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We're Entering a Golden Age of Podcasts

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Re: We're Entering a Golden Age of Podcasts

#261

Post by adamrezich »

doublepg23 wrote: post #243
black6 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In particular, I find independent podcasts like Sam Harris or Dan Carlin to be FANTASTIC, and that content is free for all to download in multiple ways. So, I'm not worried in the slightest. This. Dan Carlin is fantastic and I enjoy supporting him because of the quality. No Agenda and Congressional Dish are two more listener supported/value-for-value podcasts which do an outstanding job. No Agenda, in particular, r…

I haven't heard of No Agenda in years. I stopped listening to them a while back after they had a hard right turn IIRC. Their business model was excellent though.

I'm curious about what you mean by this exactly

Re: We're Entering a Golden Age of Podcasts

#262

Post by robryan »

ryandrake wrote: post #213
hanklazard wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A slightly different take on your “eye engagement” point is that podcasts allow us to utilize time that would otherwise be spent listening to music, talking to others, thinking, or just zoning out. Combined with Apples air pods (a horribly great piece of technology), I find myself using lots of time for podcasts that I wouldn’t otherwise (like when I’m doing the dishes). I find all of this enjoyable overall but I do…

Are there any studies on how good retention is when consuming books as a background task while you're doing something else? Sample size = 1, but I briefly tried listening to audio books while driving, cooking, etc. but stopped when I realized I got all the way through a few books without even vaguely remembering what they were about.

This is why I find more casual listening like a podcast good. Listening to a book you can really hamper understanding of the later parts of it with low retention of easier parts. A lot of podcasts don’t really require your full attention at all times to understand later parts.

Re: We're Entering a Golden Age of Podcasts

#263

Post by illegalsmile »

gibspaulding wrote: post #114
hanklazard wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A slightly different take on your “eye engagement” point is that podcasts allow us to utilize time that would otherwise be spent listening to music, talking to others, thinking, or just zoning out. Combined with Apples air pods (a horribly great piece of technology), I find myself using lots of time for podcasts that I wouldn’t otherwise (like when I’m doing the dishes). I find all of this enjoyable overall but I do…

I've wondered about this too. It's rare now, but sometimes I just want to drive to work in silence and it's always surprising to me how nice it can be. I'd be curious to see a study about the affects of time spent "zoned out". I wonder if it may turn out to be an important opportunity for our brains to subconsciously process things or work on ideas. I'd imagine our ancestors spent a significant portion of their lives…

I spent years driving to remote sites in the desert for field work and have spent countless hours listening to audio books, podcasts and music. Often times on the return journey home I found myself thinking in silence or listening to my thoughts and the road in silence. Maybe it was sort of an active meditation but it seemed to happen naturally and felt great.

With all the screens around us, people or content, if you will, we often don't have long periods of time with the option to tune it all out. You allude to our ancestors and I think being still of mind is an important part of our being. Many people are anxious these days in that environment. My favorite part about doing extended river trips (1-3+ weeks) is tuning completely out for large stretches of time.

Re: We're Entering a Golden Age of Podcasts

#264

Post by ip26 »

celeritascelery wrote: post #259
el_cujo wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'm actually worried that podcasts are going the way of the web. What, for a while, was a weird world of enthusiasts talking about things that interests them seems to be morphing into a world of a few big corporate entities calling the shots. I think podcasting is somewhat shielded from this by the fact that you really don't need an insane amount of capital to put out a good product. There definitely are podcasts th…

> I think podcasting is somewhat shielded from this by the fact that you really don't need an insane amount of capital to put out a good product. You could say the same thing about the web

And aren't there plenty of interesting personal blogs out there?

Re: We're Entering a Golden Age of Podcasts

#265

Post by matwood »

Mister_Snuggles wrote: post #24

Personally, I'm not a fan of podcasts at all. I've tried, and listened to some interesting ones, but in the end I'd much rather consume the same content by reading instead of listening. It's faster, it's easier to skim and skip around, you can have hyperlinks to other references, etc. Overall, text just works better for the kinds of content I'm interested in. There's a podcast related to a product I work with that I'…

I partially agree with you. I don't like audio books, because I prefer the pace of thinking and reading a book.

But, for conversational topics I love podcasts. Long form interviews (1-2-3 hours) that used to be impossible now can be done.

Re: We're Entering a Golden Age of Podcasts

#266

Post by blotter_paper »

scrumbledober wrote: post #155
TecoAndJix wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you keep track of what chapter/paragraph you fell asleep at when you wake up?

this is the biggest problem i have with audiobooks/podcasts. I've thought about the idea of hacking a fitbit or apple watch that can track sleep to automatically pause them but I fall asleep much faster and easier than my fiancee and she likes to leave things going to cover my snoring.

Two fit bits, with a recorded stop time for each of you (offset a little bit so that the part immediately before you went to sleep is repeated). When you wake up, the segment in between the two stop times has already been extracted and sent to whoever fell asleep first so that they can catch up before jointly continuing the podcast with their partner before bed.

Re: We're Entering a Golden Age of Podcasts

#267

Post by lbacaj »

I believe behind much of this success with Podcasts is that we are actually entering a golden age for Audio content that isn’t music. So I don’t think this is limited to just podcasts but podcasts are riding this wave.

I think the Apple AirPods, gaining extreme popularity and removing so much friction, the home speakers and the incredibly busy lives of people today all make audio easier to consume while doing other things. I think we will see more and more interesting content in this space and it’s not limited to Podcasts or Audio books. I think we may even get to a point where we see audio go viral, which has never happened to my knowledge.

As an example of alternate sources for gaining knowledge on the go, and a little self promotion, I have built an App that uses AI/ML models to read any article to you.

You check it out here at https://articulu.com

Generally I’m incredibly motivated by the non music Audio space and I think there will be even more interesting things coming.

Re: We're Entering a Golden Age of Podcasts

#268

Post by m3kw9 »

I think is a bit over hyped looking at just the extra time you have and use that to listen to podcasts: driving, gym on the go. But if you have choice between that and the other medium it compete against a for you attention, it isn’t a win as they hype sugggests

Re: We're Entering a Golden Age of Podcasts

#269

Post by eterm »

ip26 wrote: post #264
celeritascelery wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think podcasting is somewhat shielded from this by the fact that you really don't need an insane amount of capital to put out a good product. You could say the same thing about the web

And aren't there plenty of interesting personal blogs out there?

And it then comes back to content discovery. It doesn't matter what is out there, it matters how easily you can find the niche rather than the corporate.

Re: We're Entering a Golden Age of Podcasts

#270

Post by Mister_Snuggles »

jeremy7600 wrote: post #208
astura wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, yeah, of course if you're just sitting in your living room you'd rather read than listen; however that's not really the use case of a Podcast. The value podcasts bring is you can consume them during times you can't read. During exercise, driving, walking to work, cleaning the house, cooking, and train/car rides (for people who get motion sick while reading in a moving vehicle). They turn tedious menial tasks in…

If you can pay attention while doing those things. I am not the OP, but if it isn't music, listening to anything while doing those things is a non-starter for me, especially driving.

I'm roughly the same way. When driving the choice is that I either miss something on the road or miss something on what I'm listening to.

I usually take public transit to work, but the buses are too noisy for me to actually get anything out of a podcast. I could use noise canceling headphones, but I find those just make the bus sound weird instead of getting rid of the noise.

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