into the mire of people complaining, oh, we don't like the word recommendation, or we don't like pod roll. But I think once you ignore the people who are complaining about the names of these things, I think it's a really good thing. I think it's well worth having a look at. Right, the other part that I thought was interesting, Podchaser has a similar feature already. I mean, it's proprietary, but within Podchaser, you can create your pod roll of the eight shows that you want to put in a side bar for your Podchaser profile. So there is a precedent there already, but again, an open standard would be good. Yeah, there's a precedent there in terms of human beings liking other shows. There isn't necessarily a precedent for, okay, if you like the Pod News daily podcast, then why don't you listen to the Pod News Weekly Review as one example. So that isn't necessarily there yet. And I can see quite some benefit in having something. Maybe it's a pod roll. Maybe you say this particular podcast is a part of our channel and this particular podcast is a recommended one, or however you end up doing it, just so that it appears a little bit differently in the UX. But quite a lot of this needs UX professionals to have a look at this and go, okay, how can we make this good for podcast apps? And one of the things that we do not have in the podcast namespace and in podcasting 2.0 is a lot of UI folk who understand what good design is and good user journeys and all of that kind of stuff. And I think that's a missing opportunity. So hopefully we can get some more of those people in or hopefully this new podcast standards group which hasn't yet launched. Hopefully that will also be a bit of a help in terms of that side as well. Moving on, WordPress have acquired an activity pub plugin. So they've added this plugin, they've taken the developer, and they're rolling that out into WordPress, which is quite cool. Yeah, so you'll be able to follow individual blogs on the Fediverse, which is all exciting. And Blueberry has said that the alternative enclosure tag is rubbish. So with my other hat on, without going into it too much depth, we've been working on the alternative enclosure supporting that. And of course Podnews Daily has a alternative enclosure within the RSS feeds, or we've been using New James as a test case. And it works very well. So in the audio player, we can just flick between the different audio files that you've chosen to put within your RSS feed. And I've spoken to Todd in the past about, look, hey, Todd, if you aggregated your two feeds, because he has two for the New Media Show, one for a video and one for an audio, into one feed, we support the alternative enclosure and we would support video with it. And of course, Todd's answer has been clearly no, because Apple do not support the alternative enclosure. So he has to have two feeds. So he sees no point in the alternative enclosure. So as much as I kept saying to him, look, Todd, you can still do it. Other apps will support it. Here's Adam and it's a waste of time. Apple won't do it. So therefore we won't do it. Is a good excuse for not doing anything. And whether that's podcast transcripts, whether that's better chapters support, whether that's a whole bunch of things. So absolutely fine if that's what a belief is. And you want to basically say, no, we're not doing anything unless Apple ends up doing it. But you can't have things both ways. You can't be talking about podcasting 2.0 features in one side and then saying, oh, no, but we're not doing that because Apple won't do it. So yeah. And I think the answer that he's given you, which is that, well, we've tried it before between 2004 and 2008. And nobody was interested then is, of course, a very different time when most people in developing countries didn't have smartphones. Now there are a bunch of smartphones. And if you use PodLP, for example, which is a podcast app specifically for Lizzie Pollard to Acust. No, it's a podcast app specifically for small, cheap smartphones. That will automatically get the low bit rate version of a feed because it knows that the majority of people using those phones don't have much bandwidth. So again, I don't know. I think it's a potential missed opportunity there in terms of the amount of people using that. Yeah. Well, I mean, I did go back to Todd with a slightly facetious comment, which is, well, let's not support value for value if Apple don't do it then. He didn't respond to that one, strangely. The other thing I think that was really interesting. I think the apps are going to support this quicker than the hosts. If you look at Justin at Trans istor, he's added support now for embedding your YouTube video into the Transistor webpage. We're going to make it an open field. So if you are a host of a podcast, you can actually just put in your video feed into your RSS within our platform. It's not the ideal way because it makes it slightly proprietary. And we really, really wish there was an alternative way of doing it, strangely, like the RSS feed would have it. But yeah, we'll wait, but we'll try to support it as best we can as an app. But there's a real benefit in having all of the different versions of your audio and video in one feed because that means that you will be higher in the charts because more people will be subscribing to that one feed. So at the moment, the new media show has a video feed and a audio feed. Both of them are appearing lower than they should in any of the charts because their traffic is split between them. It just seems such a missed opportunity to basically be spl intering your audience between different RSS feeds when you could put the whole thing in one RSS feed. But still, there we go. Moving on, we're recording a Riverside and the company says they're launching a free AI transcription tool. And they're also promising a new version of Riverside, James. So are we on the new version? Well, yes, the new Riverside was promised yesterday. And we're recording this on Thursday morning for you, Thursday evening for me. And I noticed as I was logging in, it said the new Riverside happening in five days. So it looks as if they've pushed that back a little bit. Not quite sure what's going on. Riverside is an interesting platform because unlike quite a few of these remote recording platforms, they have points of presence, you know, computer servers in lots of different places, including Australia. One of the problems that I've had from using some other platforms is that they haven't. And so therefore, everything gets very laggy very, very quickly. It doesn't work too well. Whereas Riverside and indeed Clean Feed has actual hardware in this country, which makes life a little bit easier. But yes, don't see any new Riverside is yet and certainly haven't received any press from them explaining what that new version is going to be all about. Now, over the last 90 days, pod casters have received at least a$35,000 in value for value streaming stats and boosts. That's a stat from the podcast index, James. Yeah, this is a really good piece of information. You'll find it at stat.podcast index.org/vforv. And it's basically a great big list of at least part of the value for value podcasting ecosystem. It's the bit that the podcast index can see because most podcasts include a 1% split as this podcast does. And as the main podcast news daily does as well, a 1% split to the podcast index so they can work out from there how much money is actually flowing in the system. I mean, $35,000 in 90 days is still pretty small beans, to be fair. But it's certainly helpful to see how that's actually working. There was a real peak in the middle of, well, right at the beginning of February. And I wonder why there was such a great big jump at the beginning of that point. A massive peak in terms of transaction count, although weirdly not a massive peak in terms of the amount of money that was flowing through the system. So I don't fully understand what was going on there. But yeah, but some really interesting stats and Dave Jones doing something that looks suspiciously like OP3 and why not? Indeed. Now, one last tag that you might have recommended. I know you and Courtney spoke about it last week. The accept guest tag. I'm glad to say that James, I've implemented it for you. There you go. That's all I can take. I'll move on. Yes. Excellent. Well, many congratulations. Yes, something that, you know, just a way of podcasters signaling that no, we don't accept guests. So please, there's no point in wasting time in sending us emails saying, big, big fan of your show. How do I get to be a guest on it? No, that won't work. Moving on then. Let's let's take a quick peek at some events. There is a very exciting interactive webinar happening with rss.com and with Fountain, two companies that I am advisors for. So can you guess how this conversation might have initially started off? But anyway, Fountain's co- founder and CMO, Nick Malster, will be speaking and helping people understand how to innovate commas, build unbreak able relationships with your listeners. It's a free webinar and there's more details, of course, on the Fountain website and on rss.com. Also, other events going on, the Birmingham podcast festival happening in the middle of April. I Heart also running the Black Effect podcast festival on April the 22nd. There's the publisher podcast awards night in London on Wednesday, April the 26th. Go and see Sam Sethi in person. That's not the poll. I gather that you're going there. Yes, but I doubt that's the poll. And of course, in May, looking forward to the podcast show 2023 in London, which is happening from the 23rd to the 25th of May. There's also the Outlier podcast festival in Los Angeles the previous week and the New Zealand podcast summit, which I will be at too. There's more events, both paid for and free at Pod News virtual events or events in a place with people. And if you're organizing something, you can tell the world about it. It's free to be listed at pod news.net/events. Of course, not forgetting, Pod News Live on June the 13th in Salford in Manchester. More details about that at podnews.net/live. Yes, it's our favorite time of the week and Corny Kosek's favorite bit of the show as well. It's Boostergram Corner. Loads of boosts and stuff this week. None from Adam Curry. I hear that Adam is now no longer boosting because he doesn't want his name to be read out on these boosts, which is fine, Adam. You can still boost us lots of money. Just say don't read this out. That'll be absolutely fine. What have we had though, Sam? Gene Bean was very complimentary. He sent us 1337 sat. The difference in the audio clips of the intro was quite remarkable. Well, yeah, you had a bit of a technical hitch last week, James. Yes, this is where I was recording myself, except I was recording myself on the MacBook internal microphone, which frankly, after Adobe podcast had done its thing, then it was kind of okay. It sounded a little bit robotic in places. It was. Yeah, it was pretty good. So yes, Gene Bean, a fan of that. And then Gene heard me explaining value for value kind of to Courtney and saying, you know, it had some good info and also pointing her and pointing us to Todd's podcast ing 2.0 introduction on Blueberry, which has a good value for value explanation as well. And you'll find that on the Blueberry website if you do a search for podcasting 2.0 introduction, then you'll find that there. Gene Bean, thank you so much for all of this. That's both elite boost, a row of ducks and whatever lots of sevens are. So, so thank you for that. Kyra and friend of the show from Mere Mortals sent us a boost saying boosting because you guys deserve it. Thanks, mate. We appreciate it. And it's a row of Richards, I believe that is, isn't it? One, one, one, one. Oh, yes, a bag of Richards. Yes, a bag of Richards. And Dave Jones also sending us a message saying it was it was a great episode. Courtney is a good guest host. Put her on the Sam has the flu or is skiing shortlist. I should tell you that that there was feedback from Sky P illsbury basically saying, how did Courtney get that gig? And can I have that gig next time? Oh, you lot. So Sky is now waiting for you to go on holiday again. And we will see quite how that bit works. I haven't yet spoken to you, Sam, about what we're going to do next week. So I should probably get that done. But firstly, let me just tell you, if you do get value from what we do, this show is separate from Pod News. Sam and I share everything from it. We really appreciate your support so we can continue making this show. You can become a power supporter at weekly.podnews.net through our friends at Buzzspr out. You can subscribe in Apple Podcasts at apple.co/podnews or supporters with satts by hitting the boost button in your podcast app. If you don't have one, podnews. net/newpodcastapps will help you find a new app. Or you can now become a supporter of this podcast, as I mentioned. So what's been happening for you this week, Sam? You were off skiing. It looked like a dreadfully hard life from the pictures that you were sharing. On Twitter and various other things. Where were you in Switzerland? No, in Austria, in Kittsville. And a friend of mine's got an apartment right on the slope. So it seemed like a rude thing not to go and join him. And just straight after Vegas, my body had no idea of the time clock. It had lost it completely. And what were those drinks that you were drinking? They looked very strange. Bambinos. Yeah, they're very nice. They're little shots that you can have straight after your dinner. Very nice and warming on the slope, yes. Very good. Had several of those. What was in them? And still managed to get back. You grapple probably a little bit of cream, a little bit of nutmeg. Very nice, yeah. Cold complain. Cream and nutmeg. Less of that. Now, I haven't had a busy week this week, thankfully. I needed to rest. But I did come across two interesting podcasts. Now, obviously one is called The Future of Podcasting with Dave Jackson and Daniel J. Lewis. Friends of the show, they've renamed their old podcast. So it is an existing podcast. But I think they're doing a really good job. I've enjoyed that. But the more interesting one is Reid Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn, and one of the partners, the Greylock partners. He's got a new podcast called P ossible. And on the first episode was Trevor Noah from the US Daily Show. And I didn't realize Trevor Noah was such a massive geek. He's been hanging out with Sat ya Nadaladi, CEO of Microsoft for years. And he's been playing with GBT4. And it was a brilliant interview with Trevor Noah. So highly recommend finding Reid Hoffman's new podcast, James, called Possible. Oh, well, I will watch out for that. He's also writing a book as well, all about AI. I was actually at a thing yesterday called Hacks Hackers. It's part of a global group of journalists who are also hackers. And they were all talking about AI and how chat GPT works and what the possibilities of it are. I understand much more now about artificial intelligence than I did, which is good. It's all guesswork. It's fascinating. It's a really interesting thing. So yeah, so that was really good from somebody from the University of... I was going to say the University of Queensland. That would be wrong. Queensland University of Technology, which is different, as you can probably tell. So that was really good. And yes, I'm getting ready to pack up and go to Prague next week, which is where I will be from Saturday. Looking forward to taking part in their podcast summit. They also have a data summit, which I'm taking part in. And on the Tuesday, I'm doing a couple of different keynotes, which I'm looking forward to writing. So that should be fun. It's part of a big conference going on, all to do with radio in Prague. It's also Czech Radio's 100th birthday. So it'll be nice to be giving them some pets on the back for existing for 100 years. So that's a good thing too. So looking forward to that. We should work out when I'm recording next week's show. So because who knows, it may be coming to you from an airport lounge somewhere. Maybe how it works. With Adobe Noise Clearing, that'll be fine. No problem at all. We're fine. Yes, well, we will see. Anyway, that's it for this week. You can give us feedback using email to weekly@podnews.net, or send us a boost of gram if your podcast doesn't support boosting grabbing new app from podnews.net/newpodcastapps. Yes, our music is from Studio Dragonfly. Our voiceover is Sheila D and we're hosted and sponsored by Buzzsprout. Podcast hosting made easy. Get updated every day. Subscribe to our newsletter at podnews.net. Tell your friends and grow the show. And support us. And support us. The Podnews Weekly Review will return next week. Keep listening.[MUSIC PLAYING][BLANK_AUDIO]