Jordan: 0:00

You remember last time that Kevin said he was gonna blow our mind?

Kevin: 0:03

I don't remember what did I do last time.

Alban: 0:05

I said I'm gonna my memory was that it didn't really blow our mind, but now I can forget what it is.

Jordan: 0:10

He's like are you guys ready for this? And we're like okay, here we go.

Kevin: 0:19

Kevin, you have something for us. What is it? Yeah, it's more visual, though.

Alban: 0:23

Look here's my mic, that's an SM7B that has not connected anything.

Kevin: 0:29

Oh, the earthworks ethos is back. Yes, it's back, baby.

Alban: 0:34

I think I could have known If you'd have quizzed us on it. I think I would have known, because your voice doesn't have that overdone bass at the bottom end.

Kevin: 0:41

Overdone vocal fry. I've been working on my vocal fry. Isn't it like the opposite of vocal fry?

Alban: 0:46

I don't know, I don't really know what vocal fry is. I don't either. It's interesting to me that there's this thing that really bothers some people and I have. No, I really don't understand what it is. I don't know how to explain it.

Jordan: 0:58

A lot of people, especially on the western side, like where I'm at, have vocal fry. It's the very like Kardashian when you talk like this and it's really hard for me. I do it all the time and I can hear it when I'm editing it and I cannot stand it because sometimes, especially if I'm very fatigued, my voice kind of go down like this and then there's this fry sound.

Kevin: 1:19

It just kind of gets raspy at the bottom a little bit.

Alban: 1:23

We do have that in the south. We call that wine, I think.

Kevin: 1:27

Yeah, I don't know if we talked about it on the show or not, but I'm a fan of their Earthworks Ethos microphone bought it maybe six months ago. Alvin was upset because he's the one who found it first and he's like that's awesome. Then all of a sudden I popped up on the next episode and had one Something like that Wait, I have to add a little bit to this story.

Alban: 1:45

I said, kevin, this microphone looks awesome, we got to try it and you go, you won't like it. We have tons of them at church and they're really not that great.

Kevin: 1:53

No, no, no, I didn't say we had it at church. I just said you won't like it because it's a condenser. And I had not done my research and realized that they have, like finally tuned this condenser to actually perform more like a dynamic mic. Oh, I didn't know that.

Jordan: 2:05

I didn't know that.

Kevin: 2:06

So I dismissed Alvin's find right away. And then I found I stumbled upon that footnote and I was like, oh, I'm going to give it a try. And then he was really mad what? That's my mic, what are you doing? So anyway, I gave him my mic because the black one went on sale Again. He found that the black one went on sale, so I ordered the black one for myself, gave him mine and then the black one came and it was defective and I couldn't use it. So the last couple of episodes I've been back on a SM7B, which is great mic but just doesn't really work great for my voice. Anyway, the whole story is that Earthworks Ethos customer support is awesome. I shot him an email, they sent me a form, filled it out and shot off the mic to him. They paid for the return shipping and then they sent me a brand new one and it works great. So if you have any concerns about how their customer service is, they're awesome, they're great.

Alban: 2:51

Kevin, the matte black one, because I knew that you wanted matte black. There was no way that you preferred the silver, but the silver was like half price for a while.

Kevin: 3:00

They dropped the price. First of all, it was $800, and nobody that I know is paying $800 for a microphone.

Jordan: 3:05

Yeah.

Kevin: 3:06

And then they dropped it to $400, which is still way too much to pay for a microphone. But after it was $800, you're like, oh, that's so cheap. Now they just totally sucked us into buying it. But whatever, we had Amazon credits and we bought it from there. But they never dropped the price on the black one until recently. So now the black one is the same price, though Now we have one of each. So somehow they still got $800 out of us.

Jordan: 3:28

Would you say it's good at blocking out, Because you said it acts like a dynamic mic even though it's condenser. I love the tonality of condenser mics, but I don't live in a place where I can really have a condenser mic because there's so much ambient noise.

Kevin: 3:40

Yeah, it's pretty good. I mean, my home studio is pretty well treated, maybe a little better than what it looks like Albin's is, but it works fine in here. I imagine it would work fine in our studio in the office. It's definitely not like Q2U or ATR 2100X, but the SM7B that I was using I would say it's similar to that because that you have to crank the gain up so much on that mic. It's like they call it a gain hungry mic. You have to crank it up so much that it ends up not really feeling like a dynamic mic. Anyway, it ends up picking up a lot of background noise. So I'd say it's in the same ballpark. So if you have an SM7B and that works for you and you want to try something else out, this might be a good fit.

Alban: 4:15

Kevin, last week you were talking about how manifestos have gotten a bad rap. You know what else has gotten a really bad rap? Misinformation has become a pretty big problem on social media, obviously like election interference, kgb, all this stuff.

Kevin: 4:30

Is there a lot of misinformation about the KGB recently.

Alban: 4:33

No, I think the KGB are like the misinformationers. They're the ones doing it, at least in the olden days, but now you know who else has joined their ranks? I don't. This is concerning because we work with her. Jordan is now the source of misinformation. We were alerted on Twitter and there was some misinformation in our last episode. Jordan, would you like to clarify?

Jordan: 5:00

It wasn't exactly misinformation.

Kevin: 5:03

I think that I just that's exactly what somebody who was spreading misinformation would say 100%.

Alban: 5:09

Yeah, 100%, kevin, I totally agree.

Jordan: 5:11

You know, listening back, when we were discussing the Kids Podcast apps, I had talked about Kids Listen. I said that it's a network and a community of podcasters and I wasn't quite clear.

Alban: 5:25

I also remember you saying it cost $75 to get your podcast listed and then and join the community. I feel like I was deceived a little bit, because then I went on a little bit of a rant about how bad that was.

Jordan: 5:36

I am so sorry you did. I completely led you astray. I am so sorry. No, it's true you pay $75, but it's not just to get into the app, it's also to be included in their community of like-minded podcasters in the niche and there is value to being in a community of podcasters that can lift each other up and collaborate. And Kids Listen actually does a lot of work in the kids and family space, so I wasn't super clear on that and I take full responsibility for it.

Kevin: 6:11

Okay, so Stoopkid Stories reached out to us on Twitter and clarified this for us, and we appreciate that. Thank you so much, and I just want to make sure that everyone understands, because this has been clarified for us. This is exactly what Stoopkid Stories wrote on Twitter that we aren't just an app. We're an organization of kid podcast creators who advocate for high quality content, and Kids Listen is a space for those in this niche to connect and grow with each other. So that's exactly what Kids Listen is and we thanks for the clarification. We love interacting with our audience.

Alban: 6:40

Yeah, another little piece of follow up we got from Twitter this week was from Twilozone Media and we're having this conversation about a bunch of new Apple Podcast categories getting their own rankings and their own lists. And they just reached out to me and said talking about categories and rankings in your last episode of BuzzCast, how about? This is a source of frustration. That's sitting at number 62 in a category and they've only released a one minute trailer and that category was TV and film and it had been over a month with just a trailer sitting there. So I feel like that kind of lends a little bit of evidence to why Apple maybe a bit reluctant to have these like giant two top 200 lists for so many categories If something can be all the way up there at 63 and only have a trailer.

Jordan: 7:24

Well, Apple, they disclosed what went into their algorithm a while ago, didn't they?

Alban: 7:30

Yeah, the algorithm. They've talked about what goes into it, but I think that there's still a bit of. There's just not a massive amount of high quality shows in some of these categories and they're not growing, they're not getting new subscribers, they're not getting big listen through rates, and so I just think that there are times, even in something as popular as TV and film, that something can just be a one minute trailer and if they got a good promo boost and a handful of people subscribe, it still can kind of skyrocket up this charts all the way to 63 and hang out there. And you know, if you're a podcaster who's been there for years and years doing your show, you might be a little bit bummed to see this thing passed me and there's not even an episode there yet. Yeah, what's going on over there at Cohost AI? Kevin?

Kevin: 8:17

So there are some new AI-generated helpful bits that are getting added to everyone's Cohost suggestions that when you upload an episode and it runs through with the AI system, you've always been getting or since launch you've been getting title suggestions, descriptions, chapters, transcripts and anything else. Was that it? That was four, right? Yeah, those four things. Now you are also getting the three social posts and an example blog post or a starter post. Maybe is the best way to say that. So oftentimes, we suggest one of the great things that you can do to help promote your podcast is to create a post on your website like a blog post, for every episode, and oftentimes that can take a lot of time, because are you going to write the whole story of all the things that we talked about? Are you just going to use your show notes? Well, show notes are great when you're in a podcast app and you're listening. They kind of go along. You can read along with what you're listening or jump to a certain section, but it's not really its own standalone blog post. Well, now Cohost AI is generating at least a starting point for a really good blog post that could accompany the embed player from Buzzsprout right on your website. And then, once you get that blog post posted and it's ready to go, you can grab one of the social tweets. It's either a tweet or a thread, or they also work on Facebook and LinkedIn. Whatever social network works for you, they're just good starter points for promotional content to put on social channels.

Alban: 9:38

To point back to your episode, Something I've been thinking about a lot lately kind of something that's hard in the creator economy or just for people who are doing a podcast is not only do you have to be creating compelling content, you also have to kind of learn how to be an editor, and you've got to be really organized if you're setting up interviews and you're becoming a little bit of like somebody who understands tech, if you're trying to figure out all the equipment and then at the end there's also also you kind of have to build a little bit of expertise in marketing or get a little bit start getting your feet wet if you want to grow. And I always feel like it's a pretty big ask to put all of that on somebody who's just starting out. And this is a way for Cohost AI to come alongside the podcaster and say let's help you start doing some marketing work. When you put together your episode, putting in that title description, your chapter markers, your full transcript and now it's probably time to go to do some a little bit of marketing. Well, we're pulling out a few different ways to promote that episode and if you're somebody who wants to create a blog post for your website, now we've got you a significant start on writing out that blog post. You're probably going to want to make it rewrite bits of it so that it's in your own voice. You always have a generic blog post. You want it to have a little bit of your style, but now you've got something that's gotten you much more of the way there and hopefully, over time. That's the goal of Buzzsprout and our adventures into AI with Cohost, the whole idea being how do we come alongside you and help a podcaster, make this whole process a bit easier, streamline the workflow so that you can continue podcasting for the long term. Like we talked about last week, if you're an indie podcaster and you want to be successful, one of the main things to do is stick around and be here next year and the year after, when you've put out lots of episodes. Well, with Cohost AI, hopefully we have increased the chances that you're able to do that.

Jordan: 11:37

Albin, I've heard you talk about how repurposing content can quickly turn into like a full-time job. It's as easy as you know. You have your podcast episode and then you're going to repurpose it into a YouTube video, and then you're going to repurpose it into a blog post and you're going to repurpose it into social media content and your entire week is gone because you've spent so much time on that. And I really feel like this is getting you majority of the way there, to the point where you can just quickly make some tweaks to it and then put it out and suddenly something that took up your entire week is now taking up I don't know an hour for everything.

Alban: 12:17

Yeah, the creative part is the podcast. That's where the unique stuff happens. It's where you combine different people with different perspectives and they're coming together and they're chatting about something, and that's the cool thing you're doing. That's the creative part. And when you combine that creativity with what some of these cool AI tools can provide, which is taking that and transforming it to different types of writing so promotion tweets, or figuring out what a title would be, or writing a description or a blog post All of that stuff is leveraging the creativity that you brought to that initial episode. I mean, I guess you're referencing my point, so I agree. Obviously, I've been to so many talks that are like here's a hack, create a podcast, then turn that podcast into a blog, turn that blog into tweets, turn those tweets into short form videos, and I'm like, oh my gosh, have you done this before? This is days and days of work. Now, if you're going to do it, well, yeah, and just telling people to work more can't be the solution to all of these problems. We've got to find ways to make it easier for people to do the things that they want to do and the things that bring them joy in life.

Kevin: 13:27

Yeah. So let me touch on one other really interesting thing that you get with these additions of the social content and the blog post is that the blog post itself has been kept to around 3000 characters or less. It doesn't matter if your episode is 30 minutes or two hours. It's going to try to write somewhere around a 3000 character blog post for you. The really nice thing about that is you can then copy that and go paste it into like chat GPT, and now it has context for your episode, and then you can get prompts off of that. So if you're like I really want something that's going to be a high engagement tweet or a thread, or if you're saying it's actually this content is great, I just want it written a little bit more professionally, or I want it to be a little bit more light-hearted or make it funny, you can just paste that in and then chat GPT has all the context. The challenge obviously you get a full transcript as well, but you can't. Oftentimes the transcript is too long to paste into chat GPT. Even if you're on the paid plan, it's too long, you have to like break it up, and so that's very difficult. But copying this blog post, pasting that in now. It has context about what you're talking about and you can say yeah, so just rewrite this thing a little bit more professionally for me, or light-hearted, or whatever adjectives that you want to use to sort of make it your own, so you can use the AI output to generate even more AI output, if you want.

Alban: 14:44

Oh, that's cool, kevin. One question I had and this is a real question because I don't know the answer If I have a podcast and I use co-host AI in old episodes to get my title and description and everything else, now that we've added these social features, do those old episodes have those promotion features already or do I need to rerun something to get those?

Kevin: 15:05

As of today, the day of recording, they don't have them. The plan for us is to get them in there, but if we go back and do them all at once we'll completely overwhelm the system. So it's slowly but surely we're coming up with a plan to be able to kind of backfill all the previous episodes that have been run through this process before and add that content in. So it's a little bit realistic that we're going to be able to do it, but I can't say definitively for now. What I can tell you right now is that any new episodes going forward will get this stuff, and we're trying to get it into the previous episodes as well.

Alban: 15:34

Is that our thinking for other things that we add to co-host in the future, that we want to be able to go back and always try to backfill and make sure that we're improving this over time. So if I turn it on today, I'm going to get any future features as well. Is that the goal?

Kevin: 15:52

It kind of depends on what the future brings. I don't know exactly what's next for co-host AI, like what we'll add to it next, and so if we add something where it's possible, yes, we'll do it. We'll never hold back on anything that we can do, but we might run into some technical limitations or API limitations or whatever. What I'm really excited about is that, as of today, people are getting more from co-host AI than they were yesterday, and that's super exciting, and the price is staying the same, and so those are the opportunities. That we're looking for is how can we deliver more value at the same price point?

Alban: 16:23

There's a little bit of a, I guess, behind the scenes of what it's like between product and marketing, where I'm like I want to be able to tell everybody anything you already did got way better, and Kevin's like that's actually going to be a big deal. We're going to try to do it, but I can't make the promise until it happens.

Kevin: 16:37

That's always our intention. It's just, you know, sometimes you run into roadblocks and sometimes you don't. So we feel like the roadblock on this one isn't necessarily that it's impossible, it's just that it's a little bit challenging, Like we can't just run a script and say go back and do this for all these previous episodes. That would shut down systems and cause huge delays and stuff. So we're going to have to figure out how to slowly but surely, systematically go back and kind of do it one episode at a time for people, and so that just might take some time. It is something that we want to do, so we're going to pursue it.

Jordan: 17:08

I think really the biggest topic everywhere is about threads, the new podcast or the new social media app from Meta, and it's the. For anyone who doesn't know, it's kind of like the competitor to Twitter or Zuckerberg's answer to Twitter, really. So people have been testing it out. I got on there not a lot, not as much as you, Albin, so I'm probably going to be asking you some questions about threads. But something that I've seen come up a lot in the podcasting community, you know, on Reddit or on the Facebook group, is people saying should I or how can I promote my podcast on threads?

Alban: 17:45

No, you don't need to be there, you don't need to be on. Every social media app the day it launches stressed out like I have to do something. The first like few hours of threads where a bunch of people making jokes like, oh, I feel bad for all the social media managers who have to come up with like what's our strategy for threads by tomorrow. And I think those are jokes, because if they're not jokes, those companies are like very unhealthy. If something launches brand new, you shouldn't have to that night say I know what the strategy is, I don't know the strategy. I'd be surprised if Facebook knows the full strategy yet, because sometimes things just have to be out there in the real world for you to start figuring out what it is really going to do. Yeah, so for the last year I feel like Twitter has been struggling in different ways. First like it just seemed like it wasn't doing as well and then Musk said, okay, maybe I'll come in and buy it and try to help it out. And then it has gotten maybe better in some ways, but a lot worse in other ways you better be careful here, man.

Kevin: 18:47

You're gonna have some misinformation to apologize for next episode.

Alban: 18:53

I'm perfectly happy to defend that. Twitter has degraded. I guess we could argue about the specific ways. One is All of my account is just now like there are 14 new AI tools and if you don't use them today, you're gonna fall behind. Here's what you need to know, and I'm like I don't want to know anymore. I don't want any more of these threads and it's like non-stop pushing those, but anyway. So I think a bunch of people were just kind of looking like what would it be like if there was an alternative to Twitter? And Some people tried mastodon for a little while. It's too techie. Then blue sky was sending out some invites, but that felt very exclusive. A lot people weren't getting invited to it. And then Facebook or meta launches threats and it was such a clean and professional launch. I was really impressed. So I got a notification my phone that it was ready to be downloaded. It was in my hand. When I got the notification, I clicked sign up immediately and already like 400,000 people had signed up by then yeah, I saw in the first like 24 hours it was like 70 million people had signed up. Yeah, maybe the 70 million number is a couple days, but we're past 100 million. There's a ton of people in there. It uses all of what you already have on Instagram, so you kind of are connected to a lot of friends and family and you know celebrities you already follow. So it's not like Twitter where you have to restart. It's similar to Twitter. I think people are trying to make the culture a little bit kinder, a little bit less argumentative. It sounds like Facebook itself or meta itself. I'm, it's always gonna be. Facebook to me is the company, but meta is trying to make it a little bit less news focused, maybe a little less politics focused, so maybe a little bit less fighting focused. It seems interesting. My experience has been a lot of the people I liked on Twitter have moved over to threads and are kind of doing both. But there's still this core group that I really liked on Twitter that are only on Twitter still, and so For the first three, four days I only open threads and since then I've noticed myself hopping back to Twitter a bit Just to see like, oh, I want to catch up on what this person has written. So similar type concept. But if you tried Twitter out ten years ago and didn't like it, and you have an Instagram following, you have a Instagram account. It might be fun for you just to dip in there and see if this is a Paradigm social media paradigm that you would like to use. I also think you don't need to do it. You don't need to feel the anxiety or the stress you're falling behind. You're not. It's just another social media app and there's dozens and dozens of others that just happens to be kind of the hot one right now. So it's up my alley, since it's text first. But for a lot of people, if it's not the thing you enjoy, like, you don't have to do everything. You should feel the freedom to say I'm good, I've got Facebook and I've got Instagram and I've got YouTube and I've got LinkedIn. I've got enough.

Jordan: 21:51

I don't need an additional thing to check on my phone my experience with threads my limited experience with threads thus far has presented a couple frustrations, in that I'm not able to toggle between accounts. I Started my account just from my personal page just to test things out, and then, when I went to Create an account for my podcast, I wasn't able to because I had already created one for my personal account. So it doesn't have the ability to go between accounts like Instagram or Facebook does. So that was really frustrating for me. And then also I can't search anything on threads. What is up with this? I tried looking up like certain topics I was interested in. I Don't understand how you're supposed to discover new content on threads other than them just deciding to put something in front of you. It's very strange hundred percent.

Alban: 22:45

So all the reporting has been that threads was still a couple weeks away, if not more than a month away, from being launched, and then bunch of stuff starts happening on Twitter, one of which was they started limiting how many tweets you could see in a day, and so people were running into this limit and we're just really upset and they're going like I hate this, this is dumb. And it was over July 4th weekend and apparently Facebook decides let's get this out the next few days, and so they very quickly launch. So Content search you can search for people, but you can't search for topics or content. You can switch accounts, but you have to like log out and then the credentials for the other account are saved, so then you log back in. That's not seamless. It's hard just to go back and find things you found before. Your only feed by default includes tons of people you don't know, so lots of celebrities popping in. It's not finished. It's polished in that all the features that are there, they feel natural and like there's nice animations and it looks good. But the experience if you've been on other apps before, you like oh, they should have this feature. They should have this feature. Yeah, they're all in the way, but as they've scaled to over a hundred million people, I think the main focus right now is how do we make sure the servers don't explode and how do we keep scaling, which it seems like they've done really well with. But I'm sure in the next few months They'll see this is the biggest opportunity we have. Let's grab it and let's try to keep rolling out new stuff. Kevin, are you on?

Kevin: 24:12

threads. I click the button, but I don't see myself participating. Nice, I'm shocked at how many people are Willing to jump at the opportunity to just provide more of their personal data to meta.

Alban: 24:26

When is meta ever done anything wrong with your personal data?

Kevin: 24:33

It's like they already have everything. So on one hand, you're kind of like, what does it matter? I'm just kind of like taking my whatever they know about me from Instagram and then just moving it until I'll tell them a little bit more through text threads. But it's just another app launching into the I don't want to use this derogatory term, but this surveillance capitalism Economy is is not super enticing to me. I mean, I don't know that there's another way to do it. Twitter is trying to move a little bit away from that, but that's super controversial as well. Like the way that they're going about doing it. I kind of like the idea of hey, pay a small fee so that we don't have to figure out a way to monetize all of your personal data. But Twitter's like in this no man's land between the two models. The meta has just launched threads and, as of today, it's probably great, but Facebook was also great for the first three or four years of its existence. I mean, we've all seen the social network right. Like ads aren't cool, like you have to figure out. You got to get the people before you start pushing the ads, but that's there, that's their jam, that's what they do, and so you know it's coming at some point, so they're just gonna be collecting the data and then, all of a sudden, what is it something about boiling a frog? You don't throw them in the boiling water, you boil them slowly. There's some saying about that.

Alban: 25:46

Yeah, real story, by the way, I feel like that's. That just doesn't sound like totally.

Kevin: 25:51

I feel like pita wouldn't let you try it anymore. So yeah, for sure I can't run the experiment, but you know what I'm saying.

Jordan: 26:00

I don't think it's an experiment.

Kevin: 26:04

Recipe. I can't try the recipe, I think it's just a saying like.

Jordan: 26:07

You know more than one way to skin a cat doesn't mean you actually skin a cat.

Kevin: 26:10

It's just a saying don't actually do it yeah who's coming up with these sayings that?

Alban: 26:14

I guess that's what I'm saying Is this like some old French cuisine trick and they were like hey, make sure you boil the frog slowly. And then the only remnant of that is that somebody's like Remembering, like hey, this is a great phrase, I'm gonna use it everyday life like it's kind of violent animal phrases. Anyway.

Kevin: 26:35

We're slightly off the threads topic at this point. Yeah, we're just a little bit.

Jordan: 26:40

I'm not sure if this is going to make it.

Alban: 26:41

We're going to get some follow up about this, so it's going to be like ah, misinformation about the Frogs episode?

Kevin: 26:45

Yeah, so I guess the answer to your question is that, yeah, I did click the button. I did check out the design. I do think the design is cleaner, is nicer. The little invite thing that they did inside of Instagram was very appealing, how you kind of got like a threads ticket. That was pretty cool. But after signing up for the account I closed it and never went back. I'm really just not interested in participating in another another. I don't need more social networking stuff. I need, like real people, social stuff in my life, if anything. So I probably will not be an active participant much in threads, but you know it's going to be good for some people. Maybe it'll be good for Buzzsprout. I saw Alvin set up a Buzzsprout account there. So we're just looking to be able to connect with customers and our audience as much as possible and, if it, if it serves that purpose and it feels better to some people than the alternatives great.

Jordan: 27:29

Is Buzzcast starting a threads account?

Alban: 27:31

Buzzcast does not have a threads account. Buzzcast doesn't even have an Instagram account, so maybe we need to make that some point. It just feels like we got a little too much going on, so maybe I'll give that to you. Jordan, you can create the Buzzcast Instagram account.

Jordan: 27:44

I love Instagram.

Kevin: 27:45

We used to have an Instagram account and then it went away to Buzzsprout Instagram account.

Alban: 27:50

And now all that's on. There is one square that says we're not using Instagram anymore Because at some point we like I don't know, I feel like we were in social media free fall and then we pull the ripcord and we're like all right, we're done. Too much TikTok, too much Facebook, too much YouTube, too much everything. Let's take a little bit of a step back and so we started doing a bit less and honestly, from my perspective at least, it's a better world to. You can do some social stuff, but the pressure to every day be posting at 12 different places is just not healthy. One thing that is, I guess, important to say if you have an Instagram account, you don't need to go create a threads account just to like, park your name. So if you're afraid that somebody will take the handle you already have any handle you have on Instagram is automatically going to be yours over there on threads, so no need to stress it and feel like you've got to go and create this new thing. You are already covered.

Jordan: 28:57

Pocketcast has announced the release of Pocketcast Wear OS app this week, and Wear OS is a Google operating software for Samsung Galaxy Watch, google Pixel Watch, so I think that Android users will be very excited for this.

Alban: 29:14

Will they? Yeah, I don't mean that to be against.

Jordan: 29:19

Pocketcast fans enthusiasts will be excited for this. I like Pocketcast.

Alban: 29:22

I'm not trying to dig Pocketcast. I just don't know, honestly, how many Android Wear OS watches I've seen. I don't feel like I've seen a lot, but maybe they're more popular somewhere else than kind of my social circle or outside of the US.

Jordan: 29:38

maybe yeah, probably Because, I mean, iPhones aren't as popular outside of the US as they are here.

Alban: 29:43

Yeah, this is the problem with doing market research by like looking around to your friend group or like looking around at Publix and you're like, oh yeah, the only phone is an iPhone. No, it's still far in the minority as far as how many are in the world, but if you're living in the United States, you might think that it's a majority.

Kevin: 30:03

Yeah, so, as you guys are starting to dig in here, I have an iPhone, I have an Apple Watch and I am right now I'm installing the Apple Watch companion app for Pocketcast. Now there's a reason why this isn't on my watch right now, so I'm installing it and it's because it used to be there and I tried it and it was terrible, and so I removed it from my watch and so I'm going to install it again right now to see if it's gotten any better.

Jordan: 30:26

What didn't you like about it when you installed it?

Kevin: 30:28

If I remember correctly I think we talked about this on the show I tried three or four different podcast apps that had a companion app for the watch, and the one thing that I wanted to do was to be able to listen to podcasts when I left my phone behind. So if I go out and walk the dog, I don't want to bring a phone. If I go for a run, I don't want to bring the phone, I just want to wear the watch and have it kind of sync my now playing list or my up next or whatever and then be able to use the cellular to download the latest episode if it's not already on the watch. And I could not get overcast to do that reliably. I couldn't get pocketcast to do that reliably. I tried a couple others, I don't remember. The only one that I could get to do it consistently, like I think a lot of them said you could do it, but they were buggy. The one that worked and then the one that I use today is Apple Podcasts, which is problematic for me because Apple Podcasts is as much as I think it's becoming better and better and better. I'm a daily driver for podcasts on my phone and so I don't have a good sync history. I don't have the next episode that I would listen to on my phone is out of sync with what's on my watch, so it's a little bit problematic. So I'm just wondering if they did. They didn't say anything in this press release about the iOS watch. What do they call it? Watchkit or something that version of the app being updated. I'm assuming that this is probably a rethink or a reinvention of what a watch app can be on a phone and they're releasing it for Wear OS first, and the reason I think that is because this particular version of the app also requires a Pocketcast plus subscription, and so I don't have a Pocketcast subscription and I never ran into anything that said I needed one to use it on my Apple Watch. Okay, so here I am. I just launched the podcast app on my Apple Watch and on the first screen that comes up it says play source phone watch plus only or nuts, and I'm not signed in. So looks like they have updated the iOS one because I need now a subscription to also use it on my watch. So there you go, roadblock. I can't go any further because I don't have a plus subscription.

Jordan: 32:26

According to their press release, some of the new app capabilities are access any episode up next Q and filters. Episodes can be played, q'd, archived, starred, marked as played and you can adjust playback effects like changing the speed, trim any excess silence and turn on volume boost for a dialogue. But, yeah, you can only use it if you have Pocketcast plus subscription, which is such a weird thing.

Alban: 32:53

Well, if there's anyone out there who does use Pocketcast as their main podcast app and they have one of these watches, let us know what the experience is like and whether you're enjoying it. We'd love to learn a little bit more. We don't want to spread any more misinformation on this podcast, so yeah, let us know. Yeah.

Jordan: 33:12

Let's go to the next one Time magazine wrote this really extensive article about how Huberman Labs got America to Care About Science, and it was interesting to me because it talked about how he has just exploded in recent years and it's so different from regular podcasts where there's live shows and people are really into it, and I think about the smart list, where they have live shows but it's because it's like celebrities and comedy and there's entertainment and all this stuff, and so it's him doing these sessions that he would normally do at Stanford University on a podcast and it's just exploded. And so they're talking about why people actually care so deeply about this, and some of the parts I really like about this is it just talks about how everyone likes to feel smart, and I think that that actually does lean a lot into why podcasts have boomed recently is because people like to feel like they're learning while they're being entertained. They're trying to improve their lives in some way. I brought this in because I thought of you, alvin. I don't listen to Huberman Labs, but I was like Alvin would really like this article.

Alban: 34:21

Yeah, I like to feel like I'm smart and so this is right in my alley. I can't tell you anecdotal evidence. In the sauna at my gym, everyone's favorite podcast is the Huberman Lab. Oh yeah, people get in there and then they start giving off. They just like start giving each other like health advice and it's like there's only two podcasts that are ever mentioned and it's Huberman Lab and there might be somebody who makes a reference to like a Joe Rogan episode, but they're quickly booed down for the Huberman guys.

Jordan: 34:54

There was a part in this that made me think of you two and your little like experiments like the you know, the ice bath in the backyard, things like that.

Kevin: 35:02

These are not experiments, these are. That's a lifestyle change.

Jordan: 35:06

Like you're biohacking.

Kevin: 35:08

These are extremely dangerous biohacks.

Jordan: 35:10

There's a line that made me think of you two, and it says the couple has incorporated many of Huberman's protocols morning, sunlight, cold water exposure, sauna sessions and more into their daily lives, and the podcast even inspired them to build a cold plunge pool in their backyard.

Kevin: 35:26

It's a slippery slope, it seems harmless enough and, before you know it, plunging your body into ice water. It's a really good podcast. This is the part of the article that caught me way off guard. It said something about his first episode he recorded in a shower because it had good acoustics. I saw that. Is that a good idea? No, it sounds like a terrible idea. Right?

Jordan: 35:45

Yeah, that's not good Acoustic.

Kevin: 35:48

Is that like the most reverb environment that you could possibly find?

Jordan: 35:51

There was an Instagram post from the home edit and they have a podcast as well and they posted a picture of one of the gals from the home edit in a bathtub with her like sure, mv7 on the side of the tub with her thing, and it was talking about podcasting and I was just looking at that like no, no, no, no, don't do that.

Alban: 36:11

There's something about singing in the shower Like your voice sounds better to you because there's so much more body. It's like there's so much more the reverb kind of adds to it. It feels like it's much more full sound. But you don't want that on a podcast. What you'd rather do is do that manipulation with the microphone and pull all the reverb out. So maybe it was a little bit of thinking. Well, actually when I'm in the shower and I sing or I talk, it sounds great, so that'll probably sound good on the podcast.

Kevin: 36:43

Yeah, so I just found the line in the article. It said he recorded the introduction to Huberman Labs first episode, titled how your Brain Works and Changes, in a Shower, because it had good acoustics. I'm really curious to see what that sounds like now.

Alban: 36:55

This might be some special, like cold plunge shower or something.

Kevin: 36:58

The next line says in less than a year he'd amassed about a million YouTube followers. So who are we? We're sitting here making fun of him recording in a shower.

Jordan: 37:05

Yeah, that's true, he got a million in a year.

Kevin: 37:07

So I want to do it. I say next episode. We are all recording in the shower.

Alban: 37:17

That's definitely a strategy. Maybe that is what led to his success.

Kevin: 37:20

Yeah, we'll have to do it yeah.

Alban: 37:21

It's probably what prompted that sort of challenge in some way. So, yeah, so just when I listened to this podcast, I've thought the information density isn't as high as it appears to be Sometimes. I'm like this could be edited down at least in half and you could get all the same information. There's a lot of like. I'm going to tell you the exact thing you should do and exactly which protocols you should implement in your life. And if you talk to a physician and you're like, all right, you're going to tell me, just tell me. You don't have to tell me, you're going to tell me.

Kevin: 37:47

I think that's true for any topic that you're like mildly interested in. You're kind of like I want the cliff's notes. I don't want to read the whole book. But like anybody who's like my wife, I'm like, oh, you should listen to this podcast about podcasting or we'd actually did a pretty good bit. You know, once every two years on the show, I want you to listen to it. And she's just like, yeah, do you guys just talk about podcasting for an hour? I really like every two years. What's the punchline? Like get to the point. And so, yeah, I think you could say that about anything. For sure I totally know what you're saying, because I have a hard time. Like Cuban labs are huge podcasts and it's always on the top of the charts and I try to listen sometimes and there's times when I have the energy to sit through it and listen to it, but it's not. It's not an easy listen for me. Like if I listen to a tech show, it's an easy listen because I have some context to sort of understand and fill in all the blanks, as opposed to the science stuff. I just don't have the context there, so it's harder to engage that content.

Alban: 38:42

One of my theories had been he grew primarily through YouTube. So that first episode I don't imagine that one, the shower episode was not recorded for video, but all the others are on video and they're put up on YouTube. And I went to a talk that he gave at podcast movement a few years ago about how YouTube led to his podcasting success. And one of the things that I've noticed and plenty of people have noticed with the YouTube algorithm is watch time is super important and that's a really good indicator of whether or not people are interested in a topic. You know if they're not watching for a long time, like they're moving on, but sometimes what that does is it rewards content that is longer, even if it could be toned down a bit, and you get these times like you ever clicked on search for a video. It's like how do I pronounce this word or how do I do this small thing? And the video will start with someone who's like. So many people are confused about how to pronounce this name. I'm going to tell you exactly how to pronounce it and just make sure you watch to the end because you want to understand all the little things that go into. Just say the name Kevin, that's the answer. But there's something about like YouTube kind of wants the long video, so the person who can't get to the point is rewarded with getting the answer. So I've noticed that a handful of times and I do wonder if there's a little bit of a synergy between his natural teaching style is a little bit long winded, and that kind of fits the YouTube algorithm and for an audience that is very interested in maybe having a longer episode, sticking around for 45 minutes an hour to listen while they work out, well, that kind of fits in with their lifestyle as well.

Kevin: 40:23

Yep, I mean, it just reminds me of. I mean, he's a professor, right, one of the best professors probably in the world, and no professor that I've ever run into is like concise and to the point. They're always like no, you have to understand this fully and they need to tell you everything. And the best can do that in a way that's engaging. And I'm not saying that he doesn't do that, it's just it's work Like. I've sat in tons of college lectures. Where I was, I thought that stuff was interesting. But if you're just too tired or if you're not in the mood, you just you're learning and so your brain is being taxed in a way where it's just like oh, I'm just out walking the dog, I just want to listen to something easy. I oftentimes get halfway into an episode of Huberman Labs and I'm like I'm just, this is just, I'm trying to relax and this is not relaxing. It's engaging but it's not relaxing.

Jordan: 41:07

So one of the things that we talk about a lot with how to grow your podcast or kind of get like listener loyalty in this article that says, as Huberman sees it, all he's doing is giving people free access to the best, most current information he can find about their bodies and minds and a few science-based tools that might help them work better. And I thought that was actually a really, really good point, because the reasons why certain podcasters do excel is that they give so much value to the listeners and then the listeners, like, want to give back, they want to keep coming back for more, and then they grow because they're allowing some of their best information to go out to people for free. I mean, we do this all the time.

Alban: 41:53

Yeah, I think this is the like promise of the internet, and the wonderful thing about the internet is you can spend an insanely long amount of time putting something together, writing the very best thing, putting as many things that are time-intensive to create but are very valuable for the person who consumes it, and it actually pays off, because there's so many people in the world that are interested in any number of things that if you're creating something really great and putting a lot of effort into making it, there's going to be somebody out there or there's an audience out there who's looking for it. So I totally agree with that, jordan. That makes perfect sense to me.

Jordan: 42:29

If you want to read the article in its entirety, we will leave a link in the show notes. It's time for sound off, the segment where you send in your tips, tricks and podcasting advice to kick things off. In the last episode, I asked if you were to break a podcasting world record. What would that world record be? And at this time of recording, we have no responses.

Alban: 42:54

What.

Kevin: 42:56

We were going to choose one of them and try to break it Like a podcast movement or something.

Alban: 43:01

That's it, our audience doesn't want us to be famous. They want to break these records on their own? They're not interested in participating in ours.

Jordan: 43:10

I think you're right. I think that they don't want to share the world record. They're just going to break it and then come to us later and say, hey, I broke this world record.

Alban: 43:18

Well, we didn't get any responses to our sound off question. We did get a couple of boosts to grams. The first was from Mir Mortals podcast. In our recently released 400 episode, we talked about how we'll be dropping a lot of video and focusing instead on creating more niche audio feeds. We give it a good crack, but ultimately, we need to either focus on audio or video, and I feel like it's just too risky to be relying on YouTube's goodwill. Audio and value for value is where I'm laying my bets for the future. Thank you for the input, mir Mortals. I feel like there's been a lot of this episode. You've got to pick the things that are working for you and you don't have to rely on just the big media companies or social media companies or on doing everything. So I like that you focused your efforts.

Jordan: 44:00

Also congratulations on 400 episodes.

Alban: 44:03

Yeah, that's true, that's a lot.

Jordan: 44:05

We just went right over that.

Kevin: 44:08

At Gene Bean dropped us a boost. He said a laughing emoji and here is one tenth of that 50,000 sats boost that you said I need to send. I think that was to verify his identity, since he was taking he was claiming an anonymous donation the weekend before this is like a layaway for his identity.

Alban: 44:25

Kevin, it's an installment plan, that's right, an installment.

Kevin: 44:31

Yeah, all right, gene Bean, we will officially credit you with the anonymous boost from two episodes ago, so thank you so much for your support. I appreciate you guys listening to the show, and thanks for connecting with us.

Jordan: 44:43

And on our episode discussion thread on Twitter, Sam Sethi said this is the equivalent of using the social interact tag. Can Buzzbrow please officially support this in the admin podcaster UI? It's just a field to place this Twitter or Bastadon link and exposed by apps like his app, Podfans.

Kevin: 45:02

Okay. So yes, I understand what he's saying. There is a tag in the podcast name space called social interact. It's written a little bit differently than Sam wrote it here in his tweet. The tag is actually not part of the tag. The tag isn't part of the tag when it says social interact tag and then he closed it. It's a little bit wrong, but it's fine. I know what he's saying and what you're supposed to do is you can drop wherever it's kind of used for like cross app comments. But if you want to use Twitter, it's like the spec was written in a very open way. So if you want to use Twitter, if you want to use threads, if you want to use Maston or if you want to use activity pub for your cross app comments or discussion around the episode, you can list that in your RSS feed. It's a pretty simple tag. He's right, it's pretty simple tag to implement. The reason that we haven't implemented it yet is there just hasn't been a lot of I don't know excitement or adoption around it, and it's a fair argument to say, well, buzzfed is not another stuff that hasn't had a lot of like excitement or adoption around it. That's true. We kind of pick and choose. That's one that we decided to hold off on a little bit and we're trying to see if it kind of catches on or not. We serve a lot of podcast feeds and every single byte counts when you're serving up like millions of requests for RSS feeds a day. So anytime we go back and we've say, hey, you know, infrastructure team, we're going to add another line to the RSS file, and they're like okay, well, you just, you know, increased our infrastructure costs by X dollars and the render time by X amount of milliseconds and just adds up so it is technically easy to implement it. A place the size of Buzzsprout, all of those things have implications and ramifications and so we just have to place our bets strategically and wisely. So that's just some inside baseball. You know why we've chosen not to do it yet. We do like it. We love the name space, but we just can't do everything all at once. So love your feedback, sam. You know we've got a good relationship and I'm sure you want to argue the other side of that and convince us to move faster on it. Love pod fans, love that it's supporting it. Hope it does well and as soon as pod fans launches publicly and is the default player for everyone that we know it's going to be, it's going to rule the world in the podcasting space. Then we're going to add that support for you, but right now there's very limited support.

Alban: 47:01

Maybe my favorite quote from this entire episode Kevin is going to be Buzzsprout, does lots of things that aren't very popular or very like, wanted or something.

Kevin: 47:10

So I mean we do, we do try to blaze some trails once in a while, but we can't blaze every trail.

Alban: 47:16

Yeah, there's sometimes those trails.

Kevin: 47:18

There's not many people who really want to go down that trail anyway, so yeah, I mean we have the ability under your podcast settings you can go under host and co-host an option. You can upload a photo of the people on the podcast and write a little bio about them and then we use that when displayed on your the Buzzsprout website that we give you for your podcast and the dream is that more podcast apps will support that. But very few do still and like that's a no-brainer and it has at least Buzzsprout's publishing. You know tons of feeds that have hosted co-hosts but still, for whatever reason, some of the you know now. This is not to take away from what's happening in the. There are a lot of great podcast apps like Podfriend and Castamatic Fountain and stuff like. They are moving aggressively and adopting a lot of these tags. It's not to take away anything from them. We absolutely appreciate what they're doing and they're helping them move off over. What's sad is that some of the larger legacy apps just kind of refuse to move on some of this stuff. It's hard when you look at. You know 98% of podcast consumption comes from these larger legacy apps. Still, we either need to move people off of those apps into something more forward thinking or we need to get those people on board. That's it.

Jordan: 48:24

All right, so for our next sound off question. Kevin, you're up. What's your sound off question for the next episode?

Kevin: 48:31

Okay, so that's the last question. Was that your question, Jordan? It?

Jordan: 48:33

was me you don't have to rub it in.

Kevin: 48:37

Well, I've been skunked. I asked a question. I can't remember what it was, but I got skunked.

Jordan: 48:41

Yeah.

Kevin: 48:42

It was something about podcast, conspiracy theories or something.

Jordan: 48:44

Didn't I get skunked on that? That's right, yeah it was conspiracy.

Alban: 48:46

You got one answer that you wrote yourself or something Jordan made it up, it was me.

Kevin: 48:50

Yeah, she saved me. And then now Jordan's been skunked. Albin, have you been skunked yet? I've not been skunked. Oh my goodness. Alright, I need at least one response. I can't have two OFERS OFERS, Alright. Here's my question. We have a podcast movement that's coming up at the end of August, so here's my question to anyone who's listening have you been to a podcast conference? Any podcast conference have you attended? If so, did you find it valuable, Like would you go again? Would you recommend it to other people? And, if not, what has kept you from going to a podcast conference?

Alban: 49:24

Ooh, kevin, I can help you not get skunked on this. You have an answer? Well, I have an answer, but I also have an incentive for people to give us answers. Oh sweet, I have. So we're going to podcast movement in Denver next month. Podcast movement is my favorite podcast conference. Somebody from BuzzFrago has gone to every single one, including the one that was a Kickstarter in 2014. I've been to almost all of them. I missed one for a family vacation one year, but we are going this year. Kevin and I will be there, jordan actually all three of us will be there.

Kevin: 49:57

Yeah, and why is this feeling? Like one of those videos where you're like just say the name. You have something that you're going to offer to entice people to answer the question, but you just won't say it.

Jordan: 50:08

He's teasing us.

Alban: 50:09

I'm going to tell you exactly what I'm giving away in just a minute. But first to work from response.

Kevin: 50:14

Well, I'll tell the end of the video. You won't believe what happens at the end.

Alban: 50:17

Okay, so what I have to give away is I got some extra tickets.

Jordan: 50:22

Those aren't cheap.

Alban: 50:23

No, they're not cheap at all. No, and these are tickets we're giving away to people who have never been to podcast movement before, and you need to be an independent podcaster, so not on a network not working for a company for podcasting. We're trying to find people who are doing podcasting themselves. These would not cost. We're just going to have the ticket, so this would not cover your flights or any of the other things. I have not offered these anywhere else, so this would be first to people who are listening to buscast. We would love to meet you and for you to come to podcast movement in Denver, so the way we will pick people will be based on this response. So, kevin, hopefully we don't get you scunk now.

Kevin: 51:05

Okay, that's great so at a chance to secure yourself a ticket to podcast movement. If you've been to a conference, was it worth it? Would you go again? And if you have not, it's holding you back from going to a conference. So Jordan will tell us how you submit those answers.

Jordan: 51:19

Yep, to have your response featured on our next episode, leave a 30 second voice message at podinboxcom. Slash buzz sprout. Send a boost gram or tweet the answer at buzzcast podcast. And, as always, thanks for listening and keep podcasting. So podcast movement Denver podcast movement Denver.

Kevin: 51:37

I like Denver. I'm excited to go there.

Jordan: 51:39

I've never been.

Kevin: 51:40

Oh, for real.

Jordan: 51:41

I'm so pumped. Yeah, I've never been. It's not that far from me either, so I don't know why.

Alban: 51:45

Kevin and I actually went to camp in Denver once.

Kevin: 51:47

I just heard I just listened to pod news weekly review this morning and James was saying he's never been to Denver but his plans as they stand now are to fly in to the airport, drive to the conference center, be at the conference and then drive back to the airport and leave. And I think that is a terrible mistake.

Jordan: 52:05

Oh yeah.

Kevin: 52:06

Denver is fine, but it's just like most big cities in the US. I don't think it's nothing super special around Denver itself. That's uniquely. I don't want to offend Denver people, but it's just a big city. But what's amazing is hour and a half, two hours out of Denver there is some amazing amazing like small towns, ski towns, and they're great in the summertime. But I feel like you don't want to go to Colorado and not at least drive into the mountains for some amount of time.

Alban: 52:31

There's tons of cool stuff to do. Denver itself, though, has lots of good food I feel like they're all. They're known for a lot of their breweries. There's lots of like outdoor activities, and you can go bouldering and you go hiking and you can go mountain biking and all sorts of stuff. We actually just had a programmer from HirePixels, our parent company, move out to Denver so that he could go and do all this stuff more often. So it's a cool place. I really have enjoyed it when we've gone and I'm excited the podcast movement's there this year.

Jordan: 53:01

You know one of the things when I was looking at Denver. One of the things that stuck out to me and I've seen so many images of this it's the Red Rocks Park and Amphitheater, where it looks like the Monument Valley or something like that, like it's just so beautiful.

Kevin: 53:15

Yeah, that's very close. That's like 20 minute drive from kind of the city. I would say, if you have like a half a day and you're not going to like go whitewater rafting or go on a hike or ride a mountain bike, I would suggest in half a day. You're an hour and a half or so from Colorado Springs and they have a national park there called Garden of the Gods, and you can at least get a taste for it in like two hours stroll through the park and it's amazing. So hour and a half down, two hours exploring the park a little bit and then hour and a half back to Denver. That's just where I would start. But oh, my goodness, this is some of the most beautiful country that we have in this country. Whoa, some of the most beautiful landscapes and yeah, I'm looking at images of this.

Jordan: 53:52

It literally looks like something from a science fiction novel, like it looks like a landscape that you would see in, like Star Wars. It's so beautiful.

Kevin: 54:02

And I'll tell you, this is the big test for me is, I think, my kids maybe the youngest was maybe four, so that would put him at like four, six and eight and we were out in Colorado and so they're at the age where they can't sit. Still they want to be on screens all the time, like they have to be, I don't know, constantly entertained with whatever.

Alban: 54:17

You're describing the stage of life that I'm in right now, not with my daughter, but with myself Constantly need to be on a screen.

Kevin: 54:26

Yeah. And so my wife and I had the idea that we're going to go to Garden of the Gods and we're telling them that it's cool and you'll have fun. But in the back of our minds we're like this is going to be a total train wreck, like they're not going to want to look at rocks and walk around. Well, we got there and we they had a blast. They loved running around. You can climb through some of the rock formations. They were like you know, having fun and trying to take different cool poses and pictures and stuff like that, and like we had to pull them away and we thought there's no way this is totally going to hold their attention for more than 30 minutes. Why are we driving all the way out here? And they loved it and they still talk about like they remember it. It's like one of those things that's kind of burned their memory. It's an amazing place in Colorado, so can we go there?

Jordan: 55:03

How far is it?

Kevin: 55:04

It's an hour and a half. It just depends on how much time you're staying out there. It's very cool. I won't have time on my trip to go, but I've been. So I would say if you haven't been, try to prioritize it if you can, with your flight schedules and stuff like that.

Jordan: 55:17

It's amazing.

Kevin: 55:18

Yeah, it's beautiful. There's also plenty of very cool stuff to do in Denver. It's just. I'm more of a outdoorsy person than a city person, but yeah the city of Denver is also very cool too.