Podcasting 2.0 for April 4th, 2025, episode
217, Post-Economic.
Hey everybody, welcome once again to Podcasting 2
.0. We're not just a podcast, it is
a board meeting of the most important people
in podcasting today.
And some of them are from podcasting from
yesterday and from way, way yesterday.
Some of us are boomers.
We are the only board room that isn't
broadcasting live from Podcasting Movement Evolutions.
I'm Adam Curry, here in the heart of
the Texas Hill Country and in Alabama, the
man who fights AI email spam 24-7.
Say hello to my friend on the other
end, the one, the only, Mr. on stage
himself, Dave Jones.
I will have you know that I tweeted
and tweeted in the intro.
During the intro, I hit it at the,
I mean, you hit the post, I hit
the post at the exact same time.
I mean, it's a post-a-thon.
It is beautiful.
Right under the wire.
You said, Dave Jones post.
Yeah, perfect.
Perfect.
Well, everybody, welcome to the official board meeting
of Podcasting 2.0. Yes, we are not
coming to you live from Podcast Movement Evolutions.
And I don't, this says, wait, hello, Fred
FM in the chat.
What?
In the board, in the boardroom, hello, Fred
dash FM.
Oh, yeah.
Announcements disabled, but we'll continue monitoring, but remain
quiet.
You have to understand that we have the
most awesomest people in our community.
So when, so this Podcasting 2.0 board
room, when it's not being used by us,
and of course, we, we allow Oystein Berger
to come in after the show.
And, and I mean, he, he really messes
it up.
I mean, there's candy wrappers everywhere.
There's empty cans of soda, but he does
clean it up.
He cleans it up.
And so then in between all that, you
get song announcements from hello, Fred.
Like some used, some of those office fluorescent
bulbs, the long ones like laying in the
corner, all burned out.
Yeah.
Do people still use those?
Um, the new thing is these led panels
that replace those.
Oh, it's so it's horrible.
Cause you know, we use horrible, you know,
we used to do with those with the,
with the, the fluorescent, uh, the, Oh, we
call them and watch them explode.
No.
Well, what you would do is, uh, so
we go up on the roof where we
had the pirate radio station in Amsterdam.
So we'd be on the roof underneath the
antenna and then we'd each get one and
they would light up like lightsabers.
You could have lightsabers.
Now, of course, if you actually crashed against
each other, then your lightsaber was gone, but
it was pretty cool.
They were the radiation from the radio.
I guess it's radiation, right?
Oh yeah.
I mean, you can, you can hold one
of those next to your ham radio antenna.
It'll light up too.
Yikes.
As long as you hold onto the metal
part, but don't worry about it, but don't
worry about EMF and don't ever touch.
If you're holding onto the metal part, don't
ever touch the antenna itself with your, with
your light.
That's a bad idea.
Lord have mercy.
But that phone in your pocket is fine.
Don't worry about nothing wrong with that.
Oh, that'll also light it up.
I'm sure one of these phones, if it's
ringing.
Oh yeah.
Oh, definitely.
Those things light up at just with the
littlest amount of power.
It's pretty amazing.
That's kind of creepy, honestly.
Well, that's why people always got headaches in
offices and workshops and stuff is, you know,
if you were susceptible to it and you
had those lights, they're just radiating all kinds
of crap down on you.
The led light panels are, are worse though,
because they just feel, it's like, it's like
you're in, it's like you're being questioned in
a, you know, in an interrogation room.
You can't dim the power on those.
It's a, it's only one, one single dimmers
in offices.
It's like, it's like the light is either
own and you, you work slave or the
light is off and the clean and the
cleaning crew is there.
So work slave, that's how this stuff works.
Oh, that's funny.
Let me get the ISO of that.
Yeah, there we go.
Perfect.
So, uh, yeah, so, um, as I said
in the intro, we actually had a little
back and forth about that this week is
it's a, it's one, it's probably the toughest
time of the year for you.
And so we really appreciate you being here
today for the board meeting.
I made special dispensation for this year.
Well, that's, that's really cool because this is
the time when the company you work for,
of course, is doing everybody's tax return and
they're all late.
And, uh, and I, and I, and I
noticed that you were working, it seemed more
hours and harder than previous years.
Cause I've, I've gone through these periods with
you for about 15 years, I think.
And, uh, and you said, yeah, it's probably
the worst.
And then you came back with AI email
spam is the worst.
Oh, I'm so bad off the chart right
now.
I mean, phishing has exploded in, in like
new and impressive ways since the LLM stuff,
because used to, you could really depend on
poor translation to sort of identify, but now
you can't.
Wow.
You can't, I mean, they all, all the
emails are grammatically really good.
So, I mean, you just, it's really hard
to tell, you know, when something they, they
look just like normal emails, but they're coming,
you have to use, you have to go
to these extra links to find out that
it, whether or not it's legit, like, um,
like link detonation and there's these other, you
know, so you basically in a sandbox environment,
you, you click, you, you have like a
VM that spins up that clicks the link,
goes to where the destination is, is pointing
you to, which could be, you know, two
hops away.
So a common tactic would be, um, some,
somebody's email account gets hacked at an office
365 organization.
Yeah.
That email is then connected within the office
365 organization to a SharePoint site in 365.
And so it has all the whole address
book, everyone's address book, and it starts to
email everybody.
It does have the address book, but what
happens is the email account, well, the 365
account gets compromised.
Then a, a PDF gets uploaded to the
SharePoint site for that, or the one drive
for that user.
This happened to our church.
Exactly this.
And then you get an email and says,
click on this link to download the PDF.
Uh-huh.
And what's in the PDF is only another
link to another website, which takes you.
And that's where the payload gets detonated.
Yep.
It's, it's so, it's just, it's just off
the chain now.
It was, it was convincing.
It was a convincing email because it came
into me and, uh, Pastor Jimmy always emails
me his, uh, his file, which is basically
all of his devotionals.
And I edit them up, chop them up,
put them into Hello Fred.
And it happened to be the very day
I was expecting that to come in.
Now it came in from his bridge church
email address.
And it says, you know, Pastor Jimmy is
sharing this file with you.
And, and I'm looking at it.
I said, well, that's odd.
Why would, and it said, you know, bridge
project or even the name of the file.
It was, it was pretty sophisticated.
And I'm like, uh, no, this doesn't look
right.
And then of course, everybody in, uh, everybody
who is in the church date, the main
database, everybody got a copy.
Yeah.
A thousand people at least.
Yeah.
Everybody got a copy.
Yeah.
Stephen B saying that, um, he got a
fake email from a claiming to be from
his, uh, HR department.
Uh, excuse me, HR department.
We were seeing a bunch of that too.
So it's like, uh, a new, uh, the
latest round is, um, here's the latest revisions
to the employee handbook.
Oh, that's well, that's actually a classic one.
I remember that one.
Yeah.
Or salary dot XLS, you know, so, Oh,
I can find out what everyone's salary is.
Yeah.
An X, an XL file is the best
to open up salary adjustments.
That's another one here.
Here's the new salary adjustments, a benefit benefits
onboarding.
Here's our new benefits onboarding.
Yeah.
It's just all over the place.
Yeah.
And of course, uh, we still do not
have an AI to combat the AI created
email, which is so disappointing because, and it
can't, it never will be able to, because
if the AI creates it, that means that
it's based on what humans actually wrote.
And so you'll never be able to tell
the difference.
You'll never be able to tell you an
LLM will never be able to tell you,
tell you whether something is just based on
language.
So here, here's, here's what makes it so
disappointing.
Sending links and attachments is sort of old
school.
It still happens, but it'll get you blocked
pretty quick.
What happens now is they just, they just
want you to, they just want to bait
you into replying to them.
So they establish a look of trust and
then later they hit you with the link.
And so what you get, which the, the
initial phishing email is no longer the payload.
It's just bait.
And all it says is, you know, Hey,
uh, you know, I found your company on,
uh, on Google.
Then I just moved to the area.
Oh, well I'd be out already.
I'm like, no, no, no.
There's nothing about it.
That sounds that you could get 10 emails
that all sound that way.
And two of them are, are legit and
eight of them are phishing and you will
never be able to tell the difference with
software.
You just can't.
Yeah.
So I, um, since we're, uh, since we're
talking about it this week in AI, uh,
twilp, twilp, twilp, twilp, twilp, liquid soap, twilps,
twilps.
There we go.
This week in liquid soap.
So I'd signed up.
I, someone had, I read an article about
this new agentic AI called Manis, Manis dot.
I am wait.
M a N what?
Us dot.
I am man.
It's a gentic AI.
It's the new, new thing.
A gentic AI.
Manis dot.
I am.
Yeah.
What is an IM domain?
Where's that from?
I don't know.
Email DeMarcos.
I don't know.
Yes.
The isle of man.
Oh, there you go.
Okay.
So I'd heard about this thing and, uh,
I'm like, ah, you know, and I wasn't
even thinking cause I wasn't actually void zeros
helping with the liquid soap.
And it's even hard for the AI known
as void zero, what I want to do.
Uh, so I'm like, oh, this is interesting.
And so I say create, uh, actually it
was very simple prompt.
I was, I was quite surprised.
I said, um, what was my initial thing?
Get me the latest Bitcoin price from the
past five hours, five hours show the price
from each hour.
And it created, uh, a web app, a
PWA that I can refresh and, um, and
actually revise that to say, give me 24
hours.
I mean, it is a stunning, stunning little,
uh, little app that it created.
Um, in fact, I can probably, can I,
uh, can I share that link somewhere?
Hold on.
I should be able to share the link,
I guess.
Um, created an app, but where did it
put the app?
Where does it on my desk?
No, I did.
It created a, when I created, it creates
a website.
This is what's crazy.
So create, it created a website.
Let's see.
I'm, it's going through all of the things
here.
Let me see if this is the one.
Is that the five hour?
Let me see the 24 hour.
Um, I want to post it into the
boardroom.
Here we go.
Okay.
Manners dot space sounds kind of gross, but
here we go.
So there you go.
And, uh, it's, it's stunning and it did
all this stuff I didn't ask for.
It has a beautiful chart.
It shows me the 24 hour change, current
price, 24 hour range.
I'm like, wow, that's, and it, and it
goes through all these steps.
You know, it shows you browsing, looking up
all these different things.
I'm like, okay, this one can help me
with my liquid soap problem.
Nope.
And you can see it browsing the documentation
for the version I have, or at least
it says it is.
And it's, and just, it keeps throwing errors
every single time I throw in an error.
It's like, okay, I apologize for misunderstanding your
requirements.
Let me clarify.
It just keeps on going.
And then of course I ran out of
credits.
It didn't, it ran out of credits, man.
I've got no, just give us some credit,
some credit.
So I'm like, okay, I'll, uh, you know,
I'm, I'm gonna, I'm in it.
Okay.
You guys are trying to do something here.
So I went to the upgrade much 39
bucks a month, not cheap.
Like, okay.
And so I burned through 2000 credits with
a couple of queries.
So now I have 3,500 credits.
So I guess they'll get me 10 more
queries maybe.
Yeah.
And with all these errors, mistakes, it's just
not good.
And then now it says, choose the approach
that best fits your needs.
Could be this script, could be this script.
So it just can't do it.
Have you looked at the source code of
this thing?
Of the app?
Yeah.
Have you right-clicked and done view source?
Um, I will do it right now.
Is it crazy?
There's a lot of Chinese, uh, comments in
this, uh, source code.
Really?
Yeah.
Where's the, where's the Chinese comments I'm looking
for?
Oh, oh yeah.
Uh-huh.
Oh man.
Yeah.
What's, what does all that mean?
I don't know.
The Chiners.
You're, you're in bed with the Chiners.
What is shadow?
What is, what is, uh, symbol, symbol, symbol,
shadow Dom?
What does that mean?
I don't know.
It's, it's a shadow Dom.
I'm sure.
I'm sure it's now eating away at my
hard drive doing something I don't want.
So it's, uh, anyway, it doesn't really matter
because everything is in meltdown right now.
And, uh, and they're blaming and they're blaming
the, the stock market meltdown is so cool.
Uh, Scott Besson, our, uh, treasury of the
secretary is saying, well, I just want you
to know that ever since deep seek, we
already reached peak AI.
So it's kind of normal that this is
all falling apart now.
And I agree with him.
I kind of, yeah, I was about to
say, I kind of think that's accurate.
I just, we just needed the catalyst.
Let me see if I can, uh, find
that clip.
That was kind of interesting.
Uh, see, was this it?
Yeah, this is it.
Here we go.
This is from Bloomberg.
Okay.
But since the peaks in February, this is
obviously about the tariffs down 8%.
I think the NASDAQ from its high most
recently is down 12%.
So far though, these kind of, this kind
of market down draft so far this year
is not concerning you.
Well, look in my old business, I was
very concerned about market movements and I'm trying
to be a secretary of treasury, not a
market commentator.
What I would point out is that especially
the NASDAQ NASDAQ peaked on deep seek day
that, so that's a mag seven problem, not
a MAGA problem.
Bam mag seven problem, not a MAGA problem.
And there's your soundbite.
Yep.
So totally disagree with him.
I think, I think it makes sense.
Yeah.
Uh, meanwhile, back in podcast land, everybody's a
podcast movement evolutions.
Not everybody there.
No.
And they're all talking about a video apparently
for what I understand.
What's what's new video is video.
We've got to have video.
Don't forget to do your show.
You got to have your, the short play.
You got to use a short play for
your video, for your podcast, the short play.
You know what the short play is on
today.
You've got to have a short play.
What's your short play.
What is a short play?
I have no idea what that is.
You got to have videos of the YouTube
shorts promoting your stuff so people can discover
you discovery, even though the number one way
of discovery is still friends and family.
Yeah.
Word of mouth.
Yes.
And if I, uh, if I may be
so bold to, uh, congratulate, uh, this group,
this entire group, uh, on our, on our,
on our achievement.
Yes.
We are the number one podcast directory, everybody.
According to the pod news podcast surveys, the
report card report card.
Yeah.
The report card thumb finger number one.
Yes.
Right, baby.
And you see right underneath us is a
Spotify, Apple, Amazon, Google, which one does not
belong in the list.
The one that runs on donations from a
ragtag crew of nut jobs who can't seem
to do anything right.
I wish I wish that, um, that Apple
and Google and Spotify could see our backend
infrastructure.
And I mean, like it would just be
in a complete embarrassment.
We should do tours.
We should do tours through your office.
Look at our Linode dashboard.
Here's the tour.
I mean, like it's, it would be, it'd
be hilarious to just watch it.
It's like, you just have to shake your
head.
Why are these guys?
Number one?
What?
Why?
I just like saying, check out our backend.
They should, they should check out our backend.
It's great.
We've got a good looking backend.
We've got a great looking backend.
The backend you've created it, red beans and
rice.
Didn't miss it.
I'm telling you red beans.
Um, let's see, what else have you been?
What do you mean?
I mean, you've just been heads down at
the office, right?
It's been, it's been crazy.
I've got nothing today.
I've got nothing but our, but our boy,
but our boy.
Well, let's bring our boy in because, uh,
uh, you invited him last minute and he
was a happy to oblige.
And, uh, we always love that.
And it kind of fits with the guests
that we had on, uh, two board meetings
ago, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the podcasting
2.0 boardroom, the international troublemaker who is
Matt Medeiros.
Hey, I just showed up to a party
with a bag of AI tricks right before.
What bag of tricks?
You got a bag of tricks, show us
your bag of tricks.
Man, we could talk about it, but this
is a, it's a pleasure and an honor
to be here.
And, uh, I find some solace in, um,
you know, being here when everyone else is
in Chicago.
So yeah.
How come you're not there?
I know.
Do you, where do you work?
What do you do?
I lost track of you.
Are you still at Castos?
Are you the, you're not the success manager
anymore?
No, not the success manager anymore.
So I haven't been there for two years.
I'm back in the WordPress space proper.
WordPress space.
Oh yeah.
WordPress space.
Work for a company called rocket genius.
And we make a form software.
Do you, do you need to wear a
suit in your rocket space in your WordPress
space?
So what does, what does rocket genius do?
They make a WordPress plugin called gravity forms
and it's a contact form plugin.
Yeah.
So they're actually the, one of the longest
lasting, uh, plugins in the space.
Been around for 15 years, headquartered out of
Virginia.
And, uh, I do their podcasts, some of
their YouTube stuff, marketing stuff, and community advocate
for WordPress and gravity forms.
Oh, and so gravity forms has been around
forever.
I remember it too.
Yeah.
Let me guess, uh, with it, you can
create forms easily with, with it.
You can create forms easily payments, anything you
want with inputting data and having something else
happen after that.
Well, congratulations on the new gig, man.
I'm happy for you.
What, uh, what, what facilitated this move?
If you don't mind me asking why, why,
why did you leave podcast space and go
to the WordPress space?
Uh, I think it was, um, the economy
as I'm told.
Oh, you were asked to move to the
other space.
Okay.
We're replacing, we're replacing the director podcast success
with an AI bot.
Yes.
Yeah.
Well, you, you came from, but you came
from WordPress and you're just going back to
your roots essentially.
Yeah.
I mean, that's how I got all the
podcasting, uh, roots.
Cause I started my podcast and WordPress about
15 years ago and I was just covering,
you know, if, if folks in the WordPress
world knew about James Cridlin, they would call
me the James Cridlin of WordPress.
Uh, wow.
Wow.
I don't know about that one, brother.
I've been covering it for a while and
uh, yeah, it was, it was a natural
fit to, to slide back to that side
of, of my career.
Well, cool.
That's an interesting, I like, so I'm, I'm
glad, yeah, I'm glad to have this conversation
because I've been thinking, um, about this for
a long time.
There's this weird sort of, um, uneasiness between
podcasting and open source, like the, I would
say like the podcast, uh, industrial complex and
open source, which is, is ironic when you
think about it because, you know, podcasting was
born in about as open source way you
could, you could possibly imagine with, you know,
RSS and then an OPML directory.
And, and, and then it became like rapidly
when it came, became sort of like an
industry, everybody went secret.
Everybody has proprietary stuff.
You know, nobody shares any code or anything.
And so it's like, it feels like, it
feels like it was born in open source
and then rapidly sort of like open source
was like rug pulled out, but it's still
at the foundation of what podcasting actually is,
you know, it's, it's a weird, it's a
weird dichotomy.
Yeah.
I mean, the reason why I get so
emotional about this, about this stuff, uh, like
my response to Tom and like some other
stuff I've, I've published in the past is
because I've heard the same kind of criticisms
to WordPress for literally 15 years.
And aside from automatic laying off 16%
of their staff two days ago, Oh, I
didn't hear about this.
Yeah.
Um, Oh, that explains a lot.
Yeah.
There's a whole thing happening, um, with automatic,
but I've heard the same criticisms of, of
WordPress for 15 years, you know, bloated software,
old, nobody uses PHP anymore.
Uh, the competitors like Wix and Squarespace or
video video is better.
Right.
It's the same thing.
It's the same sort of thing happening.
And, but then when you take a step
back and you look for WordPress powers 45
% of the websites on the internet, which
is just a massive number.
So it's like, how bad could this be
if people are still using this solution that
you keep telling me is dying year after
year.
Yeah.
The death of the death of PHP has
been, has been proclaimed forever, you know, and
then the, you know, WordPress, one thing that's
interesting to me about WordPress as it relates
to podcasting is that it's probably at least
as responsible for the success of podcasting as
Apple.
I mean, for sure.
Wasn't it baked in very early?
Uh, so they didn't have, they had RSS
feed for every link of a WordPress website.
So no matter what page you're on in
WordPress, you can do slash feed and it
will generate.
Yeah.
It'll give you the feed for that category
or that archive.
Um, but Castos was actually, uh, they got
investment from automatic, uh, seed investment.
That's how I got the job.
Yeah.
And the whole time when I was there,
Craig was like trying to tell them, like,
don't, don't you want to, uh, don't you
want to scoop us up and own us?
Cause they had bought pocket cast when I
was at Castos, it was a natural progression
to just kind of own a hosting company
too.
So, um, they, they still didn't do it
and spent hundreds of millions of dollars on
other things that have got them in trouble.
But, um, yeah, I mean, certainly like publishing,
uh, you know, putting words onto the internet
with an RSS feed.
Yeah.
I mean, WordPress is, is, is the, the
de facto CMS for that, in my opinion.
So just as I'm sorry, Dave, go ahead.
No, I was just gonna say, am I
wrong?
Or do you still have to have a,
do you have to have a plugin to
do to put an enclosure into an, into
a WordPress RSS feed?
Yeah.
So I guess PowerPress.
Yeah.
I guess PowerPress was the first one, right?
Um, PowerPress was probably the first one, but
where Castos has seriously simple podcasting plugin and
it was a different name and Craig acquired
it from a developer.
Um, they came out roughly the same time
ish.
I just remember back in the day you
could, you know, like so many were, um,
and still are, but really, but really early
on there were so many, uh, podcasts being
run off of WordPress site.
Yeah.
Uh, since just, we don't have to go
into it too deeply, but of course I've
been following the, uh, WP engine WordPress fracas
back and forth.
Now, all of a sudden it feels like,
was this some kind of elaborate set up
for a downsizing due to the economy?
Yeah.
Um, uh, it, it, there's a lot here.
I could go into it forever, but I'll
try to summarize as quickly as possible.
I mean, Mullenweg, uh, fancies himself probably along
the same lines of like an Elon Zuckerberg,
uh, you know, your, your typical tech guy.
And, um, you know, he, he has done
some pretty, some pretty big damage to the
community since August or September of last year
when we had WordCamp and that's when he
sort of like roasted WP engine over the
coals and his live, his live talk.
He actually kicked them out of the conference
that we were at, um, or tried to
kick them out.
Yeah.
And they were sponsored.
I mean, they dropped probably a hundred, 150
,000 to be there with the booth and
a huge team that they bring.
And, um, so, you know, fast forward, what,
what we've kind of uncovered through all of
this stuff is when Matt started, uh, Automatic,
he also started the WordPress foundation.
Yeah.
There's a conflict right there.
Right.
And he's on the board of the foundation
and what kind of came out of this,
which nobody knew, uh, everyone always thought WordPress
.org, which is the biggest distribution point for
free themes and plugins.
Everyone thought that that was part of the
foundation.
Well, through all of this discovery of through
legal, we've just found out that he's just
the sole guy who runs it.
Uh, so there is no like protection.
It's just this dude's website who, which literally
powers, you know, 45% of the, of
the web.
Um, and when things started to go South
with WP engine, he, they have a very
popular plugin called advanced custom fields and it
creates custom fields for custom post types.
And he literally just took over there.
Like eminent domain just came in, took over
their plugin, which had millions of installs and
just made it secure custom fields by automatic.
And like, yeah, it was like the biggest
egregious takeover of open source.
Like I think anyone has ever seen.
Right.
Um, and there's just been a lot of
like bad stuff happening.
He's kicked people out of, you know, the,
the community, uh, he's banned people from going
to word camps, which are the events held
around the world.
If you criticize them, you were blocked.
Um, it's been a bit of a roller
coaster ride.
So, you know, um, I know Matt, uh,
when I was at pod show, we lived
in the same building, we'd bump into each
other.
He was always a really nice guy.
So I never got any of that kind
of Elon juice from him.
Uh, let me rephrase that, but you know,
you know what I'm saying?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Uh, he was on a podcast recently, the
guys from, well now owned by HubSpot, uh,
my first million, Sam Parr, some, and the
other guy, I forget his name, but anyway,
he, Sam doesn't really know Matt and he
just had like the biggest backhanded compliment where
he was like, wait a minute, WordPress has
45% of the internet share and you're
not the richest guy in the world.
And this is because, well, that's because it's
not how open source works.
Right.
Well, I mean, it's like people still think
I'm a billionaire because, oh, you invented podcasting.
How come you don't, how come you're driving
that car?
But yeah, I mean, there's definitely the vibes
of, of like when you get to know
him behind the scenes and hear like one
of the comments he made, like when people
first, uh, when this started all going South,
you know, everyone was kind of afraid about
their business, like their freelance businesses, their agencies,
you know, how I came up in places
like Rocket Genius.
Yeah.
Like we're all kind of like wondering what,
what's going to happen.
And he made a statement that he's post
economic.
So he doesn't really think of those things.
Oh, no, that's not the statement you want
to hear.
Post economic, right.
Well, why, what the current crash could be
his fault.
Anytime you say I'm post economic, that's, that's
your crash right there.
Because of the WordPress fracas, the Dow has
crashed.
Yeah.
The S&P is down 500 by the,
you know.
All right.
Okay.
Well, that's all very unfortunate.
I mean, that would be Dave, like if
you and I went post economic.
I'm post podcasting.
Yeah.
Yeah, really.
Well, speaking of such, uh, you sent us
a couple of links to discuss today and
we should probably, uh, and this probably folds
right into it.
I want to talk about the dot CC
site in a second, but let's start off
with, uh, your, uh, this, uh, sub stack.
I said sub stack, I guess.
Uh, is it a sub stack?
No, it's WordPress.
Oh man.
It looks just like a sub stack.
Congratulations.
That's a great WordPress theme.
Um, and from your, uh, the podcast set
up.com ladies and gentlemen, the question is,
is the podcast industrial complex dead?
I figured I could get a shot back
at it too.
You know, since everyone asks if podcasting 2
.0 is dead, uh, I feel like I
could, I could have a shot back at
that, but, uh, from Dave's blog posts last
week, right.
When you talked about the live item tag,
um, and sort of like advocating for that.
Uh, see, I've always seen in my critical
take of Tom Webster and that other video
and posts that I put out, I've always
seen the open source side of what you
guys do, just like WordPress.
In other words, there's WordPress.
And then there's companies like rocket genius that
I worked for for 15 years.
They've been making software that sits on top
of WordPress.
And there's a whole economy, a billion, billions,
billions, uh, of the WordPress economy of themes,
plugins, hosting providers.
And then you just have WordPress as that
framework, if you will.
And that's the way that I see RSS
with podcasting is the way I see how
you all enhance podcasting through podcasting 2.0.
And it's, it's never, it's, it's been unsettling
that, that like other folks don't see it
out of our bubble, right.
Of podcasting 2.0. So, um, in today's
video, in today's blog post, uh, what I
did is I took to my friend AI
and I built, uh, this app called podcast,
power.cc. And what I've built is just
a demonstration of the, some of the really
cool marketable is the way that I see
it, uh, podcasting 2.0 tags, like chapters,
the live item tag, um, transcripts, location, the
person tag.
And I've loaded up, you know, your podcast
and all the other podcasts that cover podcasting
in there in a demonstration for folks to
see how, how all of your, how, how
all of our podcasts react, uh, to these
different chapters.
And I've made it, I've tried to make
it as like a utility where if somebody
is interested in this, like they're hearing what
we're talking about, or they're, you know, they
hear me rattling the cage all the time
about this stuff that they can just learn
about these tags and where to develop.
Yes.
I love this.
I see the little, learn about podcasts, uh,
colon live item podcast person.
Oh, very cool.
Well, this is a great idea.
I love it.
Um, podcast, podcast, power.com.
Yeah, this is interesting because you have the,
you're showing the, you're showing the thing and
then you're linking to, you're not just, it's
not just documentation.
It's documentation baked into an example of the
app as it's functioning.
That's very cool.
Yeah.
And again, it's just, it's what we do
in the WordPress world.
Like if, like if you install a WordPress
theme, if there's no content on your WordPress
website, it just looks like nothing.
It's just a header and a footer in
an empty middle.
Um, so there's the, the idea in WordPress,
like the style book, where you have all
of like the heading tags, the, the, how
everything looks like all your content, it's just
one page.
So a user can go to and say,
Oh, this is what my content is going
to look like when I use this theme.
So I was listening to what you were
saying and reading what you wrote about live
items.
Like, you know what, let me just throw
this together.
That's crazy.
That's great.
I love that.
So, um, you know, and it's, it's a,
it's a cool little, little project, but also
a little sample of like what I think
is really cool about podcasting.
Like being able to see rant, like randomized
chapters to find like fun moments.
Um, not quite the one button of joy
that, that you all talked about with Tom,
but it is just a way of thinking
about this stuff differently and visually, I guess.
How did you, how did you put this
together?
I mean, what exactly did you do?
I said, please make me an app.
Is that actually how I did it?
Can I give you my liquid soap script
and a couple of things that needs doing.
Yeah.
So, um, so I, for this particular app,
I've made a couple other apps with AI
and let me just take a step back.
I've, I'm not a developer obviously, but I
am why I am good at, I say
that I feel like I'm good with like
the community evangelism with WordPress is because I
can see both sides of it as a
user and a developer.
And I can kind of chat with both
teams in the middle, which is, you know,
what I was doing with Castos as well.
Right.
So, um, I use an app called replet,
R E P L I T.
Oh yes.
I've heard of this one.
People have told me that I should shut
up.
AI is great.
Have you seen replet?
Yes.
I have heard of this.
Um, I wouldn't go that far, but, uh,
it is, it is one of the better,
more sane versions of coding with AI because
everything's in-house and the infrastructure's in-house.
So I should say like, uh, you tell
it what you want for a framework.
In this case, I'm using, uh, react and,
uh, it has database in-house.
It has, you know, your edge functions in
-house has everything kind of like in-house
replet does.
Uh, you could think of it as like
the Adobe Photoshop of AI.
You know what, you know what I like
about this?
Um, this could, this type of, this type
of AI specifically that does these types of
things, very similar to what Manus did with
that web app for me, that could actually
revolutionize what I call universal apps.
Yes.
That could actually revolutionize it where people like,
well, I created a replet app, you know,
anything but PWA people might be interested in.
And, uh, it could create, it could create,
it could create quite a storm of a
web apps.
That's interesting.
Yeah.
And that's part of my, uh, my argument
in today's post video, uh, and demonstration is
the debate.
The debate shouldn't always be, or for me
anyway, it's not just about like, Hey, I
love podcasting 2.0 because it's free, man.
And you guys in the closed gardens, we
don't, we don't want that.
It's also about the fact that from a
development standpoint, because it's open source, the, at
least in our timeframe timeline right now, AI
can quickly build with, with these open source
solutions.
And it doesn't have to be with AI,
obviously, if you just know how to develop,
then you have an advantage, but I can
build these things because it is open source.
And you know, like Tom, uh, criticizing the
apps, you know, again, I, I agree with
a lot of what he says, but with
something like this, it's like, you might not
have to wait for an app or a
podcast hosting company to catch up air quotes,
catch up.
You can just build the experience yourself to
a degree.
I like it.
Well, this is thank you for doing this
because this is one of the things I've
been saying for months now is we need
different experiences, different things.
This is the beauty.
It's not this set thing that we have
to create every single time.
And you've just proved it.
Uh, by the way, I have a summary
of your blog post from madness.
I am.
No, I'll go straight to the future vision
and conclusion.
The post concludes by suggesting that as podcasting
evolves, the gap between what's possible with open
standards and what's available on the mainstream platforms
will likely grow rather than waiting for the
industry to catch up.
Podcast power dot CC demonstrates how creators and
developers can build the future themselves using open
standards, AI, and commitment to open ecosystems conclusion.
The blog post makes a case for embracing
open standards and podcasting to the practical example
of podcast power dot CC positions podcasting 2
.0 as not just a technical specification, but
as a philosophy that preserves the open nature
of podcasting while enabling innovation and enhanced experiences
for both creators and listeners.
Yeah.
And when you, when you zoom out on,
on this project, um, this is, you know,
six or whatever, six or seven podcasts here.
Um, the ones that cover podcasting, but this
could be, you know, your, if you're like
a big branded audio play and you have,
uh, comedy shows, you have sports shows, like
you can build a whole different experience on
the web with this stuff.
You could have your live stream with your
chat box right next to it.
And that like that competes against that live
stream, um, experience that Dave wrote about last
week.
So what's cool is on like, if you
go to some, I'm on podcast power dot
CC and I'm looking at, um, pod news,
I'll switch over to pod news weekly review.
And because they have links, uh, in their,
in their chapters out to various, you know,
articles they've talked about or whatever, uh, they,
these become sort of, these become clickable links
that you can just go to and see
the content.
These are like, like one of them is
this on the screen right now.
It's a Tom Webster's article and you check
the chapter link and you go straight to
his article.
Like this could be such a, it becomes
structured, um, like another source of structured data,
but it's really, but it's highly, uh, relevant
data because it's been curated by, by actual
people, uh, sort of like pod roles and
such is pod role in here.
I wanted to do pod role, but I
think I have to look up right through
the GUID and I'd have to have a,
this is where my, my shortcomings of being
a developer show really, really quick.
I would have to look up that GUID
on, on the podcast database, right?
You don't, you don't, that, that, that's a
common misperception about the, uh, because it uses
the remote item, which can you, which, which
can use a feed URL as well.
So you'd have the feed URL, you'd have
the feed URL, you'd have to resolve it
back into a podcast somehow, but yeah, you
don't have to look it up by GUID,
you can look it up by URL.
So, so here's the question.
Um, the podcasting, what we're doing here at
roundpodcastindex.org, podcastindex.social colloquially known as podcasting
2.0. Uh, there's a significant criticism about
the project.
It's not being led, there's no evangelism.
Since you come from a long history of,
uh, open source, because you say open source,
I say open source.
I'm not quite sure why we're different there,
but I'll try open source.
Um, how do you think we could do
this in a way that is more effective
that leads ultimately to a success story like
WordPress so that Dave and I can become
rich and blow it up later?
Yeah.
Well, I mean, when I think of WordPress,
um, it's just like we're waiting for hosts
and apps.
Like there's always going to be that, that
tug of war or chicken and the egg,
whichever like phrase you want to use on
that.
But with WordPress, when you go to look
for themes, right, there's the WordPress theme directory
and it's just, here's a browser, uh, with
all these themes in it and you click
to preview, uh, and you can, you can
see the theme.
And even that is, is something that's finally
starting to mature where now you can do
it in your own WordPress website and see
what it looks like before you actually make
the change.
And, you know, I don't have like the
technical answer to that, but previewing what these
other experiences look like, like at the, in
the directory, you know, what I'll say, screenshots
of these apps, like the different, like, uh,
podcast listening apps or the podcast hosting companies,
their interface, like there should be maybe like
these landing pages like WordPress has, here's the
theme, here's what it looks like.
It's just screenshots.
Um, and maybe that'll help people see some
of this stuff, you know, without having to
go full blown, build a, you know, a
demo site like this, although you could build
a demo site like this that showed off
the different, uh, the different, uh, uh, tags
in their different features.
Um, you know, but there's no word, you
know, there's no WordPress of podcasting and I'm
curious why and I've got, that's a weird,
that's a, that's a, I can see Todd
Cochran squirming in his seat right now, but
what I mean specifically is like, I mean
something real specific by that.
Of course there's, there's things like power press
and, and, and, uh, castos, but what I'm
saying is like, there's no, it seems like
work.
So if you look, let's like look back
and say, okay, what are, if like fundamentally
the web is based on HTML, podcasting is
based on, so let me, okay, let me,
let me do a better job.
The web is based on HTML delivered by
HTTP.
Podcasting is built on XML delivered by HTTP.
They're essentially just parallel tracks of the same,
the same style of distribution mechanism for content.
But on the website, you had WordPress, which
sort of came along and made it super
easy to do sort of, to kind of
like, democratize owning a website and running a
website.
You, you didn't, there's been a few of
these types of things in podcasting.
I think of like, it was a podcast
generator that was Alberto's, uh, early software.
There's been a few of these things, but
there hasn't been like the full package where
you just had like, okay, if you want
to run a WordPress site, you could find
a million articles on how to spin up
a lamp stack and be, you know, and
bada boom, you got a, you got a
website.
There wasn't something similar for podcasting where it's
like do this, this, this, and now you're
running all of your own stuff.
Instead, what you have to do is go
and install WordPress first, then install a WordPress
plugin called PowerPress.
Then you get what you want.
Like, I don't, I guess isn't there one,
isn't there one, uh, an open source one,
I think the guys from France, I want
to say like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Never, never, never successfully installed it.
Yeah.
It's still basically a website though.
You know, you're building a website that also
delivers a pod, you know, podcast content.
I guess, okay.
I guess what I'm talking about more is
like, where is the, um, it's like internet
in a suitcase.
Where's the podcast host in a suitcase that
you just sort of like flip the switch
and I've got my own podcast host that
I'm running myself.
Yeah.
There's just not, it doesn't seem to be
one.
And I always wondered why.
Bandwidth.
That's a historical problem.
The historical problem is bandwidth.
And it was, it was Lipson were the
first guys who figured that out.
And we all sat there scratching our heads
going like, how are you paying for this?
How are you?
And we, I still don't know.
Well, I mean, I guess they had Chinese
investors eventually to pay for it.
I know that's, that's a low blow.
Um, but that, that, so historically it was
just an issue.
Remember the, the daily source code, if you
know, the, the backstory ran on my, uh,
uh, was it the Mac drive?
Mm.
And, uh, and, and the Apple guy saw
what was happening.
And this according to Steve Jobs, he said,
yeah, we saw this bandwidth coming from your
Mac drive, but I just said, just let
him have it.
Let's see what happens according to Steve jobs.
So I'm going to take that for what
it is.
Dead man.
Tell me no, no lies.
Yeah.
I mean, the other thing too, like WordPress
has become a success because it, it, it
was able to be packaged up, right.
PHP, HTML, CSS, and then just distributed across
all these major pod, uh, all these major
web hosts, GoDaddy, Endurance International, like, you know,
all these massive, uh, hosting companies.
And that's the moat.
Essentially that's the moat to WordPress is it
is distributed, you know, across 3000, 4000 web
hosting companies across the world.
And it has the advantage because it is,
it's open source.
So they're allowed to do that.
But then you have like the business side
of it that, that can distribute it like
that.
Um, and I guess that's probably, maybe that's
the difference there is that you have something
like cast a pod, just, just came too
late.
It came too late where, whereas within word,
WordPress was very, very early in the web.
I don't know what year it was, but
it, it, it came very quickly.
And then 21 years old now, 21 years
old.
Yeah.
Whereas we're, whereas, uh, in podcasting you had
quickly, you had podcast hosting companies that took
that role and something like cast a pod
didn't come until, you know, 20 years later.
Yeah.
Um, which is kind of like, well, you
know, it's already a thing now.
And then I guess what makes me sad
about that is what you end up with
is this thing like, um, like James mentioned
the other day on, uh, I forgot.
Oh, I think it was in the podcast,
the report card stuff.
He said, um, uh, in his write-up
about the, the different directories and how they
were ranked, um, and show saying, showing that
the index was the number one, he made
a comment.
He said, this is before Apple fixed their
problems with podcast submission, but, but they really
didn't fix any problems with podcast submission because
you still, the only thing they changed was
now your, your hosting company can submit for
you, but you still can't submit yourself.
Like you can't as a, as a person,
just go in there and randomly stick a
show into Apple's directory.
Like it still goes through these gatekeepers of
the hosting companies, or you have to go
create an Apple account.
Like there's no, there's no open source way
to, to put these things into the directory.
And that's sort of like this unfortunate side
effect that we had where the way into
podcasting, at least before the index came around
the way into podcasting distribution, all gets funneled
through, through, you know, companies we know.
I mean, we love the hosting companies.
They're great, but it's not like in the
web, you don't have to ask anybody's permission,
you know, to get in, to get listed
somewhere.
I mean, it's just the way it just,
it's just open.
One of the things I was trying to
advocate for, for at Castos and also like
still scratching my head that it doesn't really
exist.
And maybe it's because there is no market
for it, but I disagree because I think
James just talked about, I'm going to forget
the name of it now, the Patreon.
So he just met, I think it was
on the air today.
Like, I don't know how many millions of
dollars in, in paid subscription podcasts, Patreon just
announced.
But with like, again, looking at podcastpower.cc,
every podcast hosting company should just have their
own version of Patreon built right into the
websites, you know, because that's the, that's eventually
what happens.
This is what happened at Castos.
You'd have the customers go, okay, I'm all
set.
And maybe this is part of the problem.
Customers would go, okay, I'm all set.
I got my RSS feed.
Now let me go to 18 other places
and get the stuff that I need.
The website, the Patreon, the email service, you
know, the, the clip maker, the recording studio.
And then now the podcaster has 18 different
tools to do all this stuff with open
source.
And with the podcasting 2.0 stuff and
RSS, you could just have a Patreon page
for every customer on your hosting company and
have them push to that URL.
And then they don't have to pay the
absorbent at Patreon fees.
They would just have a link out to
Stripe or wherever that they want to get
their donation from.
And, and that's why I look at this
too.
If you look upstream, you know, to the
criticisms I give, you know, at the top
of the market with these big, you know,
Hollywood plays or, or, or big brand plays.
Um, yeah, but they're also giving a big
percentage to YouTube and Spotify for their ad
deals.
Why not just build an experience right on
a, on a landing page?
And then they don't have to share in
the revenue cut.
They could just sell their goods right alongside
their live stream.
Uh, isn't that what everyone wants?
So like, I just look at it as
like, this stuff is, is very flexible.
Um, and it's all right there at everybody's
fingertips.
You know, like if you look at the
new media show on podcast power and scroll
to the bottom, Todd has his, um, a
scroll to the, I put it below the
episodes.
Uh, Todd uses the location tag and I
quickly integrate with open street map and it
just plots out where he put his longitude
and latitude.
So, you know, you know, like if you're
like a city or a town and you
have a tourism thing and it's like, Hey,
we have this whole audio experience and it's
plotted out across your town.
Like this stuff can be built rather quickly.
Again, I'm using AI because I'm not a
developer, but it does quickly build these things
out.
Um, I mean, don't look under the hood,
but I think you're right.
Yeah.
I think you're right about that though.
Because like bus, bus sprout did it, you
know, they put the, the bus sprout.
Um, I forget, I keep on wanting to
call it buzz bucks, but I forgot the
name of it.
It's like, uh, where you can like click,
you know, they, they put a funding link
in, in your feed and then they go
and you can pay for it right there
on, on like a site that's run by
them.
And that makes, uh, you know, that, that
makes perfect sense to me that rather than
having, yeah, you're so right.
Rather than having to go to this other,
these other services, you know, I was watching
this video of, uh, or watching the video
of Linus tech tips and how they didn't
make their revenue the other day.
And I think if I'm not mistaken, I
think they said that they, the rev share
for subscriptions, uh, gets divvied up in some
based on some algorithm.
I forgot the way it works.
And then they get, they get, I think
it's 45% or 35% of that.
And if they go over a certain view
count is 45% of that.
So, I mean, YouTube is, you know, they're,
they're keeping 70% plus of, of what,
you know, 60 or 70% of what
your, of, of that revenue share.
So the podcasting host running that thing directly
makes a ton of sense.
Yeah.
So cast a pod should put that in
there, basically bake it in there with a,
with a stripe API key.
So I heard you on a podcast weekly
review, also known as power.
And, uh, you were talking about, uh, what
Tom Webster had written and then the conversation
we had had, and you were heartbroken over
something we said.
And I, and I want to, I want
to explore that.
How did, how did we, how did we
show me on the podcasting 2.0 doll
where we touched?
You've got a heart out there too, I
want to be careful of your time.
Just let us know when you get it.
Oh yeah.
I still have 30, I have 30 minutes.
Okay, cool.
Okay, good.
Cool.
Um, yeah, again, I I'm just, I I'm,
I'm comparing my, uh, so my experience of
evaluating the podcast 2.0 experience, same thing
with, with WordPress, right?
Cause I've, I've heard this in the WordPress
world so many times of, of people who
are literally giving, uh, tens hours, hundreds of
hours, thousands of hours of their lives, free
open source, uh, contributions to WordPress.
And then people come in and just bash
WordPress.
Um, but at the same time, they're making
money with WordPress and it blows my mind
that you can, you can bash the foundation
that is making your money.
And I'm not saying that Tom was, but
I had, that was a tipping point, right?
After like seeing all like is podcasting 2
.0 dead is value for value dead.
Like, and it was just like, ah, the
sentiment was just driving me nuts.
And then I finally cracked, but there was
the line from Tom.
I think he said, it's a, uh, I
think the, I think he said maybe leadership
was rudderless or something like that.
Um, sounds about right.
I heard you guys say sounds about right.
And I was like, no guys, no.
Like, cause I still look at, at you,
um, as, as you both, as, as the
leaders of, of the space.
And you know, I, I, then I think
it was a few episodes ago, Dave, you
were sounding pretty stressed out about a lot
of criticisms over the image stuff.
And I won't pretend to know like the
full conversation about that, but I, I was
just like, man, I, I need to stick
up.
I need to stick up for these guys,
uh, because I don't think anyone else is
going to do it.
So, you know, that's, that's how that moment
of, uh, emotion, you know, came out because
I, I just look at all the work
that not only you, you two, but all
the other folks that are in, uh, Macedon
that I see, you know, chatting, um, all
the time about this stuff.
And I really look at this as this
is hard work people are doing.
And it's, it shouldn't just be brushed over
because I see it get brushed over and
on the WordPress side all the time.
And, uh, you know, this is, it's important
stuff, man.
Like you can't just let this stuff go
away.
So let's look at the analog here.
Um, now the difference between the WordPress space
and the podcast space is, uh, there's very
few podcasts app developers.
Um, um, that's historically been that way because
of the feed generation and what Apple would
accept, et cetera.
Um, but in both cases, it really kind
of went wrong the minute it got commercialized
because the, so, you know, there's, there's big
WordPress conferences and it's, uh, and it's, it's
paid for by someone.
And the money's coming from somewhere.
We don't really have all of that.
We, I mean, our funding comes in small,
very welcome donations and monthly we get some
nice big ones from some of the hosting
companies.
Uh, but the podcast, uh, movement, if you
will, the podcast industrial complex, they don't give
a crap.
Sorry.
Sorry, Jesus.
They don't give a crap.
They just, they just don't care about what
we're, you know, they care by saying it's
no good.
This is rudderless.
There's no leadership.
There's no evangelism.
And my favorite is Adam should do a
keynote.
Yeah, sure.
Sure.
They don't invite me for that.
You know?
So it's like, it seems like when someone
commercializes open source, see, I'm learning, um, that's
when it, that's when it goes wrong.
That's when it kind of, it goes askew
and you, you bifurcate and it just doesn't
work.
Yeah.
Uh, you know, I, I believe I'm not
trying to pick a fight, but, and I
totally believe in what Tom and Brian, uh,
and team are doing.
It sounds profitable.
Like there has, there has to be, I
guess, folks in that space talking to that
demographic of, of podcasters and audio people.
And it makes total sense.
Um, you know, but I, I just don't
want to, uh, I just don't want that,
this podcasting 2.0 stuff to be passed
over.
He, we had an exchange once, uh, online
and I was like, I was like, well,
we have to, we have to support podcasting
2.0 more in, in the media, in
the news, right?
Aside from just pod news.
And he has asked like, well, how would
I do that?
It's just like, well, you would have to
cover it more.
Like you'd have to write about it more,
you know?
And, you know, that's interesting.
In five years, I've never been interviewed about
this project.
Well, you listen when you, I mean, outside
of pod news, um, you know, and the,
uh, new media show, nothing.
I was, I was listening to, to the,
the conversation with Tom and I literally threw
my hands up when, when you were like,
Hey, so what does Sounds Profitable do?
And you're like, Hey, and he said, we're
trying to build a, um, uh, I forget
what it was called a vendor membership or
something like that.
And you were like, where's my email?
And like, he was just like, well, I
guess I never sent you one or trade
a trade, right?
Like a trade organization of podcasts.
And you said, where's, why didn't I ever
get an email?
And I was like, yes, that's, that's my
point is that you have to include the
podcasting 2.0 guys and the app makers
and the hosting providers that are doing this
stuff too.
It can't just be about that full on
commercial side.
That goes back to, that goes back to
the very, to the very first thing that
I brought up or, you know, earlier in
the discussion is that there is a uneasy
tension between open source and the podcast and
the commercial side of podcasting.
They don't, they don't really, they don't get
along.
And I think it's more than just, uh,
well, open sources is sort of antithetical to
the needs of commercialized media.
Um, cause you, you have to be able
to proprietize the stack in order to keep
it away from other people.
Yes, you're, you're correct.
And, but let's go straight to the end
here.
The kind, it's always about the content.
People are drawn to content and the content
is what's being monetized.
They got pipes, they got pipes everywhere.
That hence the video, video, YouTube, Tik TOK,
Instagram, it's the content, what matters and they're
monetizing the content.
They're not monetizing podcasting.
That's, that's the issue right there.
And well, won't make any, many difference if
it's have some chapters, that's not going to
make the monetization any easier.
We need downloads and we need measurement and
which is why true measurement is not desired
by the podcast industrial complex because, and Tom
Webster kind of danced around it a little
bit, but I don't think anyone really wants
to know what the real numbers are.
And you can tell me a million times
that it's pretty accurate, but I don't believe
it.
I just don't believe it.
I've told, I've, you know, I've alluded to
this before, but you know, some, somebody, uh,
gave me an example one time, uh, somebody
at a hosting company gave me an example
one time of, of a podcast that used
one of these, uh, services that will put
your podcast in a, um, into like banner
ads that are in mobile games.
Oh yeah.
And then you, uh, click the banner ad
and what, what you have, what you have
to, you get rewarded in game for, uh,
for subscribing in Apple podcast is the long
and short of it.
So what you do is you, it, it,
it artificially, because of the way that the,
the Apple download, uh, Apple app download algorithm
works, it artificially inflates your download numbers by
a certain amount, you know, in a short,
in a short term, on the short term.
And so what you have to do is
you have to keep, you have to keep
re upping with this service because if you
don't, you're, you're, you're, you'll fall out of
the ad rotation and your numbers will come
back down.
So you keep resubscribing to this, uh, artificial
subscription, uh, artificial boosting service to get your,
your podcast subscription and download numbers up.
And then that flows through to the, to,
you know, to your host, to your hosting
company and your numbers look big.
Well, then you go as the rep, you
know, as the producer of the podcast, you
go and show the company that's, you know,
this, this, uh, whose name is on the
podcast.
You go and show them, look at how
big our download numbers are.
Well, these download numbers are not real, but
nobody in the chain actually cares.
I think the funniest, the funniest thing is
that I don't know if he's provided a
recent update, but James says that, you know,
pod news is being download spanned by some,
some bot somewhere at Google.
He's got 40,000 downloads per day on
the pod news daily.
And no one cares.
No, no one cares.
I mean, it's obvious that something scammy is
going on or there's something that has been
activated and no one even cares to turn
it off.
It's unbelievable.
The one, the producer who signs up for
a service like that, they are happy because
they get to show big numbers and the
brand that the, that whose name is on
the podcast, they're happy because they see big
numbers.
It's a win-win and the numbers are
all fake and everybody's happy.
It's like, nobody cares that they're not real.
They don't, you know?
And yeah, I think there's a, this is
what I think.
This is why I think that's that layer
that sounds profitable is trying, trying to protect
is, you know, the money side of audio
and making sure that that doesn't go away.
And what I mean by that is, cause
I've, when I was at Castos, you'd always
have the folks that I'm starting a podcast
so I can be like Rogan.
And this is all at the height of
like post COVID.
So like everyone was trying to do this
thing and it's like, it's not, it shouldn't
just be about your number count.
Like if there's a hundred people listening, 10
people listening, if, if you're making an impact
and they're in and they're interacting with you
and they're talking with you and they're recommending
it, what more do you want?
So, so it's, I feel like we, I
hate to say it, but I feel like
it needs a reset in expectation for audio.
Like does it need to have, does it
need to compete with video?
It's a totally different thing in my opinion.
And you should actually want a more engaged
audience with lower numbers because at least, you
know, they're listening and talking back to you.
Yeah.
Well, I think the, the podcast industrial complex
is its own worst enemy.
They're the ones, they're the ones that keep
asking if video is right.
They're the ones that keep talking about, they're
the ones that do forums about it.
And what they're really doing is they're just
making, changing perception, changing everything.
But that's why I love what Dave and
I are doing with the Godcaster because it's,
it's a whole different audience.
It's not about podcasting.
It's about getting content, managing content, having it
in a certain place.
And it's, it's, it's about the content and
how it's organized and how people consume it.
And there's no real issue about what apps
we're, we're, we're giving you all the features
and we actually basically just do it on
a, on a, with a webpage, a drop
-in and, you know, which, which also some,
some customers are using in their, in their
web-based apps.
I mean, it's, it's a native app, but
they have a web view in there and,
and everyone thinks it's fantastic.
They don't care.
They, they love the whole, the whole system,
the whole setup.
They love the audio shows they want, and
it's a relatively small group.
You know, it's a, it's a, it's a,
a, a subset of all podcasting, but it,
it's, you know, it's, it's, it's successful.
These things are all successful.
Small, small things are successful.
I mean, when I sat on Rogan Hyperlocal
Podcasting, it was like a, like I turned
on a huge light bulb and everybody went,
what?
I don't have to be Rogan.
I can just do a podcast for my,
for my town, for my community, for my,
for my club, for my church.
What?
That has, that has left people's minds because
of all you hear about is big numbers,
number one charts, et cetera, which is fine.
But the internet has always, has always been
comprised of small, successful projects and groups everywhere.
So even our own conversation shouldn't be it.
I'm not interested in, in every podcast app
doing it.
I'm just, maybe I used to be, but
I've seen the light.
I don't, it's not necessary.
It's just not necessary to be successful with
whatever project you set out to do.
This podcast power.cc is an excellent example
of that.
If this was the only way you could
get my podcast or the only, the only
thing I promoted, people would go to this
website.
Right.
And they use that.
They really would.
The, the hyperlocal thing is also much more
fulfilling.
Like personally, I ran a local podcast too.
And people, you walk into the restaurant and
people are like, Hey, I listened to your
podcast.
I don't get that on my WordPress podcast
because nobody around me is like following WordPress
like, like I do.
And this is another point I wanted to
make about like value for value in the
local market.
It's actually easier to sell on value.
Absolutely.
Even if you only have a hundred downloads,
you could get a monthly sponsor for a
thousand dollars who just wants to be a
part of this thing.
And that is very real.
Um, and often, you know, overlooked.
Yeah.
I've always thought I've thought for a long
time that it would be just a local
podcast that only interviewed local businesses and had
got the owners to tell their stories about
how they got into the business, how they
started the business, all this kind of stuff,
things like that, where you just go around
and interview local people and have a super,
like you could easily get sponsored for that
and have a lucrative side gig, if not
a full-time gig for sure.
And it's all, it's all just reducing scope
down, down to the, to the local level.
And I, and that's kind of been the
ethos of, like you said, Adam, the ethos
of the web for a long time.
I remember the first blog I ever had.
Um, it was so specific.
It was about, uh, different types of tobacco
because I used to smoke a pipe.
I don't remember you smoking a pipe.
This is before we met.
Yeah.
This was before we met.
Yeah.
Uh, and so like I had, I did
this big write up on this one specific
type of, it's called twist tobacco.
It's this old, uh, really old, like they
would take their tobacco and twist it up
into these things that look like ropes.
And then you just, you know, like take
a, take a plug off of it or
whatever.
And it would preserve it on long trips.
And then I had this guy email me
and say, Hey, uh, can I, you know,
I'm a, like a research student and I'm
doing my, some kind of thing on a
research project on tobacco.
Can I use your post and all this
stuff?
And I was like, Oh sweet.
Yeah.
It was, it was this sort of like
the more niche you get, the more narrow
your focus is, or the more local your
focus is, you get much more engagement.
And then you do, if you try to
just replicate whatever the big thing is.
Yeah.
I think it's, I think it's always that
way.
Yeah.
There's one other thing I just wanted to
add about the, about the WordPress stuff and,
and podcast index and being successful with all
this thing.
There's, well, it's kind of been shuttered now
because of everything that Matt did, but there,
he did start this, um, I don't know
what you would call it.
Cause mantra.
It was called five for the future.
And basically his thing was, yeah.
If you can invest him largely talking to
like other WordPress, like web development agencies and
freelancers, if you can develop, if you can
invest 5% of your time monthly to
WordPress, it was sort of like a, you
know, rising tide lifts all boats kind of
thing.
And that was, that could be anything that
could be logging into wordpress.org and answering
forum tickets.
It could be writing documentation.
Um, it could be obviously contributing code to
WordPress, uh, solving bugs on, on GitHub, uh,
or issues.
Uh, and it was just this thing, like
if you just gave 5% of your
time, how much better could WordPress be?
Um, not saying that that's the exact thing
that we would replicate in the podcasting space,
but, uh, you know, it could be something
to chew on of how other folks who
might feel like myself, like I couldn't help
you write code, Dave, but like, can I
do some marketing things like this?
Yeah.
Uh, can I write blog posts to support
it?
Yeah.
But maybe there's folks that can kind of
contribute in different ways.
They, they haven't thought of yet.
Yeah.
That's a great idea.
That's a really good idea.
Some sort of like, because you can't, everything
that you, everything that I feel it, I
feel it constantly.
Everything.
When I, when I spend three hours in
a week writing a blog post, that's three
hours of something else I had to not
do.
Right.
And you know, and it's, and sometimes it's,
it's welcome.
Sometimes a respite from, you know, from the
thing that you're, that you are constantly doing
is what you need.
But a lot of times it really is
a distraction.
And I think a lot of the, I
think a lot of the, um, the hardship
of open source comes from when you log
into get hub and you see 300 unclosed
issues, you know, and you're just like 299
created by Adam.
You just, your head drops and you're just
like, Oh, I give up, you know?
And then, and then, you know, 10 of
them are critical and all, you know, hypercritical
of what it's of something.
And it's just like you, a lot of
open source boils down to that just sort
of like people getting exhausted.
Um, and yeah, no, I, I, I think
that's a good idea for sure.
I love a moment of silence.
I really do.
Well, first of all, I'd love, uh, whenever
you write one of these, uh, blog posts
or anything, please, uh, please ping me, uh,
Matt, because I'll, uh, I'll send it out
to my incredibly vast network of followers.
Uh, how am I doing our followers by
the way?
I'm some reason I'm stuck.
I'm, I'm for always stuck at 98,000.
I can't seem to get over it.
Let me see.
You tell me that on, on Twitter.
Yeah.
99.3. It never goes over.
I don't know why it goes up.
It just never hits a hundred K for
some reason.
Um, because I mean, this is, this is
the, this really the best I can do.
Um, talking about it here is, is a
good thing, but also let's just keep doing
what we're doing.
I mean, I, it's like Stephen B and,
uh, and, uh, and all those guys that
are doing a whole bunch of, um, uh,
uh, what is it?
Uh, Nostra integration and there's still a thriving
2.0 value for value music community.
And it's all good.
You know, it's all, it's all little pieces
and bits and bobs and everyone's using the,
uh, what's available for their own, uh, for
their own, for the love of their own
projects.
And, and I, and that to me is
success.
And if something catches and goes viral and
people start using it, that'd be great.
You can't make it happen.
You know, it's like, uh, back in the
think new ideas days, we have Reebok and
say, Hey, uh, okay.
So your agency, our digital agency, uh, we
want a viral video.
Oh, okay.
I'll hop right on that.
I'll make that happen right away.
You know, you, you can't do that.
If something catches, it's great.
And until then just use what you want
to use for what you want to use
it.
And it's perfectly valid.
No, you know, it, it just, it's not
one homogenized big thing.
Well, uh, John Spurlock posted earlier on the,
um, uh, on the mastodon, he's like, uh,
you know, at the end of the day,
podcasting is just people doing stuff they like
to do.
Yeah, exactly.
That's pretty, that's pretty much sums it up.
Yeah.
It's exactly right.
And, and it's, it's fantastic.
You know, it's like, that's open source.
That's not just podcasting.
That's open source is what that is.
Absolutely.
So maybe I'm just going to ignore these
conversations from now on.
How about that?
I'm just not going to participate in it.
It's not important.
If people want to do video, do video.
That's great.
You know, if you think that's great, you
know, but so we had a, for God
cast, we had a, a request because the
old version of our, of the product before
Dave and I came in, uh, had some
YouTube scraper functionality.
So people could add YouTube videos into their
God caster player.
And we don't have that anymore.
It's, it's not podcasting.
And so, you know, you get a, you
get someone saying, oh, I really missed that
feature.
And I had to think about, I had
to walk around the block for a second.
I was like, we really shouldn't do that.
It's like, no, I mean, if, if, if
it's in the, in the index, if it's
an RSS feed, if it's not, then you
will get it into the index.
They have a feed, a feed of the
channel.
That's, you know, it's not even an RSS.
I'm not even sure what it is, some
XML thing.
Although the index does eat them.
I noticed it does.
Yeah.
But you, but you don't get anything out
of it.
You get nothing out of it, but it
does, it does eat it.
So I immediately marked it dead.
I'm like, no, if you want YouTube videos
on your, on your site, get an embedded
YouTube video.
The index eats everything.
It's like Mikey from the, from the Kix
commercials or whatever it's, or is it Kix?
What was that cereal?
Life, life cereal.
Life cereal.
Yeah.
Mikey, yeah.
The index ate anything.
Now, what you get out of the other
end is not exactly, you know, great always.
Well, anyway, so that's, that's kind of, that's
kind of where, where I'm at, where I'm
thinking.
I, I've listened with great interest to, you
know, the reports coming in from, from podcast
movement evolutions, but I'm like, yeah, you know,
y'all are running after dollars.
And meanwhile, I'm having a lot of fun.
I, I, I like all the things that
we're doing with, with the capabilities that we've
built and we all do it for different
reasons.
And you know, it's, it's good.
You can, you know, Apple app, when Apple
integrated podcasting at the beginning, I mean, how
many years of not making any money?
What podcasting for them was never a moneymaker.
No, it still isn't.
It was, it wasn't even really a feature
that was, that was being demanded.
I mean, no, they, they really just, to
this day, I'm not sure exactly why they
did it.
I don't know.
And you know, at best with subscriptions, it
might be break even.
And I still doubt that.
Oh no, no, no.
I mean, how many people do they have
on staff?
They've, they've got a, they must have at
least 10 people, maybe 15.
Yeah.
And they probably don't even meet payroll, you
know, on that, on that division.
No, I, I really don't see that as
a, as being a moneymaker for them other
than people use their iPhones for it.
And at the time, I think it was
to make sure that no one else used
it a different air and an MP3 player.
If, if anything, that's why jobs, oh, let's
keep this, you know, we can't have people
using iRiver.
iRiver.
Yeah.
That's not going to work.
I just want to mention one last thing
about what Adam just says, like people are
doing this thing because, you know, we love
it and we just want to make our
stuff.
Adam was interviewed by my colleague for a
podcast that we're doing called Our Beloved Medium.
And it's a series that highlights all the
most important milestones, well, not all, but most
of them, all the most milestones of radio
throughout human history.
Episode one opens up talking about World War
II, but there's, it's wrapped in a fictional
fight for radio.
And there's one radio station left on earth.
It's trying to get acquired by this big
streaming company.
And what this radio station is doing is
broadcasting these stories.
So again, we open up with World War
II.
Adam's episode is about MTV and the rise
of MTV and stuff like that.
But if we were turning this into a
video, it would have to be a film
with actors and cameras.
We wouldn't be able to create this thing
we really want to create if it weren't
for audio.
And, you know, we have voice actors and
we're trying to set a world and a
stage and all this stuff, but we could
never do it if it was a video.
So where's that at?
Where's this?
That's ourbelovedmedium.com.
And it's being released as a podcast?
Yes.
We've got episode one out and we're just
raising funding.
Shout out to the RSS guys because they
sponsored our first.
RSS.com?
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Small league productions.
Is that?
Yeah, that's Stewart.
Yeah.
Oh yeah.
Cool.
Okay.
So it starts off with BBC World Service.
Oh, wait.
Hold on.
This is London calling.
You're listening to a news bulletin read in
the overseas service of the BBC.
Yeah, baby.
It was preordained.
Yes, it was.
It was.
You know, I'll just say one other thing.
Look at what we're doing right now.
I mean, this is this.
Yes, it's a podcast, but this is a
this is a board meeting.
We have fifty one people in a chat,
which is not integrated into any podcast app
or curiocaster to a degree.
It is kind of integrated into podcastpower.cc,
but it's irrelevant.
You know, there's a couple thousand people listen
to this podcast at best.
I don't even know how many people listen
to it, but it's it's functional.
It's great.
And Dave and I are happy.
We love doing it still.
Dave takes a chunk out of his day
has to go home in that in that
old jalopy.
You know, it's like it's dangerous.
There's no radio.
It's like the Beverly Hills, Billy's.
He's got grandma on the roof coming home.
Hey, granny.
Yeah, Texas tea.
So it's that that if anything, that is
the most important takeaway from this conversation for
me is we're building fantastic functionality that anybody
can use however you want to use it.
And if and if it's if we believe
that this is somehow going to be the
next big thing that Apple's going to integrate.
No, it's not going to happen.
And I don't think we ever really intended
it to be.
We didn't even intend for the index to
be number one.
It was a pure accident.
You know, so so it's like, cool your
jets, everybody.
It's good.
You know, we're doing cool stuff.
We use it for different things.
And I would have to say the same
about the Nostra folks.
You know, it's a limited audience and they're
happy with it.
Now, they still run around saying, you know,
this is the future of social media.
I don't think so.
You know, that's OK.
Yeah.
And that's OK.
Exactly.
One day, something may catch you.
I don't care that Mastodon is one percent
of all social social media systems.
Who cares?
Podcast index on social is super good.
It's the first thing I check every day.
You OK?
Yeah.
Yes.
Yeah.
Almost.
All right.
And and here's proof that it works.
This little open source project.
We have people who support us.
They support us in a multitude of fashions
with our value for value system, which I
also check every single day just to make
sure my start nine is still working, to
be honest about it.
Like I got this.
I got Chad's.
I got the IPF podcasting email.
I'm going to have to reboot this.
What did you get?
The IPFS podcasting email.
Oh, you.
Oh, you got the email.
Oh, no.
Reboot.
Yeah.
No, my my umbrella is dead.
I gave up on it.
I don't care.
I'm done with that thing.
You know, it's too flaky for me anyway.
I also got a thank you from podcasting
2.0 for hosting by IPFS podcasting three
sets.
All right.
That's cool.
I love that.
But people did send in some legit boost
for us.
Let's take a blueberry who sent us seventeen
thousand seven hundred and seventy six sets.
Thank you, blueberry.
And he says bits plus plus them bubbles
plus plus.
Cool.
Twelve seventeen.
Twelve seventeen from Salty Crayon.
V4V still works for podcasting 2.0. 2
.0. Everyone else says it's dead.
Quit.
Went over to the YouTube to be a
show.
Good luck to bronies in the pipe.
Exactly.
To be a show.
I grew up and became a show.
Became a show.
This thing live on Fountain for the first
time says Douma.
Douma.
I think we need to defragment to Douma.
How do I change playback speed to two
point five?
Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey.
I don't think you can.
I don't think you can do that.
You can't do that on a live show.
There's Martin Lindeskog with 1982, presumably his birth
year, sending you a super comment of 1982.
Oh, London's age.
London's age.
Forty three C.E. Satoshi's.
I would like to attend Sam Unconference.
And then he has some kin to conference
in Swedish is potluck in English.
OK, and the podcast show between May twenty
twenty two.
Adam, do you have any suggestions on how
to find affordable hotels or other accommodations?
Yes.
Gives it gives it gives you tips, Adam.
I have no tip.
I have not been traveling.
I've not been to London in a while.
Travel tips.
Ask Sam.
I'm sure he'll help you out.
Triple seven from Salty Crayon.
He says the bat signal received.
Good.
Thank you very much.
And I've hit the delimiter.
Low boostage today.
Very low boostage, people.
Where's your boost?
We got we did get a this is
discombobulated because I didn't have time to organize
before I left the office.
But we did get a one off.
We got one hundred dollars from Languatalk Incorporated.
Languatalk Incorporated.
What does Languatalk do?
Says I just want to thank you for
a great API.
We just donated one hundred dollars to your
project.
It allowed it allowed us to add a
podcast player for language learners with interactive transcripts
and more.
See, this is exactly what I'm saying.
Boom.
Languatalk.
Learn language with five star tutors.
Oh, that's awesome.
Now, see, I hear that.
That bring that.
That'll make me happy throughout the whole weekend.
Straight up.
Yeah, it really does.
Not a podcast app, but they needed podcasts.
That's why we built this thing.
Perfect.
Beautiful.
Love it.
Let's see.
We got.
Oh, yeah.
So let me go back to or I'm
just going to do the monthlies in here
to Chad Farrow.
Twenty dollars and twenty two cents.
Thank you, Chad.
Cameron Rose.
Twenty five dollars.
Thank you, Cameron.
Kevin Bay.
Five dollars.
Brendan over a page.
Twenty five dollars.
Thank you, Brendan.
New Media.
That is Martin Lindescope.
One dollar.
Mark Graham.
One dollar.
Joseph Maraca.
Five dollars.
Oscar Mary.
Two hundred dollars.
Whoa.
Thank you.
Twenty inch blaze on the Impala.
Love it, brother.
Thank you.
That'll keep the machines humming for a day
or two.
And Oscar May talked over email the other
day.
He said they've got some cool stuff coming
for Fountain.
Yes.
The new release.
We've got some booster grams.
McIntosh says I would love to see twenty
one, twenty one through Fountain.
He says I would love to listen in
on that liquid soap session.
Any chance it could be recorded and made
available?
Go podcasting.
You should record yourself talking to a eye
on liquids about liquid soap as a podcast
and release it.
That is a really horrible idea.
It is.
I don't think we want to do that.
I regretted it before I finished that sentence.
Bruce, the ugly quacking duck.
Twenty two.
Twenty two through podcast guru need artwork showing
Dave with big shoulders holding off a shoe
sole with the name.
Blame it on Dave.
Seventy threes.
That's seventy threes.
Cole McCormick, Satchel Richard one one one one.
Wait, did you read this one as a
podcaster?
Live streaming my podcast has been a game
changer.
Really happy pod home has the lit tag.
It's very simple to set up.
I've recently been their video creator for tutorials
and have a couple of videos to walk
you through how to set up your broadcast
tool and a link and link it up
with Podhome server.
Go to any of Podhome socials or the
podcast Norma YouTube channel to check it out.
Maybe I could make Godcaster tutorials for you
guys if you need them.
Whoa.
Who's this?
Cole McCormick.
Shoot me an email, brother.
I got some needs.
Got some needs.
And the delimiter comes to blogger eighteen thousand
sixty sats through fountain.
He says, howdy, Dave and Adam.
I'd like to invite your audience to subscribe
to a 30 minute long podcast called Under
the Radar, available at www.relay.fm slash
radar.
Both co-hosts are millionaires.
Marco Armit, the developer of Overcast podcast app
who got rich off Tumblr and David Smith,
independent iPhone developer whose Widget Smith app went
viral.
So he got very rich and moved to
Scotland from USA.
Good talk about solo dev.
Yo, CSP.
Did Marco sell Tumblr?
He he was one of the original founders
of Tumblr.
He was he owned a bunch of Tumblr
stock and got rich when they sold.
Oh, I didn't realize that.
Oh, that's cool.
Yes.
I think he was like employee number two
or three.
Oh, nice.
That's cool.
Oh, late boost from Darren O.
Darren O'Neill, the rock, the rock and
roll pre-show guy, Chef Darren.
Fifty five, fifty five in the pipe.
If podcasting was all about money, unrelenting wouldn't
exist.
Go podcasting.
Thank you, Darren.
Yeah, that's true.
Unrelenting is always on the stream before we
start.
And yeah, exactly.
And before Darren has a rich wife, so
easy talking for you.
Some of us got to pay rent, Darren.
Oh, man, I'm I'm excited about what's what's
taking place here.
I'm excited about this community.
I'm excited about all the things that we're
developing.
I'm not so excited about the podcast industrial
complex, what they're doing.
So where there's no excitement, I'm not going
to venture anymore.
And I don't go where I'm not asked.
It makes sense.
Yeah.
Hey, Matt, congratulations again on the new gig,
brother.
I'm so happy for you.
You sound happy and keep keep blogging, keep
posting these these good articles.
Why are you laughing?
I just think back to last week when
you when you call me mad Matt on
the podcast.
Well, no, you are.
You are the international troublemaker.
Of course you are.
But that's what we love about you, man.
I love it a lot.
And thanks for doing the podcast power dot
cc.
I'm going to I'm going to post that
as well.
And more stuff like that, people, more stuff
like that.
Brother Dave, I know you're working this weekend.
You are you got a lot to do.
Oh, man, man.
Can I can I talk to the boss?
We're getting there.
Can I talk to the boss?
Melissa?
Hey, boardroom, thank you very much for being
here.
We appreciate all of you.
This is podcasting 2.0. We are your
weekly board meeting of all things podcasting 2
.0. Remember one thing when you go to
sleep tonight.
Go podcasting.
You have been listening to podcasting 2.0.
Visit podcast index.org for more information.
Dadgummit.
Another fine presentation.