Way fewer people are creating new podcasts these days

Re:Way fewer people are creating new podcasts these days by theshrike79 on Monday January 23, 2023 @08:29AM (#34488488)

I don't listen to off the cuff podcasts at all. I used to listen to Tank Riot, for example. They had really interesting topics. But then it devolved into "we haven't seen each other for a month, so let's catch up while we're recording" and they got into endless unrelated tangents.

My current list is only well-edited and produced stuff

  - No Such Thing as a Fish (facts, trivia, comedy)
  - 20kHz - audio production and sounds in general
  - 99 Percent Invisible - random trivia and deep-dives
  - More or Less - analysing statistics 
  - Cautionary Tales - historical failures, they have actual radio play style stuff with actual name actors (Helena Bonham-Carter for example)

And stuff I listen to on the background and usually fall asleep to:

  - Crowd Science - people as questions about science and the host interviews people who know about it
  - Every Little Thing - More random trivia stuff
  - 30 Animals that Made us Smarter - exactly what it says on the tin

My tolerance for "let's turn on the mic and chat for three hours without any plan and publish it as a podcast" is pretty close to zero.

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Re:Way fewer people are creating new podcasts these days by petepete on Monday January 23, 2023 @08:52AM (#34488688)

- In Our Time (https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qykl) - nearly 1,000 episodes since the late 90s, covering history, science and literature. Different expert panel every week with some amazing reoccurring guests (Ian Stewart, Martin Palmer, Mary Beard, Angie Hobbs, Paul Cartledge, Caroline Crawford).

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Re:Way fewer people are creating new podcasts these days by zoltanse on Monday January 23, 2023 @09:20AM (#34489008)

Definitely my favourite podcast. The only other comparable one Revolutions by Mike Duncan.

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Re:Way fewer people are creating new podcasts these days by kzrdude on Monday January 23, 2023 @11:25AM (#34490876)

Revolutions podcast was too in-depth for me (think, hundreds of episodes for each revolution). But I've been listening to his podcast-closing appendix (12 appendix episodes, that tells you something about being verbose), and it's fun :)

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Re:Way fewer people are creating new podcasts these days by pjc50 on Monday January 23, 2023 @10:06AM (#34489625)

Now wondering what the boundary between "BBC radio programme on Sounds" and "podcast" is. Could the BBC have been said to invent the "podcast" format with https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_from_America ? (2,869 episodes! "The series ran from 24 March 1946 to 20 February 2004, making it the longest-running speech radio programme hosted by one individual")

(Very strictly, a podcast requires an RSS feed and the ability to download to an iPod, but those criteria have been eroded to "any audio programme that is not on the radio")

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Re:Way fewer people are creating new podcasts these days by petepete on Monday January 23, 2023 @10:31AM (#34489967)

Many programmes on BBC Sounds have RSS feeds, you can subscribe using any podcast client.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/help/questions/features/subscri...

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Re:Way fewer people are creating new podcasts these days by fknorangesite on Monday January 23, 2023 @10:50AM (#34490228)

> Now wondering what the boundary between "BBC radio programme on Sounds" and "podcast" is.

This thread is teaching me that people would even draw a boundary there at all. It's clear from the people posting here that many really think of podcasts as "couple of guys sitting around shooting the shit", but there's a hell of a lot out there outside of this one genre.

It's a bit "I tried a bunch of science fiction books, but I didn't like them so reading isn't for me."

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Re:Way fewer people are creating new podcasts these days by rchaud on Monday January 23, 2023 @11:10AM (#34490612)

Ever heard the term 'The medium is the message?"

BBC Radio podcasts are not representative of podcasts, nor is it the reference point for most people that start one. Those people very likely have the image of two friends shooting the shit in front of a mic.

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Re:Way fewer people are creating new podcasts these days by TheCapeGreek on Monday January 23, 2023 @08:57AM (#34488740)

Have a look at Fall of Civililzations as well - I think you'd like it. 3h deep dives into fallen societies of history.

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Re:Way fewer people are creating new podcasts these days by pm3003 on Tuesday January 24, 2023 @04:39AM (#34501577)

I find Fall of Civilizations lacking. It often lacks structure, few sources are cited (though I don't doubt the author's seriousness) and few points are made. I much more prefer Dan Carlin's Hardcore History, even if it is based on a kind of long storytelling.

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Re:Way fewer people are creating new podcasts these days by II2II on Monday January 23, 2023 @09:01AM (#34488782)

There are a few podcasts that turn on the mic and chat, yet where the hosts also make an effort to reach out to new guests. For example: episodes of The Amp Hour that aren't just Chris and Dave pull in people from all over the industry. The thing is, I suspect that is difficult to do when you are are small podcast. Without the reach, potential guests simply don't know who you are.

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Re:Way fewer people are creating new podcasts these days by gangstead on Monday January 23, 2023 @10:15AM (#34489748)

Over the years I have adopted almost this same rubric. The way I describe my filter is "two people read wikipedia to you for an hour".

I have 2 of the ones on your list: 99PI and Cautionary Tales and I notice that they are both publish about the ~30 minutes episodes once per week. I think all these podcasts that are 60-120 minutes > 2 times per week are really just replacing talk radio on people's long commutes. It's just a pleasant way to fill the air, not to actually learn anything.

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Re:Way fewer people are creating new podcasts these days by theshrike79 on Monday January 23, 2023 @03:16PM (#34494342)

Exactly, there's no way you can produce 2+ 2 hour podcasts a week without them being a rambling mess - or you have dedicated script writers and editors and the one reading them is just the voice of other people's text.

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Re:Way fewer people are creating new podcasts these days by pm3003 on Tuesday January 24, 2023 @04:50AM (#34501664)

Any podcast should be prepared and scripted to some extent, especially shorter ones. Especially good political comment/talk shows. Unprepared 15-minutes interview podcasts are just as annoying to me as very long one.

This relies on the moderator / podcaster to have sufficient time / manpower to prepare, or sufficient authority to convince guests not to come without any serious preparations.

On the opposite, there's a podcast from the German Newspaper Die Zeit that has made the long rambling its concept. It's called "Alles gesagt?" and consists in a usually unedited interview with two journalists. The interview (in English or German) stops when the guest considers he has nothing more to say or pronounces a magic word. Yuval Noah Harari's interview lasted 10 hours IIRC. It's decently prepared, but that's not the kind of podcast you can listen to regularly.

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Re:Way fewer people are creating new podcasts these days by kzrdude on Monday January 23, 2023 @11:28AM (#34490913)

These are good, maybe similar, and have high frequency of very interesting episodes:

  - People I mostly Admire (Steven Levitt/Freakonomics Radio)
  - The joy of X (Steven Strogatz, discontinued)

Both are in the style that the host talks with an interesting guest about their work. Coincidence has it that in the most recent episode of PIMA, the guest is the host of the other one, Steven Strogatz. They normally don't collaborate but have their similarities.

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