SPEAKER_01 0:00

Those listings have hundreds of pictures for that car, so I think that's a very strong visual addition to the player.

SPEAKER_05 0:06

How do we make podcasts a more visually engaging medium without necessarily using video? Ryan Williams has some ideas, plus Sam's back, and what to do about Apple Podcasts.

Human Announcer 0:19

With James Kridlin and Sam Suthey. This is the Pod News Weekly Review with Buzz Buzz Sprout. Start Podcasting, Keep Podcasting.

Sam Sethi 0:31

Well I'm back, James. Did you miss me? Oh, uh massively, massively.

Overcast - growing or not?

Sam Sethi 0:35

Overcast must be super, super happy. They're growing, growing, growing 28% year on year. Or, as Dave Jones suspects, is there something afoot? Tell me more, James.

James Cridland 0:46

Well, is there something afoot? Yes. Um, so overcast, according to Buzz Sprout, our sponsor, um, their stats for June show that overcast has increased by 28% year on year. That's total downloads. Interestingly, Transistor also shows a 22% increase in overcast year on year. Pretty well everybody else is static. You uh Spotify is down, but that could just be video. So hooray for Overcast. I mean, obviously, Overcast has been in the news recently with uh transcriptions and all of that thing. Um, Overcast has been more in the news for those of us in podcasting 2.0 because Marco Armand jumped in and said, I don't want any of this uh server signature stuff, you know. Um I I have a user agent that says Overcast, and that should be enough. And I will not even consider anything more than that. Um so uh Overcast has certainly been making a name for itself, so it clearly has um paid off, hasn't it, Sam?

Sam Sethi 1:42

Well, according to the pod sage Dave Jones, he says, or is it Claude just likes building bots that use Overcast as the user agent to bypass filtering, aka Adam Curry. We've seen it done already. Um what's your thoughts, James? Is it is it bots using the overcast user agent or is Marco Arment onto something?

James Cridland 2:04

I think there are three things. I think firstly, Marco Arment is onto something. He got a lot of coverage for his transcriptions. Secondly, I think that yes, Claude does like using Overcast as a user agent. It's very easy, even if you just ask uh Claude to do that, it we it will do that. Um, which, by the way, would be fixed with, you know, uh server signatures. Um and then there's the third thing, which uh there is talk of Overcast actually having a download bug where it downloads and downloads and downloads again and downloads again. And it could well be that there's a download bug as well. Now I've asked for details from the person that uh pointed that out. Haven't had any of those details. So what I might do is go digging into some of the stats and seeing if I can actually see any evidence of that going on in some of the data that I can see. Um but certainly um yeah, it I think there's more than meets the eye here in terms of overcast numbers. But on the other side, it's really good to see an independent podcast app, one that isn't doing anything naughty or nefarious itself at least, um, appearing so high in the chart. So many congratulations if this if this is true.

Sam Sethi 3:20

So he's not downcast, he's over the moon. Hey. Yes, yes, I'll go back on holiday, don't worry. Now, um

What to do with Apple Podcasts

Sam Sethi 3:29

Apple's market share, according to Ashley Carmen at Bloomberg, is declining, James. Why?

James Cridland 3:36

Well, so this isn't market share. This is um this is the share of people who say that their number one podcast app is dot dot dot. Apple is definitely going down in terms of that. Um, that uh uh is is the case according to Edison Podcast Metrics, it's the case according to Signal Hill Insights as well. Um so Apple Podcasts is less of a go-to app, if you like. Um in terms of downloads, interestingly, as you may have seen in the Pod News um uh newsletter yesterday, Thursday, um, the uh total downloads, for example, if you look at the UK, total downloads to Apple Podcasts has gone up. Um, so it's 37.5% of all downloads in the UK according to OP3, according to our data uh there. So I think that there's um uh different numbers, as is always the case here. I think it's also the fact that we can't see Spotify video anymore. We obviously can't see YouTube numbers in OP3 either. Um, and so therefore there's going to be some differences um there. Um, but um I do worry about Apple because I I'm kind of thinking that Apple um they're still behaving, aren't they, as if they're the number one top dog in podcast aggregators. And I'm not so sure that they really are anymore. And you can swagger and swagger for as much as you like, but actually at the end of the day, when people start realizing what the numbers are, then I'm not so sure that they are quite as healthy as uh Apple's swagger would lead you to believe.

Sam Sethi 5:15

Well, I look, I've got m, as you know, multiple complaints about Apple. I mean, I I am an Apple fanboy, I'm looking forward to the iPhone 18 Ultra, yada yada yada. But um the auto downloads really annoys me that they set that on by default. I think that should be a user choice. I hate the fact that they are the default uh app and they don't allow that to change, and I know there's the reason why, but if you type the word podcast in uh an iOS app, it comes up with Apple only. That's the first thing it does. There's no choice. So I think that's very monopolistic. And again, I also think what we're seeing with Apple.

James Cridland 5:53

But none of that is helping them, Sam, though, is it? I mean, I mean I mean that's the weird that's that's the weird thing.

Sam Sethi 5:58

Well, it is because it's keeping them where they are. I mean, if they're losing market share and they have all of those advantages already, then they're in bigger trouble than I think.

James Cridland 6:06

Indeed, indeed. Because, you know, they they are most certainly, I mean, Apple is nowhere near as big a percentage of the market as it's been. Uh, you know, Paul Rissmandel in the article um that uh Ashley Carmen wrote said something, you know, quite um quite intelligent and clever because he is, um, saying that it it isn't that Apple is actually losing, it's actually that um the podcast audience is gaining and people aren't thinking about Apple first. And from a lot of people, I'm hearing the same sort of thing. I'm hearing that Apple is actually, it's great if you've got big numbers on Apple, but we're not seeing new people getting into um getting into Apple. And certainly some of the data that I've seen from new podcast listeners, um, what platforms do you use? Well, new podcast listeners, Apple Podcasts really isn't anywhere. And that's a real concern because old podcast listeners eventually die. Uh and so we do need a replenishing. You're not talking about me, are you? You're not talking about me. So, you know, so I do think that that is a bit of a concern. Um, but uh, you know, of course, the the the main story from Ashley was all about video and how how video seems to be, well, it seems to quote show early promise, uh, according to um the article. Um but but you know, again, I'm not entirely convinced by that either.

Sam Sethi 7:39

Well, uh my my initial thought was that if you look at YouTube and with the sort of you know way that people want to go video first at the moment, is the it's the fashionable thing to do, then they are very clearly you land on YouTube and it's video video in your face, and then if you want to find the audio podcast, they are there somewhere, and if you want to find the music, it's sort of there as well. So it is a video first platform. You look at Spotify, it's a music first platform. That's really why my children stay on it. Um, and then podcasting and all the other bits are secondary to that. I look at Apple, and they have the same problem I think that Amazon has. They are exposing their internal corporate thiefdoms. So instead of having one app, Apple Podcasts, with Apple Music and Apple Books, um, they have three apps and and they're not synergistic, and that's the same with Amazon. And I think the problem is that young people don't turn to Apple Music first, they turn to Spotify first, and that loss lead means that Apple Podcasts is always gonna play catch-up. I I don't know. I think they're not video first and they're not music first, and I think those two elements are gonna affect Apple.

James Cridland 8:52

Yeah, I mean I can I can certainly see that um, you know, I mean, I I guess if you if you look at and and you use Apple Music next to Apple TV, next to Apple Podcasts, it's the same app, basically. It's the same app with just different content inside it, um, which I think is interesting. They don't necessarily cross-post as much as they should, but there is a little bit of cross-posting in there. Um, but I think certainly, you know, Apple Podcasts to me has the swagger of somebody that is number one, but they but they are, well, according to Edison Research this week, they are number four in the UK. Um, after BBC Sounds, after Spotify, and of course after YouTube, which is now number one. So, you know, again, I think that Apple's uh swagger is it's absolutely fine to have that swagger if you're number one. Um, but if you're just number four, then I think you have to be working a little bit harder than just, but we're Apple, don't you know who we are? Um, and that's their relationship with journalists, that's their relationship with podcast um uh hosting companies, that's their relationship with all kinds of things. No one else would um get people jumping through as many hoops as Apple has been doing. Um and and there are good things around that and there are bad things around that, but I don't necessarily think that it's particularly helpful for us as an industry um for Apple to have the swagger that it has without the numbers that actually back up that swagger.

Sam Sethi 10:27

Yeah, but you know, again, um we saw this with the Apple API for the video, you know. They they they literally turned around to every host and said, This is the way you will do it. And we all jumped. It was a case of you know, jump and we all went, how high? Right. So they still have that power um domain over the industry.

James Cridland 10:46

Yeah, they do, but uh there will be a point where the industry turns turns around and said, And why would we do that for you? Because you're the you're the fourth biggest, you're tiny. Why on earth would we bother? Um, so I think I think that that's the thing that if if I was working at Apple, I would be concerned about now. Um, is that actually they don't promote Apple Podcasts at all externally. Um, there are no promotions for Apple Podcasts as a service. Um, you know, the only work they do is this work within the industry, which is, you know, okay, but that's but that's um but that's fine. The the

Apple and Acast - what's going on there

James Cridland 11:23

the the other thing that I did see in Ashley's uh piece was about ACAST. And yet again, here's another positive story from Acast about Apple Video. And app and ACAST appeared to have leaked to Ashley that the um video shows that ACAS has, 180 video shows now, um, have seen a around a 25% jump in Apple consumption. And Acast magically has got that number to Ashley to report on. And it occurs to me there's something weird going on here, Sam. Because we've had this, right? Uh ACast saying how lovely and wonderful Apple Podcast video is. Apple Podcasts uh at the podcast show in London, that was essentially Apple Podcasts uh talking on a stage with an ACAST executive and two ACAST talent. Um ACAST released something very early on saying that it it was the first company, not true by the way, but it was the first company to be earning revenue from video podcasts, which by the way is revenue that Apple will get. And I don't know if you saw recently Creators We Love, UK and Ireland, which was a new feature that came out in the UK from Apple Podcasts. The only people in there, the only creators that Apple Podcasts apparently love in the UK and Ireland are weirdly on ACast and our video enabled podcasts. I what what's go well what's going on with Apple and ACast? And could they please get a room?

Sam Sethi 13:01

Uh it they they both begin with A, that's it. That's the only thing, James. Yeah, yeah. That's probably it. I guess if Apple uh were thinking about implementing this video stuff, they've probably gone and looked at one partner who they can work with early under NDA. That was probably ACAS, they probably put engineering resources at it early. Um you know, because I know, for example, Transistor were complaining that they were late to the party being offered all of the API access. Yeah. Um I I I don't think well, we'll see. I don't think there's any more in it than other than they picked one one lucky partner to work with early, and it happened to be ACAS this time.

James Cridland 13:46

Just a strange old thing. On that, by the way, Riverside, uh the latest to enable Apple Podcasts HLS Video. Uh, if you host a podcast on the platform, um there doesn't appear to be any complicated um uh pricing plans. It's just if you're on the Grow Plan or above, which I think is $29 a month, um, then you get Apple Podcasts HLS video as well. Uh so that's an interesting thing too.

Sam Sethi 14:12

The the other thing was uh I'm still annoyed that all of this video is not available to other podcast apps because it's not available in the alternative enclosure. I know companies like Transistor are using the HLS they produce for Apple and putting it in the alternative enclosure, but that's not true of our sponsors, that's not true of ACAS, that's not true of AdsWears or any of the others.

James Cridland 14:37

No, no. Um, and so again, you know, you you kind of ask yourself, well, is there something there in terms of um uh you know, in terms of that relationship with Apple? Um, are people really nervous about upsetting Apple? And again, you can have that swagger if you're number one. I'll keep on saying it. You can have that swagger if you're number one. But if you're if you're a number four, you're an also ran and you you you have none of that swagger anymore. Um so um so I hope that they get this fixed, and I hope that Apple actually puts, you know, one of the richest companies in the world who are going to get richer, by the way, from video in podcasts, because they are going to be grabbing a fee for every ad which is um which is shared. Um uh, you know, is Apple going to be doing something in terms of um helping promote Apple podcasts to normal human beings? I don't know.

Sam Sethi 15:32

You you said you're waiting for the new Apple TV hardware, so am I. Um no sight or sound of that yet. Uh is this going to be when they really accelerate the support for app uh you know video in all of their platforms? Will we, do you think, see a new podcast app for Apple, which is video first rather than audio first?

James Cridland 15:56

I mean, arguably you could say that the podcast app from Apple is video first. If you open that as a brand new user, then then you will see lots of video and much less audio these days. Uh so arguably you could claim that anyway. I uh think that in terms of Apple TV, and I don't have one because I am literally waiting for the new hardware, um, but I would um I I would think that again the problem with um video podcasts is that they're not in the Apple TV app on uh Apple TV. The Apple TV app on Apple TV, on the Apple TV device. Um and because they're therefore not where everything else that you would watch from Apple is, um, I wonder how many people are going to open that purple, you know, the purple box um to get their uh video podcasts out of there. Um because, you know, again, I haven't seen any promotion outside of people who are already listening to podcasts on Apple Podcasts. I haven't seen any promotion within um uh Apple of, you know, well, here's some here's where you can watch lots of your favorite shows now. Um and I can't help but think it's gonna it's gonna be very confusing if you're an Apple TV device user um to have lots of um lots of content in the Apple TV app, and then there's a bit of content in the Apple Podcasts app as well. It's gonna be very strange. Well, we'll wait and see in

USD stablecoin

James Cridland 17:27

September.

Sam Sethi 17:27

Now, moving on, James, this is we're not gonna get we're not gonna get too technical here, but I did want to just raise the flag on a story I saw that was uh from June the 30th. And you and I, for probably the best part of three, maybe even four years, have been talking about micro payments, talking about Bitcoin SATS, talking about how value for value works. And you know, I think the concept of being able to pay peer-to-peer fan-to-creator directly with some small token of value, micro payment, is a good idea, right? The internet doesn't have a layer of micropayment. Now, the industry we're in, the podcast industry, has tried to adopt Bitcoin micropayments as a way of doing it, and I'll be the first to say I don't think it's been a success, I think it's been overly complex, I think there's been too much change, and I think we've confused those early adopters, and let alone got the mass adoption from the mainstream. I don't think we've got any of that at all. I've always said that there has to be a trigger. If this is going to work, there has to be a trigger, and that trigger could have been uh do you remember Elon Musk was talking about getting into micropayments with X, and I thought, okay, well, I'm not happy, but if he issues 300 million wallets and explains what they are, and people on X start using it, maybe they'll look to podcasting and use it there as well. But that never happened. But something's come up called OpenUSD. Now I've been a not a staunch advocate because that's a uh uh and not the right word, but uh, I've been interested in this thing called stable coins, which are digital coins that are pegged to the dollar currency in this case. And last week uh this thing called Open USD, um, 140 financial institutions got behind, and it's it's really being driven by Stripe because they bought a company called Bridge, and now they've given the CEO from Bridge the role to run this thing called OpenUSD, Zach Abrahams. And the idea is that this will be linked to your bank account, your checking account, your your current account, whichever word your country uses, where you'll be able to move money from one to the other. And maybe they haven't talked about what standards they're going to use, i.e., what wallet and what mechanism, but um it looks like something called X402. Any thoughts from you on this? Because I I'm I'm not saying this is the way forward, but I'm interested to follow the story forward because I think it has some legs.

James Cridland 20:07

Yeah, I think it's definitely got some legs. So Open USD, um, the companies and lots and lots and lots of of uh companies um have uh signed on, including my business bank I can see in here here in here in Australia, uh, as well as uh Stripe, the people who um take um uh credit card payments uh from me. Um there's Moon Pay, I've heard of them. Uh there's Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and Discover. They're they're all there as well. Uh as well as you know, interesting companies like Cloudflare, for example, who have um things to um uh uh gain from uh the ease of micropayments. So I think that there's definitely something going on here which is worthwhile taking a peek at. Uh Google's also in this list, Apple is not, by the way. Um, in in terms of what it might mean, I think it's a little bit too early because we don't necessarily know what this is going to fix. Um, we have in most countries we have programmable money anyway. Uh, and by programmable by programmable money, I mean some form of API that I can connect to my bank that will transfer money for me on my behalf. Um, we've already got that in most countries. Uh, in most countries, there is a standard which is a national standard, um, which allows you to do that for whatever bank you happen to be banking with. I do know that the US is not that, um, and so therefore, from the US's point of view, it'll look very exciting to them. Um, what we don't necessarily know is what this means in terms of costs. I mean, Visa and MasterCard, particularly, earn their money from two things. They earn their money from a percentage which is put on all credit card payments. Um Which is fine. And they earn their money from a payment cost as well. And so for me, for example, I think from memory it's something like 30 cents to accept a credit card payment. And then there's a 3.5% cut on top of that. And those are the fees that I pay. Now the 3.5% is fine, but the you know, whatever it is, 30 cents, 50 cents, to accept the payment basically kills um uh individual uh micropayments stone dead because I can't pay two two cents a minute to listen to this show uh if you're going to charge me um you know 30 cents uh every time uh I send some money because you know it it just all goes to the bank in that way. So if this fixes that, which w w we have no uh visibility of, and uh you could argue, well, why why would they fix it? Because all these people earn money out of um uh out of that fee. But if this fixes that, and if it drops everything down to literally two or three percent, then I think that would be super exciting because it would enable us all of a sudden to say, if you really like this show, just pay us a cent a minute, that's all I want. Um, pay us a cent a minute and away we go. Um so it it's exciting if you have a look at it from that point of view, um, probably way too early. And I suppose the question is what happens next? You know, will this be the case? You know, will this be put into action um in the next couple of weeks, or will this be put into action in the next five years? Will we have it by the the Brisbane Olympics, for example? Um, you know, who knows? But um, it could be very exciting, or it could be a total waste of time.

Sam Sethi 23:52

Yeah, I think the driver isn't really podcasting, obviously. I don't think the driver is even humans, I think the driver is AI agents being able to autonomously pay for web compute or buy product on our behalf. Um, and that's why I think everyone's getting excited because then they can start to build this agentic AI layer over the internet, and that's where I think it's going.

James Cridland 24:17

And the only thing that I would say is you can do that today. You can do that today in the UK with the OpenAPI um work, you can do that today in uh Australia, uh across the Nordics, um in India, um, but they're all different. And so if this is essentially a unified API for programmable money to shift money around, then great. Um uh because we sorely need a global standard. Um, but um, you know, but we've got that standard if you want to already uh within individual countries. It's just that that doesn't necessarily work when you start having a look at content which is produced on a global basis.

Sam Sethi 24:59

The other last thing I'd say on it is where's the open Aussie dollar, where's the open pound, where's the open euro, right? Are we all gonna have to transact in US dollars?

James Cridland 25:09

And then that'll add additional money for us. I can't imagine that governments will be particularly happy with all of a sudden all of the online payments being done through US dollars. Um, I can't imagine that that's gonna be a thing that governments really want. Um really?

Sam Sethi 25:29

Well, you you say that, but we have the petrochemical dollar, right? Every dollar, sorry, every barrel of oil is traded in dollars, and that's why the US can have such a high 37 trillion debt, because they can publish anything they like and they can put treasury bonds out and because the world needs dollars. Um, and if they get open USD to be the universal standard, have we just moved to an a dollar-denominated world?

James Cridland 26:00

Yeah, well, I would imagine that the European Union will have a thing or two to say about that, uh, apart from anything else. But uh yes, I mean, you know, because that's that again is where some of the complication comes in. I mean, I'm paid in US dollars every single month. Um, and you know, US dollars have become less valuable over the last um over the last six months or so. Uh, and so therefore, um I'm paid less in real terms, even though I'm paid the same amount of money um uh coming out of the US bank account. So yeah, I you know it's um it's gonna be something that probably needs to be fixed somehow, but I'm not quite sure how how you end up fixing that uh or what you end up doing in terms of um you know, in terms of that.

Sam Sethi 26:47

Now, uh coming

Spotify ads - now in Amazon

Sam Sethi 26:49

back down to earth from that giddy heights of global e-commerce, let's talk about Spotify ads. Uh Spotify has deepened its relationship with the Amazon DSP. I'm gonna go make a coffee, James. Tell everyone about this one.

James Cridland 27:03

You'll have to be very quick. So Amazon DSP is the thing that you go to if you're a big advertiser and you want to buy across many different places. There are a few of these. There's uh one called the Trading Desk, there's one called Amazon DSP, there are a few others. And Amazon DSP is a big one. Um, it does um, well, it did 60 billion dollars uh last year. And yes, you can buy on the Amazon website, so you can buy advertising on Amazon, but um pr uh but more and more um the Amazon DSP is now selling advertising off the Amazon website. It um you can buy uh um TV ads on Disney Plus or Tubi or Hulu, and now you can buy ads in podcasting uh through Spotify. Um so Spotify have made I I think ads in terms of uh music streaming for a little bit, they've now rolled out podcasting as well. So that could be a bucket load of more cash put into the podcasting world uh through this because it's going to be much easier to buy advertising on podcasts in a programmatic way, um uh at least onto megaphone and that sort of thing. Um so it could be very good news. Um uh it could be a real game changer for us, or it could be just another announcement around uh a DSP somewhere, somehow, um, that we don't fully understand. But um let's hope it's the it's the good news rather than yet another announcement. Perfect. Um but uh yeah, no, I think it's all good. Got the latte, right? Um lovely. Very nice.

Sam Sethi 28:36

No, you don't. No. Now let's

Round the world

Sam Sethi 28:40

whizz around the world. Um, we've talked about a company called Bending Spoons, not one of your favourites, um, but it seems, James, that their strategy of aggregating old stagnating companies that brands that we might know, like AOL and Vimeo and Eventbrite, has worked. They've just done their IPO. Uh, it flew out the door at $40. Um, the the initial set price was $29, so 40% above the initial strike price. Um it's 13 years old, they're now worth 25 billion, James. Um yeah, seems that what we thought about them was wrong and what they thought about their strategy was right.

James Cridland 29:24

Well, I mean, maybe. Um, I mean, the user base has grown significantly in its 13 years, but of course, because it's bought lots of um big companies that have big user bases, you know, people like Evernote or WeTransfer or Vimeo, uh, or indeed StreamYard, which who we shouldn't forget, who are owned by them. Um so yeah, absolutely, you know, so of course it's going to have many more people now. It's going to be doing much more money now than it was 10 years ago because it owns all of these additional companies, many of whom are just uh a monthly, you know, uh a monthly subscription, which most people have forgotten about. So um, yeah, so it's going to do pretty well in terms of that. Um I mean, I guess the question really is, you know, is it actually, is their successful IPO showing anything good about their company, or is it, um, and this is a trope in this in this podcast, a repeating trope of mine, uh, or is it that um nobody in the stock market knows what they're doing?

Sam Sethi 30:29

Well, is the whole greater than the sum of the parts, which is what they're trying to do? And this isn't new, by the way. I mean, I was the European marketing director for a company called CMGI in Web 1.0, based out of Boston. We had 60 companies, two Rome, Navio, uh, Alta Vista, and the problem was Alta Vista. Yeah, do you remember that one?

SPEAKER_06 30:51

Were you the person that killed Alta Vista?

Sam Sethi 30:52

I was, yes. There you go. Came to fame. No, I didn't do that. No, what what we did do was we basically hoovered up all these companies and then took a IPO. The company's valued at over a billion in those days. And the problem was, once we'd done the IPO, the the grown-ups in the company, because I was only a kid at the time, um, didn't know what to do. So they came up with these stupid synergy strategies. Oh, we're going to uh we're gonna sell a bundle of uh uh CMGI companies, and you would go out and have to market bundles of companies. We'll send you some search and email, and they weren't things that worked together, they were just absolutely, you know, in their own individual silos as products, but you know, they didn't know what else to do. They'd done the IPO, they made their money, go and get a few more companies and then sell them. And that's where I think um bending spoons is gonna go. It's done the thing it wanted to do, which is make a ton of money by hoovering up, and now I I don't think it knows what else to do. And the last thing I'll say on this, I think this is PodX's strategy.

James Cridland 32:02

I think I do, yes. I was just about to mention PodX. Yes, because this is essentially PodX, but Podx doing it in a in an industry vertical of podcast companies. Um, you know, they own much of Lemonada Media, they own platform media, they own, you know, all of these other companies. Um, so yeah, you could you could certainly see um echoes of PodX in terms of this as well.

Sam Sethi 32:27

Over to Dubai, James. The Dubai Press Club has announced the third edition of the Arab Podcast Programme. It starts on the 13th of July. What's this one?

James Cridland 32:36

I think we overlook how big podcasting is getting in the Arab-speaking world. Uh, and I think the reason why we overlook it is that we don't speak Arabic. Um, some of us are a bit suspicious of what a US TSA um official called worm writing to me. Um what's this worm writing in your passport? Uh gosh. Um so yeah, so I think I think that we overlook it, but it is massive. And the Dubai Press Club, the government of Dubai, of course, very, very keen to get as many creators in there. They see the future as does Saudi Arabia sees the future as being a creator economy um uh for them as the oil begins to run out and as we don't want to buy any oil anymore. Um, and so they are spending a lot of money on creator stuff. And this is the latest of that, the Dubai Press Club headquarters, which I've spoken at and it's very fancy. Um, there will be a uh program um that will run for uh three weeks uh there with uh podcasters, experts, and trainers from across the Arab world um helping people uh understand how to make great podcasts. So uh it all looks quite uh it all looks quite fun and exciting. Uh it's starting next Monday.

Sam Sethi 33:54

Witting down nearer to you in New Zealand. Uh there's stuff going on down there as well. What are they doing?

James Cridland 34:01

Yes, they're uh they're uh enjoying their fush and chups. Uh that's my Kiwi accent there. Um uh and every Kiwi's face planted right now. Go on. I'm here all week. Uh so uh yes, uh I bought it at the deary. Um uh I I I don't know why they sound South African.

SPEAKER_06 34:19

I was gonna say where have you gone?

James Cridland 34:23

Anyway, uh podcasts, yes. Um uh there's uh another streaming platform that uh podcasts have suddenly appeared on. TVNZ, uh, which is one of the big um uh TV broadcasters in New Zealand. TVNZ Plus is their online um platform, and they um for the last couple of months actually have been taking video podcasts from an indie podcast maker. Um so they're available on the um on the TV NZ Plus platform. Uh Between Two Beers is their big one, but they've got a number of other uh shows on there. It's a company called Frank. Um and uh I just thought, isn't that interesting? Yes, another company has decided, okay, we're going to bolster up our proper TV shows with um with crap podcasts. So we're going to put uh so we're gonna put some of these um uh on there. But it's yes, it's even happening in New Zealand as well.

Sam Sethi 35:21

As Louis Thoreau says, cheap TV. Oh crap TV, didn't he? Just crap TV.

SPEAKER_03 35:26

Well, in fact, here's the clip. Hello there, and welcome back to the Louis Thoreau podcast, or if you're watching it on Spotify, the Louis Thoreau slightly shit TV show. I do love that.

James Cridland 35:38

I do love that. Thank you for the excuse of getting me to play

People news

James Cridland 35:41

that again.

Human Announcer 35:41

People News on the Pod News Weekly Review.

James Cridland 35:46

Yes, in People News, Elise Burgesson has been hired as Senior Director of Business Development at Libson. She sounds like somebody who should be working at ACAST with a name like that. But anyway, she's moved from Verve Talent and Literary Agency, where she served as head of audio. Interesting that uh Libsin um uh still uh staffing up with uh new folk there. And a very interesting uh piece of news, the co-founder of DOAC, uh Jack Sylvester, who is also the producer of that show for quite some time, has left the company. Um, for the last three months, he's been going around South America in a yurt or something. Um he's posted on LinkedIn, he says, for now I don't know what's next, which is always interesting. But uh yeah, so um I'm not quite sure what's going on there. I mean, obviously, you know, he may he might he he just might be very rich now and and and wants to stop working. Um that may that may be it. Um but uh yeah, no, I thought that that was fascinating, uh Sam.

Sam Sethi 36:49

Yeah, I mean look, Jack's a lovely guy. I I think has he outgrown or have they outgrown him, which way? I don't know. Maybe you can never tell when you've got somebody who's been on the ride with Stephen Bartlett, and and is Stephen now uh bigger than you know what Jack can offer. Maybe they're going for more. Or it could be just as you said, Jack's just got so rich, he's just decided to put his feet up and retire.

James Cridland 37:14

I mean, I mean it I mean it could be that, or it could be frankly, you know, now that he's um now that Dariva CEO now has so many other people working there. I mean, that is a seriously staffed up company from where it was uh at the beginning. Um uh maybe he he's actually at a point where he's being told by lots of people that now work for him uh what he should be doing, and he's there going, you know what? Uh you know, I'm not I'm not enjoying life anymore. And there's nothing wrong with uh saying I'm not enjoying life anymore, and so therefore I'm gonna move on.

Sam Sethi 37:45

Well, yeah, I mean it's gone from a startup to a corporate company, and and maybe the corporate nature of the business doesn't suit Jack's character. Indeed.

James Cridland 37:54

Well, many congratulations to Jack. If you want to hear a full-length interview with Jack Sylvester, you can find it in this very podcast back in October 2024. Just go scrolling up there, uh, and you will find um a show with uh Jack Sylvester on. So many congratulations to him.

Awards and events

James Cridland 38:12

Uh let's move on to awards and events, shall we?

Sam Sethi 38:14

Yeah, look, talking of lists coming out, here's another list. It's a long list in this case. Um, the British Podcast Awards 2026 has recognised 409 entrants across 27 categories. Um, you've done a great job of putting it on Pod News Daily. Um, it's a long list, though, James.

James Cridland 38:33

It's a really long list. I think I what a clever idea. I've never seen this from an award company before. What a really clever idea because it's allowing anyone, anyone to say, oh, we're in the long list of the British Podcast Awards. Oh, aren't you fancy? Um We can't say that, James. And it's allowing, I mean, we can't because we didn't bother entering. But um, but for example, I know a very indie podcaster. She makes her own show. She's made it for the last four uh or five uh years. She started doing it in lockdown. It's a show called Walk the Pod uh by Rachel Wheely, who I used to work with once at Virgin Radio a long, long, long time ago. She's in this list. I mean, how excited must you be for a show that you literally make in your lunch break, as she does, um, for your show to be recognized in the British Podcast Awards. I think it's such a clever idea. So well done to the British Podcast Awards for releasing that. You will find that list uh on the Pod News uh website. You will notice um half of them are apparently independent uh titles and talent. So that's interesting to see. Um 53 nominations for the BBC, 11 for Audible, eight for audio always. How many for Goalhanger? Zero, because they did not enter, uh, they tell me. Um uh Global, I don't think entered, although uh apparently there's there are some shows of theirs in there. Um, but interesting to see that the UK's largest independent podcast company, Goalhanger, couldn't be bothered entering the British Podcast Awards. Um and I suppose, well, yeah, fair enough. Uh probably made sense too. Um so uh yeah, but that was uh that was very uh exciting to end up seeing. So congratulations uh to them. Um congratulations also, of course, to Sheffield, which is um uh where uh a lot of podcasting royalty was uh last weekend with crossed wires. Uh it's the UK Podcast Festival doubling its attendance this year to 50,000 attendees, uh, which is quite a thing, isn't it?

Sam Sethi 40:44

It is. Uh congratulations to Dino Sofus, friend of the show. We had him on a couple of weeks back talking about it. I must, I must, I must book to go next year. You should go as well, James. We should go there.

SPEAKER_06 40:55

Yeah, it's a long way to go.

James Cridland 40:56

It's a long way to go. I mean, I mean, maybe, yeah.

Sam Sethi 40:58

Your parents are around the corner, mate. You've got you've got no excuse. No, they're not.

SPEAKER_06 41:02

They're in South Wales.

Sam Sethi 41:03

Oh, they moved, did they? Yes, yes, bugger. Well, yeah, get an Uber, you'll be fine.

James Cridland 41:10

But if you want a full catch-up of uh what happened there, then you'll find plenty of pictures and videos and everything else on the PodMuse website as well. But uh yes, that looks like a really good uh event. Um, I I think there's some very clever um financials that go into how that event works as well. Uh, we shouldn't forget, by the way, the London Podcast Festival uh also happening uh between the 3rd and the 13th of September. I don't know if you saw how I mentioned it uh in in Pod News uh during the week. I I said live in the UK, love podcasts, scared of Sheffield, the London Podcast Festival.

Sam Sethi 41:52

Yes, north of Watford, do not go.

James Cridland 41:55

Yeah, exactly, exactly. But that's got that's gonna be a big uh a big show. Uh no such thing as a fish uh is there. Um Jamila Jamil uh will be there, other people are there too. Um uh and um it's still being held at King's Place, which is where the Guardian is, right next to the uh to King's Cross. Um and so uh yeah, I think it's a really good thing. So uh well worth keeping an eye on on that.

Sam Sethi 42:22

I think it's really interesting that the UK is punching above its weight, right? Yeah, I mean the London Podcast Show is now the best podcast show in the world, period. Um and I think you know what you know Dino and his friends and team have done in Sheffield's pretty amazing. It's it's mirroring the Edinburgh Festival, um, and I'm sure it'll be bigger next year. Um the London Podcast Festival, you know, it's as you said, it's in uh it's been going for quite a few years, and it's again a big festival. You asked the question, I think, on our secret WhatsApp group, what's the US equivalent to this? And it came back with crickets, really.

James Cridland 42:59

Yeah, there isn't one. There isn't one, which is really weird. If podcasting, you know, is supposed to be a US thing and owned by the US, um, even though uh in in my upcoming talk, hopefully, at Podcast Movement, I will be pointing out that the first podcaster in the world um from 1949 was a British person, um, uh which is which is partially going to be a bit of a joke, but nevertheless, it's kind of it's kind of a thing that I I argue. Anyway, um, in spite of all of that, there is no big podcast festival in the same way um in the US. And I find it fascinating. Now, what you would really need for this to succeed is you would need a friendly creator hub like Sheffield. So you'd need to find one of those in the US, probably Portland, I would guess, would would be your place. But anyway. Um, secondly, though, you would need massive support from a big public broadcaster, and that is, I think, uh Um the sticking point here, because really the reason why Crosswires does so well is that um it it's not a BBC event, but the BBC um piles a lot of its stuff in there. So there's lots of very big stars. So could you get something uh you know, there isn't really a BBC equivalent in the US, but could you get um APM and PRX and NPR all playing together, those sorts of people, um, so that you would have a tweed jacket explosion in uh Portland. Um, you know, I mean, maybe there's something there, and can you then do it um uh literally over three days, which is what Crosswired uh ended up doing? Um I mean that's a big thing to do. Um, but there really isn't an equivalent in the US, which is I've found surprising, and I think it's something that um you know, it's something that uh hey US, if you're so good, why don't you have uh this sort of event?

Sam Sethi 45:05

Isn't is South by Southwest turning into a podcast event, though?

James Cridland 45:10

I mean, South by Southwest is a is an everything event, yes. And so uh I I mean again, uh what is a podcast? Um uh so you know, yes, I suppose that you could look at South by Southwest being as part of this, but then you know, it would be suffocated under the South by Southwest mark. Um so you know, I mean, it's really sort of, you know, uh what is it, Comic-Con and that sort of thing uh in the US? Um resonate is kind of uh close-ish, but has other things there. Um there's a the there are film festivals which also have podcasts, you know, Tribeca being one of those. Um, you know, it's just really interesting, isn't it? That as you say, uh the UK seems to have the biggest and largest podcast festival, the biggest and largest um podcast um uh conference get-together thing, uh, you know, as well. And frankly, quite a lot of pretty good uh content, as well as um, you know, companies like Goalhanger, you know. I I I think the UK is doing some pretty impressive things. I find it fascinating. Um, so I'm uh uh speaking, I don't think it's been announced yet, but I'm speaking at the audio festival in the UK in early October. And, you know, again, they have deliberately changed their name there away from the radio festival to the audio festival so that they can be a bit more uh a bit more open armed to all audio people. Um, and again, I think that there's there's probably something there. Um, the radio industry isn't doing that in the US either. So yeah, fascinating.

Sam Sethi 46:50

I think they should call it Podcella. There you go. That's my excellent.

James Cridland 46:55

You and uh you you and uh uh Podchanner or Spotflix or uh you should you should go and buy podchanner.com and uh and waste your money on that as well. Yeah, again, you know, why not?

Sam Sethi 47:07

Um talking of events that are going on in the US though, um, Podcast Movement is going to be in September. Um they've opened the doors for voting. Voting for what, James?

James Cridland 47:18

Yes, so there's uh uh two things that they've ended up doing. One of them is uh opening uh the doors for voting for speaker sessions. So half of the sessions at Podcast Movement are going to be voted for by you, and you can vote um for them right now. Um you'll find links in the Pod News newsletter, of course. Um, and that is a really interesting way of working out um who the speakers are going to be. It's very transparent, uh, it's very straightforward, and you know, and away you go. Um, I can tell you who's currently leading at the moment. Um, stop chasing downloads, start building community is the number one. Lou Mongello, who has spoken at Podcast Movement before, he has over a hundred votes already as a big uh solo talk. Um uh also in there number two currently is Latin America is already bigger than US podcasting, um, which is something that we have covered on this uh very show. Um uh so that's quite nice. And then number three, stop thinking like just a podcaster, building a 360-degree creator business, which sounds like the sort of thing that you would be talking about. But anyway, this time it's Alison Marino uh and GoGo Zoga. Go go Zoga, what a great name! Go-go Zoga, Go go Zoga, brilliant. Anyway, uh so um so you can uh I mean maybe see those. So that's what's going on uh with half of the sessions at Podcast Movement. The other half of the sessions is going to be voted by some sort of independent review committee. Um, you know, all of these names on there.

Sam Sethi 48:59

Um anyone, anyone you might know?

James Cridland 49:03

Well, I know Lauren Passell from the International Women's Podcast Awards, of course. Um uh this is very clever because it's awards and events. People from awards and events has basically been added to this list, and a couple of journalists as well. Um, so um uh Amy from the Ambies and the Podcast Academy, of course, uh Ann Baird from Audio Fiction uh Conference, um uh from Podcast Review, which is an excellent um online uh publication, the editor of that, Alice Florence Orr, um and from Pod News. Oh, I've heard of that. I'm sure I'm sure I've heard of that. Um uh the editor of Pod News, James Crittham, that's me, uh, will also be on this uh committee as well. So um we get to choose the other 50%, basically. Um so yeah, I think it's uh I think it's gonna be very, very interesting.

Sam Sethi 49:54

I think the other name that stands out for me is Peter Lewis from South by Southwest. We just talked about you know podcast events and Brian Barletta, the uh president of podcast movement, is very keen to do stuff with South by Southwest. They've done that this year already. I wonder if there's some synergy that's gonna form there.

James Cridland 50:10

Yeah, I mean there may well be. There may well be. So I think, you know, I mean, the the uh Sounds Profitable has been at South by Southwest for many years. Last year, or this year I should say it was um branded podcast movement, but that's certainly a sounds profitable thing. And uh yes, uh all of that makes sense. Um, I think the the job that the committee is going to be doing is we are going to be uh there are downsides with a popularity contest, which is what this voting thing is. There's a downside with that, and the downside is that some of the underrepresented voices don't get mentioned, some of the people that um aren't as popular as some of the others, but nevertheless need their voice hearing, um, should be getting uh um you know their voice heard as well. And so all of that kind of stuff is very important, and so therefore, that's you know part of the uh reason why there is a committee there to basically combat the issues that you have with um voting, but there are also massive benefits that you have with voting as well. Um so I think it it'll be very interesting that seeing what the um you know what what actually comes out of all of this. Um and it should be a very uh it should be a fun uh time. So I'm looking forward to uh being there. I'm um also going to be at the sounds profitable bit uh for much of that, not all of that, um, because I'm also get this, get this, Sam. I'm also I'm also lecturing at a university. I should probably not say which one because it's probably not official yet.

Sam Sethi 51:44

Yeah, no, great. Well done you.

James Cridland 51:46

Um uh yes, and then I can and then I can claim that I'm a university lecturer in the US as well, which is um which is even more ludicrous than seeing it in uh the UK and in um uh and in and in Australia

The Tech Stuff

James Cridland 51:59

as well.

Human Announcer 51:59

The tech stuff on the Pod News Weekly Review.

James Cridland 52:03

Yes, it's the stuff you'll find every Monday in the Pod News newsletter. Here's where Sam talks technology.

Sam Sethi 52:07

Well, first of all, a little happy anniversary. It's the fifth anniversary of the first ever boostergram. Uh it happened this week.

James Cridland 52:15

Happy birthday, booster grams. Will it will it reach six? Doubtful. Anyway, happy birthday, happy birthday, booster grams. That's a lovely thing.

Sam Sethi 52:26

Now, um, there was a couple of things that I don't understand. There was a very nice man called Andrew Shell who posted on Mastodon about RSS Cloud Server version 4. Sorry to say I hadn't heard of versions 1, 2, or 3, uh, but version 4 now supports web sub notifications, the push technology that allows people to be pinged when a podcast has been updated. That's different to Podping. Um now, I recall you once telling me that within the original RSS 2.0 spec, uh Dave Weiner had put in a cloud server capability. Is this what this is? And this is now version 5.

James Cridland 53:09

This is what this is. Right. Yes, this is what this is. This uses um a uh RSS tag called cloud, which uh essentially points to um where the um uh where the update server is. Um uh and so this is in fact, even if you go and you have a look at Dave Wyner's stuff now, he still uses RSS Cloud as um as uh his sort of thing um uh to make that work. And he gets grumpy if you start talking about um about uh uh web sub. Um so uh yes, so all that RSS Cloud really is is it's a lightweight update notification system for the web that makes feed updates instantaneous, uh essentially. Um and so um yeah, that that that that's what that is. So why uh are you so excited about version 4.0?

Sam Sethi 54:04

I'm not it was just uh Andrew was excited, he put 4.0 out. He said, I spoke to Dave Jones in 2020, and look, I've just brought version 4. I went, boy, that was six years to get the version out.

James Cridland 54:15

Yes, yes, yeah, I'm not sure. Well, I'll tell you why you should be why you should be interested by it, because it is actually merging WebSub, which is the other uh equivalent of this. Uh it's m merging WebSub together to um to RSS Cloud so that they will actually just work. Um, so there's full compatibility there, which is uh quite nice. So that actually is interesting because that potentially means that it's more interesting to us in podcasting. And potentially is this the replacement to Podping? I mean, there are lots of reasons why Podping is a good thing, um, and Podping works fine. Um, but uh is there something else um that we can be um you know that we should have a look at uh uh here? There are various parts of Podping, for example, that aren't um uh particularly easy to code for, and the um having to run a blockchain and everything else is not a is not a particularly easy thing. So yeah, so it might be worthwhile having a look at.

Sam Sethi 55:18

Well, I think Pocket Cast, I mean I know TrueFans does, I I'm sure a couple of other apps do as well, have to support both Podping and Web Sub because we realized that just Podping on its own wasn't going to get us the updates we needed. So we supported both standards. Yeah, you might be right. I'll have a look at it. I'm not I'm not jumping into this um immediately, but yeah, it it was something that piqued my interest, but uh I needed to understand it better.

James Cridland 55:44

I should uh I should take a peek and see if I should be sort supporting it on the other side, supporting uh how to get updates into the into the RSS cloud, um, because I'm sure that there's something complicated that I have to do there as well.

Sam Sethi 55:56

So

Interview: Ryan Williams, adding metadata

Sam Sethi 55:58

now um moving on, uh a couple of weeks ago in Pod News Daily, you wrote a story about a car company called Car Curious. It's a podcast network about cars, and the person behind it's called Ryan Williams. He also put something in there called a proposal for a podcast annotation format, which piqued my interest because Apple earlier this year came out with something very interesting called Timed Links, which uses the transcript. Um uh and the basic idea behind that is that they are using Apple's AI to go and find entries for books or maybe a reference to a place or whatever, and then they link it to Apple only external sites, so it might be Apple Books or Apple Music, and it was very proprietary in that sense, but it was a really good idea, and I was hoping that there was going to be a more open standard for using transcripts. Now, uh I don't know what you think about this, James, but uh podcast annotations that seems to me to be a an alternative. I wouldn't say open because I don't know yet, but an alternative to timed links. What are your thoughts?

James Cridland 57:12

Yes, I mean it could well be used for timed links, it could be used for all um all sorts of things. The question I suppose is whether or not or not it needs to be different from podcast chapters, which are much the same sort of thing as well. Um, but the good news is that um uh you've you've ended up speaking to the to the uh person behind that, haven't you?

Sam Sethi 57:35

Yes, I thought I'd find out uh what Ryan was doing. So I started off actually asking first of all, who is Ryan Williams? What's his background in technology, and to tell me a little bit more, first of all, about Carl Curious.

SPEAKER_01 57:48

Yeah, for sure. So I've been developing software for upwards of 20, 25 years now. Self-taught developer, got into web development at the start, and then moved to the full stack, tech lead, engineering manager, all player coach type roles over the last decade across a number of industries: transportation, personal finance, telecom, and now in the medical space. And but over that time, I've always just been interested in it as a technologist with new emerging technologies. I've always been a podcast fan throughout the last two decades as a listener, and I've tinkered with my own products over the years as well and developing them. And as side projects go, we just experiment and see what kind of sticks as an personal interest and then see what can become interesting to the community at large. So a couple of my projects have been successful, most have not. And like on most entrepreneurs, that's kind of how it goes. And we'll see how Carcurious goes, but it's been fun to just kind of explore new technologies, new space, and new topics.

Sam Sethi 58:53

Cool. So I just want to clarify you're not a vibe code. Thank God for that. Right, moving on. Now, Carl Curious. You've mentioned it a couple of times, I've mentioned it a couple of times. What is Carl Curious?

SPEAKER_01 59:04

Yeah, so Carcurious is an automotive podcast platform and player. So two things really. The player experience is designed to provide a way for people to understand what car podcasters are listening to. I was trying to find an offline hobby last fall, and cars had always been an interest in mine, but I hadn't really spent a lot of time working on them or exploring it. So I wanted to kind of dig in a little more and kind of drive that offline off the computer. So I started listening specifically to car podcasts and to see what everybody was talking about, how they kind of got interested in this. But there were so many model codes, car codes, terms being discussed that I was like, I don't know what this is, I gotta go Google it, or what does this car look like? What's the history of this car? And I'm one of those nerds, I guess, that like after every movie, I go and like look at Wikipedia and understand, okay, what's the story of this movie? And maybe not always after the movie. So if what is that context kind of in line? But I just was like, is there anything out there that does this? What are the technologies that actually support it? And I didn't find a lot in the podcast space. Obviously, in video space, there are many precedents for contextual information. We have Amazon's X-ray video, even going back to like VH1 pop-up video and things like that. And then the second part of it is the platform itself. So, like you said, it's a network. So 300 plus automotive podcasts dedicated to this space. Because the other problem I was having with discovery, I found a few popular podcasts, but I'm covering the rest of them. And obviously, I'm not going to listen to 300 podcasts, but I just wanted to have a chance to discover what was in the network. And then we can get into a little bit about how discovery is more unlocked by the annotations as well. But those are kind of the two driving things. So just started with the website. There's a web-based player. I have the mobile player in test flight and working in and getting into the app store. But yeah, podcast, automotive podcast player and discovery platform is kind of how I think about what Car Curious is for either new car people or car enthusiasts.

Sam Sethi 1:01:02

Now, I've been talking about podcast networks for the last probably year, but certainly again, it's raising its head, which is the sum of the parts is greater than the whole. And the idea here is for me at least, anyway, that you could start the podcast network, Carl Curus in this case. You could invite others to join into that network. But the analytics, the follow accounts, the listen numbers, all of those metrics then could be aggregated and taken to advertising agencies. So your $14 CPM could become a $300 CPM, right? And dynamic ad insertion, I assume, you could then have that one ad play across the whole network and then split the monies out based on listener counts. All those things, right? And that's how I see it. And I think that's where you're going with it. So it's really cool to see that. But one thing, because I'm a technologist like you, that really piqued my interest then was this thing called podcast annotations. Now, to set the scene, over the last couple of years, podcasting 2.0 has evolved with the namespace, adding transcripts, chapters, links within the chapters, cover art within the chapters themselves. So imagery can change as you go through the podcast. Apple then added something called timed links, which are hyperlinks basically for discovery within the transcript. So there might be a book reference or a place reference or whatever it may be. And although that's a bit of a proprietary solution, it's a clever solution because it just links back to Apple landing sites, you know, Apple Books or Apple Music. And I've been hunting for an open version of that and been thinking about it. And so explain to me first of all what is podcast annotations, where and how can I use it, and then let's investigate what I think it might be the marriage between what I'm trying to find and what maybe you're developing.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:58

Yeah, so at its core, it represents like an entity at a specific time in the episode. So there's a timestamp and there's a entity description attached to a specific reference in the podcast. And this is all built on those technologies that you mentioned. So transcripts, number one, none of this happens without a transcript. So whether it's the transcripts is provided in the feed, which makes my class certainly a lot better, or I have to do a transcription, sorry, to get that text. So number one is getting that text in, and number two is making sure the text is mostly accurate. So again, there's a whole lot of like transcription issues related to that. Again, that's why it's ideal when transcripts are done upstream. So once we have that, then we can start to understand like what are the pieces of the podcast episode. And really, there are a couple of inspirations here. Like several of the podcasts would put just timestamps in their show notes or the summary tag or description tag, referencing, like if we look at like if you're familiar with Bring a Trailer, which is a popular automotive auction site in the US and Europe, their podcast has like links to their auctions at times in the episode. And I wanted to render that visually because I wanted to go see those listings have hundreds of pictures for that car. So I think that's a very strong visual addition to the player. So building on that, so transcripts are key. Chapters, interestingly enough, I did just post some data. Like only 10% of the podcasts that we track have like podcasting 2.0 chapters tags. And that's mostly driven by BuzzSprout. I know is a sponsor of yours as well. So get up plug-in.

Sam Sethi 1:04:37

We need renewals.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:39

So definitely credit to BuzzSprout for driving this. And one of the things here with this whole spec is I'm new to the space. I don't have all the answers. I'm just trying to see, like, I had this need of I wanted to extract an entity at a specific point in time and display that in the player. And I didn't see like a spec that really spoke to that. I know there is chapters, and I know James has advocated like chapters, like super chapters, extending that. Haven't definitely haven't ruled that out. Like that's a strong possibility. I just want to understand from the community and the other people in the space, like yourself, like that sparseness versus like how many entities are we talking? So when we're talking about like Carcurious, I have like 50 to 150 annotations per episode. And a chapter is maybe a handful. So it really comes down to like that density and if we need that distinct thing. But again, going back to that other original inspiration, so many of these people, producers, podcasters, are just putting it in the show notes or the description, like not even in a chapters format today. And speaking to the time links as well, I think we see several kinds of ways that this is emerging, right? But like, but not like structured specifically to extract that key information. And I think there's benefits to once we have that extraction, that annotation, sure, it's attached to that episode and we can visually represent it and we can pop it up in the player. I think your episode last week talked about the glancing. economy. I think that was on one of the panels. And this is the interesting alternative to a YouTube dominated space. It's like if I can have that that podcast episode and it's popping something up and I can glance at it, then that's gonna meet me where I am when I'm doing the dishes or out on a walk or what have you. And so like you said, the time links are another indication that this is a need, but it is locked into the Apple ecosystem. And I guess the other kind of ecosystem format is like, what is Spotify doing? Because they are the dominant, I think they have like 20% of the feeds on Car Curious and like none of them have chapters and it's a very locked in environment and they're gonna do their version of this, but like we can certainly try to make that experience a little more cross-platform friendly, I guess.

Sam Sethi 1:06:46

Yeah, you you talked about people putting into show notes and I think what you've got is podlove chapters which is what Spotify and YouTube use, which is fundamentally a bit weird. It's uh a German initiative that came out left field and Spotify adopted it and YouTube have adopted it. So apps like TrueFans My Own app, for example, has to support both Podlove chapters so we hunt for them in the description when we know there isn't a chapter in the chapters section for the namespace. So we balance that. But it would be lovely if Spotify would adopt namespace 2.0 chapters. They have adopted an element of the namespace. So it's possible. But I want to go back to the annotations there's two questions that are burning in my head. The first one is how do you put the annotations in there? Are you talking about density? I struggle post show and I'm like oh my god I've got 20 chapters now I've got I've got 20 bits of image art. Now I've got to find these URL blah blah blah and that's 20 and that that's probably a really intense piece of work in the sense that most people only do two or three or five. So 20 is a lot. So if you're now talking about 120 or how do you do them is it by hand or is there some sort of automated mechanism that you can use?

SPEAKER_01 1:08:02

Yeah so it's an automated pipeline. And so going back to kind of like the entry point is a transcription. So once we have that in the system then there's a two-layer pass. When I started out one of my hypotheses here was like maybe AI can do this alone. I was quickly disabused of that notion that LLMs are not strong enough to recognize all of these concepts and cars and stuff on their own. So the two passes are one I ended up building a car database with all kinds of aliases and mention patterns and a fuzzy matcher that uses that is this an ontology that you've built yeah I think that would be a good way to describe it. And so as the pipeline kind of scans the transcript looking for mentions of any of the cars it can extract the annotations for most of the cars without AI or without an LLM. And really I think the focus is on the cars because I think that's what people are most interested in. It's why YouTube is such a dominant like experience for car media at the moment is just being able to kind of have that visual. But going back to the kind of origin story like there's other things I want to learn about cars other than just seeing the cars. So the LLM makes the second pass with a very iterative prompt that I've been working on for a long time to try to get that key information extracted into a format that I can pull. And so I tried local LOMs I've tried openAIs tried Gemini's currently doing open AI's kind of batch on five four mini I believe so the quality of the annotations is going to depend strongly on the AI but this is also a very new space right and I think the models will get better at understanding this and I think there is even some advocation for this could all live in a player at some point we don't need these pipelines maybe at some point but my experience was between the transcript not being the super cleanest needing those aliases and that specific corpus of cars was that it kind of had to be human in the loop right it couldn't be completely done with the LLM to generate the annotation. So once we have the annotations then we can sync them to the player because the annotation's been extracted at the time and so that's kind of where I started I need to sync these so I created this like JavaScript library for the web because I was trying to like demonstrate it on the web first that synced to the player and it turned out that I could use something very similar to the chapters 2.0 tag. If I had a a podcast call and annotations, I could pull that down in the library and then sync it to the audio being played at the same time and I've got a few different players on the web like the kind of the legacy where as the show proceeds it just scrolls down the page and shows the photo and the photos are mostly pulled from Wikipedia at the moment or Wikimedia Commons with citation and trying to capture that. I think long term I would like to see the podcasts themselves and users contribute images that we can also have like a nice car photo database as well. And then if it's not a car, if it's like a term or a topic then it just floats a little description or context as you go through and then there's a more immersive player that kind of has a stage and this will be what the mobile app is where there's a single stage as the episode plays things pop onto the screen to show that context.

Sam Sethi 1:11:12

Yeah I call it cinema mode but yeah stage is cool cool as well. I like that too yeah I think I like this and you've also put out a GitHub for those who want to know more about it and we'll put the URL in our show notes and obviously we'll talk about it in a minute. So the annotations are very cool. I think going back to Apple's time links fundamentally each one of their endpoints whether it's the Apple books or the Apple music is their ontology. It's a database of items terminologies bits that they can then reference in the transcript which is what you're doing vertically for cars. So it begs the question do we have to do this for other verticals? And probably the answer is yes and it's interesting that you mentioned that the LLMs aren't really ready yet because I know when I posted it to Mastodon there was people like John Sperlock and Nathan Gathright very intelligent people in my humble opinion but they were going oh we don't need all of this we just need LLMs and I'm like Really are we ready for prime time with those? I'm not sure and your work is telling us that it's not quite ready. So the question then I'm just one person but other people may have other experiences so I'm fine but you rolled your sleeves up and got in the weeds with it so if anyone's got in the weeds and want to come on and talk about it as well more than welcome you know where me and James are.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:24

Now you say it's the side project and that's what it is do you see any form monetization from the way that you put the annotations can the annotations be monetized in any way have you thought that far forward yeah for the annotations specifically I think not as much but even what you were kicking off of this interview talking about that network effect. So combine the two and I think there is something there potentially the biggest challenge I think is just getting people interested in the product to see if if there's enough there to kind of develop an audience around I think there could be opportunities in terms of advertising certainly selling cars or doing some kind of car lead gen is definitely a very lucrative thing to do in this space, I'm thinking and that would fit right into that annotation right if you've got a car annotation and you're interested in buying one of those that would certainly fit in. So as a technologist I've certainly been more focused on the tech up till now and like developing an audience in the user base. But I think remaining flexible on how we can monetize that is going to be key. And I also thought about the hard thing with podcasts right but the obvious thing with podcasts is you're gonna listen on your phone, right? You're not gonna listen on the web and I know I developed the web first as a prototype.

Sam Sethi 1:13:43

So right I did the web first I went that way it's easier.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:46

Honestly trying to design for a single pixel when it's small on a mobile is so much easier on the web but go on yes yep yep so that's where do you do a paid app and subscriptions and all that kind of stuff. But I think ultimately that that trade-off of audience size and if we can get to some scale then certainly those kind of sponsored annotations or the other elements of advertising will probably be naturally more of a podcast play. Interestingly enough one of the biggest technical challenges and maybe you're much more familiar with this than I am is the dynamic uh inserts that are already a key part of the podcast ecosystem and how challenging that makes syncing up transcripts and annotations in the playback. So there has been I know Marco Armet uh from Overcast has has done a lot of work in this space and I kind of read some of his stuff and then I've done additional trying to understand and fingerprint various parts of audio and sync them up so the player can get on track it's very easy for them to drift and that will create a very poor user experience. So that's kind of why I come back to the tech part there's still some tech and user experiences challenges to nail and make it that great product that people will come back to, I think one of my other bugbears is that there are three separate containers for information regarding podcasts.

Sam Sethi 1:15:00

So you got your show notes then you got chapters then you've got a transcript and Boss Sprout recently did something that I was so happy about which is they put the chapter titles at the sound point above the transcript so they embedded the within the transcript which is just basically a word document and I just thought that was so smart and then you could collapse the transcript down and open it up blah blah blah and I still don't understand why you need all three so I've always for a number of years said to James I really wish we just had one document that attached and then you can evolve that document with annotations and you can evolve that document with other things right person tags so you can see the image of the person which we do and all sorts of things. One of the last questions I want to ask you Ron have you seen a secondary network effect no pun intended from annotating a single podcast and then finding that there's discovery within other podcasts within the network?

SPEAKER_01 1:15:53

Yeah great question I think I I would start it off with the cars themselves as somebody who is interested in like in a specific car brand Porsche BMW or a model 911 M3 if you want to find other shows that are talking about that the discovery today is just very difficult. You can Google it you can search an Apple Podcast on Spotify you'll probably come up with some episodes but it's going to be just a varying degree of quality on your results there. And so with Car Curious now you can go to a specific car page and see all the episodes that have talked about that and that unlocks that discovery element to see who are the other podcasters that are mentioning these, what are the other cars that are often mentioned with these. So if you want to find like related cars, we can jump off to those points as well. And then like you said like the people another thing I'm working on is unlocking that guest network. So if I can extract the people that are the guests, which looks like a lot of thought and work has gone into doing some guest tagging, but support for guest tags is also low right now. And so extracting the guests from the text and the transcript and then seeing like oh what other shows were these guests on and then places as well if you're big into the Portland car scene, if you're big into the London car scene, where are the other mentions of those references being brought to life. So that's the discovery element and I know there was some feedback to that effect on the Mastodon post as well we can really unlock some of those things if we have this common kind of entity or annotation representing the person or place or the thing.

Sam Sethi 1:17:25

Yeah I'm very interested in what you're doing I'm going to be following along I think the annotations is a great enhancement to the transcript I think it's another form as you talked about the glimpse networking capability and I'm audio listening but I can glimpse up and see something. If I want to as a developer find out more about this where on GitHub can I go where would you send me?

SPEAKER_01 1:17:45

Yeah go to github.com slash carcurious and there are a couple of repos there. One is the podcast annotationjs repo and the spec is in there but then there's a whole implementation example as well if you want to play with that in players and I'll have a swift one here shortly as well to kind of be the mobile equivalent library and then getcarcurious.com is carcurious and slash Ryan Wi on GitHub as well.

Sam Sethi 1:18:10

Nice.

James Cridland 1:18:10

Ryan thank you so much nice idea loving how you're implementing it we'll be following along great well it's great to be here Sam appreciate you having me on

Inbox

James Cridland 1:18:18

booster booster grand super comments zaps fan mail fan mail and voicemail voicemail our favorite it's the Pod News Weekly review inbox yes so many different ways to get in touch with us fan mail by using the link in our show notes or boosts or emails and we share any money that we make as well we've got uh what have we got we've got uh a couple of messages here um uh the first message is from Martin Lindescog uh and he says is Elsie added to the split no um I like uh uh no no we didn't do any of that um I like swing jazz music uh Martin also says uh that will mean no nothing at all unless you heard the end of last week's episode uh he also asks Sam how was your holiday?

Sam Sethi 1:19:10

It was great um any any parent knows when their children have flown the nest any time you can get back with your children is a bonus.

James Cridland 1:19:19

Somebody said something really scary that you spend 85% of your time with your child before they're 18 and only the other 15% for the rest of their life because they're off of money you know so enjoy it while you've got them but uh yeah so it was great to have both the girls with us we just did nothing we sat by the pool we went to the beach we ate we drank we played cards and it was lovely very nice and you went to Majorca uh which is very good uh how was the water in Majorca the water in Majorca yes uh you'd have to play the ad for people to understand that one wouldn't you would I would I the the clip from Mary was it Mary Poppins or was it uh yes it was Mary Poppins I thought yeah uh no it was my fair lady oh okay my fair lady there you go and then we got uh 1600 sats from Seth Goldstein Philly FTW what's that a reference yes Philly Philly for the win uh it's because uh I was talking to Elsie about when I first met uh uh and uh that was in Philly in the um in the market next to the uh tediously boring hotel that podcast movement was in that year um and uh where I met um Elsie and Rob and um for a podcast that they used to do is uh the phrase that I used so uh and uh that was all that was all very good uh we've also had a voicemail and it's another Australian voicemail here is Will Clark hello James and Sam Will Clark here from not so sunny Melbourne Australia I figured I couldn't let the clerks of Adelaide have all the voicemail fun.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:59

As a history podcaster it's great to see that James is joining the bandwagon with a session on the history of podcasting at podcast movement and I have already voted for it. But that did get me wondering if there was a way to know which power supporters had sessions that were currently up for voting and how best to be able to support our fellow power supporters. I've got a session myself called From Passion to Profit Crossing the chasm to full time creation. If that sounds interesting please do give it a vote and likewise let me know who else I can support in the podcast weekly review community. Thanks for all your work gentlemen and hopefully see you in New York.

James Cridland 1:21:38

It's always good to hear from another Australia uh another Australian accent um so excellent 53 votes so far um for uh that particular session which is nice how many have I got sixteen uh so uh yes so there we go uh um but uh yes um uh no and Will actually said uh in an in an email to me he said um I'll tell you what why don't we have a WhatsApp group for the power supporters what do you think of that okay I'll take on that task yes I'll I'll create that I can I can hear that was what the uh request was no it's a good idea I think that's quite a nice idea isn't it yeah one more place that would be a fun that would be a fun a fun I know one more place but uh you know uh a WhatsApp group or or a signal group no no no what do you think just no one in the world knows that's where you and I hang out so no we're not signaling more people that place signal group okay whatsapp group then well thank you for the idea uh much appreciated

Marker 14

James Cridland 1:22:47

and slightly late but uh still we managed to get it in uh another voicemail hi James welcome back Sam it's Neil Apodnos here Neil Vellio and well done to LC Escobar on last week's episode obviously you covered the podcast Atlas and for me the stat about 78 to 55 in screen free moments which is obviously when people are commuting or the between meetings maybe going out for a walk to me that is beautiful data because I've been preaching to the choir as long as I've had breath that that's exactly how our ideal listeners are consuming their content.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:21

Obviously we're very niche towards the B2B market but as I always say to people these decision makers are not watching your show on the sofa at half past seven with spaghetti sauce around their chops and the kids screaming about wanting to watch Peppa Pig. So all that video first pressure that Ariel called out in that panel yeah I agree for certainly for B2B podcasters it's mostly a distraction from what actually builds that relationship. So um yeah great point there.

Sam Sethi 1:23:50

Well what else has happened for you? Well I've got a bit of a mad week this week uh I've got sadly one funeral to go to on Saturday I've got one graduation to do on Friday which is my daughter who's graduating from Birmingham University. And uh last night uh because we're recording this on Thursday but it will be out on Friday last night I went to Henley Festival which I always do we take the boat up on the river and we go and listen to whatever artist is there. We take the boat up on the river to meet the fellatilla yes yes it's very posh um but it's lovely and um we have rose all the way up and it's lovely. You could have a beer if you wanted James when you come over nice but um it's lovely to do and it takes a it takes about an hour or two hours depending on on um the locks that you have to go through.

James Cridland 1:24:39

But anyway long story short it was Boy George last night who was rubbish um he did one track that everyone knew we were all excited because we were playing come a chameleon yeah do you want to do you really want to hurt me no he didn't do that one he did a he did a David Bowie cover and he did a load of Bob Marley reggae and we're like nobody's come here for that mate read the rule but um I got home for three o'clock in the morning and I then played paddle this morning at seven so my own fault I've had your own fault yes three hours the world's smallest barley in over here but yes uh so that's been my week wow okay um the other thing I've been dealing with is people who don't understand RSS and it really annoys me because I get so many people going why's my podcast appeared in your app I didn't ask for it and it's like oh yes do you understand how RSS works but I've got to say that nicely other than condescendingly so yes um that's a page there's a page all about this on the PodUs website oh right I'm finding that I'm pointing it to them yes because I absolutely linked to it and I and and it basically says if you send us a deer a DMCA request to get your podcast taken off then obviously I'll take your podcast off but secondly I will make fun of you mercilessly because you do not understand how podcasting works um uh yes no it's uh it's a real frustration isn't it real frustration and then while I was away um Mo, my CTO was busy so uh we've updated premium RSS to support both L402 and F402 so lightning payments and uh fiat currency payments which is great because we did that as an app but we're now doing it as a host so that's great and more to come on that I won't go into more detail here.

Sam Sethi 1:26:28

We added cross promotions which is not the same as adding to the audio what we do is if you've claimed a podcast on TrueFans we then show an advert in the second slot of a podcast that you're visiting and we say would you like to have your podcast listed here and then there's a request button which then goes to the person's podcast page who can then accept or reject it and you can choose the duration and the amount of money you're willing to pay that podcaster to have your podcast promoted on their page. So for example if somebody wanted to promote on Pod News Weekly Review we would get a request um you or I would then accept or reject it and that promo would sit there with their cover art and their latest episode uh showing in slot two of our podcast page. So that's what we're doing there. Nice um we built a gifting service for ourselves so we were onboarding a few people and we wanted to gift them uh some hosting one month three months six months or a year and I thought well actually why can't we give that as a feature to fans so fans can now go on to a podcast page look at the merch tab and then they can gift uh hosting obviously you have to be hosted on true fans so it would make sense for you James for someone to gift you three months of TrueFans hosting you're not going to switch but if you are already hosted on TrueFans then in the merch store Or you will now have the option as a fan to gift your favourite creators free hosting.

James Cridland 1:28:06

Nice. Well, there you go. That sounds like a smart plan.

Sam Sethi 1:28:10

And then the last two things very quickly, um, one thing that I want to do is build a no one asked for this, by the way, so God knows why I did it. But um topic suggestions. The idea is that now on your podcast page, fans can go there and suggest topics they might want you to talk about, and other fans can then vote up those topics. So you as a creator might say, Why don't you give me some ideas of what you want to hear from me? Fans go and do that, and other fans can vote it, and maybe then the creator says, Yeah, that's a topic I'll cover in my next episode. So we've built that, and finally, pod roles. We we like the idea of pod roles. We we, you know, we've got one here for Pod News Weekly Review, but we wanted to also have an option where a fan can request to be in our pod roll. So again, we don't have to accept it, but it's a nice way to interact with your community. So now on your pod roll page, you'll be able to send a request to your favourite podcaster to be added to their pod roll. Okay, very good, very good.

James Cridland 1:29:13

Gosh, well, yeah, you've been busy. I should go away more often, really, shouldn't I? Yes, that's usually how these are. And then the last one. I'll tell you what, I'll tell you what, it's because he he's achieved so much because he hasn't had you on the phone. Exactly. That's what's going on there. Exactly.

Sam Sethi 1:29:30

Shut up, I'm trying to do some work. Yes, go on, Claude, get on with it. Um now the last thing we we had Liam Hefnan on the show from Mercury, who created something called the Independent Podcasters Day on the 4th of July. Uh, it was a way of promoting indie podcasters, and it was a good initiative. I know Pod News got behind it. I know TrueFans did, I know quite a few other people did as well. So well done, Liam. What we did is we created a dedicated page. So you can go on to TrueFans and you can now go on to the indie podcast page and see all the podcasts that were being promoted, and they're in a playlist. Um, so yeah, well done to Liam. Uh, and that's our little bit of support. So that's what we did. So, James, what's happened for you while I was away?

James Cridland 1:30:17

Um, well, I mean, I uh I I have uh so two things has happened. Uh, one thing has happened is that I finally got my solar installed, uh, which is very exciting.

Sam Sethi 1:30:26

Um I know a number of people have asked me about that. They wanted to make sure you're okay, so that's good news.

James Cridland 1:30:31

Yes, so that's been very exciting. Actually, there's one bit that hasn't quite been installed yet. So um that is coming tomorrow morning at seven in the morning. Brilliant. Um, which is which is the uh the plug for the car. But um if you ignore that bit, then everything else has been in there. And um it what has been fascinating is I I've gone from spending a fair amount on electricity um to spending literally nothing. I I've spent probably 50 cents most days on electricity. Because the um because it's charging a battery, but I worked out how to charge the battery um during the three free hours of electricity that I get given as part of my um electricity thing. So during those three hours, the the system is is is set to pull as much as you can from the grid and charge the battery up. Um and it's it's been really interesting to play around with that and to see what I can do and to see how much you know uh how much I can take from the grid without the electricity company moaning uh and all that kind of stuff. So that's been fascinating to uh play around with that. And uh hopefully the um the last bit will be first thing in the morning tomorrow when the man comes comes in with my uh plug for the car, which will enable me to basically plug the car in and go, if there's any spare after you've charged the battery and after you've you know done dealt with the house, if there's any spare, please could you put it in the car rather than set it back to the grid? Because I earn virtually nothing from that. So um, yeah, so that's been that's been fun to do. Um very much. Very good question for you.

Sam Sethi 1:32:11

Yes. I'm sure you have a spreadsheet. What was the amortization period of the cost of the solar panels before you broke even?

James Cridland 1:32:19

Uh it's very difficult to answer that question because um uh because obviously, you know, the price of electricity changes a lot, um, and you're never you're never quite sure. Um, but um, I mean I could probably work out that you know, I mean, uh and also of course I didn't pay for most of the solar because most of the solar is um because I paid for the solar originally, um, and then there was a massive hailstorm uh and there were and there were holes in the solar system. So therefore I've paid quite a small amount in comparison, um, because I've up I've upgraded it, but most of it was insurance. So it's um so it's an interesting one. But what I what I can tell you is when I got the solar originally in 10 years ago or nine nine years ago, um, I think I paid for it within six years easily.

Sam Sethi 1:33:16

Um that's your amortization period.

James Cridland 1:33:18

Yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah. But um, yeah, so it's it's gonna be fascinating seeing. But I I think having a battery um uh is is a game changer. The the only other thing that you notice when when you've got a battery is you notice how big the battery is in the car. Because the battery for the entire house um is 20 kilowatt hours, right? So you know, 20 sounds like a big number, right? The one in the car is 64. So the one in the car is considerably bigger, three times bigger than the one that's actually powering the entire house. Um, and you suddenly realize how much electricity uh EVs use because they've got to, you know, move this a ton of metal around. Um, and so you suddenly realize, wow, it's uh it's a very different world than the entire house. But uh yeah, so it's been really interesting, sort of playing around with that and um doing all of the uh home assistant stuff, you know, and all of that, which I've nearly got working correctly.

Sam Sethi 1:34:21

Yeah, we we've got um an EV or a hybrid, and there was a recall on it by Jaguar Land Rover, and the cost of a battery replacement I was told was 11,000 pounds.

James Cridland 1:34:33

Oh yeah, yeah, crazy high number. I mean it's the engine, isn't it? It's it's it's the it's the thing that makes it go. So yes, yeah.

Sam Sethi 1:34:41

Thank God it was on warranty.

James Cridland 1:34:43

Yeah, well, yeah, exactly. Exactly. No, it's um yeah, it's it's been so it's been interesting playing around with that. So that's been one thing. Uh and the other thing that I've been doing this week is mostly spending it in bed uh because I ended up catching the worst cold in the world. I can feel it coming on this time last year last week with Elsie. I could feel it coming on, but I thought, oh, I should be all right. Um, and uh I was just so Friday's Pod News. If you want to have a look at uh at uh what pod news looks like if I spend the bare minimum amount of time doing it, then Friday's Pod News was it. It went out with the wrong artwork because I was so um I uh because I was running so much of a temperature I didn't even know, you know, I messed that bit up. Um and it was just you know four very quick, four very quick stories, which is the minimum that the template needs. I have to have four stories. Right. And that and that was it. And that was just sort of right, pile that out, um, and uh, you know, and and get uh and get that done as quickly as possible so I can go back to my sick bed. The perils of of having uh of having a single person business uh is I'd also say the wife's away uh and you're on dodgy takeaways, it might have something to do with it. I mean, uh to be fair, it's probably because uh yeah, because I've not been bothering to cook for myself, because why would you? Yeah. And so I've been uh and so I've been having you know uh the ready meals and stuff, and it's probably something to do with that. So uh yeah, who knows? But anyway, um that's that really. And I uh that's it for this week. Uh all of our podcast stories taken from the Pod News daily newsletter at podnews.net.

Sam Sethi 1:36:26

Uh you can give us feedback using the Buzz Proud fan mail like Will did. Uh voicemails are really good. In our show notes, you'll find a link, or become a monthly power supporter like the 24power supporters at weekly.podnews.net. And you too might be able to join the Secret New WhatsApp group I haven't performed yet.

James Cridland 1:36:42

Yes, our music is from TM Studios. Our voiceover is Sheila D. Our audio is recorded using Clean Feed. We edit with Hindenburg, and we're hosted and sponsored by Buzz Sprout. Start podcasting, keep podcasting.

Human Announcer 1:36:54

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