James Cridland: 0:00

It's Friday, the 20th of September 2024.

Speaker 2: 0:04

The last word in podcasting news. This is the Pod News Weekly Review with James Cridland and Sam Sethi.

James Cridland: 0:13

Yes, I'm James Cridland, the editor of Pod News. And happy birthday to Sam Sethi. You all right, old man, do you need a seat?

Sam Sethi: 0:21

over there. Oh, I was going to say thank you, but now I'll take that back, do?

James Cridland: 0:27

you need a cup of tea.

Sam Sethi: 0:30

I need my AirPods with hearing aids in them. James, Can I get them? When's that new thing coming out?

James Cridland: 0:37

Anyway, who are you for the intro?

Sam Sethi: 0:39

Oh, yes, I'm Sam Sethi, the CEO of True Fans and now the grand old age of 58.

James Cridland: 0:44

My goodness, my goodness, I'm looking forward to being 58 in many years from now. There'll be a new president and everything.

Sam Sethi: 0:54

There'll be a new co-host as well, by the time you get to 58 as well.

James Cridland: 0:58

Now in the chapters. Today, spotify launched Spotted and their global ad revenue is set to reach $2.1 billion by the end of this year. They're also launching a new messaging platform Not to be outdone YouTube launches new communities and hype. Do we need podcast portals?

Carl Fridsjö: 1:16

I'm Carl Fridqvist, CEO of Podspace. I'll be on in a while to talk about Podspace plans going forward, our quick expansion in the Nordics and hopefully outside of Nordics as well. Stay tuned for that. They will.

James Cridland: 1:30

This podcast is sponsored by Buzzsprout, with the tools, support and community. To make sure you keep podcasting, start podcasting, keep podcasting with buzzsproutcom From your daily newsletter, the Pod News Weekly Review.

Sam Sethi: 1:44

We're starting this section of the show, it seems, with birthdays and anniversaries. It wasn't intended, I never planned this, but there are two anniversaries that I do think are worth noting. Happy 20th anniversary to the word podcast. I think you did a massive story on the whole history of this, didn't you?

James Cridland: 2:03

Yes, yes, massive full history, which almost everybody agrees with. It was proposed on September, the 15th 2004, by Danny J Gregoire on a mailing list that Adam Curry set up. So there we are Happy 20 year anniversary. Actually, if we're going to be strictly accurate, the word podcaster, right, the word podcaster. But yes, can I just say my school does not like you.

Sam Sethi: 2:28

Why is that? Well, because the person who we believe at Loughborough Grammar School, who invented the word podcasting, ben Hammersley, my fellow Ulmani, has been written out of history.

James Cridland: 2:40

Well, this is why I'm very careful in saying it was proposed on a mailing list. Ben Hammersley was the first person to make up a word called podcast, which is great, and he put that in the Guardian and then no one used it at all for six months. And then Danny J Gregoire used it and everybody started using it. So I think you can claim both Both the mustachioed British journalist Ben Hammersley and the Pearl developer from Kentucky.

Sam Sethi: 3:13

I think Danny J Gregoire I'll ring up the old Lough Breorian and get you removed off the blacklist. Fine, let's kick this show off then. Okay, google released some interesting technology this week. It's called Note LLM. You had a play with it. What is it?

James Cridland: 3:29

Yeah, so Note, llm, it is where you can give it a bunch of different articles and it will turn all of those articles into what it calls a lively conversation or as we might call it a podcast conversation or as we might call it a podcast. So I uploaded just the article which is on PodNews about podcast stats, which is about 12 minutes long, and I uploaded that to Google's Notebook, lm, and I said please make a quote lively conversation. From that it's come down to seven minutes. It's quite nice. You can hear the whole thing in the Pod News Extra feed. Here's a little clip.

(Clip): 4:08

It really highlights why just looking at download numbers alone isn't enough. We've got to dig deeper. Look at engagement, the real deal.

(Clip): 4:14

It's about the quality of those listens, not just racking up a huge number of downloads. Those are just virtual dust bunnies if nobody's actually listening. Okay, so we're looking for quality listens, not just downloads. But where do we even find these all-important stats?

(Clip): 4:28

Well, the good news is, you're not short on options. The article lays out three main sources your hosting platform, those third-party services and then, of course, you've got the individual podcast apps themselves.

(Clip): 4:41

Sounds like we've got options. Yeah.

James Cridland: 4:43

I mean that to me, firstly, very difficult to know that that's AI. Secondly, actually it's quite listenable to. You know, I like the way that she kind of stops and starts. I like the way that they bounce off each other. It's very, very nicely done. And I have have to say, I think that there's, I think that there's something there in terms of that I'm not a hundred percent convinced still that I could listen to a long form version of that.

Sam Sethi: 5:12

I think short form maybe. I mean we have interviewed on this show, uh, super producer um manon belodia, who created quickies, which does exactly the same thing, taking new sources, and I still find that slightly grating on my ear. I don't know what it is, I can't quite define it. I know it's an AI and therefore should I just get over the creepy line and just accept it. I think what's interesting, though, is that you did a ai voice using wondercraft for a pod news daily, because you were stuck in an airport, if I remember rightly, and that did yes, that's right. That didn't grate on me so much, and I I tried to think why was that? And I think it's because I know you as the personality, james Cridland, and therefore, hearing your AI voices, at least I know that that has a relationship to a human, whereas the ones produced by Google and the ones produced by Superproducer are totally non-character based. They have no depth to them.

James Cridland: 6:22

Yeah.

Sam Sethi: 6:23

But they pretend to have depth, and that's what I find weird.

James Cridland: 6:26

Yeah, I think that there is a little bit of that, there is a little bit of uncanny valley, but I have to say I listened to the whole seven minutes which, as I say, is in the Pod News Extra feed, and to me actually it was quite an interesting listen. And you can certainly see, I'm not necessarily saying make this into a podcast, use this as a means of making a podcast, but if you have been sent by your bosses the new purchasing policy of the company that you work for and you're supposed to read through it and understand it, then one very easy way of reading through a new purchasing policy, something as dull as that, is to give it to this thing and make something interesting out of it. So maybe that's a step forward. I was interested actually in that. You know, it actually made stuff up. It hallucinated the difference between a download and a listen, but I actually quite liked it. Their description of a download is people who say that they'll be at a party, but a listen is people who actually turn up to the party.

James Cridland: 7:30

And I thought okay, well, I can kind of see that that's quite clever. I certainly didn't write that, so yeah, so I think that there's definitely something there. Yesterday in the Pod News newsletter I covered a pager protocol from Caloroga Shark Media and this again very clever use of AI. You've heard all of the things going on in the Middle East about exploding pagers and exploding walkie-talkies and things. This is a 10-part espionage thriller podcast. It's called Pager Protocol and they have used AI to produce quite an interesting sounding show.

(Clip): 8:17

As an unusually large shipment of pagers makes its way to a volatile region, CIA analyst Sarah Miller grows suspicious. Meanwhile, in Zion City, Nexus director Amos Ben-David sets a daring plan in motion.

James Cridland: 8:34

Pager Protocol is available now wherever you get your podcasts Spies and exploding pagers and goodness knows what else. But, you know, very, very clever idea to jump on the back of that news and to go well, we can probably make quite an exciting true crime show about that through AI. It's worth a listen if you can find Pager Protocol in your podcast app. So I think there are certainly things there you know in terms of using AI to help you along. But I also agree that I think you know sometimes you need to know that it's AI and the AI voices shouldn't be pretending that they're human beings either.

Sam Sethi: 9:14

Yeah, they don't have weekends, and what did he get up to, which really annoy me. Talking about shows, I highly recommend listening to the interview with Evan Ratcliffe on Pivot. He's the producer of a new podcast called Shell Game, which was recommended to me by Stephen Pratt last week, but I hadn't got around to listening to it, and what he's been doing is looking at using his AI voice with a chatbot to try and fool people into believing it's him.

(Clip): 9:44

What would happen if I made an artificial version of me and set it loose in the world? Okay, fine, that was also a voice clone. This is me for real. I'm Evan Ratliff, and I'm the real Evan Ratliff. And this is Shell Game. This is the story of what happened when I made a digital copy of myself, an attempt to see how amazing and scary and ridiculous the world is about to get.

Sam Sethi: 10:07

And he talks about the results of it and I think it's really interesting actually. So I highly recommend, if you fancy, listening to that. And a little fun fact James, when I was on River Radio, my co-host and guest got stuck in traffic so I didn't know what to do. So I got my Alexa and stuck it under the mic and I used my Alexa to do the weather and news and travel and various other bits. It's good fun.

James Cridland: 10:30

But that was in the old days.

Sam Sethi: 10:31

Well, that sounds fun.

James Cridland: 10:32

Yes, and also Danny Brown has made his own fancy podcast as well. It's called Be A Better Podcaster, with Jamie and Jane Jane spelt with two A's for some bizarre reason. I'm not quite sure why that is. Anyway, if you hunt that out on your favourite podcast app, it is an experiment in AI technology from Danny Brown, where both the co-hosts and the entire conversation are generated by AI, helping you understand how to be a better podcaster.

(Clip): 11:02

This idea of AI-powered hosts. It makes you wonder about who's really creating and who's in control, but at the end of the day, it's the advice that matters, and theirs is solid, really practical and actionable.

(Clip): 11:14

Completely agree Be a better podcaster.

James Cridland: 11:17

So see if that's any good as well. Tons of these AI shows appearing, so interesting to see what Danny's doing there.

Sam Sethi: 11:26

So, on a serious note, should these all now be tagged as AI? We talked about this many, many months ago.

James Cridland: 11:33

Yeah, I mean, I think that they should be very clearly tagged as using AI. I mean, you know, I think it needs to be obvious. Now, when you look at the description, for example, of Pager Protocol, which I mentioned earlier, there is no mention of AI in there. There is in the press release, but there's no mention of AI, as far as I can see, in the show description. Show description. So you know, I would have thought that that sort of thing, at least somewhere, might be good to say. You know, this is a collaboration with AI and human voices, or however it works. I think that we should be probably open with that. But there is degrees in terms of what you do. If you mess something up and you say 30% when you meant to say 40%, and we fix that with an AI clone voice, that's not, I would have thought you know something worthy of making a big deal out of. But you know, but who knows?

Sam Sethi: 12:40

I think several countries are looking at having people put for imagery, certainly, and for other AI-generated content that is AI-generated, or they will face fines. I think it's getting hard for people. I think it's getting hard for people to distinguish between what is real and what is AI-generated, and I think humans need help. So, yes, yes.

(Clip): 13:02

Yes indeed help.

Sam Sethi: 13:06

So yes, yes, yes indeed. Now, moving on, I think I've revealed on this show several little times before that my dirty secret is I actually quite like Spotify. I won't go as far as to say I love Spotify, although that's what it did say in the show notes, and the reason is I think they execute so well. And again, here we go. Ashley Carman has revealed that Spotify has started to spend big bucks on reaching deals with influencers and content creators for video, and, of course, we've talked about this a few weeks back, about how they are supporting uploading into podcasts for video. But they do something quite naughty, james. What do they do?

James Cridland: 13:45

Well, when you upload videos to Spotify, then it replaces the audio. So now that may not seem like a big deal, but of course that means that if your podcast is monetised and it might be monetised through dynamic ad insertion it might be monetised through Buzzsprout ads, you know, as this show occasionally is then you won't get any of that and it's not very obvious what's going on there. But Spotify certainly seem to be doing very well in terms of the video numbers. They're claiming all kinds of numbers. More than 170 million users have watched a video podcast.

James Cridland: 14:34

Whenever I see have ever stories, I always say I have also stood on a Lego brick with my bare feet and I didn't enjoy it and I won't do it again. So there is always that. But nevertheless, you know, video seems to be doing very well. They seem to be earning significant amounts of money through video advertising as well, and that's probably why they're so interested in getting into this world. Is that it's easy for them to monetise video than it is for audio. Actually, video appears to have more ad creative now than audio, and so therefore, you know why. Why wouldn't you do that? But you know, interesting seeing Spotify really, you know, now trying to bribe people to get them to upload their podcasts to Spotify as well as to YouTube.

Sam Sethi: 15:20

We're also seeing Blue Sky. You know the competitors to Nostra and to Activity Pub and to Twitter. No wonder Twitter's dead. I mean, it is to me. Videos, according to Blue Sky, have been very popular indeed, with over 169 years years of videos being served within two days and half a million videos posted within four days. Their videos are about one minute long and people can upload 25 videos per day. So it looks like Blue Sky is going after that small market there where it's short-term videos. I don't want to call it TikTok because I don't think they're going to get to that level, but it's interesting to see and Spotify James have also started a new in-house video podcast production company.

James Cridland: 16:09

Yes, they seem to be doing a fair amount of shows which are specifically video shows. So one of them is Countdown 2. And these are video shows which aren't available on Open RSS, they're just purely available within Spotify. There's a series that they've made called Countdown 2, which is essentially one music artist interviews another music artist interviewed by MGK. That was a massive, massive show in that it was Sunday's most listened to new podcast episode in the US, australia, canada and New Zealand, number two in the UK and Ireland. So you can see that that is going to do particularly well for them. I mean, as you would kind of expect, because it's a music show. It's available on Spotify, where lots of people consume music, you know, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So, you know, I'm not necessarily sure that it's a massive surprise, but nevertheless interesting to see Spotify again doubling down on producing video. They clearly see that as being their future and their share price seems to be agreeing with them on that, doesn't it?

Sam Sethi: 17:29

The share price this year has risen to date 81%, you would have to say. It's gone from $153 to $342, consistently rising A few dips, but consistent, as I said. You know my dirty little secret there whoever is in charge of their overall strategy and whoever is in charge of their podcast strategy, I think, is knocking it out of the park. You know, I've talked in the past about their support for video events, ticketing, uh, merchandise. I think the way that they've done it, um, yes, all of it's proprietary and we knock them for that, but some of it, I would say, is they are the big behemoth. Why should they wait for us? You know they need to get on with their own business and unfortunately, I think they aren't going to change direction anytime soon because you know guess what the share price says. They're doing the right thing.

James Cridland: 18:22

Yeah, yeah, no, indeed. So they seem to be doing very well, you know, in terms of that and launching brand new things too.

Sam Sethi: 18:29

Yeah, chris Messina, a friend of the show, posted that they've launched a new feature or shortcut icon called Spot it, which is a competitor to Shazam. So you know, you can listen to a track point, shazam at it, and Apple will tell you what that track is. And now Spotify has got a similar function, but the big one, I think, that they've been testing, according to Chris, is it appears they're adding a user messaging service so members can share albums, playlists, profiles, shows and tracks without leaving the app. Yeah, we've talked about this in the past, where you can just share what you're listening to onto Facebook, which they had in the past. It looks like they're extending that and I guess that'll come out very soon.

Sam Sethi: 19:13

So, what podcast are you listening to, james? I will be able to see it on Spotify, if you use Spotify, of course, and other things that you're doing. Guess what? I think that's what you know. No offence here, but you know what I'm trying to do with True Fans, which is your activity, and what you're doing is important. It's a massive signal of discovery and, again, I think Spotify probably is going to do a really good job here as well.

James Cridland: 19:41

Yes, no, indeed, spotify doing some very interesting things. Spotify isn't yet live, but they're busy working on that, and similarly, messaging isn't yet live. What typically happens is that it takes about three or four months from things being seen in the code to them finally appearing, so don't go expecting those anytime soon. Stuff to share, though, from YouTube they have done a big event, which was on Wednesday, announcing all kinds of new communities features, which essentially allows creators and fans to interact with each other. It's a new feature which allows a creator's existing viewers to help hype a video with a click of a button which allows it to climb up a leaderboard of top hyped videos. So it's essentially another chart in youtube, is it?

Sam Sethi: 20:31

it is, and I think what they're trying to do is find out how they can get videos from the long tail raised up through to, you know, the top of the tree and instead of them having to do it through an algorithm or through other mechanisms, like you know, one of their of the tree, and instead of them having to do it through an algorithm or through other mechanisms, like you know one of their staff doing it, they're going to try and get the community to do it, which I think is quite a good thing. You know, get your fans to hype your video and if you've got a big community, guess what? They will hopefully hype you up the leaderboard and then YouTube will see that and then they will feature you. I think it's gamification. I think it's very smart. These are ways that users can earn points. I don't know what those points will be redeemed for, but again, it's all badges, it's leaderboards and points, aka gamification.

James Cridland: 21:19

No, indeed so interesting to watch from YouTube there. Obviously, I mean they talk a lot about this being for videos, but obviously a podcast is a video in the YouTube world and so all of this is active for podcasts as well. Finally, I did cover something about Spotify's global ad revenue earlier on in the week. It's set to reach $2.1 billion in 2024. Now that's global ad figure. If you look at podcasting in the US, that's only $2 billion and it hasn't even reached that figure yet. So we've been very excited for the last three or four years that podcasting was going to be a $2 billion medium, but it still hasn't quite managed to go there. But yeah, spotify doing very well, and the data that I published earlier on this week from WARC does say again that Spotify's video podcasting is driving an awful lot of this. They quote research that says that audio and video ads work 66% better than audio ads alone, which is quite a thing. I hope that they're charging 66% more for them?

Sam Sethi: 22:27

Well, they might be. I mean and again we talked about, you know, Elsie Escobar talking at Podcast Movement how you know, we, the older generation, have got to be very careful that we don't become curmudgeons and go, oh, it's audio, only it's audio, when the younger generation, like my daughters, will watch video podcasts and don't have a distinction between the two.

James Cridland: 22:50

Yes, now I was listening to YouTube videos while I was cooking supper this evening. So, yes, I know exactly what you mean. So, yes, that makes a bunch of sense. Now, a trend that you were talking about podcast portals. Now, this was something that Adam Curry and Dave Jones were talking about last week in the Podcasting 2.0 podcast. What do they mean by podcast portals?

Sam Sethi: 23:18

Well, I have to be honest, when Adam Curry first said it, I was scratching my head. I was like what are you talking about, adam? Adam's world, rachel Maddox's world? It came out of the Hollywood Reporter article that we've talked about on this show a few weeks back, where some of the podcasters were asked you know, what could podcasting do next and where's it going and what's wrong with the apps. And it was all about oh, it's not designed around me and it's not designed around my audience.

Sam Sethi: 23:49

And Adam sort of picked up on that and he was talking about how actually can apps like Fountain, truefounds, podverse, et cetera, can we customize the environment to be much more personalized? And, of course, we also talked last week about how Buzzsprout rolled out a redesigned podcast website which looked great. And, of course, I think Podpage, who are one of your sponsors for Pod News Daily, have got some great new pages. And I actually was thinking, if you took Buzzsprout and they created a meta page for want of a better word which highlighted some of their best podcast websites, and then they created that as a entry page, that could be quite interesting for a discovery portal, and Podpage could do the same.

Sam Sethi: 24:42

And if you then look at what we're trying to do on true fans. We've got more than just episodes. We've got blogs and events and merch coming and we're trying to create this and it just seems that there may be a trend that now, instead of being, as dave jones said, listed based um views so here's all my episodes, here's all my pod role, here's my um. Whatever that, you take the best of each part of that and you create a front end page, which is fundamentally what pod page is. So I guess Adam's saying is can the apps begin to give more personalization to podcasters rather than saying it's?

Sam Sethi: 25:26

You know, you've come to true fans and now you've gone to pod news daily, um that there's a way of you, maybe through episodes, fm, promoting that single page within an app as your page and it looking like your page and not looking like an app's page and that's what I guess Buzzsprout and Podpage have been trying to do is make them much more personalised to the podcaster rather than they look like a Buzzsprout green page they don't and giving templates. So again, it was an interesting conversation. If you want to hear more about it, I'd certainly recommend listening to last week's podcasting2.0 show. What do you think, james?

James Cridland: 26:06

Yeah, I'm kind of in two minds about it, I think. Firstly, you know we listen to more than one podcast, and if the idea is that we end up with lots of different sort of portals into our favourite podcasts, then all of a sudden we've made life an awful lot more complicated than just opening Apple podcasts. So I suppose there is that side of it. But one of the things that I do wonder is whether or not we can copy this sort of idea from the radio industry. Now, if you look in the UK, for example, there is a big company called Global and Global own a lot of the radio stations in the UK, including a radio station called Heart, one called LBC, one called Classic FM. Now they are all available in the Global Player, which is their app. But they also have their own apps. They've got a Heart app. They've got a Classic FM app. They've got a LBC app. You can go and download those today from the Apple App Store app. You can go and download those today from the Apple App Store. They are the same app. They are the identical app. They just have a config file in there which says, when you open it, use this particular colour scheme and go to this radio station first, so you still get access to all of the other radio stations, you still get access to all of the podcasts which are in there, but it is themed, if you like, for that particular radio station because that's the one that you want to get first.

James Cridland: 27:31

And I wonder whether there's a little bit of that. I can see why, if you're a podcast hosting company, you wouldn't necessarily want to be competing with podcast apps, because that's not what things like True Fans want is for Buzzsprout to compete, you know, with you as a podcast app. But I can certainly see there being benefits for podcast apps to give a bit more of a, you know of a styled way in for particular shows and particular sort of you know, areas. So perhaps there is something there in terms of that. I mean, for example, if I was wondering, would I be running my own app? Probably not. Would I be doing a deal with Pocket Casts so that Pocket Casts can take the app you know can make a Wondery app for me, which is essentially Pocket Casts, but it shows the Wondery stuff on the front page? Probably, yeah, that's probably a thing that I would like to do and it strikes me that that maybe is a better plan than everybody doing their own apps, but yeah, I don't know.

Sam Sethi: 28:47

Look, I don't know either. I do know that one of my predictions is I've said that I think the industry will start to see big M&A coming next year. I think verticalization will be happening. I think hosts will beef up their apps. They want first party data and I think apps may have to go towards hosts, and I can see an industry in which the two are very closely aligned in that way, and I can see what Adam's saying, which is don't make it vanilla, make it more personalized. But my big worry is we end up looking like Myspace, and then that is the one thing I do not want to look like. You know, um, you know people with no color design designing pages because they think they can, and then it looking like, um, an, all sorts licorice, all sorts uh, jar or something with multi-colored pages, which would be awful, um, so no, I'm not quite convinced yet, I don't know which way to go, but I think, um, more personalization around each individual page may be a good idea yes, well, that's uh.

James Cridland: 29:48

Yes, there's a, there's a whole thing.

Sam Sethi: 29:51

Um, yeah, yes now um, who or what is podspace, james? Um, you've written about podspace, uh, a few times in pod news daily. Um, the first time you wrote about them, I was was sort of, oh okay, nice, you know, they're the number two ad platform in Sweden. I was like, yeah, great. And then they hired some very interesting people the co-founder of Acast, the former CEO, country manager from Spotify in Finland and the Nordics and I'm like whoa, now that's an interesting acquisition of people. Yeah, did you know much about Podspace at all?

James Cridland: 30:30

No, I don't know an awful lot about Podspace, and so I found it interesting to see that they've managed to get some very, very senior people working for them. They are talking about expanding out of Sweden and Finland now and expanding even further. So you caught up with their CEO, who is a nice man called Carl Fridjo, and you asked him what is Podspace?

Carl Fridsjö: 30:59

Podspace, the way we think about it, is not really as a classic hosting or distribution platform. We do that, but at the core of what we do, I would say, is essentially revenue optimization for large enterprise publishers. So that can be on the ad side, through marketplaces and such, but it can also be through premium content paywall, making the workflow more efficient. What we're trying to do is essentially an all-in-one podcasting platform that's easily scalable and tailored to professional large publishers.

Sam Sethi: 31:34

Podspace has only been going for about a year, somewhere in 2023, did you start Now I was reading about? You got a round of investment. You raised 10 million Swedish kronor last year, which is really cool. How did you go about raising that fund so quickly and growing so fast?

Carl Fridsjö: 31:54

Right. So we're working with an investor called Comade. I have actually been working with them for quite some time, also in previous ventures. So before I joined Podspace as a co-founder, I founded one of the largest production studios here in the Nordics, so focused on high-end narrative journalists, documentaries and that type of storytelling and sort of owning those rights and formats and spreading it across different mediums and different markets as well. But they were an investor in that company as well, as we've been working very closely for quite some time. They actually also invested some seed money into Podspace, and that was before I joined full time, because it's a tricky background story, but to keep it simple, so Podspace as a platform has actually been built over quite some time. The technologies we started to develop that almost, I think, seven years ago, but as a hobby and as a side project. And then what happened was third year acquired Podspace and that's how I got involved and it eventually became more of a real business. So that's been going on for roughly a year's time.

Sam Sethi: 33:09

Okay, and you were also a successful podcaster before all of that, weren't you?

Carl Fridsjö: 33:15

Right, right, yeah, so that's actually how I entered this industry and sort of how the production studio started, how I entered this industry and sort of how the production studio started. So I was working at the time as a TV producer. I found a couple of different stories that I thought was quite interesting to do something with. Obviously it's more of a hassle to gather a TV production team larger budgets, more people involved, go out on set and record and whatnot. So I figured go out on set and record and whatnot. So I figured why not just try to tell these stories by myself at the computer?

Carl Fridsjö: 33:47

And it ended up becoming the first couple of episodes of a story or of a podcast. Roughly translated to a dark story would be the name in English. I released the first episodes and all of a sudden we had a million monthly downloads, and that's in a small country like Sweden. So we became one of the largest documentary shows here in the Nordics and I figured I think we're onto something here and I definitely want to continue exploring that. But of course this was quite early in terms of podcasting and the space and the market and like a lot of things were missing in terms of monetization, technology and that type of thing. So I actually really got to experience firsthand many of the problems and issues that we at Podspace are trying to actually solve right now.

Sam Sethi: 34:42

Very excitingly and this is the thing that really brought Podspace to my attention you've recently had a very interesting group of people join Podspace.

Carl Fridsjö: 34:52

Yes, our latest recruitments were three people, all with a background from Spotify and all with extensive background from the audio industry. So we have Oje Holt. He's the former Nordic CEO of Spotify. He's also one of the co-founders of ACOST and he's joining us as Director of Growth, so he will sort of be responsible to help and assist with taking Podspace to the next level and out into new and larger markets as well. Then we have Eva Ronkainen. She was at Spotify in Finland Helsinki for I think seven years. Then she joined another startup and then eventually joined Podspace. So she will be our Finnish country manager. So we're just about to open our second office, which will be in Helsinki. And then, lastly, we also have Johan Leijonhuvud, and he's been a senior account director at Spotify for I think 15 years. So quite the trio of people. I'm super happy and excited to start working with them all.

Sam Sethi: 36:00

How big is Podspace now? How many people have you got on board?

Carl Fridsjö: 36:05

We're around 15 people in the team, so we're still super early in our journey. We try to really focus on. Team is a huge part of what we're doing and, I think, a huge part of what any company is doing or trying to achieve. We have quite high standards when it comes to that and we try to be very particular about who joins us and sort of in what role and what capacity. So we actually already had a fantastic team before these three hires, but now we're taking the next step as well in terms of expansion and really trying to get the ball rolling even faster than what we have been doing.

Sam Sethi: 36:44

Now you've basically started to expand, as you said, with Eva taking on the role in Finland. Where next, after that, do you have plans to go into other European countries, the USA? I'm pushing you hard because you're a year old company, but you know, maybe your roadmap shows where you're going to go next.

Carl Fridsjö: 37:05

Yeah. So I think that's the sort of the luxury, and the issue with podcasting or the podcast market today is that there's definitely not a lack of opportunities out there. It's more a question of sorting and finding the best one and the right fit for us as well. So we have a couple of different markets we're looking at both in Europe and outside. We haven't really made any final decisions yet. We're in that process of analyzing and seeing where we end up, but we're definitely pushing on in the Nordics. I'm traveling to the US in a couple of days. I will stay in New York for almost three weeks to meet the Nordics. I'm traveling to the US in a couple of days. I will stay in New York for almost three weeks to meet the industry there. I have as many meetings as I can and learn as much as I can and research a possible US expansion for Podspace. So that's obviously one market we're looking at, just given, of course, the size and the maturity that exists there. But we'll see where we end up.

Sam Sethi: 38:03

Are you? I'm not expecting the answer to be yes, but it'd be lovely if it is. But are you profitable yet?

Carl Fridsjö: 38:09

Yes.

Sam Sethi: 38:10

Wow Okay.

Carl Fridsjö: 38:11

We actually are. Yeah, so the thing we're actually growing, we're seeing exponential growth while actually remaining profitable. So the capital or the funding you mentioned is still in our bank account. We haven't been able to use it quite yet because things have been progressing, you know, I think, faster and quicker than anyone expected. So, yeah, it's exciting times.

Sam Sethi: 38:37

And in terms of Sweden itself, why do you think Sweden has been so successful, from Spotify, Skype, Acast, PodX yourself the list goes on. What makes Sweden so unique in its entrepreneurial environment that generates so many hit startups, so many hit startups?

Carl Fridsjö: 39:00

Yeah, I mean that's a great question. I think Stockholm has really become sort of the tech hub of Europe in a sense, which is amazing. Part of it is sort of when you start seeing that traction and more people get involved in space. You have all of these role models, you have successful entrepreneurs, you have Daniel Ek at Spotify, you have Sebastian Simakovowski at Klarna, these big, big companies. I think that sort of spikes an interest and an ambition in people. That's part of the question.

Carl Fridsjö: 39:34

We also have sort of a great infrastructure for entrepreneurs. In many senses it's quite easy to actually start ventures and, yeah, we have a good sort of community in infrastructure and role models. Sweden, you know, for quite a long time has been a test market for many companies because we are in general as a people, we're quite early adopters. We use a lot of technology, we do it early, so it's sort of a good market to actually try your concept in and if it works, that's obviously a good signal to keep moving and expanding into new territories. So that's, of course, what we're trying to do with Podspace as well.

Sam Sethi: 40:15

Now Podspace has had this stellar start. As you said, you're now profitable, looking out to expand. What else do you have on your roadmap? What would Carl like to see 12 months from now?

Carl Fridsjö: 40:24

I think new markets and sort of really really proving that we can scale outside of the Nordics is obviously a big one. But in terms of I think we're looking at a few different areas. Obviously, the product is, you know, the core of everything and what we do. I really want to sort of ramp up development of that. We have a great product today.

Carl Fridsjö: 40:49

It's sort of we actually were quite bad at marketing, to be honest, because we have a much better product and tech than what most people understand and, as I said, the tech has been built for essentially much longer time than Podspace has been around as well, and that's sort of given us a head start in that sense as well. But I definitely want to keep on developing the product and there's I guess I shouldn't give away too much of our sort of secrets coming up, but we do have quite a lot of exciting sort of features coming. We're looking more and more into paywalls and sort of premium content. What can we do with that and sort of their open access tool allowing publishers to feature their paid content directly in the Spotify app and driving traffic directly to their own paywall and sort of increasing those conversion rates and whatnot, and so that's definitely one of the products and one of the areas we'd like to keep developing as well. So, product team and new markets, like to keep developing as well.

Sam Sethi: 42:02

So product team and new markets Brilliant Look, carl. If anyone wants to come and find out more about Podspace, where would they go?

Carl Fridsjö: 42:07

Yeah, so they can, of course, podspacecom. They can hit me up on LinkedIn, Carl with a C, Fridsjö, Fridsjo in English. Yeah, and just send us a message. We're open to meeting everyone and talking to as much people in the industry as possible.

Sam Sethi: 42:25

I look forward to meeting you in London, carl, then next time you're over.

Carl Fridsjö: 42:30

Likewise, likewise. Thank you so much.

James Cridland: 42:33

Karl from Podspace there's more of that in the PodNews Extra feed and I mean podcast listening as a whole is growing tremendously across Scandinavia. I mean, we only covered earlier on in the week a story from MediaVision, which is one of the media research companies, saying that podcasting is continuing to grow in Sweden. I'm really looking forward, sam, to going to the Nordic countries learning more about what's going on there. So I'm on Friday, the 18th of October, I'm in Oslo for their radio and podcast conference. On the 21st I will be in Sweden, I will be in sunny Stockholm chatting with them, and on the 20, I want to say the 25th, which is a Friday I will be down in Copenhagen, in Denmark. So, oh, hang on, hang on. Did you say Copenhagen? I did say Copenhagen, yes.

Sam Sethi: 43:37

I'm there on the 25th in Copenhagen.

James Cridland: 43:39

Are you really On Nordic Radio Days? Wow, there's a thing.

Sam Sethi: 43:43

I'm not there. I'm taking my 25-year-old daughter for a birthday present. I'm taking her out in Copenhagen, Well there you go, there you go.

James Cridland: 43:52

Well, I could be the embarrassing hanger on a. No, I couldn't, but yes, so I'm looking forward to going around the Nordic countries and learning a little bit more. I'm also, by the way, at the Independent Podcast Awards, which is Wednesday, the 23rd of October, in the evening, looking forward to going there particularly We'll say why that might be when we get to the awards and things. But, yes, very much looking forward to taking part in all of that. And I had a very nice email from a nice man called Guttorm, and Guttorm is the chairman of the Norwegian Union of Podcast Producers.

James Cridland: 44:35

There's a thing and he was telling me all about Sound Days, which is the name of the conference in Norway, and my reply was, firstly, thank you for the nominations, which we covered yesterday in the Pod News newsletter, and secondly, yes, I'm looking forward to seeing a very good speaker there who's going to talk about AI tools for podcasting and audio. Can't think of his name, but he seems familiar. So, yes, so that should be fun. But yes, so very, very much looking forward to learning more about what's going on in that part of the world. Of course PodX is from there as well. They seem to be doing incredibly well. So, yes, a fascinating thing.

Sam Sethi: 45:16

Zipping around the world. Back here to the UK, james. What's the BBC doing? Your old former employer?

James Cridland: 45:22

Oh, you're going to make me angry. Go on, you're going to make me angry. So they have been running a trial inverted commas which they say was a six-month trial but was not. It was an 18-month trial, because I can read dates and they seemingly can't. Anyway, that trial was all about keeping podcasts hidden for the first seven or 28 days in the BBC Sounds app and only then publishing on Open RSS.

James Cridland: 45:48

The BBC says that it's been so successful that they're going to do more podcasts that way, so you'll get even less podcasts for the first time in open podcasting. The person who says that it's been so successful is the head of growth and discovery for BBC Sounds, so she presumably is not a person that cares about open podcasting at all. Because why should she? The only thing that she cares is the BBC Sounds app. They say that it's attracted 218,000 listeners to use BBC Sounds. That sounds a lot. It's 4.3% of the total audience. It's not big at all, really and the BBC also says that the majority of listeners still use Open RSS to listen. So how better to serve those people with their licence fee to take those shows away from them? I think it's a dreadful bad idea. But still, there you go. That's the BBC for you and in Canada after the company closed earlier on this year, the company being Pacific Content, two former Pacific Content leaders have launched a new podcast production studio which is called Sequel.

James Cridland: 46:57

See what they did there Very clever Tori Allen and Andy Shepard. They have recruited former Pacific Content colleagues and they started production in July. There is also another Pacific Content alumni who we covered yesterday in the Pod News newsletter as well. Jeff Blundell has worked with a bunch of Pacific Content, former Pacific Content shows as well Tell Me what Happened and Targeting the Toughest Diseases which are former Pacific Content shows, now with this company which is called Broadcast U in Canada. So lots of that going on. And, of course, the Pacific Content brand is now owned by Lower Street, who also did a quite nice conference this week, virtual conference this week with former Pacific Content head honcho, steve Pratt.

Sam Sethi: 47:52

It just made me wonder. We talk about Steve Pratt, we talk about Sequel, we talk about Dan Meisner and Jonas Wust and we talk about, you know, the brand itself. Look, PayPal, have the PayPal mafia. I'm just wondering are these the Pacific canoes? Can we give them a global name that they can use for their spreading out?

James Cridland: 48:12

Yes, I don't know, crikey. Well, there's a thing Other things going on Mamma Mia, who we really ought to get on the show. They did a big upfront stay. They've also said whenever I'm in Sydney I should pop in and see them. So I really ought to make the trip down, but they had a big upfront stay earlier on in the week.

James Cridland: 48:33

They've announced three big things the launch of a brand for Gen Z called Know. That's K-N-O-W, not just know, know, daddy know. Also a content planning tool for advertisers called the Daily Dial, and they've expanded the company's edutainment strategy. They seem to be doing an awful lot of very, very clever things, so that's a smart thing. They seem to be doing an awful lot of very, very clever things, so that's a smart thing. Australian podcast company ARN has partnered with Magellan AI to produce a list of the top international brands investing in Australian podcasts. No surprise, number one is BetterHelp. Also in there is Manscaped, because of course, everybody needs to be a bit tidier down there, and Wise were at number two, I noticed, which is the banking app that I use.

Sam Sethi: 49:22

So there you go.

James Cridland: 49:24

And then finally Podio, which is a podcast platform in the UAE. This is very clever. They have put a lot of their podcasts into taxis, so when you jump into the back of a taxi in Dubai, there's a big touchscreen in front of you and you can listen to your favourite podcast on the Podio platform, which is a very smart thing. It's a very clever addition that you will only get if you're hosting on the Podio platform, so quite neat. There are millions of people that take taxes every single month in the UAE, so it's quite a nice plan, and I will learn more about that because on September, the 30th, is Dubai Podfest, which I am going to, so I'm looking forward to learning a little bit more about podcasting in the Middle East and North Africa too. Let's move to awards and events.

James Cridland: 50:25

And the shortlist has been announced for the Independent Podcast Awards 2024. Excitingly, for this very show, the Pod News Weekly Review, we're nominated in the news and politics section. I mean obviously no chance, nevertheless we're there, the news and politics section. I mean obviously no chance, nevertheless we're there, which is good. That's fine.

James Cridland: 50:40

A nomination is a win so far as I'm concerned, unless it's actually a win, in which case nominations are for losers. But yes, so the Pod News Weekly Review in the news and politics section and the Pod News Daily is nominated in the Business and Money section.

James Cridland: 50:58

So either of those two I know, so either of those two is going to be good. I mean, obviously, all podcast awards are rubbish until you're nominated in one, but that should be good. It's on Wednesday, the 23rd of October. So did you say you're going? Yes, it's on Wednesday, the 23rd of October. It's in London. So did you say you're going? Yes, it's on Wednesday, the 23rd of October, it's in London. I know I'm going all over the place. It's in London, in King's Place, the home of the Guardian and the Observer, just for the next couple of weeks. So I'm going to be there and I'm giving away a. Well, I'll join you then. Well, I think you should. I mean, I'm giving away a prize. I mean I'm giving away a prize, so you know.

Sam Sethi: 51:43

so I get to go on stage at least once and we'll see if either of our podcasts have won. That would be nice, wouldn't it? You did put in Pod News Daily that you know. Congratulations to me. But I would like to point out to everybody who listens to this show that it's a very much joint effort. James writes the stories every day. I don't write them. He edits his podcast as well and thankfully his edits have saved my career by leaving many of my rants on the cutting room floor. So thank you for doing that for me James.

James Cridland: 52:05

Well, thank you, sam. Sam hasn't even noticed that I've deleted one of his rants which we were going to go through earlier on.

Sam Sethi: 52:12

Yes, which we were going to go through earlier on. Yes, no, I did I. Suddenly there's a thing, oh, suddenly you realise that.

James Cridland: 52:17

Yes, other things that I will be at. By the way, in case you're wondering, I'm in Ottawa in early October for a big public broadcasting conference there. If you are in Ottawa and you drink beer, I would love to know about that, please. James at podnewsnet, that would be lovely. Also, I'm at the 2024 ASI International Radio and Audio Conference, slumming it in Venice on November the 6th. It is a super. He has a hard life. People Don't give him any sympathy. It's a super good conference to go to.

James Cridland: 52:55

I've been to it a number of times. It's full of research people. That is the only thing it does. It is the only research conference that I'm aware of that is properly just nitty-gritty research stuff. I feel like a complete fraud there, but I really enjoy it. Speaking there includes Darren Battaglia from Triton, rocky Thomas from Soundstack I'll be speaking there as well, alongside Ray Jarre, the radio research people who also research podcasts as well. So very much looking forward to doing that. And one place where I won't be is the Irish Pod Awards, partially because I think that I mean it's very last minute and they are going on because Haymarket didn't bother to do an Irish podcast awards this year, and so the Irish Pod Awards have been created and you can enter those awards if you are in the excellent place of Ireland.

Sam Sethi: 53:59

Irishpodawardsie is where to go to enter that. Excellent, I'm sure you will be there. You know why not. Why not just keep going around the world?

James Cridland: 54:05

Phileas Fogg. Yeah, I'm doing way too much travel. Do you know what I bought myself today? Sam Sethi.

Sam Sethi: 54:11

A first-class return flight, toralia, I don't know, no, go on I mean that.

James Cridland: 54:16

No, I mean that would be nice. No, I've bought myself, um, one of those um weird, um, uh air, um, weird airline cushions, so one of those things that goes around your neck so you can actually get a proper night's sleep. Um, and I've actually uh, got myself. I was reading, reading reviews of that in bed this morning and I thought now I should, I should spring for 149 dollars, um, for one of these things, but still, have you got an eye mask as well? That goes with it. Is that is? Is that an apple thing?

Sam Sethi: 54:47

not yet but I'm sure it will actually just buy one of those apple visor pros. Stick it on your face, you'll be fine oh, yeah, yeah, like that'll work.

James Cridland: 54:57

If only I knew somebody at Apple who would get me one of those. No, I don't think that that's going to happen, but yes, I will be looking forward to at least seeing whether or not that was a complete waste of $149. 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 Sam talks technology.

Sam Sethi: 55:21

Eddie Bai Headliner is now available in more than 100 languages. They're doing a great job. You can use it to generate transcripts, captions, blog copies, social media posts and other tools. So well done to them. And I still say and we aren't at the Boudicca show yet, but I think Headline is another standalone company that I suspect will be bought in 2025.

James Cridland: 55:40

Yes, you would have thought so. Pocketcasts is to support transcripts, according to 9to5Google. Now, they have said this because they have seen a transcripts button in the latest beta on Android and they've said but it doesn't appear to be working for all podcasts yet. My suspicion is that this is Podcasting 2.0's podcast transcript tag, and so you will see them on shows which support that tag, like this show and many shows from Buzzsprout, for example. But yes, so I don't think you'll see them on everything. But great news if that's true that Pocket Cast is to support transcripts, they're also supporting clipping, which is a thing which nobody will use, and then they will wonder why they bothered, but that's a good thing.

Sam Sethi: 56:33

I should tell you at this point. We will be announcing the end of this month that we're giving a free transcript for every podcast in TrueFans.

James Cridland: 56:43

My goodness. Well, there's a thing. There's a thing In the transcript tag as well. So, yeah, we're fine, very nice. And also congratulations to our sponsor, buzzsprout. They are version 2.2 enabled in terms of the IAB podcast measurement guidelines. They are the only large podcast company to achieve it, other than Megaphone, which achieved it in late July, and, outside of the US, captivate and Audio Means. So they are in very rarefied a company there, but many congratulations to them for hitting version 2.2. What does it mean, james? Well, not really an awful lot, but it just means that the stats are as accurate as they can be. So many congratulations to them. Download stats yes, download stats, yes, I know download stats. And yes, and I put something in the pod news newsletter yesterday got a diary find September the 24th and market new, exciting thing from road to be released.

Sam Sethi: 57:46

Yeah, yeah, james, you always know these things. Never tell me, so I have no idea. So are you going to reveal it now or are you going to just wait till the 24th?

James Cridland: 57:54

still, Well, I tell you what I will do. I think I should reveal it now, but I'll only reveal it to you now and I'll just see what you think. If you wanted to click on, you'll need to zoom in. I should say Climbing. Yeah you'll need to zoom in, uh, but I just click on the thing. What do you think is that? Is that going to be exciting? Are people going to be excited by this?

James Cridland: 58:21

not the price point so that's the first thing you looked at, holy schmoly wow, but apart from the, apart from the price point, I can't even say what we've.

Sam Sethi: 58:37

No, you can't.

James Cridland: 58:40

You can't give any hints there whatsoever.

Sam Sethi: 58:43

Right Blimey O'Reilly.

James Cridland: 58:45

Yes, but yes, it's a very impressive piece of kit, like super impressive. It's a big, big deal, isn't it?

Sam Sethi: 58:54

It is, yeah, I won't be getting one, but yes, it's a big big deal, isn't it? It is. Yeah, I won't be getting one, but yes, it's a very big deal.

James Cridland: 58:59

no, indeed, uh, yes, so I managed to find a leak of it. Um, but uh, road have basically said uh, you know, look our big, our big launch is on september the 24thth. Please don't spoil our big launch for us, and there's no real benefit in spoiling that launches there. So I decided that I wasn't going to spoil their launch for them. But yeah, but it's a big deal. Yes, it is a big deal. There you go, activity Pub. Tell me about Activity Pub, sam, while I go make a cup of tea.

Sam Sethi: 59:33

I'll have two sugars please, and a stir of milk.

Sam Sethi: 59:38

No, we don't actually have sugars. I don't know why I said that. Anyway, activity pub Well, we've progressed our activity pub end point. So if you go to truefanssocial forward, slash your name, you will be able to see now the activities you've chosen to publish from your listening behavior. We've extended that this week with filters, so now you can choose to say I only want to see what james is playing or what james has commented on, I don't want to see everything he's publishing. And we've also added two new verbs, which is is read and buy.

Sam Sethi: 1:00:14

So the idea is that in TrueFans you can also write a blog post that supports your podcast and now you can then, as a listener, actually have your reading behavior.

Sam Sethi: 1:00:25

So if I've read a blog post from a podcast, I can then publish that to my activity pub and other people can see what I've read. And equally, if I buy tickets or, in the near future, merchandise, I can also publish that to my activity pub for others to follow with a link back. So we're just adding capabilities for people to follow influencers, more likely than just everybody being followed. So if you want to follow what James is doing listening to, commenting on but you don't want to join True Fans and follow him in there, then this is another way. So, yeah, we've done that and we can also. As of today, you'll be able to also follow podcasts, so you can follow Pod News weekly or daily and you can see what people are listening to, how many people listen to it and all sorts of other stats around the podcast itself rather than the person. So, yes, we've done that as well.

James Cridland: 1:01:20

Well, there you go, and that's all on truefansfm. Boostergram Corner on the Pod News Weekly Review.

James Cridland: 1:01:31

Yes, it's our favourite time of the week. It's Boostergram Corner and, just as a reminder, all of the money and value that we get from this show stays with Sam and I. It doesn't go to the rest of the massive pod news set up. So thank you for all of your support. Thank you for the zaps on True Fans from Sam that I guess is you from Harry Gardner, from Si and from Chad F, all of which are not you. So thank you for those zaps. We've got one boost, which is a message from a new podcast app, this time Cast-O-Matic. What does this say?

Sam Sethi: 1:02:08

Keep up the good work. On Activity Pup Sam. Yes, it's from Gene Beans. So yes, he's been asking what we're doing and we've been talking. So, yeah, it's coming along nicely, gene, coming along nicely.

James Cridland: 1:02:19

Excellent. Yes, it certainly is. Also, thank you to those of you who send us sats while you listen. People like Oi, the late bloomer actor, a Mug of Java, all using True Fans. Also, dave Jackson, john McDermott, brian Entsminger, dave Jones and Gene Bean. No, adam Curry this week. I did notice. No, adam Curry this week, not quite sure why. Hope he's OK, you know, and all of that and big news. It's now the Magnificent Eight in terms of power supporters Weeklypodnews. If you want to become a power supporter, david Marzal, have I pronounced your surname right? David Marzal? Marzal Marzal. Thank you so much. That's very kind of you for becoming a power supporter Alongside Cy Jobling, rachel Corbett, dave Jackson, mike Hamilton, matt Medeiros, marshall Brown and Cameron Moll. So, sam, what's happened for you this week?

Sam Sethi: 1:03:18

Well, we were just talking about the ActivityPub stuff, so that's been my main focus, but also on the side, I talked about launching PodCamp 2.0 in London. I'm pleased to say we've got our first speakers and our first sponsors. So I'll be announcing that next week on this show and having a link for where people can sign up and then other people can also say they might want to speak or, hopefully, they might want to sponsor. Either way, I'll be happy to have you come along to the event.

James Cridland: 1:03:45

Yeah, Very good. Well, I look forward to getting the Eventbrite details and we'll get that into the Pod News newsletter as soon as we can. You're reading books. You were very proud of saying that you were reading books and then you linked to Audible. So you're actually having books read to you.

Sam Sethi: 1:04:01

Yes yes, I'm in podcasting, james. Come on, stick with it.

James Cridland: 1:04:06

What are you reading anyway?

Sam Sethi: 1:04:08

The updated book from Ray Kurzweil, the Singularity is Nearerer when we will merge with AI. It's an updated version which is worth reading or listening to. And Yuri Noval Harari, whose books I really love 21st Rules of the 21st Century and Homo Sapiens being his other books. For example, he's got a new one out called Nexus, a Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI. Both are really interesting. If you're interested in just tech and AI, then highly recommend both.

James Cridland: 1:04:38

Yes, I'm interested in the Nexus book. I keep on walking past it in airports and so one of these days, who knows, I might end up getting that. But yes, there we are. You're a very interesting man, Sam Sathy.

Sam Sethi: 1:04:53

No, no, no. I just have a lot of things to do at the weekend, and these are great long form reads James, what's happened for you? Have you fixed your website yet?

James Cridland: 1:05:01

Ah, yes, so you may remember that last week I was having a bit of a nightmare keeping the Pond News website up. Well, the good news is that the website is still falling over with remarkable regularity. I say it's good news because I've basically now got two different websites. One of them is the PodNews website, which is now fine, and one of them is the image resizer that I use for the podcasts and things. It's all to keep your privacy, folks, so that if you visit a podcast page on PodNews, I don't go pulling the image directly from the podcaster, because that would be giving your IP address to them, and so therefore, I will take it and produce a cached version of that. But that is tremendously expensive and the image resizer is still falling over, but at least the rest of the website isn't now, so that's a good thing.

Sam Sethi: 1:05:58

And what are you reading? James, you posted what you were reading as well.

James Cridland: 1:06:02

I did post what I was reading. So I recently read, for example well, I'll tell you what's in the queue. First of all, that new Richard Osman book that's in the queue. Looking forward to reading that.

James Cridland: 1:06:16

Also, I read a book about cycling across England that was very dull. Basically it was a woman goes on a bike, woman cycles on a bike path. It's not maintained very well, she interviews somebody. Then she goes on another bike path and it's not maintained very well and she interviews somebody else and that's basically what it is. But nevertheless I do notice that the British Transport Secretary has read that book. So therefore that is a good thing. I hope that whoever the British Transport Secretary is takes the stories in mind. Also, I read Adrian Edmondson's autobiography, which was very good, and Albert Camus's the Plague. But right now I'm reading Michael Wolfe, the Fall, the End of Fox News and the Murdoch Dynasty, just in the week where Rupert Murdoch and Lachlan Murdoch are both being taken to court by the rest of the Murdoch family because they're all bickering about what to do with Fox News and everything else. So I'm very much enjoying the end of Fox News, or rather the fall by Michael Wolff. So there is a thing and looking forward to it.

Sam Sethi: 1:07:26

Yes, I'd just like to say Mr Murdoch Fox off.

James Cridland: 1:07:30

Oh, now, there you go, and on that bombshell. That's it for this week. If you've enjoyed this podcast, the newsletter's got more news and stories. You can find it at podnewsnet and the Pod News Daily, wherever you get your podcasts. There are longer interviews too, in the Pod News Extra podcast as well.

Sam Sethi: 1:07:50

You can support this show by streaming sats. You can give us feedback using the Buzzsprout fan mail link in our show notes and you can send us a boostergram or become a power supporter like the Power 8 now at weeklypodnewsnet.

James Cridland: 1:08:04

Like the Magnificent 8. Our music is from Studio Dragonfly. Our voiceover is Sheila D. We use Clean Feed for this audio and we're hosted and sponsored by Buzzsprout. Start podcasting, keep podcasting, keep podcasting get updated every day.

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