podcasting 2.0 for December 21 2020, Episode 17 will pop
into being
What did you say
when Evan introduced all become clear with what I meant by that
it is it's Christmas I guess. Yeah like we're really doing
this on Christmas day you know we are I'm Adam Curry here in
Austin Texas and Now may I introduce to you the man who
takes people so seriously he wrote the person tag for the
namespace mystery
Merry Christmas
oh wait I have to come totally prepared today.
Oh wow. That is so festive. Wonderful. Yes. Makes me happy.
This is our little Christmas surprise to everybody who's
worked so hard. Hi guys. Everyone who's worked so hard
these past podcasting 2.0 this is this is our gift to you a
little Christmas you know all the gifts have been open your
uncle's falling asleep on the couch and so now you want to
just slide off and listen to something
here and has COVID sorry
who's uplifting now
sorry sorry this i mean i i get i did get you something actually
I get you to think
oh I did
I made them myself. Okay their home their homemade one is the
person tag. Yes. And it's the season
Oh no, I didn't even know about the season tag. Merry Christmas
everybody I read it I read the the person tag and I think it's
fantastic.
The gate the gate to happiness is self compassion that's what
my that's what my tea bags I just made a cup of tea and
it's so true. It's so true. So true. Wow.
Yeah. What's going on this Christmas for you for you? Are
you yo get family or anything just
not just my stepdaughter Elise. She's over. So she's three of
us. My daughter's in Rotterdam, mother stepdaughters in Chicago.
And Tina and I and then and all the family is in either Indiana
or Chicago. Or as I said in Rotterdam, so it's just the two
of us and then the stepdaughter is moving to New York in
January. And I don't think I can wait any longer for
grandchildren. So we'll probably get a dog. completed.
Same thing. Yeah. Well,
at least you can control the mess now. Yes. The financial
mess is kind of a known factor.
Now isn't moving to New York in January. That's it. That's
called
moving to New York during a COVID lockdown. I mean,
that's what I'm saying. Yeah.
Yeah, this did not go without some interesting conversation.
For those of you who would like to catch up and everything
that's happening here, podcasting 2.0 we have a cool
web forward new podcast apps.com it takes you to podcasts
index.org apps page. And if you want to see any of the stuff
that we talked about on on the show in action, that's the place
to find it. The holsters the all the categories of everything
that that has been built. And I wish I could have gotten two
things this past week. I know no one picked up my podcasting 2.0
certification tag that I wanted.
We get a badge. We get a badge for it. Oh, it was I didn't see
the badge. No, no, no, this is this is not for us. This is for
from us. This is we get it we get a badge from podcast
taxonomy.
Oh, we got a badge on their website. Yeah, we did. Yeah,
we're gonna we can put this
on our on our website. Yes.
That links back. Yeah. You better put that in react.js and
make that happen.
Wait, man, we were so we like totally came in. Yeah, what do
you call that we like, subverted that whole thing. Because they
they've been working on this taxonomy thing for months and
months. And then we can
avert it. We we just gave it a home.
What else? Well, true. I mean, I do come in like three like, like
two months ago. And it's like, oh, pockets, that you're an
equal partner and all thanks for your help. It's like there's
been people working on this thing for years and we're you
know, we just show up like a bunch of
cowboys first podcast, boys. Well, that's the way I think
we're viewed. By the way when I see my my podcast, 2.0
certification log I want something that people can put on
their on the app. This is podcasting. 2.0 certified comm
like a stamp.
It's like when it says the but my keyboard I don't know if you
can hear this. Yeah, yeah, that's, uh, you know, it's like,
it's a really old mechanical keyboard from like, the early
90s.
With the deep key travel.
No, yeah. And it's got key if you flip it over on the bottom
is it's a it's got a big sticker on it that says it's Novell
NetWare tested.
And it has the color of what hearing aids used to look like.
The geriatric gray or brown
colored. Yep, it's pretty much, man. That's, that's, yeah, we
need that badge we need.
We need the badge, slap it on there being the badge. But as we
were kind of viewed as Cowboys, and I think you might have had a
chance to listen to it the most recent episode of The Todd and
Rob show the new media show. Holy moly.
I haven't. I was, oh, that was like finishing the previous one.
I haven't even heard that one yet.
Oh, my God, the whole show is about us. The whole show about
how fabulous we are.
I like those
guys a lot. Well, there's a number.
No, the title of the show is the podcast index gathers steam or
something like that. And it's all about how we came in. And
and we just said, EFF it, and we're going to go for it and the
stuff that I mean, no, of course it's true. These are all tags
that they've worked on for a decade, that I don't think we
came up with anything. Well, the value tag is new and specific to
us. But there's been ideas like this for a long time. And I
think they both realize that, oh, wait a minute, you come in
as an independent party and you just say fuck it, we're gonna
go, then you can actually get it done. And they recognize that we
have buzzsprout to the degree that now I knew this last
Friday. I wanted to clear it with Rob. first before we
mentioned it, but he mentioned it on the new media show. Lipson
hitting Yes. libsyn is going to support the podcast 2.0 tags.
I mean,
I got a Christmas present. present to me. I mean,
now we're cooking with gas, as you would say. Yeah. This is
fantastic. I mean, so now we can really push stuff ahead. And
they were you know, they were taught by the way.
pod bean will be next. You go you're coming, you're coming to
the dark side beam
beam will be next. We're bringing you in pod bean. And
what a power what a power we'll have as a force man. Everyone
will love these tags. And they'll be there for anybody to
use and you watch. Apple is going to have to adopt at least
some of them that mean the season tag. That's our gift to
them. Their customer NPR wants that. We get this again. Yes.
Yeah, that's a bunch of fuckers. Well, I
put that in there. Put that in there today. And that mean it
was low hanging fruit. So we finalized that thing and Merry
Christmas MPR gifts going around all over
the place. It's the season man. It's the time is the time
forgiving. It's beautiful.
Man. I can't believe I have to listen to that have not not
finished the previous one yet.
It was a real good insight into how we've been viewed from the
outside. Which I'm sure that it never really I've never really
stopped to think about it but I'm sure that there were plenty
of people going well why don't we just wait until they go away?
Because we've seen shit like this start this way so those
guys give up and then we can move on and not have to worry
about it. And it's completely understandable.
Absolutely yes I do the same thing.
Yeah, well of course it's like a like a Kickstarter. You know you
get burned a couple times like yeah, wait, let me see you ship
something first. And then I'll get I'll buy on the open market.
Yeah, well, I mean, that basically was our first board
meeting was effortless dude.
Yeah, no, no without it without a doubt this has been a fly by
the seat of the pants operation but it's not that we and we
don't mention Eric the shoe enough. I don't know if he wants
us to use his last name. I don't have to ask him. So Eric's a
partner that podcast introduces Bitcoin lightning node address.
Just read that says this is who this guy is. Exactly. Yeah, we
could just screw it. Let's just do this. And we but we do have
experience in our in our individual areas. And now it's
more of like an A team situation where we just bring together
some some good talent and we all fit in the van. And we're good
to go.
I'll fit in the van
fit in the van. But
who am I? Who am I? Am I like okay you're obviously Mr. T. No
no yeah me like
I'm face at least I'm facing I might be Hannibal maybe I have
too many of animals. Yeah, you're handsome but i think i
think you would be more
oh my god Murdock
Murdock Murdock crazy crazy mecanica yeah as you Dave.
Sangha
Yes man but at least we don't have to figure out who would be
ginger and who would be Marianne I'm the special Christmas
episode let me cue up the the sleigh bells again we have a
guest and this is so we have your we have your best interests
at heart we're just going to chat a little bit and of course
the left tons of news in the in the new year the next show who
our guest today I feel deserves a lot more credit than he's
received for the success of podcasting 2.0 Not only is the
editor of pod news, he's the host of pod land which is I
quote a podcast about podcasting. I read him every day
and since he launched pod land, I listened to him every day,
Dave, I think you do the same. He's kind of presents the the
daily Bible for for the industry, also known as the
podcasting space, ladies and gentlemen from down under where
it's tomorrow, James Cridland.
Thank you so much.
That was weaker that was weaker than my intro. James.
I worked on that. No, no,
no.
Come on. You guys are nerds. I know what to expect from y'all.
Yeah, that's what it is.
What do you do?
Yeah.
So it's beyond. Thank you.
Yeah. And James, thank you, because you were you jumped into
podcast index the project very soon. I think you immediately
recognized what we were attempting to do. You come with
your own credibility. But also you've, you have an interesting
role. Where on one hand, you're a that you run a business, which
is delivering the latest news information and analysis on
podcasting as a whole. On the other hand, you also contribute
to in no small way, I mean, to namespace descriptions and
definitions. There's a lot of, I would say, technical policy that
you're involved in. What do you consider yourself? Because this
is I think it's any journalist would say, Well, he can't be a
journalist, if he's working on it. If he's working on this
stuff himself, I'm doing my journalist voice here. yet. It
seems very comfortable to everybody, you know, and yeah, I
mean, you're also taking money from the industry for your ads
to keep the keep it running, which to me is kind of another
version of value for value. I mean, it's all within the all
within the ecosystem. So it's very much appreciated what
you've done so far, and what you do. And yeah, what you consider
yourself is a big question. Well, thank
you. I yeah, I mean, it's, it's an interesting one, I guess I
consider myself, somebody who really enjoys podcasting really
enjoys the technical side, as well as the creative side. And I
guess one of the things that fun is, you know, I'm a writer by
trade, I learned to write radio commercials a long, long time
ago. But I'm all I also do the tech stuff. So I've worked for a
bunch of radio broadcasters, actually, and done a lot of the
coding behind the scenes. So there's a good sort of mix
there, of things that I can hopefully bring. And I think one
of the things that excited me about the podcast index, was
just being able to see there being a group of people that
wanted the best for the industry, and wasn't there just
to sell their own company, and to, you know, to just sort of,
you know, hide, hide away behind that sort of thing. So actually,
just wanting the best wanting to move on wanting to innovate was
something that I felt wow, this is really cool. And if, if
people get behind this, then that should be a fantastic
thing. The fact that you now have 100,000 podcasts, which is
using some aspect of the podcast index namespace is just really
good news.
Yeah, that, I think, so I was looking in the database, and you
are the ninth person to sign up for a developer account. So
that's out of almost 1000 accounts. So you the first eight
of which are different versions of me. So you're, you're almost
literally the very first person to sign up for a developer
account. And it was before you started using it before we even
Did our squishy launch. I mean, like, you're using it like a
week before anybody even knew it existed? I
think he has. He has keys before. I did. He did.
And so I was like, so you emailed me, like a couple of
days before and I was doing some work on the stuff and had stuff
stuff down. You'd like, Hey, man, your stuff down. Hey, I
hope you know that. And you know, I mean, like you were
actually troubleshooting before we even went live with this
thing. So yeah, you are definitely.
I know, watching me.
I know what I call you. I know what I call you. You're the Dick
Clark of podcasting. Because, like, somehow, somehow you're
like, you were doing radio in the 80s. And you're still in
you're doing podcasting today, but you don't look like you're a
day over. 40 Yeah.
American Teenager?
Yeah, that's that's kind of it was I mean, I was doing radio in
the 80s. Yes. But in the very late 1980s. Okay, so yeah, but
yeah, you're right. No, it's, it's, it's been really fun. And
I think you know, what, what's been lovely is seeing, you know,
seeing the things that makes some of radio really good. Also
working in the podcasting sphere, as well of just that,
you know, that relationship that you can have with your audience,
the relationship that you can have with, you know, a random
stranger talking into your ears. That's a fantastic thing. And
there's a lot a lot of things that go together with that, and
a lot of things which are, you know, which some people find
really weird. Some people look at Radio and go, but they're the
baddies, aren't they? They're the they're the gatekeepers, and
we don't want to be involved with those. Well, you know,
actually, I think that there's a lot of shared experience there,
which we can all use in podcasting, and in radio, as
well.
People always say, Hey, man, how did you learn how to make make
it sound so good? And I say 40 years of practice? Exactly. It
is really what it is. It's 40 years practice. I can publish
all my
policy. Yeah, yeah, you can buy all of the all of the equipment
that you want. But actually, you you do also need to have that
skill, to learn how to do things to learn how to use a microphone
to use how to how to use a compressor, and all of that kind
of stuff. There's a lot of skill, which isn't just going
out and buying a new gadget, a new cloud lifter, or a new, you
know, USB interface.
On the other hand, what is and I think I've said this before,
what always has enamored me is kind of the unprofessional
crappy sounding stuff to that it doesn't really bother me if it's
something that is if the contents there, it kind of adds
to it sometimes for me, and I see it more as a whole, you
know, I'm very much to theater of the mind. So if I'm hearing
your boomy room, I'm gonna build a MindScape around that, and
I'll get used to it. And that may not be my preferred way, and
it's not going to be the best for walking the dog cuz I'm
gonna have time difficult time hearing you, perhaps. But I kind
of like all the differences that are
out there. He's kind of like the project of you know, of your
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
I I completely agree with that. And I think that there's a lot
of, there's a lot of over polish, sometimes it is
sometimes not even stuff like
You have been listening to podcasting.
For more.
Wow, that's fantastic. So yeah, I think, you know, all of that
polish is lovely and fine, and works in a lot of different
places. But also, you know, it is actually quite nice to hear
real people. And I think that's one of the difficulties of some
of the podcasts that you hear certainly some of the radio that
you hear right now is that they've taken the humanity out
of it. And it's just something which is so totally, so totally
polished and professional. And you know, there's no real human
connection there anymore. And I think that's a big mistake.
I agree so much. I also come from radio, as you know, and
pretty much the interactive gateway we had was the phone
line, which was typically utilized for maybe trolling for
a date on a Friday night if you're doing a later shift or
you just want $100 budget a radio station Yeah, that's the
kind of stuff that was the interactivity or and this part I
think does carry over very well. live shows live remote broadcast
that carries over very well in podcasting. Surprisingly, well
actually, if you look at pod save, was it pod save the
country what is the
pod save America pod save
America, thank you to my new pod words, pod save America who went
on tour and did their show on stage and got people to buy
tickets to come in. I mean, these these are things that were
not possible before and the real beauty of this, which is if you
look at the, the genesis of podcasting, we just bought all
this time. That's what we have. We have all this time and it's
it's our time to create it. And it's the other the consumption
side, the reception side is your time to place it into your life.
That's why it wins.
Yeah, no, absolutely. And, and just the connection with the
audience as well as the is the really big thing here. I mean, I
remember so I when I was on on the radio a long long time ago,
we got a fax machine. Adam, this was the most exciting thing.
Yeah, this was the most exciting stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it was.
That was that was fantastic fun and and just like giving people
the tools to communicate and to make the thing that you are
working on better. And there's and that's where I see quite a
lot of the parallels in between what what was going on there
with you know, people sending voice messages and sometimes
emails into the studio and people sending fax faxes in. And
now with what you're doing with, with chapters, with community
driven chapters and stuff like that, all of that stuff is very,
very similar.
Did you ever get your Sphinx app running for the podcasting 2.0
stuff with the with the lightning payments?
I haven't got my Sphinx app working yet.
No, it wouldn't you call yourself a newsman Shame on you.
Sorry.
One of one of the things that I have real difficulty
understanding is this whole cryptocurrency and and all of
that I understand, understand how the blockchain works. But
everything else just confuses my little head. Yeah, I'm waiting
for somebody to write it down.
No, no, no, no, that's, that's, that's incorrect. What What you
need is an app that will be clear from day one, and you
understand what's happening, and no manual should be necessary.
The reason I bring it up is that experience, I think, is a
version of the future of podcasting, where they're each
podcast has its own little area, and that area is built right
into the player is a chat room. And the beauty of it is that you
can hit a boost button, which is the equivalent of a like or
tapping hearts on a on a periscope video or Instagram
Live. And but that is sending extra satoshis extra money. And
the podcaster can see at what point that was done. So they
know where the extra kudos attaboys, etc, is coming in
from. But really the just the interaction in the chat room, by
itself is phenomenal. And it's your my dream, as you may have
heard, is to have these types of features work inter app. And so
yes, and that's why I'm so excited about possibilities of
using lightning, specifically, but even if, if that doesn't
happen, you know, we've already looked at a whole bunch of
different things of doing that. And it's just the creativity of
the group man, that that's what's driving it all for you.
And you're a big No, well, thank
you. Thank you. But no, I mean, you know, the, I used to say, so
I worked at the BBC for two years. And I got into awful
trouble one day, because I said that my programmers, my software
developers, were just as creative as some of the people
in the programming team. You know, I'm going, going working,
working for radio and for TV, and I was, I was taken aside
until that that was, that was the most ridiculous thing that
anybody could still believe it right now.
Was this in the days of the Dutch guy who was running the AI
player?
Well, funnily enough, it was Eric and Eric, lovely, lovely
guy.
Are you just sucking up to him now? Or you mean that? No, I
know him really well. I know him extremely well. And I always
give a crap about everything. He was the CEO of blockbuster.
Did you know before he went to Philips not know that Yeah.
Before he went to film before he went to the BBC. He was he took
a job and he was working for I think he was working for
Microsoft first in the Netherlands, then yes. And he
then was working in Silicon Valley and then
wound up working for Windows Media Player. That's right,
right. And then he wound up taking a gig to try and turn
around Blockbuster Video, as Netflix was already a thing. And
Eric, is his last name, the beautiful guys, I should reach
out to him.
Great. He's great. He joined he joined the BBC at the same time
as I joined. And so therefore, it was all Eric huggers, who we
called him huggers, Eric, Eric huggers, blah, blah, blah, this
that and Here's a photograph of Eric huggers. Right at the
bottom of this press release was Oh, and James Cribbins also
joined.
Thanks so much for that.
Now, Eric was a great guy. And, you know, and and so he, he did
a lot of unblocking of things like the AI player to get that
working. He said, it was a
really hard time, he said the politics were crazy.
Oh, the politics was just insane. And so Eric was kind of
my boss, but not my boss. And in typical BBC fashion, I had two
bosses, and one of them has a dotted line, and one of them
didn't have a dotted line. And then there was another with a
wavy line. And, you know, and all that going on. But yeah, you
know, and and, you know, it was it was the best of times, it was
the worst of times. Working with Eric was fantastic, explained
the
dotted line.
Oh, so, um, I think so I had a manager who, you know, who would
be my boss, who I would go and ask things like, you know, can I
have next Monday off, please. And then I had him. And then I
had another manager, who would be in charge of telling me what
it is that I should be doing.
Ah.
And then I had another manager, by the way, who was also in
charge of telling me what it is that I should be doing. And
neither of those two people agreed with one another.
We started this, we started this project, we're like, we pretty
much just want to have three separate Bitcoin accounts. And
you can just deposit it directly. And we don't really
want to be a company. Yeah. And maybe we can get well jump in.
I can just add something in a previous podcast that I thought
was absolutely right. When you when you turned around, and you
said we're not funded for politics, we can't afford
politics. And I thought that that was a really good way of
putting it that actually, you're just going ahead and doing
things and and and making them work. And I think it's really
interesting. You're talking about Todd and Rob's new media
show earlier on, you know, they have been talking for a long,
long time about, you know, we need to be working on new tags
and all that all that we need is basically a couple of hours of
meetings a month and then and then you know, we'll be able to
after six months, we might have some ideas of you know, where we
should be going forward. And I was thinking No,
no, no, no, just go ahead and do well. Actually, the meeting
process was the same way except we just decided to turn the
meetings into a podcast that seemed a little more effective.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, that's speaking of industry, industry, and players
and movers and shakers. I heard on that. thing was for me today
or yesterday's episode of pod land that Liz Gately from
Spotify is rumored to be leaving.
Yeah, apparently so.
So what's the deal there, man? So what's happening? So?
So this was in pod news yesterday? Yes. So she was the
original person that was supposed to be sorting out
Spotify, his podcast development and everything else, and says
Bloomberg, she's going to leave the company. But it looks as if
what's basically happened is you've now got, you know, the
ringer in there. You've got a you've obviously got Joe Rogan.
But you've got gimlet, you've got podcasts, you've got all of
these other companies who are now part of Spotify. And so
really, they don't necessarily need somebody to oversee all of
that, because they've got some really good people there. So
maybe, you know, maybe if if the story is is true, maybe that
frankly, there's nothing for Liz to actually do anymore kind
of patriarchy is that that's not a good system. This is a common
that
loves this. That said if you look at Nick quarz hotpot, he
was saying that he was saying yesterday that this has come as
a surprise to quite a few people who've been working with her.
You know, because Because actually, you know, they were,
you know, she was really involved. And so it just seems a
little bit of what was
whose task is a James, to bring it all together. Who is in
charge of that there?
Maybe that is Dawn Ostroff. Who's the Spotify Chief Content
Officer? Maybe that's fair. I mean, maybe they're just, you
know, too many people at the top. And maybe, you know that
that was the basic thing. But, you know, I mean, the story from
Bloomberg that broke this yesterday was talking a lot
about, you know, just the growing pains of how Spotify is
actually dealing with all of this. And, you know, I mean,
obviously, Spotify is now having to deal with Joe Rogan and all
of the issues around that. But there's also you know, I think
that
I think that is the issue James. I you Nothing to cancel stuff
not to cancel stuff. I think they're having trouble having
trouble converting a lot of people to being, they may be
Spotify customers, but converting them to becoming
Spotify podcast customers. Well, that's
absurd number that they listed of like 100 million podcast
listeners on Spotify, or something like that. And I
thought is that? I mean, they have to be counting every single
person who accidentally clicked on a podcast in the UI. I mean,
there's that can't be right.
I mean, what they said in their, in their financial reports, I
think, is that 22% I think the figure is now 22% of Spotify
users listen to podcasts. So
whoa, hold on,
in spite of they
may listen to podcasts. But do they listen to them in Spotify?
Oh, yeah. In Spotify? Yeah. Okay, in Spotify
in that's what that's what I'm saying. Is it because so here's
how you I mean, like, the first thing that I think of you could
use those numbers by auto, when you auto play after your after
your album finishes, you just throw that there was a podcast
episode in there, so that it rolls over to a podcast episode
instead of the next album. And then you got a new listener that
you can count in your quarterly results.
100 million
skeptic, you could be true. But having said that, that that
figure only grew by 1% over the last quarter. That's a quarter,
which includes Joe Rogan joining us. So from my point of view,
I'm looking at that and I'm thinking that's great. Yeah, so
it's 22% of them used podcasts, they now have 320 million
monthly active users globally. Globally, globally, globally.
22% of those used podcast, which is that 1% from the previous
quarter, that does not seem to me like a hockey growth. Yeah,
hockey stick podcasting, my friend, when, particularly when
you've got when you've got the Joe Rogan experience joining
Spotify during that quarter that to me, I don't know, I'm not
entirely convinced that that's going in the in the in the
rights.
Let me let me say this, though, I've got something that bugs me
is the diff. Well, the difference between an original
and an exclusive? those terms are used way too
interchangeably. Yeah. And you know, and so you don't you don't
ever know. Okay, is this? Is this just when they they listed
as an original, but then you can't find it anywhere else in
any, any any open system? So it's like, oh, it's also an
exclusive. But then I want to bring that in that vein, I want
to bring this up, which is no agenda is listed on Audible in
their index. Did you know that? Adam?
No, I never stated it.
Well, you know, the, the, the thing that I was looking at with
audible this morning, is they have all these original meaning
that half dozen or so original pod, you know, what they call
podcasts, which are not podcasts that are not outside their
ecosystem. And just like the Spotify stuff, they're
overproduced, like just like you're talking about earlier.
Yeah, yeah. And they're boring. Like this. I can understand why
they want to go out and buy existing existing content.
Because the stuff that's produced as, as a like a, an
audio story format, is or, or an interview show, like the Bernie
brown stuff and the Michelle Obama stuff. You can't. It is
just, it's boring to the people who love those people. You know,
I mean, you can have the biggest, biggest Rene brown fan
in the world. And you can they probably can't sit through that.
It's just not there's something about the descriptive of it.
Well, yeah, there's also hit, you can be Bernie brown all you
want, and you may make write great books and have a
tremendous following. It doesn't necessarily mean you're an
entertaining podcaster. You know, that's people seem to
forget that I would although i didn't i remember blogs and
blogging. Okay, well, we can toss out 99% of it, because all
crap. And then there's a piece that sticks and people like and
there's always going to be everyone should have a blog,
that's fine. But doesn't mean that it'll be a commercially
profitable venture. As we know, 95% of most podcasts don't even
care about that.
don't even care.
Yeah. Are you do you think that their brain Do you think Spotify
is bringing in a radio mindset to it or do you think they're
coming at it from a from a more of a television? No,
I think, well, I really don't know. And maybe James can jump
in here, but they've got production teams. Look, if you
listen to my shows, I produce four. They sound similar. Now.
They're different in content, but the production is going to
be Very similar. Now if you have not, if you have the same
producers, because remember these podcasts, companies now
they have producers and line producers and they built an
infrastructure, which is kind of counterintuitive to the beauty
of podcasting. If you can figure out how to do it yourself, you
can do it yourself. Yeah. And then you get people whose job it
is, is to back out and produce an interview show got segment
one here, segment two there. I mean, we don't do any of that
here.
Do we? Yeah.
Well, you started the show with some with some Jingle Bells. Is
that yeah, that's production.
Yes. That's production. Exactly.
What what do you what do you think about that? James? Do you
think that from the come you're talking about radio history and
that kind of stuff before?
Yeah,
I'd seen somebody I forget what it was you you link to like a
seminar or something that you were a part of, and and maybe
Sam said he was a part of it as well. But you link to it. At one
point. And you said, in I think one of y'all said that radio and
podcasting are different. And they shouldn't you shouldn't
think of them the same. Do you? I mean, what are you? Can you
flesh that out? Or do you do you think that or do you think
they're more similar than different? Oh, I
mean, I think that there's there's a lot of similarity. And
there's a lot of differences. And I think, you know, when so I
mean, I come at this as a Brit that now lives in Australia. And
one of the things that I noticed a lot is that there is a
definite sound that NPR has. And it's the sound where everybody
talks a bit like this. And it's all very careful and close to
the microphone. And here's some random jazz. And that's and
that's lovely. But there's a definite sound to what NPR does.
There's also a definite sound or gimlet does I agree, is gimlet
is a great podcast company makes great shows Reply All is a
fantastic show, which is not a radio show. It's a deliberate
it's it's a podcasting. You know, podcasting first type of
show, which works fantastically well. But there are other people
who have come at this from radio, and have taken a very,
you know, radio sort of thinking of how you make a show and how
you format a show and everything else. And tried to translate
that into podcasting without necessarily having to listen to
a lot of podcasts. And maybe that's the that's the big
difference there. And I think, you know, I mean, I've heard
you, Dave, playing clips of some of the shows that are on
Spotify, from some of these big stars. And, you know, and and
they're certainly not the sort of shows that I would want to
have a listen to that said, you know, that, you know, I'm sure
that they have an audience because otherwise they wouldn't
have, they wouldn't have spent all of the money on them again.
I also also, by the way, wouldn't listen to Joe Rogan.
Well, neither have I never will.
It's, it's interesting when I hear you to discuss this thought
popped in my mind. And this brings us back to what you said
earlier, James, the interact, I think Joe Rogan, had a great
audience, despite himself, because I know we're, we're kind
of friends. He's not a guy that interacts. He's not a guy that
to post stuff on Instagram, he won't read it. He's very vocal
about how he says it drives me crazy. his audience, as far as
I'm concerned, is in his YouTube comments, which were
unceremoniously blown up with deletion of up yet at least he
left I think he has 100 that he that he keeps on his YouTube
channel. So he had that community, despite what he was
doing. And that community kind of got a, you know, got screwed
over a little bit on where they could interact. And the the
stuffs that podcasters inherently do, which at the
basis comes down to email, but even the value for value model
is a pure interactive feature where someone is sending us
value, giving us something to read, and the fact that we're
doing it is sending the value right back. A lot of people love
that part alone. All of these things can only be done, really
without the restrictions of the commercial infrastructure.
Mm hmm. Yeah, I think you're right to a point there and I
think was you know, some of the some of the best radio shows
that I've worked on have been shows that have been really
interactive. And, and have worked very hard. There's one
thing say, you know, the lines are open, though. Cool. That's
one thing, but you can but you can also help Educate your
audience in terms of what you want from them. There's an
amazing broadcaster in the UK, a guy called Jeff Lloyd, who used
to be on the old virgin radio used to be an absolute radio for
a long time, has a podcast has a number of different podcasts.
And one of them is called, reasons to be cheerful with Ed
Miliband. And one of the things that he has done, and he's
spoken about this at conferences and things, he doesn't want a
lot of calls, he just wants great calls, calls that he can
use on the calls that he can use on his podcast as being you
know, as being great content from audience from his audience
that he can then use to make a great show. And so I think quite
a lot of radio people quite a lot of podcasting. People want
the numbers. And you know, they want loads of text. So loads of
messages, loads of very good actually, what are you really
want is you want the cream of the crop, and you want the other
people that don't think that their story is good enough to
not call please. So you can actually get really good stuff.
Really well, that's
a very good point. Because with with divorce, and I, we've
never, never, ever looked at stats, you know, a cursory like,
I know how many terabytes we push in data. The only thing we
ever cared about is can we pay the rent? Yes, that's all there
was. Which was not directly related to how many people were
listening. Yeah,
does. Does Does he still get no spam? By the way?
Oh, my God, he gets almost no email. If you put if you put if
you put the word shit in an email, you get porn blocked by
him. He doesn't believe that I keep telling him long story. Is
his reasons to be cheerful. Is that relate relating back to Ian
jury?
I believe it may be okay. Yes. cheerful. The other one is the
other one is, is called adrift. Which is another great show that
he does. But yeah, no, exactly.
No. So on the other day, I guess on the other side of on the
other side of that is just the, you know, the mission of the
India we talk a lot about the pushing podcasting forward and
that kind of thing. But on last, the last episode of pod land
that I was listening to, you're asking about, you know, how we
sort of anticipate having to deal with take downs and that
kind of stuff. And so how, you know, what, our free speech, you
know, because we always say that we want to be a platform for
freedom of speech. And, you know, the, the thing that I've
been thinking a lot about that, actually, since I heard that
episode, because I'm like, you know, what, I haven't really had
a lot of stuff swirling in my head, and but I haven't really
stopped to think to, like, put it in, like, put it into words.
And it was actually a pretty good chat intellectual challenge
to, to sit there and think about it. And, you know, we'll, of
course we'll, you know, always deal with the comply with local
law and those kinds of things in but in on a broader sense, I
think. I think really, from that standpoint, it's a it's a
situation where I think and i think i think we live in a
unique period right now with the vitriol of the of the 2016 to
2020 time period and in it has caused this this extreme
extremism it mean it It feels like there are hands in the
middle just pushing each side to the extremes of right and left
and what what happened what has happened I feel like is this
misinformation disinformation fact checking, this stuff has
popped up very recently. And so that that scares me the because
I see the debris that it leaves behind it. And really in that's
what that's what I feel like there's a challenge to there was
a there was an opening out there for someone to step in the
middle and say okay, there's there's going to be a space
space or a place on the in the podcasting world where the fact
checkers and the disinformation labels and those sorts of
things. Those those are not here. Those can be downstream
from us. But they don't reside here. It's a non techies Am I
taking a non editorial approach, so to speak, because what for
for instance, you know, I was reading a Glenn Greenwald
article the other day about Instagram fact checking. Joe
Biden's crime record and they you know, they he lists out he
goes through there and Instagram List usa today as showing that
one of the posts was false about his prime record. But then he
also lists out eight other fact checking organizations that are
listed as partially true or true. So there's, there's this
strange sort of mix of fact checking and political adherence
and all this kind of stuff. And I think it's so new in this
whole game. And it's so politicized that I don't trust
it. factcheck fault. Exactly. Yeah. And so like, we are an
organization that I've listened to and followed and supported,
actually, for a long time as anti war, calm, anti war radio,
and they have, you know, been all listed on various terrorism,
watch lists, and all these disinformation, it's the whole
thing is bogus. And that really set me off as thinking, you
know, I don't trust this fact checking the fact checker kind
of thing. And the defense of the disinformation labels have
become so highly politicized that I think there really does
need to be a sort of unbiased directory level thing where the
any, any filtering can happen downstream from that.
The
the commercial nature of the internet is what is being used
as a wedge, for kancil culture, that's what people discovered is
you can pressure advertisers to have someone kicked off and then
a certain point, you don't have to pressure advertisers, you
just pressure the platform, because hey, you want this guy
on, then he's going to get your advertisers not gonna be happy.
Look, I cc them. And from there went to well, we might as well
preemptively do something, and then we can't really take it
off, let's put a label on it is the no agenda show would last 17
seconds in a commercial environment. But because we're
not in it, not also not for hosting. It's an interesting
thing. People talk, talk crap about us, but there's no there's
no lever, there really does solve a lot of problems. It's
like, if you want free speech, you got to get out of the
advertising realm. Because advertising is censorship bottom
line. And James, I'm sure you would see, I know you have to
self censor, you can't you can't go tinkling and everybody's
cornflakes and the industry.
Well, I think once you have a once you have enough
advertisers, then I think you can actually be you can carry
enough stories that sometimes aren't going to be particularly
positive. I mean, heavens, you know, you only need to go back
and look at some of the things that I've uncovered about the
way that anchor works, you know, as one as one example and
Spotify piece is still is still you know, covering, you know,
it's still supporting the, the newsletter. I think where it
gets more difficult is if you have five advertisers and you so
you can't afford to annoy any of those advertisers. Once you've
got you know, over 100 supporters as I do, thankfully,
then it does mean that I think you can be you can, you know,
tell the truth. You can you can, you know, cover whatever it is
that needs to be covered. And if you lose one out of 100
supporters well you lose one out of 100 supporters and it'll be
pretty obvious why they've gone You know, yeah, so i think i
think that there's a difference there in between Yeah,
absolutely. If you're only going to have two or three you know
individual you know individual advertisers then you need to be
super super polite to all of them probably go some way you
know if you have more now
you do your own direct sales you don't deal with a network.
I yeah, there's a fantastic lady called called Christie that
looks after all of that. But yes, it's it's all done for for
us. So yeah.
That's another Yeah, that's another weak link in the chain
typically is when you're dealing with programmatic ads with ad ad
networks. Oh, yeah. They're not going to want you Oh my God,
that's okay, man. Please don't use it.
I was reading that article as the Guardian article. Was it the
sinister sounds
Yes or no? Yeah, this
article. He has written that in reading through it because we
talked about we briefly touched on it the light at the end of
last episode, and I was like, you know, really haven't gotten
all the way through it. And so I dug in a little bit in this,
this sort of this comment stood out to me says, Tom, Alex Jones
said Jones's own show had been kicked off Spotify under its HP
hate speech policy was given space to broadcast a stream of
consciousness about everything from climate change to vaccines
with minimal factchecking. And when I read that, I thought it
immediately the person who came to mind was art bale. I thought,
you know, that's exactly what he did. And he made a 35 year
career out of it on radio, and nobody fact checked in when he
said that some dude got one of his guests that he was
interviewing got abducted by, you know, Sasquatch in the
Appalachian forest, you know, and forced to procreate with
their women. Like he that was actually a episode that I heard
one time. So it like he made an actual career at that, but I
think we have become so we've become so deep, so sensitive
now. That a it is it is extremely difficult for somebody
to operate in the middle. You know, it's, it's, it's like,
what's happened is everybody's been pushed to the right. And
now the now you have your conservative people over here
who are bailing out of YouTube and creating their own video
sites, and then you got the left over here that you know, those
people they're taking over Reddit and these other forums.
And it's just like, there's nothing, there's no middle
ground.
Yeah. But Dave, I got to push back on that. What happens is,
is these platforms like Rumble, they see who's coming over. And
it's just like, like Fox News, Fox News, see, okay, we got
conservative people, we're gonna cater to them, rumble sees, hey,
we've got all the conservative people who don't like Twitter,
we're gonna cater to them. So they just ramp that up. And as
long as people want, as long as people are going to continue to
ride on coattails of companies that provide these services
until they figure it out, they're going to happen if we're
podcasts index dot social in, I believe, is one of the great
contributing factors to the success of this project. Because
it tastes a very familiar interface people really, it has
its quirks, but people in general understand that
immediately. But we're not messing around with you. We're
not continuously pushing stuff, you know, popping up
controversies. You know, it's kind of, you know, it's a
timeline. It's an actual timeline, you get, oh, I've
already read this one. I'm at the end, go to the top refresh
now. All right, move on. And but but the interaction is, is very
good. And there's people from all walks of life all. I mean,
so we had recently, I think, James, you might have James,
you're a guy who would easily post something like, well, since
you clearly have no clue what you're talking about, I'm gonna
step back from this thread. I saw you with Brian of London.
But But what happened is nothing. He didn't escalate, it
didn't elevate it. Which was interesting. No, I'll go. And
you know, even I don't even know if Brian answered you didn't
show up for me. So no one was presenting me with with the
conflict. I didn't even see like posting, I'm like, whatever,
fine. It'll be fine. Everyone's gonna everyone will love each
other. In the end, it all be okay. We're all grown ups. So
there's a big difference. I think the platform's are rigged
to do this. And
so I, I used to live, as you know, Adam, I used to live in
the UK and I, and in the UK, broadcast media, so TV and radio
is not allowed to be biased. It is, it is illegal. Now you can
you can laugh, because of course it is. But there is a legal
compunction for their license, that they should not unduly be
biased on one side. What that essentially means is that if you
have a mad bloke on the on the Breakfast Show talking about,
you know, the fact that climate change is nonsense, and there's
no such thing and you know, and it's all and it's all a
conspiracy, then at least you have somebody else giving the
other viewpoint. Yeah, but they stopped doing that kind of
Yeah, but they stopped doing that.
Well. And then when you when I then moved from the UK here to
Pitt, Australia, and I heard this guy called called Alan
Jones, of course on on the show. And he was there saying, you
know, this is ridiculous climate change. It's all it's all
nonsense. It's all it's all completely made up. And it's an
apostate in the news and troubling.
Where's the where's the balancing? Well, but but the
ferries in the UK there's now directive to no longer let
climate change deniers on the air at all. So it's gone the
other direction.
I mean, I think climate change is a it was a bad example that I
gave, but I think any
I think it's the best example.
And the reason why I mentioned climate changes that is, is that
that was the easiest thing that I could actually think of
vaccines are another one vaccines do it all.
I mean, it's all there. I mean, both, both both vaccines and
climate change the the, the the scientific, you know, proof is
overwhelming. So there isn't a there isn't really a
conversation in between, is it happening? Or is it not
happening? Yes, it's happening. It's obvious, it's happening.
All the scientific proof says that it's happening, therefore
it's happening. So there isn't actually a bias that needs to be
gone into there, where there is a bias that needs to be gone
into is, you know, should all should all public transport be
free, should be a minimum wage should be you know, all of that
kind of stuff, which is less polarizing, of course, but all
of that kind of stuff clearly has two sides to those
arguments, the recent two sides to climate change argument, and
there isn't two sides to a vaccination argument.
That the interesting thing about that. The interesting thing
about that, though, is what it is, how do you deal with it? And
I think that's where the issue comes in, is, do you label it as
disinformation? Or do you ban it? Or do you take it down? And
I think I think Matt Taibbi article dealt with that very
well. He said, If you know, if you're concerned about something
is being something being disinformation, banning it, is
the quickest way to make people think that there's a cover up,
and that you're trying to suppress it. So like I was
reading. This has been a few days ago. And I was reading a
CNN article, and it was actually from from back in August, he
said that 70 to 70% of the of the American population now
agrees with same sex marriage. And
I doubt that's true.
I don't know if it's true or not. But they the poll, the
polling, it's definitely higher than 50. And so the poll, what I
was thinking was, it immediately made me think, back to 2008,
when Barack Obama ran for his first term, and there was a
controversy surrounding him where he was, and he was against
same sex marriage. You know, at the very beginning, he had this
there was a big sort of a big to do with fencing Marriage Act.
Yeah. And he said, Well, I know, I've always been against same
sex marriage, but now I've changed my mind. Yeah. And so it
made me sort of put a timeline together in my head. And I
thought, you know, so here's, here's over over a 12 year
period of time, we've gone from having our politicians openly
denying same sex marriage to where you could never get
elected at all, by denying same sex marriage. And that didn't
that progress as social progress came from one than one thing? It
will it happened in the absence of disinformation labels, in
fact, checkers. Ah, I happen. It happened with just an open
debate where everybody, everybody can either say yes,
without without being banned, I hear you and and the proper,
correct decision was made by this society. So
the accelerant was, of course, the internet, because that's
what made that's what really accelerates all these things.
But I think you're very correct. At that time, man. I think Jeep
was Google Plus, I think, launched around that time.
Google Plus, and yeah, yeah, no, you're absolutely right. And so
to bring it back around to podcast index, I will, that's a
that's a hill I'm ready to I'm willing to die on. We are
hosting an index of feeds. This this is no argument. The more
people who can say stuff, the better if I just there's,
there's nothing there's no other logic.
We've seen it all. We've seen all every single model would
doesn't work. And now we have something new but the people
still have to figure out that if you want to do this, the
difference the difference there Adam comes into If yes, of
course you're hosting an index of feeds the differences do you
put if you have a discovery mechanism in your in your
podcast, That that podcast index runs, do you put something as a
as a suggested podcast in front of someone that, you know,
contains, you know, contains unsafe or racist or unpleasant?
Right? Well, that's up to the pod. That's up to the podcast
app.
So I suppose the question is, but you know, I mean, it comes
back to if you if you do a search, should the search that
podcast index runs? Should that search uncover? You know, deeply
racist and unpleasant? But
yes, yes. The the standard Basic Search should should uncover
everything I believe. So. If so, we've discussed from day one, if
you want the sanitized version, we're happy to put a checkmark
in front of everything that's an apples index, and you can just
use that, that's fine by me. But you can't get down to I want a
sensitivity for this a sensitivity for that a
sensitivity for a, b, and c, we can't do that the apps can do
that any app can be a completely family friendly app, do whatever
you like. And if we can help in any way providing an endpoint to
you in that manner, I think we don't have a problem with it,
but ultimately, has to be available.
So maybe, maybe the answer then is, is to have that, you know,
tick box of is this in Apple because you know if there's one
thing that Apple has done a, you know, a good job on, it's making
sure that the stuff which is in the apple podcasts in days, no
fun. Is has been has been humanly vetted, shall we say?
Well, now this is interesting, because it hasn't been this is
something that Dave noticed, maybe one of our first shows,
and wanting to pay attention to this snippet from 2006. I think
it is the de conference when Steve Jobs presented podcasting
onstage, I'm not playing the whole thing. Just a moment where
I say something, I dropped an F bomb, and then listen to what
Kara Swisher says onstage. This is the first podcast ever
demonstrated in public. Radio.
That's right, it's show number 180. And it's Friday, everybody.
I've actually had to restart the show three times my Mac has been
acting up like a motherfucking.
Something to do with the file system.
Okay.
How do you control say dirty stuff?
I mean, we're gonna have an explicit flag on these, like we
do the music. So you can,
Dave, the first thing you said, when you heard that was, Oh,
isn't that typical? Good, they go straight for the gatekeeping
role straight for it.
That's that's the thing that I that I always think of, and I
don't forget where I heard this first. But you know, you never
make policy based on the guy who is in office. Now, you make
policy based on the guy who may be in office, two or three guys
down the line. And because the guy that's in there, now, maybe
he may be your guy, you know, he may believe like you do, and you
may, you may be on his team and that sort of thing. But things
change over time. And in the guy too. You don't want to give too
much power to the office right now, because they got two or
three steps down the line, he may be a creep. He may be
terrible, he may disagree with everything that you do that you
hold. So I think it's the same way with Nia with making
policies about disinformation labels and takedowns. And that
sort of thing is, you know, when when it seems like the tide of
society is moving in your direction, the direction that
you agree with? You don't you know, you the tendency is to get
overzealous and say, Okay, we're gonna stamp out every every
alternative view. And but then you got to think about once you
put those tools in place, those same tools can easily be 20
years from now turned around and used for terrible things against
yourself. And I think that in if you taking that example from
just about about same sex marriage, same thing can can be
said for most civil rights. Most of the civil rights that
minorities and disenfranchised populations experienced today
weren't one because the opposing views were banned from being
heard they were won based on the merits of the argument. And that
and you can't you can't judge the merits of an argument unless
you see how bad the other side is.
So okay, so what you're basically saying that Dave, is
that you can have podcasts out there. That incredibly racist,
anti semitic threatened violence about about other people. And a,
that's great. And B, we should encourage that and see we should
be putting those podcasts in front of other people.
No, no, that's where I stand. No,
I'm not saying with any sense whatsoever. No one's
we have an index. We're not putting anything in front of
anybody. We have an API. The thinking has to change. James
from a podcast app is this. Why isn't there a podcast app that
is just for music? Why is there one that's just for, for
racists, and white, anyone can make any, any app they want.
Now, they may run into some different issues in their
presentation of the content, but I have nothing to do with that I
feel the American dollar is is should have come with a warning
label. It doesn't. But you know, a warning label, this is fake.
This is this is not real money. This is a bunch of digits. So
there's a lot of these things. But we're not serving anything
to anybody. Well, that's not true. If you go to podcast
index.org. And you search you will get you will eventually get
whatever
you're looking for using a search. If you're using the
podcast indexes API, then you're searching that,
then you can filter you can filter it for whatever you want
your customers to have.
So I guess what I'm that's and that's the hard job. Because
actually filtering, you know, filtering.
using Apple, yeah.
Yeah, just use overcast, just use overcast to be fine. And
look at the ground. It'll all go away. The evil, the evil, anti
semitic racist podcasts that harmed you so much by seeing its
album art. And hearing the first five minutes,
you might get over it, there's no racist. There's no rate like
podcast apps that only show racist stuff, because they would
only be they would only have five customers, you know,
there's like, there's just not that much out there. There's not
that many insane people out there to make that a viable
market strategy.
But the point is that the things that I say in any of my shows
offend lots of people.
Yeah.
Really offensive. And sometimes it's humorous. Sometimes it's
taken the wrong way. You've offended me a few times already
on this show. Looking
back at your baby,
that well, the part of it did, but it's like it's almost like
you can't start. So that's this The issue is you can't start
with the filtering and the takedowns because then you have
to find once you start you have to find a place to stop. And
that the stopping point is way harder than the starting point
because I guarantee you I could go on to the pockets index right
now and probably find it you know, 10 or 20 problems
problematic
podcasts problematic
podcasts that offend me. Yes, offend me to no end. And I would
love to take them off. But I just can't click the button but
yeah, like okay, now I got to pick a stopping point
this Yes. And and, and the same goes for Well, I've been running
an experiment for three years no agenda, social COMM The mastodon
which has, I think 14,000 people who they're not all active, but
there's several 1000 who are active. And people report other
people all the time. What he said is racist. You know, this
is this is a misogynistic, this is porn, this is spam. This is
an ad. And I've never taken action on any of it. Ever. And
it just goes away. And people don't care after two minutes. If
I start to silencing, deleting, suspending I have I have a whole
extra job, I'm just not gonna do it. And I get I get requests,
like serious requests, like emails hammering on me, you've
got to do something about this. I mean, like, we had a recent
little fractious going on with the, on the podcast index on
social, a little anger back and forth with a couple of people,
there's no action going to be taken. No one's going to block
anybody work it out.
Yeah, that the two there seems like there's two there's kind of
two separate categories. They're a thing of content that you deal
with and it's it's I do dangerous content, where you're
talking about some somebody advocating violence or and that
would be handled by you know, that's that's a legal issue and
you take you know, you take stuff off if you got a podcast
out there that's just Nina saying, hey, go kill this guy. I
mean, clearly that's, you know, that's that's an accurate An
item. But, you know, the the thing that bothers That one's to
me is kind of sort of a no brainer. I mean, you could take
stuff down because it's illegal. It's literally illegal. But the
other the part that bothers me more is just the whole this the
the misinformation, stuff side of things. Because there's,
again, history is our is the guide here. And if we go back,
you know, if we go back to the weapons of mass destruction in
Iraq was complete bullshit, you know, and you had the the
Secretary of State up there at the UN, claiming a bunch of
stuff that ended up not being true. But some you know that you
had the antiwar.com guys who were saying this is completely
false. Well, they could have been easily it that was before
social media
labeled information is thrown off, no, not easily, they would
have been without a doubt
then.
But that's only because we feel that it's so important to do
this on these particular systems.
I've got a bad I've got a better example. Here's a better
example. 911 truth years. Okay, so, I, the first time I ever
heard about 911 truth movement, was watching the loose change
documentary on Netflix,
oh, really.
It was on Netflix, they would never show that we
had a Google Video man remember those days Google.
But in the thing is, like this, the 911 truth or movement is
still just a tiny fraction of people. It's never the danger of
people seeing something and being influenced by it so much
to the point of bad things happening is so small, but we've
proven historically
that we're afraid the difficulty is, is that the algorithms that
you have in things like YouTube, and, and other places, end up
sort of ramping up the, the content that you see. So that
they, they, they begin to put more and more, you know, stuff
in it, you know, in front of you to the point where it begins to,
you know, begins to amplify those views that you have
a rabbit hole, it takes you down the rabbit hole
just difficult. Yeah, yeah. And so you've got that that age, I
think where I'm coming from here is not is not that they appear,
if you know what you're searching for, then you will
find it. It's the it's putting stuff in front of you. It's the
it's the algorithms and the tools that enable those
particular algorithms. It, you know, so that you do begin to
see more, you know, outlandish stuff. And then there's been
lots of pieces of research around how the Google algorithm
how the YouTube algorithm works, and, you know, people who watch
this, also watch this and so on. I think you know, that that's,
that's where it gets difficult. And, you know, and it's
interesting hearing you say, Well, of course, if it's
illegal, we'll take it down. Because that then that turns
into it being legal versus illegal. But and, you know,
it's, you know, there's various rules about all kinds of things.
All right, so
I'll give you the final word on this Jays. But now, now, I gotta
say a few things.
I'm looking, I'm looking forward to the final. Yeah, no,
of course, you're a guest.
We're gonna, we saw we're solvers here.
I'm gonna, I'm gonna slice you both down. And I'm gonna toss it
to you, James. So your bloody corpse can give the final word.
Go for it. All right, first of all, the only thing that should
be labeled on social media is the algorithms themselves,
because what you just described is not is much more dangerous,
and had adverse effects on people's health and sanity and
state of mind. And personality. And general life is the
algorithms of social media used versus Stumbling on a search
where some kkk Nazi quadroon podcast pops up that you're
probably not going to get sucked into Heil Hitler. But it was
Dave who said it. Of course, if it's something illegal, we'll
take it off. You didn't hear me pipe in there? Because I would
really have to, you know, I'm willing to go to court,
depending on you know, our resources. Because Yeah, I'm not
doing anything. I'm hosting an index. We're not telling anybody
to go shoot anybody. That's an mp3 file. You can find that over
there. And you could listen to it on that on that platform. I
have nothing to do with this. Go away from me. Secondly, I grew
up in a military intelligence family. The simple good old days
of news was one and all this information to everybody on
television today, as half of them are ex CIA, FBI agents
talking crap on the news that this information is in the
system that is telling you to shut up. And it's telling you
that you can't talk that way, because the official word is
this. And you yourself did a version of a James, you know,
climate change is settled case, there's nothing left to discuss.
But that's not actually the discussion. Is it? Now, the
discussion is, and that's, that's why it's so dangerous.
The discussion has been moved from climate change your climate
denier versus, well, let's take a look at what's really causing
it, how we can really affect it. What these particular plans
entail, none of that is discussed is just shut up and
put under a big blanket, and you can't talk anymore. And as long
as people commit the narcissistic acts of needing to
have a large audience, or thinking they have one, which
you don't really on, I don't think I think a lot of your
followers are probably up, I have a lot of bots, for sure.
And if you are able to go over to a different platform, such as
the Federated universe of sites, or podcasting, I'm perfectly
okay with us being where we are with 40% of the market. And I
don't care if Apple supports the namespace, I really don't,
there's going to be enough people who want to hear
podcasts, any podcasts have access to it, they'll make their
own decisions. And if an app is too dangerous for them, because
it shows them the full search results, they can either find
one that doesn't or shockingly build one themselves. And that's
where we need to move people. James Cridland for the last
word.
I, I certainly don't want to turn your views down at all. Do
I say?
Whatever you want, James, I'm just unloading on you, man. It
just didn't
take my Take. Take Take my approach. James. I've never I've
never let lack of knowledge of a topic stop me from having
completely unjustified strong opinions about that topic.
Well, but but
I love that we can have this conversation. I'm not quite sure
how we got here. But I think it's worth discussing. Because
this really is what we're talking about here. What we're
building here is a place where there's just a lot more
flexibility. And it's not even,
it's really important Unless Unless just unless just be
really clear. By the way, the podcast index is a conversation
around censorship or not censoring, or however you want
to say this right? The podcast namespace, nothing to do with
that, right? Oh, yes, yes. All is all about making podcasting
better for everybody. And it has nothing to do with content. It's
all about the it's all about adding additional features and
everything else. So that's
why Yeah, that's why I didn't respond to Brian London's issue.
I just, I just left it alone. I'm like, this is probably just
not the right place for this issue.
Yeah. So what was so whether or not there's a conversation
around around, you know, taking legal podcasts down? Actually,
what we really want is we really want people like Apple to
support the podcast namespace because it's that that will help
innovate and move us forward. So we should we should be working
on that, as far as I'm concerned.
Well, I am presenting to the Apple podcast team in January
the namespace.
Very cool. Yeah.
Yeah. But
it is my belief they are working on podcasting, podcast plus, and
they are working on I made him I said to them quite clearly, you
know, good luck with competing with Spotify. My recommendation
is get on a different battlefield, brother. Come on,
come over here with the red coats.
You know what I think that Adam that Apple podcasts ought to be
doing. They should be doing two things really easy
straightforward for them. Number one is for them to turn on paid
for podcasts. Now you or I might not want to do a paid for
podcast but the the benefit that Apple has is that they already
have all of the tax and all of the payments and everything else
set up because of their app store. So they can very easily
turn on if you want to listen to this podcast. $1 an episode or
it's $1, for you to get, you know, the next 10 shows or
whatever it is. So they can easily do that. That will be
number one. And number two would be an Android app. Because it
turns out that 75% of phones in the world, our Android apps, and
the Android apps that we have, with a possible exception of
Google podcasts, are really not very good. And so it would be
really helpful, I think, if Apple were to do an Android app,
but the only reason that they would do an Android app is if
they could earn some money out of it.
But why? Why would they have to do their thing? There's plenty
of great Android apps. Why would they? Why did they? Why do we
need that? Who needs that?
I mean, there are plenty of great Android apps, but
everybody just wants to use everybody talks about Apple
podcasts as if it is podcasts. And I know,
a feeling you get because I I really, I had a nice chat with
James Boggs. Um, he reached out. Yeah, no, we talk once a year
maybe. Any he checked in with me? And I told him that he right
after the Sphinx demo, and believe me, I think he's very
interested in that. But you know, the, the issue is, micro
payments is just the dollar. The and the system is
so hugely, that's a hugely complicated thing.
But But I think they also Yeah, that's not their customer there.
Now look at what they've done with professional audio and
video they've given up or semi professional, they've kind of
given up on it. Yeah, let's come back with a with a $50,000
machine, you can do anything on. But meanwhile, all the the high
end audio guys, I know, all moved to Windows A while ago,
many of them moving to Linux, there's not enough for me on on
Linux to do what I do in particular. But their customer
is the person who has the phone. And podcasting was doing just
fine. Without apple. We had we had apps being created. I think
it would be hard, actually hard for Apple to catch up on
podcasts. This is like iTunes on Windows, you know, it's like it
wouldn't it never really caught on it was a piece of crap, but
you needed it for the iPhone. I just don't see the importance
anymore of apple and the industry. The hosting companies
in particular, and this is the whole conversation that Todd and
Rob were having is they've basically been waiting for 10
years for Apple to do one thing. And oh, yeah, now just by
starting Apple is calling us. And I said, Hey, man, here's
what I know. I know that NPR, who you featured from day one,
before you were at the company, instead of the independent
podcast, which is okay. But you know, you went highbrow High
Road with all the NPR PBS stuff, and which, you know, kudos to
Tony Khan and everyone who worked on getting NPR in, but
they can't get the season tag they want, we're creating it. So
we're gonna write this for them, we're putting it in the
namespace, and we're gonna have app supporting it. And they have
their own publishing system, they're going to support it. And
they might be telling their listeners to go listen on, on
pod friend or pod verse, or podcast addict or, or any of
these different apps. So up to you. The pressure is going to
come from their customers, not from podcast hosts, and not even
for me. But there's competition out there. And these web apps,
they work great on Android. And they suck on the iPhone, but
they work fantastic. On Android. They really do is Apple hates
web apps. What a farce that is. So tell me, what is this? Why is
this still a thing? Why can't people get over this? Why does
it always have to be apple? We need Apple, Apple, I support it.
I just don't see why anyone cares anymore.
I mean, I'm I guess I'm one of the people who has been sort of
driving against Apple for quite some time. Very interesting to
me, it's a bit weird playing the other side. But you can but you
can certainly see that, you know, the the addition of Apple
podcasts to the Apple to the iPhone had a big effect on the
amount of downloads on the amount of people that knew what
a podcast was. And it would be really helpful. Whether that to
be, you know, available on the Android side of it as well. I
would also say what
part what part James, What part do you want on the Android side
what
what is the important part what is so different about that
because because you have a bunch of podcasters and there and they
all don't any better, but you have a bunch of podcasters all
saying listen to us on Apple podcasts to the point where
granny with her android phone says, Oh, well, I can't listen
to that, because that's on the apple thing.
Okay, so a, you know, a, you've got to go help your granny or
you're just a bad grandson. Very bad grandson. B. Once we publish
the payment API, we're almost any podcast app can tie in
Bitcoin lightning payments, I'm jumping the gun, but I'm saying
once we do that,
a
podcasters are not going to say, go get to go and tell granted to
get the podcast, I think I say go get this podcast app, and
then flash the QR code with this. They're going to push
people towards apps that make the money.
Yeah, the podcasters will follow them. The money Oh,
yeah, they'll follow it put it when I say you can make more
money. With with 5000 downloads, what you would call five, you
can make more money with lightning payments, then then
you're going to get from any ads in your podcast, guaranteed.
The sc sc this has the same, essentially the same thing that
happened with Google Reader. A good RSS feeds were a huge thing
at the time. You know, we're we're a fledgling technology.
And then Google Reader came on the scene. And everybody
thought, Oh, well, this Google Reader is Newser is RSS. I mean,
that's they thought it was the entire thing. And it was a
horrible interface. The UI was terrible. It was a piece of it
was a piece of garbage, really. And then as soon as Google
Reader disappeared, you had a resurgence of new innovative
apps like new, does it feed Ben feed Ben and Feedly. And I mean,
just like 10 of them popped up overnight. And some of them are
so good now. And you got netnewswire came back? It's
actually a thing again, yeah. Let's see, the problem with
Apple podcasts is when it's not just them, it's just a genre
defining thing is when some some big player comes in there and
just plants the flag at the very beginning, it can really damage
the market for long periods of time.
Well, Apple has no beef with me, because they did us a huge
favor. The beauty of RSS in general is that never went away,
the readers went away. And the methodology of a timeline was
adopted by the social networks, Twitter is, after all, at its
core, a podcasting company. So the idea of subscribing to feeds
with content was, you know, has always been there. And what
didn't have what we did not have, at the time was an
incentive that we didn't have app stores. an incentive for the
developers to build these experiences. And this is what
I'm pushing for, and what we've been trying to do it and I even
heard Todd and Rob, talk about, almost as if it was a crazy
thing for someone to say like, we have no relationship with the
podcast apps. And I thought to myself, How sad because you
couldn't, you could once you have value flowing, that you can
easily disperse back and forth. And micro payments, which has
been a big thing people have talked about for 20 years, we
actually have it working. When you have these micro payments.
Yeah, you're gonna have relationship with with the app
developers, because they're going to say, Hey, you know
what, maybe you can get half off hosting, if you kick in 1% goes
back to your hosting company, maybe you want to have the
hosting company wants the app developer to highlight certain
certain podcasts that are their customers, maybe they should
have their own app and make their own money on it. Once you
put money into the equation, Apple doesn't make money on
podcasts cost them a lot of dough to host it to have the
whole team there. But they sell devices. So what's been lacking
is that infrastructure and so I agree. And when you say, and
this is what I would hope would not happen. Because the
inclination is think if Apple made pot for pay podcast, it
would be very disappointing to me because I know that they
would say All right, here's 199 and episode, hell where and the
whole the whole premise
of why with 30% what
besides that the whole premise of value for value is what is it
worth to you make it make it open ended it make it variable
from day to day, make it variable from minute to minute,
I'm liking it a little bit more, it's more value to me. This is
the conversation that's changing and what we're doing here today
We're going to do it for music, we're going to use a similar
infrastruc. I'm telling you, Dave, right now cancel the next
10 years of your life, I have plans.
Alright, wait, let me do, let me pull my calendar
we're gonna do we can do it for music, we have a built in
royalty system that has never existed before this anywhere, it
can actually function in real time. With any type of content
source, the only hook is that it's based on value for value
and not on set pricing. And it's and therefore it's also
voluntary, because you can assign value zero, but then what
are you doing with your time. So this is my dream of the future.
And without people like you, James Cridland, we're not going
to be able to communicate it. So what can I do to suck up to you
even more?
You got everybody now that
used to navigate you thoroughly now that you thoroughly
understand lightning, or read an article. But
when I do thoroughly understand lightning, I certainly will
write I really I really want to do. James, I really want to set
you up with that. I will make it my personal mission to see that
you have experienced this. Because once you do, and once
you put because I want you to put pod land on there.
And it'll blow your mind. You see this
this? Yeah, it's micropayments. But it's coming in every minute.
Like, Oh, my God, it just makes you happy. And all you know, all
you know, is you just got to get a multiplier. So either more
people listening or get them listening longer. It's one of
two things,
I can see that and I think one of the things that, you know, is
really needed in this space is to make it really simple. And
the fact that you have to sign up the fact that you have to buy
some Bitcoin, the fact that it was Satoshi. And then and then
you need this app. And then you need this weird code. And then
you need the world's most complicated thing. But I think
I'm
ready. I'm making it sound. Yeah.
James, when when we first started podcasting, people had
to click on this button, this big page code came up, he had to
copy the great copy the link, go over to your app, paste it in
there. Oh, crap, I left on download all episodes at once.
Now I have no internet. Granny is crying.
I remember fiddling around with you know, iPod back in late
2004, early 2000. Sure. And that was not anywhere near as as
simple as you know, pocket cast is or anything else. So yeah,
absolutely. And it's that that's actually needed here in terms of
the micropayment stuff, in terms of just keeping things simple.
Yeah. What do you think about this data? When does that? Do
it? tag? it? What do you think about that stick sticking that
on the end of the download?
I,
I see your the stick the parameter on the end of the
explain, we're talking about Dave set it up because people
need to understand.
Okay. Well, you know, it's, it's a way to differentiate and
excuse me, You caught me off guard, it is a way to create a
code that is completely anonymous, that gets attached to
the end of every download, so that the CDN or the host can
accurately differentiate individual users. And individual
listens. And in a way that is completely anonymous. That's
that's the that's the idea.
Yeah, so as as pod new said yesterday, so good parameter, it
goes on the end of the audio. And the idea is to produce if
I've understood it right to produce a random grid per
enclosure, so per individual episode of a show, which is
consistent for every listener, so that you can actually
understand therefore, exactly how many listeners you have,
assuming that every single podcast app does this. Yeah. But
yeah, exactly.
Yep. And that's so that's, you know, all the other, all the
other. Let's just say I be based, things stay the same. So
you're still you know, you're still saying, well, you need to
download at least enough content to listen to the first minute
and you accounts and you listen to after 24 hours and those
those sorts of things, all this stuff. Assuming all of that
stuff stays the same. This just solve the problem of being of
differentiation with people being behind a NAT firewall and,
and all these kinds of things, which is a real issue. I mean,
In in my office, we have, you know, 100 people here and you
may and probably 50% of them have iPhones and a lot of them
podcast. So literally, it looks like it's all the same. It's all
one big, you know, one person downloading the same NP and mp3
57 times. But what I mean, do you? Do you think that's a thing
that the open podcast analytic working group could pick up and
look at? Or? I mean, I
think I think anything that makes the job of analytics
easier and better is a good plan. Mostly analytics is driven
by advertisers, not necessarily by by podcasters, because, hey,
there you go. Because as Adam has already said, you know, he,
you're not that interested in your stats, you're more, you're
more interested in everything else that you actually get back.
So in terms of that, do the advertisers, do the advertisers
care enough about this sort of thing? is an interesting
question. For me, I look at the IB stuff. And you know, I think
that the IB is good, I think it does a good, it does a good job,
it's quite slow. It's not fast enough for me, and a little bit
disappointed at the fact that it costs so much to be involved.
And that it's a bit sort of opaque. But I think it's a very
useful thing to have a standard way of talking about a download
and a play, and a standard way of, you know, of doing all of
that. If this good. Helps, then I think that's great. I should
probably also say, once more of our devices, move over to IP
version six, then we've kind of got that good anyway, because we
ended up changing all rather it changes that because we end up
changing IP addresses and all kinds of things. So there's
gonna be the IP version six.
Yeah, that's gonna be a lot of Nat though, even with ipv6
because of security issues with Nat
There you go. You see
ipv6? Am I gonna see that before I die? I've been hearing about
this for 20 years. You're gonna
get your My, my network here. I've got it on my mobile phone.
I've got it on everything, I think Yeah.
Oh, man, you want to talk about making logs and mess? Up babies?
Yes, absolutely. It does get four and six mixing together.
It's like me. No.
And the weird thing is, is that your phone because of the
privacy, your phone and your laptop, and everything else
changes its IP? Six.
Yeah,
you know, address all the time. So it makes life really, really
hard. But yeah, I mean, I think I mean, I so I do my own stats
for my podcast. And for the pod news podcast, which is the daily
one. I do my own stats for that. And one of the things that I
don't want to end up doing is to have any others any unknowns.
And I also don't want to go down the easy job of saying that all
of these plays have come through Google Chrome or through
Firefox, right?
Because that's not that's not a platform. That's not a podcast
platform. That's just the this device that you're using, at the
end of the day, the bottom line for me, and I think you realize
this as well, James, and I've been out of the advertising game
for a long time, but was a big part of it for most of my
career. It doesn't really matter. As long as there's an
agreed to standard. And it's like Neil says, we all know it's
total horse crap. Everybody knows big secret. There are
actually some ways to influence it. I think radio, Arbitron
ratings are even funnier. The way those are put together. We
used to have a promotion right around radio sweeps at wh Tz in
New York. Because it's the art the Arbitron ratings, and
Arbitron would send people a diary. And you'd have to list in
your book. If you had you know what radio stations, you'd
listen to what time and for how long. So we would run a
promotion for we will give away watches the Armitron watch. So
we would keep promoting this. It sounds like arbitrage but we
were saying Armitron and that would put into everybody's head
Armitron armor. No ever heard that? Oh, yeah, that's a book.
Oh, yes. 100 and it works. It works. We actually bought the
watches. We wouldn't even take them for free.
Oh, wow.
Wow, that's clever.
But as long as everyone agrees on the one standard, then you're
golden and I think that ay ay ay b. And of course, they also get
to charge whatever they can charge, you know, to for their,
their lunches in Geneva. I mean, that's just how it works. So I'm
super happy with that. For us for the podcast index. I just
love that we are an ad hoc working group of a bunch of nut
jobs. opinion. And and sometimes we come up with stuff and then
you know, look at the namespace it's, it's not like it's not
Adam and Dave sitting in the corner. It's a whole bunch of
people. It's years and years of work of thinking that's gone
into it. We're just the Wrecking Crew. You know, we're in here.
We're the snowpiercer. We're the snow plow, and we're just okay,
we're just gonna go, we have.
I mean, except for some personal pride, nothing to lose. The
whole world is open to you, when you are not scared of being
wrong. Yes, I'm not scared of that at all. If the worst thing
that can happen if somebody says, You're an idiot, that was
a stupid idea, and we'll just drop it and go to the next one.
Right. Hmm.
So James Cridland,
it's a good place to be.
Man, thank you so much. We have to have you back again. Because
with you, we can get into some real deep philosophical stuff.
So when we feel smart again, we'll have to get you know.
It'll take a little bit that'll be a while. Yeah. Well,
and stop stealing our namespace segment. Man that really hurt.
Doing sexy names. Sexy namespace. Yeah. Couple of
donations to take care of, if you don't mind. For a moment,
James. Yeah, this is a value for value, the whole project has
value for value. So if you enjoy podcasts, index.org the API that
horribly racist, misogynistic search, you might use that from
time to time. More any of the apps, you know, support those
guys directly, of course, but if you maybe like this show, just
what we're discussing, turn that value into numbers and go to
podcast index.org. At the bottom of the big red Donate button,
you hit that that's all pay pal. We do have a lightning Bitcoin
payment there as well, which I think some people are using. I
have seen some stuff come in as appreciated. That'll be for the
future. And let's see if we had any. We had a great, great week
last week. I mean, some massive support coming in. How are we
doing this week? Dave?
It is a Monday. And we have zero donations. This is not
Christmas. So we had we did we did have to subscribe.
We got coal. Oh, we have subscriptions.
We will we had two subscription payments that came in my box one
for $5 and went for $10. Yeah, well, that keeps some fires from
us. Good
glow. Yes. Yeah.
I just got brought up one up a random piece of paper because we
have no, that's that's our coal.
Yeah, we'll probably have a double donation on on next
week's show. Because this as you said, this is only a few days
after last one.
Yeah, usually the donations they usually come in like maybe
Wednesday or Thursday. Yeah, right before the show.
James, what you're doing for for Christmas, man? You must be
weird there with the middle of the summer.
Yes, it's middle of the summer, which is very strange. So you
have all of these songs going Let it snow and then you look
out the window and it's 90 degrees. What on earth is going
on? So yeah, we are going we are spending four days in a nice
hotel somewhere which should beautiful should be good. Yeah,
right. Should be nice. In the in the hinterland of the of the
Queensland, Bush, so
nice.
Yeah. So you should be good. Looking forward to
congratulations on on your tremendous success. It is the
Bible to me for the daily read. I always go to my newsletters
folder first and pick it out. above anything else, and I
actually load images. So I make sure you can track me because I
want you to know that I'm reading your stuff. I don't do
that on any other pod newsletter, pod newsletters.
And I'd love you so much.
Yes. And I'd love to be featured one time to try and discourage
people from using the term pod. I think that would be an
excellent really throw away articles. Oh, yeah, I have a
real problem with this change. Oh, really?
I was I was unaware of this. I never say the pod. Obviously pod
news.
Just the idea of you doing Oh, we're doing the pod? It's the
latest pod. Yeah. Which is?
Really that really drives me mad. pleased to hear it.
Yes. I have a friend in this. Yes. Rock against the pod term.
Correct.
All right. Alright. Let's we always like to ask Dave,
anything that we can do for you.
You can send donations. What up a random piece of paper I found
on my desk. That would be I want to fantastic
Dred Scott who is diligently managing the chapters for this
for all of our episodes. I have a feeling he'll put another sad
puppy up for you Dave was with the donations for today
with a Santa Claus Adam.
If you want to experience the wonder of the Have the chapters
in their full glory, new podcast app.com a number of them support
this. I like hyper catcher and pod friend, James, what can we
do for you?
You can get a free buddy who's listening to this to subscribe
to pod news. dotnet. It's a free newsletter. It's also a podcast
and it's at pod news. dotnet. That's great.
That's easy. Well, we can do that every single time. Not a
problem. All right, man, really, really appreciate. It's been
great and appreciate the time and the scheduling because, you
know, as we said, You live in the future.
So well. Well, thank you so much. It's been an honor to be
on. Sorry.
All right, Dave, my friend Have a Merry Christmas the rest of
what's left of it and we'll see all of you on the next episode
of podcasting 2.0 as we reshape the future of podcasting. Until
then, take care everybody Bye bye.
Should have muted my mic.
You have been listening to podcasting 2.0 visit podcasts in
the Zach org for more information.