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Buzzsprout's New Custom Mid-Roll Placements · Buzzcast

0:00
Alban: Jordan, why are you scared?
0:01
Jordan: Because this is the first buzzcast possibly the first podcast in my entire podcasting career where I showed up.
0:10
Jordan: I don't know what we're talking about.
0:13
Jordan: I'm pulling a Kevin and I'm so scared right now.
0:17
Alban: Well, Kevin is also pulling a Kevin We've Florida is under a hurricane warning and we're going to all get hit Wednesday, Thursday.
0:26
Alban: So we're recording a bit early.
0:28
Alban: And part of recording a bit early was that when we decided we would record early this morning, I put together an outline and neither of you know what we're talking about.
0:36
Alban: So I'll play host and you both can pull out some hot takes.
0:42
Alban: I've got a landmine in here.
0:44
Jordan: Oh boy.
0:45
Alban: Oh gosh, We've got some good stuff.
0:48
Kevin: I'm also doing something I shouldn't do during a recording, which is I'm eating.
0:51
Alban: Kevin is eating two things that he knows about from podcasts.
0:55
Alban: Kevin, why don't you tell us what this show is sponsored by?
0:58
Kevin: I'm eating Maui Nui venison stick peppered edition 10 grams of protein and 55 calories and a Jocko Go orange.
1:08
Kevin: It's just called orange Orange flavored.
1:11
Jordan: I'm eating Pringles barbecue flavored chips.
1:14
Jordan: What are you guys doing?
1:15
Jordan: One gram of protein 150 calories.
1:22
Kevin: That's the exact opposite 100% seed oils.
1:30
Jordan: I only ate five, though it's just enough to tide me over.
1:33
Kevin: Alban, you know you asked about microplastics a couple weeks ago.
1:36
Kevin: Yes, and then they just came out with a new science versus episode that's all about microplastics.
1:42
Kevin: Oh good, did you learn about it?
1:43
Kevin: I did.
1:44
Kevin: I listened to the episode, I learned all about it.
1:45
Kevin: Could you?
1:45
Kevin: Oh good, did you learn about it?
1:45
Kevin: I did, I listened to the episode, I learned all about it.
1:47
Alban: Could you give me a synopsis?
1:48
Alban: How much should I be worried about this issue?
1:50
Alban: It's pretty bad.
1:52
Kevin: Evidently you ingest roughly a credit card's worth of microplastics every year.
1:58
Jordan: No.
1:59
Jordan: Yeah, you're basically that is like the people that say you eat like seven spiders a year.
2:03
Jordan: I feel like that's they talked about that.
2:07
Kevin: So how old are you now?
2:08
Kevin: Alban?
2:09
Kevin: You're 40, something 38, 38, you're 38.
2:13
Alban: Credit like a whole bucket of credit cards.
2:15
Kevin: Yeah, so it's probably 10 to 15 of your body composition is now credit cards.
2:22
Kevin: Credit card.
2:29
Alban: Welcome back to Buzzcast podcast, where we talk about podcasting and other things, including microplastics.
2:36
Alban: Buzzsprout just rolled out custom mid-roll placements.
2:40
Alban: This is something that people have been asking for for a long time.
2:43
Alban: It's in the category of things that 5% of Buzzsprout podcasters will love and most will never use because they're using the automatic placement finders.
2:52
Alban: Kevin, you want to tell us a little bit about this?
2:55
Kevin: You know, it's exactly what it sounds like.
2:57
Kevin: It is the ability to do custom placements for mid-rolls within your episodes.
3:02
Kevin: So for about two years now, buzzsprout has had the ability to dynamically insert content into and around any of your podcast episodes.
3:12
Kevin: So pre-rolls happen at the beginning, post-rolls at the end, mid -rolls in the middle.
3:15
Kevin: The question with mid-rolls is where should they go?
3:17
Kevin: And when we rolled that out, we came up with and invented this system that will use a whole bunch of technology to kind of figure out what would be optimal placements and can we find them automatically, so that you don't have to go through every single one of your episodes and you know, punch in, you know this many hours, as many minutes, as many seconds into every episode.
3:39
Kevin: Here's what I want to placement, here's what the next one is the next one, and that works and is great for the.
3:44
Kevin: Like Alban said, the majority of podcasters use that.
3:46
Kevin: The placements it finds are really, uh, surprisingly good.
3:49
Kevin: Like I get a chuckle sometimes at how good they are, but not everybody loves all the placements.
3:54
Kevin: So about a year ago we rolled out the ability to turn off placements that you don't like.
3:58
Kevin: So it will always find between three and five, depending on the length of your episode, roughly, and if you don't like one, just turn it off because chances are the other ones are fine, so you just use those.
4:07
Kevin: And still, we had people who were asking and these are, you know, to be honest with you, these are my people, because as much as I love the automatic placement feature, I am a bit kind of like obsessive about the details, and so if you find yourself in that same category, then this is for you.
4:24
Kevin: As much delight as I find in how the automatic system finds placements, and I would definitely use that for, like, a big back catalog.
4:32
Kevin: I know if I had the time, I would probably choose to find my own placements.
4:36
Kevin: Now the reality is is that there's an automatic system for those weeks where you don't have time.
4:40
Kevin: So if you're publishing real quick and you just want the automatic system to do its thing, it's going to do a pretty good job.
4:44
Kevin: But if you want control, if you want to know exactly where, or if you have a special podcast that just doesn't set itself up for, like here's a great example is that we heard somebody does an interview show and their interview show they're talking about really deep and hard topics.
4:58
Kevin: You know, whether it be health issues or dealing with loss or tragedy or stuff like that.
5:03
Kevin: And so, even though somebody might take a long pause in the middle of telling a story, it's not because that's a good ad break, it's because it's a very emotional story and so we don't want to, you know, insert an ad break there.
5:14
Jordan: Yeah.
5:15
Kevin: And so you have cases like that where, even if the technology is as great as it is, there's still just use cases where it doesn't fit everyone, and so this is not for everybody, but this is for a few and, we hope, the few that really need it.
5:27
Kevin: We think it's going to work great for them.
5:28
Kevin: You can go in now and put your placements wherever you want.
5:31
Kevin: You know, with a few rules, nothing too crazy.
5:34
Kevin: But you can't put them within the first roughly 20% or so of your episode, the last 20% of your episode and you can't put them within six minutes or so of each other.
5:41
Kevin: But that's just general, good mid-roll guidance, and because these spots can also be used for buzzsprout ads as well, that's why those restrictions are there.
5:50
Kevin: So you can't just load up ad after ad after ad after ad.
5:53
Kevin: That would be potentially gaming the advertising system and not fair to our advertisers.
5:57
Kevin: So that's why rules like that exist.
5:59
Alban: What I really like is that we're combining this automated system with the ability to customize the mid-roll placements if you need to, and so you still have the efficiency, you still run the smart insertion point finder, we still find spots for you, and then you check and you go.
6:16
Alban: That's a great one.
6:17
Alban: Yes, that's a great one.
6:19
Alban: Yes, oh, that's at a maybe the emotional part of a story.
6:23
Alban: I don't really like it.
6:24
Alban: Turn that one off and then tweak it and find a different spot.
6:27
Alban: The goal is that you're not re-listening to hundreds of hours of episodes to find all sorts of mid-roll spots, because the moment this all became clear to me was when somebody told us they moved podcast hosts and they went to a host and they were like, oh, we had to go back and find all of the ad spaces for every episode and they had a back catalog of like 300 episodes so it was one person going for weeks back through all of the episodes to place all those ad breaks.
6:56
Jordan: Yeah.
6:56
Alban: And that's just painful.
6:57
Alban: And then, like two years later, we saw they moved their podcast again and we're like, oh man, that's brutal.
7:02
Alban: Hopefully they saved it somewhere.
7:05
Alban: Oh, it's where all the ad breaks were, but it's just, it's a pain, especially with the big back catalogs.
7:10
Alban: So the automated system is going to work for 95% of all the back catalogs, everyone's episodes.
7:16
Alban: But if you do have a spot where you go, oh, it'd be better if I could just do it myself, now you can.
7:21
Jordan: When we went to podcast movement, I think this was the number one thing that people came up and they were like, please, please, let me edit the like insertion spots on some things, like sometimes they need it for you know, whatever.
7:33
Jordan: And this was one of those features like improvements that I was most excited about, because I knew like everyone was going to be rejoicing, like, oh, they listened, we did it, we finally got it.
7:48
Jordan: So it was very exciting.
7:51
Alban: Kevin, I saw this quote from somebody who was head of product at some SaaS company and they said every feature should either be should be good for 90% of your customers or absolutely amazing for 5%.
7:59
Alban: They're like, if it's going to be for a small group, it should be good for 90% of your customers or absolutely amazing for 5%.
8:06
Alban: Yeah, like if it's going to be for a small group, it should be amazing.
8:09
Alban: And if it's uh, but, or you could do these generalized features, and I thought of our website improvements, as that was just really good for everybody almost everybody, and this probably fits into that category of really exciting for the few who use it.
8:24
Alban: Um, do you, do you agree with that sentiment that that's how you should pick features, or do you have a different take?
8:30
Kevin: I don't know what they mean by like really good, like really good execution or really good, in that the 5% that need it really, really, really need it.
8:40
Alban: I think that it should either be, or maybe, I mean, this could have been like a tweet, who knows?
8:44
Alban: I just got this into my brain and remembered it and then it was like oh, I should ask Kevin about this.
8:48
Alban: I feel like what I got was like 90% of your customers should be giving you thumbs up Like good job, but if it's going to be for a 5% group, it's got to be.
8:57
Alban: They're like yes, this is exactly what I've been waiting for.
9:00
Alban: I needed this and I think, based on how many times we heard I really need this.
9:08
Alban: I think this is a feature that we're going to get that sentiment from the 5%.
9:10
Kevin: Yeah, you know we don't necessarily evaluate features based on the number of people that will find them useful, but we do design the interface around that.
9:18
Kevin: And so I'd say it like this like would we have rolled out the ability to do mid-rolls and dynamic content with, you know?
9:25
Kevin: Just the ability, like you had to create all your own insertion points and it was kind of clunky and hard to do, like we didn't feel good about that, and so that's why we wanted to roll it out with the ability for the system to help you along, you know.
9:36
Kevin: And then we actually came up with a system where it doesn't just help you, it actually does it, and it does a really, really, really good job.
9:41
Kevin: Yeah it doesn't mean that we won't come back in it, regardless of how good that system is, and make improvements, and I think this is an improvement, but it's not going to be necessary or applicable to everyone, and so it's not replacing anything.
9:53
Kevin: It's not even a screen that you really have to go into very often, and I think that's the way that I approach it.
9:57
Kevin: More is it's kind of like we want to build software that's really easy to use and helps you make podcasting a joyful experience, but there are times where you have a special case where you have to dig down a little bit, and we just want to have the powerful tools there to be able to do that, even though the majority of people won't necessarily need them on the regular, but they're there when you need them.
10:20
Kevin: But keeping them out of the forefront is also important, because that's how software feels complex right, yes.
10:28
Kevin: Like when all the buttons and levers and switches and everything you can possibly do is always like smattered all across.
10:33
Kevin: You know the home screen when you log in.
10:35
Kevin: Do you want to do this or this or this or this, and it's all stuff that you never really have to do.
10:39
Kevin: Very often that's just complexity, that's unnecessary.
10:42
Alban: Yeah, when it starts looking like the airplane cockpit is when you know might need to refine some of these options.
10:51
Alban: I saw a story today that Vice President Kamala Harris was on the podcast Call Her Daddy and I noticed this is after I've seen on Twitter a bunch of times that former President Trump has been on a bunch of podcasts and so I looked it up and he was on Dr Phil and Dave Ramsey's show and Lex Friedman and something called the Full Send podcast.
11:23
Alban: I'd never heard of but been on podcasts and this is way, way more.
11:26
Alban: It's way more than we had four years ago, many more than obviously before that, and I kind of just wanted to talk about it because these are not small numbers.
11:35
Alban: I mean, on the YouTube video versions of these some of them the Full Send podcast was nearly 9 million views.
11:43
Jordan: The Lex.
11:43
Alban: Friedman podcast that's only a few months old.
11:46
Alban: I think had 5 million views.
11:47
Alban: So these are like these are big shows that are getting big audiences and to my mind they're kind of flying under the radar a bit.
11:55
Jordan: Yeah.
11:56
Kevin: I do not listen to Call Her Daddy, I don't either.
11:59
Kevin: But I was.
12:00
Kevin: I saw that story, Alban, and I thought that was weird, you know like again.
12:05
Kevin: So I don't listen to, I don't listen to Call Her Daddy.
12:07
Kevin: I have no idea what they talk about like firsthand experience, but secondhand experience.
12:14
Kevin: I didn't necessarily think that it was a show that would cover political topics, and maybe it doesn't on the regular.
12:18
Kevin: Maybe that's why this was a good fit, just to be able to reach people who don't normally follow political stuff.
12:23
Kevin: It was a good way for the Harris campaign to reach people who they wouldn't reach otherwise.
12:28
Kevin: Right, because they're not necessarily reading the Wall Street Journal, they're not watching rallies, they're not watching presidential debates, and so I like it from that angle.
12:37
Kevin: I wonder, like, how does it get put together?
12:39
Kevin: Do you think Harris campaign is reaching out to podcasts and trying to get on them, or do you think these podcasts are reaching out to podcasts and trying to get on them?
12:44
Kevin: Or do you think these podcasts are reaching out to campaigns and trying to get them as guests?
12:46
Kevin: I mean, it seems like a win on both sides.
12:47
Kevin: I just wonder what's happening in the podcasting world.
12:50
Alban: Well, when I started researching this and started pulling them up, I'm naturally watching to the very beginning of a lot of them, and what I thought was funny is, every single time they all lead with, we reached out to both sides.
13:02
Alban: All lead with, we reached out to both sides.
13:06
Alban: We tried to get both sides, and only the one that lines up with our audience decided to come on the show.
13:10
Jordan: Yeah, I don't see Trump going on Call Her Daddy.
13:13
Alban: One of them that was the funniest to me was Bryson DeChambeau, who's a professional golfer.
13:18
Alban: Did a video with Trump and then he was like we invited both of them, but I don't know if Vice President Harris actually plays golf or not.
13:25
Alban: So I was like, okay, and Dave Ramsey's like we don't talk about politics on the Ramsey show.
13:30
Alban: And we did invite both, but Trump said yes and then when I looked at Call Her Daddy, they said the same thing.
13:38
Alban: So I don't know if it's the campaigns reaching out or if it's the other way around, but I think it's kind of.
13:45
Alban: I mean, if you're a podcaster and the former president or the current vice president, or definitely the one of them is going to be the future president, you're like this is a big guest.
13:55
Alban: I don't think you turn that down, no matter what your politics are.
13:59
Jordan: Yeah.
13:59
Kevin: Well, should we do it right now?
14:01
Kevin: Should we reach out to both sides?
14:03
Alban: I would love it and see if they'll come on our next episode.
14:07
Alban: I'm out.
14:07
Alban: I think the opportunity for them is amazing.
14:10
Alban: You could reach hundreds of loyal podcast listeners.
14:15
Kevin: Hundreds.
14:16
Kevin: Well, let's make it official.
14:17
Kevin: So right now, here's the invitation to anyone who's listening from the Harris campaign or the Trump campaign.
14:21
Kevin: If you would like to book your candidate or the vice presidential candidate on our next episode, go ahead and reach out to us, go ahead and smash that fan mail link in your podcast player.
14:31
Kevin: Shoot us a fan mail and we'll get it set up.
14:35
Alban: Oh my gosh.
14:35
Alban: We mostly don't talk politics, but now we're ready to have the debate, we can come up with some tough questions.
14:43
Jordan: Oh yeah.
14:44
Kevin: And I guarantee we won't share them with either candidate before the interview because we won't have them ourselves before the interview.
14:50
Alban: They can be shared, you don't have to worry.
14:54
Kevin: There will be no fact checking, but there will be conspiracy asking.
14:58
Jordan: Oh for sure, I want to know where the aliens are.
15:02
Kevin: We will be unable to fact check.
15:04
Kevin: They will be fact checking our questions.
15:07
Alban: They'll be like that's ridiculous.
15:09
Alban: I did try to write a few points that I was like all right, so what are the values here?
15:15
Alban: I mean one big audiences.
15:17
Alban: I think millions of views.
15:19
Alban: It's much easier in a multi-hour conversation to control the narrative.
15:25
Alban: I think we talked about this last episode, just about long episodes and how CEOs of different tech companies are trying to go to podcasts rather than traditional media, and then this showed up and I was like it kind of makes sense for the political campaigns too.
15:40
Alban: You'd much rather than having a confrontational interview where they're drilling you about your record and all your views and how some of them don't line up with things you previously said.
15:50
Alban: Instead of that, you just get to go on and like have fun and probably talk to somebody who isn't as politically keyed in or is just like excited to see.
16:01
Alban: Oh, I got the former president on here, I got the current vice president.
16:06
Alban: This is a big deal.
16:07
Jordan: Yeah, it shows like your fun side.
16:09
Jordan: It reminds me of a when Clinton went on the late night show or something like that and he played the saxophone and everyone was like oh cool president, like there's just like this like moment where they get to like show, like, oh, I'm really cool, like I'm hip with it.
16:23
Alban: There is something that's surprisingly humanizing about it.
16:27
Jordan: Yeah.
16:28
Alban: Especially when somebody who is in political offices is in a totally different environment and then they're talking about something that probably isn't related to their political views.
16:38
Jordan: Yeah.
16:38
Alban: They do seem more authentic or accessible, and when it's over three hours, you're going to get a lot of those human moments rather than just getting like oh great, we're having another debate about some psychotic thing.
16:50
Kevin: This person said before I like the idea that if you go onto a website from one of these candidates and you read about their, their plans and their policies and their ideas and stuff, they're covering a wide swath of topics and issues, but any particular person at any given moment might you know, one or two or three of those issues are the ones that they're most concerned about, and that probably varies a lot demographic to demographic and you can start to hone that in a little bit, kind of based on what some of these podcasts are about or who they're targeting or who they appeal to as an audience.
17:21
Kevin: So I imagine, like the Harris campaign going on, call Her Daddy, they're not going to necessarily talk about all of the issues, but they're probably going to identify two or three or four that would most likely align with people who are listening to that type of podcast and I feel like that's fantastic.
17:37
Kevin: If you watch a debate, for example, they're going to ask I don't know roughly 15 to 20 questions, probably kind of focused around six to eight topics, right.
17:46
Jordan: Yeah.
17:47
Kevin: But you might have some really important topics that just aren't mass appeal or aren't the big headline topics so they don't get asked in the debate or something.
17:54
Kevin: But you go on a show like Call Her Daddy.
17:56
Kevin: You know exactly kind of who that audience is, what the demographics look like, and you know here's three or four issues that aren't getting a lot of coverage.
18:02
Kevin: But we'd really like to ask you about this type of stuff and then you have the time to explore it and to dig into it.
18:07
Kevin: But I do think it is important, like Alban said, that they reach out to both sides.
18:11
Kevin: I don't know that that's a requirement in podcasting.
18:14
Kevin: I know it is if you broadcast over national, like over the airwaves.
18:18
Kevin: Ftc regulates that and so there are rules and requirements there about offering candidates equal airtime.
18:24
Kevin: I don't know that it would exist in podcasting.
18:26
Kevin: It's probably just kind of like the right thing to do.
18:29
Alban: Yeah, and I think you just you come across a little bit less politically motivated when you're like I'm just trying to talk to this person and I'm not a subject matter expert, I'm not going to be grilling them, I'm probably just going to be trying to talk to them and learn about the few issues that matter to me.
18:44
Alban: So you probably don't want to come across just looking like a total partisan and so you go.
18:48
Alban: Okay, well, we invited both and only one of them decided to come, but nope, we got a presidential candidate.
18:55
Alban: That's a big deal.
18:55
Alban: Kevin, your point about being able to dig a little bit deeper reminds me of Andrew Yang, who ran for the Democratic nominee like a cycle ago and didn't really get anywhere, but he went on Rogan and I think he started.
19:10
Alban: He went on like Sam Harris's podcast was his first like actually getting out there and he was like I'm running for president and no one knew who he was.
19:18
Alban: And then he got kept moving around and eventually it was on Joe Rogan and at one point it was polling, I think, in like single digits.
19:25
Alban: But I think most of the campaign in 2020, 2019, or whatever it was, was focused around podcast episodes, because the message was I think automation is going to kill all these jobs and we need to have universal basic income.
19:40
Alban: It's a little bit harder of a thing to pitch when you've only got 30 seconds on a stage next to 10 other people Right bitch when you've only got 30 seconds on a stage next to 10 other people, right?
19:52
Kevin: I think it's surprising that the amount of money that these campaigns spend on advertisements and rallies and all this other kind of stuff.
19:56
Alban: Yeah.
19:56
Kevin: It'd be so easy to reach these people just with your own podcast.
20:00
Kevin: We know, back in what?
20:02
Kevin: Was it?
20:02
Kevin: 2018 or 19?
20:04
Kevin: That Joe Biden launched his podcast on Buzzsprout, and I think he got about seven episodes in Wait, wait wait, wait, okay, we got.
20:11
Jordan: Biden had a podcast on Buzzsprout.
20:14
Alban: Yeah, joe Biden, I think it was called.
20:15
Alban: Here's the deal.
20:16
Alban: I want to say it was called, here's the deal.
20:18
Alban: I think it was that sounds right.
20:21
Kevin: I don't know if that sounds right because you are right, or because he just says that a lot, but he just kept and then he was.
20:26
Alban: he was basically doing podcast promo for the next six years.
20:28
Alban: Every time he was like here's the deal, check it out on iTunes.
20:34
Kevin: Yeah, it's not something that he ran after he won the election.
20:37
Kevin: He didn't didn't do it anymore, but it was six months or so leading up to the to the election.
20:43
Kevin: He ran a podcast and I think he published an episode every couple of weeks or every two or three weeks whenever I had time.
20:48
Kevin: And, yeah, there was hosts on Buzzsprout.
20:50
Kevin: And then they won the election and shut the podcast down.
20:52
Kevin: So there you go.
20:53
Kevin: You want to win, you host with Buzzsprout?
20:56
Kevin: No, but I don't understand why presidential candidates don't do it more Like yeah they're very good at talking.
21:06
Kevin: They're very, they're very interested in sharing their thoughts on specific topics, and this is exactly what they're doing.
21:12
Kevin: They're going around and doing all these live events and I'm not saying that that's not important.
21:16
Kevin: They should keep doing that.
21:17
Kevin: They should keep doing town halls, they should keep talking to people, but they should also be publishing.
21:21
Kevin: Like I don't see them having YouTube channels and podcasts, and why are they not running Instagrams and TikTok pages and stuff like that and I think they are like from the campaign, but it's all like ads.
21:32
Kevin: It's not like them connecting with people.
21:34
Jordan: And I mean every campaign they're trying to get the younger generation to go out and vote and stuff like that.
21:40
Jordan: And like younger generation don't really listen to, like ads, so this definitely would appeal more to them.
21:46
Alban: Yeah, franklin Delano Roosevelt during like leading up to and then a little bit after World War II, did the fireside chats, yeah, and those were put out over the radio and that's where he was like explaining policies and talking about the Great Depression and World War II.
22:00
Alban: And you think those are big economic changes, world wars, big important stuff is happening and this is your opportunity to say in a lot more detail than you might get in a short little news article.
22:14
Alban: He was able to go out and speak directly to the American people and you think about how I mean, social media has become more important for campaigns, the idea of having a YouTube channel where you're putting out your own stuff, or a podcast or you're putting out your own stuff.
22:28
Alban: There's a lot of opportunity there to speak directly to your constituents and kind of set the tone, rather than having, I guess, like everybody else, kind of interpret your few little statements and, over, you know, read a ton into it.
22:41
Jordan: And I much rather prefer you know a podcast episode popping up in my feed than getting text messages every day.
22:48
Alban: Oh, man, All right.
22:54
Alban: So I saw this story in pod news today and it reminded me of a conversation we had a couple of weeks ago.
23:00
Alban: So a lot of people wrote in about notebook LM, which is like you put in all these sources and Google helps you search through them and write content about it, and one of the features was that it was automatically creating like NPR style podcasts.
23:15
Alban: Well, there's two computer science students from Stanford launched this new thing called Golpo G-O-L-P-O.
23:23
Alban: Golpo, which they say is the AI true crime podcast generator.
23:28
Alban: Oh my gosh, this is what-.
23:31
Alban: Wait, is this?
23:31
Jordan: like fake true crime?
23:33
Jordan: Is this like made up, or is this like actually pulling from real true crime?
23:37
Alban: We will have to figure that out together.
23:39
Alban: Oh no, but here's what they said.
23:41
Alban: Golpo does everything a human podcaster would do, which I think is funnier than they intended it to be.
23:45
Alban: It does everything a human podcaster would do, which I think is funnier than they intended it to be.
23:48
Alban: It does everything a human podcaster would do.
23:50
Alban: It first understands what you want to listen to, does highly detailed research on the case, creates a script and then uses that to create a production quality podcast.
24:01
Alban: Okay, and you go in and you type in here's what I want to learn about.
24:05
Alban: I want to learn about this crime, I want to learn about this controversy, this news story, and then about 10 minutes later, it's got a voice telling you a podcast story.
24:14
Alban: So if you go to the website, I mean, there's tons and some of them are like stories that are in the news right now, right up there at the top, because people are generating these and it's not like a five-minute episode.
24:27
Alban: These are five, six, part, 10 minute episodes that are.
24:32
Alban: They sound good.
24:33
Alban: Some of them have music beds, they have some B-roll sound.
24:36
Alban: They also have some other characteristics of a human made podcast.
24:42
Jordan: Like what.
24:44
Alban: Oh, so I clicked one and I was like, all right, how good is this?
24:48
Alban: And there's one that was Malaysian Airlines flight MH17.
24:52
Jordan: Oh yeah.
24:53
Alban: So this is the Malaysian Airlines.
24:55
Alban: I didn't realize this.
24:55
Alban: There's two Malaysian Airlines incidents in 2014.
24:58
Alban: There's the one that disappears and then there's the one that was shot down over Russia.
25:02
Alban: This is the one that was shot down over Russia and I, I click it and I started listening and it's all about this kid and he's in finished college and he and his mom are hugging goodbye, as he's his name's Jasper, and he's getting on a flight and he's going to go hiking and it's like so much detail.
25:20
Alban: The mom is eating at a restaurant trying to decide if she's going to get pasta or a different meal as her son flies overhead.
25:29
Alban: And I'm like this is very well researched, if this is legit, and it's dramatic, and there's music and there's sounds and I'm like there's gotta be some editorializing here.
25:38
Alban: This guy, jasper, just does not exist.
25:41
Alban: He doesn't.
25:43
Alban: No, oh, it's totally fake.
25:44
Alban: I could not find anything about it.
25:47
Alban: I was like it got Malaysian Airlines, it got the type of missile that shot it down.
25:52
Alban: Right, it got where it was going, it had lots of details and this guy, jasper Verhoeven, at least spelled the way that it was in the podcast.
26:04
Alban: That person does not appear to exist, or at least did not die on that flight.
26:09
Jordan: That's so weird.
26:10
Jordan: Yeah, I'm like, looking at this, there's so many different things and does it generate I mean I guess I'm imagining it does Like it generates the cover images.
26:19
Jordan: I mean I gotta be honest, looking at this, these are all like I like this.
26:24
Jordan: The Black Dahlia murder.
26:25
Jordan: It has, like, the BuzzFeed unsolved thing on it that it pulled from the internet.
26:37
Kevin: I'm wondering if the like.
26:38
Kevin: How far out is the day where the internet starts to get so flooded with this type of AI generated content that we start like pushing back the other direction?
26:43
Kevin: I think that's happening.
26:45
Kevin: You think it's happening?
26:45
Kevin: Yeah, I think so.
26:46
Jordan: I don't think that's happening.
26:47
Jordan: You think it's happening?
26:47
Jordan: Yeah, I don't think.
26:48
Kevin: I don't think it's happening yet.
26:49
Kevin: So here's my argument is that it's still so novel that I think people are intrigued by it, and the more people are intrigued by it, the more interested they are in, you know, listening to a little bit of it, maybe creating some of it themselves.
27:01
Kevin: But it's going to become a problem when 10, 15, 20% of the internet is real, written by people or created by people, and then the other amount is is.
27:13
Kevin: You don't know what it is Like.
27:15
Kevin: You don't know is this a real story?
27:16
Kevin: Is this a fake story?
27:17
Kevin: You don't know if it's AI generated.
27:18
Kevin: You don't know if it's a hallucination based on fact.
27:20
Kevin: At some point we're going to hit a tipping point where people are going to push back I think aggressively, like it doesn't just make me uncomfortable to think about it.
27:28
Kevin: It's actually a problem and we have to shut it down and we have to weed it out, and AI content has to be labeled or banned to some you know special part of the internet or something.
27:40
Alban: You've had this experience, I'm sure, where you read a story and it's like it just doesn't pass the smell test.
27:45
Alban: You're like this can't be real.
27:46
Alban: And then you click the source and it's another news article.
27:50
Alban: And then you're like what's the source for this?
27:51
Alban: And then it's got another source and you end up three levels deep and the thing that is being cited is just it was incorrectly cited, but everyone's just reciting the misunderstanding that you end up with a whole world that it's not AI generated, this is human generated.
28:07
Alban: We just somebody misunderstood a scientific paper, wrote about it on BuzzFeed and then that got reprocessed four, five, six times until it's kind of conventional wisdom that whatever the mistaken finding was, yeah, this is a little like worrisome too, because there's just so much nuance that a lot of these podcasters in the true crime space understand in.
28:31
Jordan: you know how they identify suspects or victims.
28:34
Jordan: Like a lot of times they won't actually name somebody, just out of respect for the like, the family, or respect for someone like not actually being convicted of a crime, like not actually being convicted of a crime.
28:50
Jordan: And I don't know if AI understands that nuance or would have the capacity to go okay, maybe I shouldn't say the name that's listed in this report you know, or it would just make up a name and say, oh, we probably shouldn't say that name, we'll just make one up.
29:02
Jordan: Yeah, exactly.
29:03
Alban: Yeah, I'm reminding Kevin of there's a science fiction book, snow Crash, which is actually the book that coined the phrase metaverse, but one of the plot lines from it is that the internet has gotten so full of garbage that's totally fake that there's a new like paid version of the internet where everything has been fact-checked.
29:26
Alban: But it was created by flooding the open web with just tons of trash until nobody could sift through it.
29:33
Alban: And it does feel like that world is happening and it's getting harder and harder to sift through just the unbelievable amount of content and so much of it is poorly fact--checked.
29:47
Alban: Or, you know, some people are just summarizing big things with lots of nuance in five sentences and then they go oh, that's the truth when it may end up being.
29:57
Alban: You know, you summarized something that was really particular into three bullet points that don't capture the nuance.
30:03
Alban: That's important.
30:04
Jordan: Yeah.
30:05
Alban: And of every type of podcast that can have really bad outcomes.
30:09
Alban: Current legal cases, I think, are the ones that are going to have the biggest issues.
30:14
Alban: I mean, one of the articles here was the Diddy party scandal, so Sean Combs being indicted.
30:21
Alban: This is an ongoing case.
30:23
Alban: It's extremely serious.
30:24
Alban: These are all real people, many celebrities, and it's not done.
30:29
Alban: We don't know the truth of what's happened yet and so.
30:32
Alban: I guess if a podcast human wants to go through and try to do this story justice, you can, but you're going to be very, very careful.
30:40
Alban: But for an AI just to go in and try to like, let's hope we do the best we can.
30:45
Alban: I feel like there's going to be a lot of instances where it's just completely wrong.
30:50
Jordan: And hopefully it's not making up a random person named Jasper in the story.
30:55
Alban: Imagine if your name is Jasper I know, yeah, You're, you're involved in the story and you're like whoa, whoa, whoa.
31:02
Alban: That's not me, but yeah, I think that I'm a little bit more with Kevin.
31:08
Alban: I find a lot of these LLMs to be very valuable in a lot of ways and a lot of AI tools can be really good, like suggesting places for your mid -rolls to go.
31:18
Alban: But, when they take the place of the person completely and you're like, hey, why don't you research a legal case that's got a lot of nuance and just make something entertaining.
31:28
Alban: For me it feels like we're not there yet and we're just going to end up with tons of erroneous information, but it just it cracked me up when they said it does everything a human podcaster would do, which is sometimes oversimplify and get facts wrong.
31:43
Alban: So you guys ready for some sound off?
31:50
Alban: All right, Kevin, why don't you start us?
31:56
Kevin: All right, john Corey wrote in and said, focusing on Kevin's point about how great software engineers create elegant solutions versus podcasters who only know how to use the product.
32:01
Kevin: And John said that he spent many years working at HP and Next Next, of course, was acquired by Apple at some point.
32:09
Kevin: And he said that the core concept to maintain is a tight feedback loop, similar to extreme programming or agile development, to focus on the customer's pain point and let the engineers innovate, rinse and repeat to refine the solution.
32:21
Kevin: Customers can rarely design elegant solutions, but they certainly know and can describe the pain that they're experiencing, and I think that's an excellent point.
32:30
Kevin: When we get to interact with customers at podcast conferences all the time, they will sometimes come up and lead with the solution and that might not necessarily land right away Like we're.
32:39
Kevin: Like I don't really understand why the software would need to do that or how that would be helpful.
32:44
Kevin: So we'll ask some clarifying questions like what exactly are you trying to do, or what's the goal, or what are you trying to provide to your audience, and then they'll tell us that and then we'll say, oh, that makes a lot of sense.
32:55
Kevin: And that is kind of what I was talking about the other day, when you want software designed by software engineers, people who can really understand how to make a system that can solve a problem at scale for a lot of people in an elegant way, versus just chalking software full of one-off solutions to solve one little you know we call them use cases but one little problem and then you have to do another feature to do another little problem, another feature to do another little problem, as opposed to an elegant solution which is one solution that solves lots of different problems in a really simple way.
33:20
Kevin: So yeah, great point, and thanks for understanding what I was trying to say.
33:25
Kevin: I know I was blabbering a little bit, trying to explain the importance of elegant software design and why we take that so seriously here at Buzzsprout.
33:34
Jordan: All right.
33:34
Jordan: Next up, we have a message from Cape Girardeau, missouri, regarding the changes to the websites.
33:40
Jordan: Could you please add three things?
33:41
Jordan: I can control.
33:41
Jordan: I'm gonna address this one at a time here.
33:43
Jordan: I think Okay, so allow me to add graphics to the show notes.
33:46
Jordan: Here's the issue with adding graphics to the show notes.
33:49
Jordan: It's really fun, it's really cool thing that you can do.
33:51
Jordan: The only issue is that the podcast apps don't support it, so it'd be kind of hard for us to add graphics to the show notes and then not have it import over to Apple podcasts or Spotify or something like that.
34:02
Jordan: So really, the best thing to do is add graphics to your chapter markers and you can upload images there.
34:08
Jordan: And then, second is enable file uploads for team members to download.
34:12
Jordan: I don't know exactly what files you're wanting to upload, but if it's the audio file, then you can download the audio file from the episode page.
34:19
Jordan: Otherwise, I highly recommend using an app like Airtable or Google Drive to share uploads with your team, and then let me edit content via the app, and I'm assuming that's edit.
34:32
Alban: Might be editing the audio files itself.
34:34
Kevin: Yeah, and the only issue with that is that on Buzzsprout, like on the desktop app as well, you can't edit your audio files, and that's not really like what we do at this point, but if you do want to edit your episode information, your title, your description, contributor tags, all that, any of that kind of stuff you can do that within the app.
34:52
Kevin: So if you haven't, found it yet go ahead and shoot our support team an email and they will send you screenshots and show you exactly how to do that.
34:57
Alban: All right, we got another one from Jody at Dork Tales Storytime a story for kids podcast.
35:02
Alban: We love the new updates you made to the Buzzsprout website, especially the ability to add fan mail and contributors.
35:07
Alban: We already have a custom WordPress website, but having a Buzzsprout site is another great way for our podcast to be discovered.
35:14
Alban: One suggestion for a future update For those of us with fiction podcasts, it would be great to have an option to add our writers to the contributors page too.
35:23
Alban: Thanks for always finding new ways to support podcasters.
35:25
Alban: Interesting Great idea, jodi.
35:28
Alban: This was something that was tough.
35:29
Alban: I think Jordan and I were both weighing in on this at some point, because we were looking at the hundreds of different roles that people can have in the podcast taxonomy and saying which do we want to support?
35:42
Alban: And I know ones that were near the top that we didn't add were.
35:46
Alban: Voice actors was one we looked at a lot, and then just contributing writers.
35:51
Alban: So I think those are, you know, things for us to consider, and maybe there might be another elegant solution to that, but thank you for writing in and giving us that suggestion.
36:01
Kevin: We had a fan from Alaska write in said you're 100% correct, since people have AirPods in a podcast is like talk radio, but it's stuff you actually want to listen to.
36:09
Kevin: I'm a talk radio guy and I discovered podcasts because I wanted to listen to my favorite radio programs while I'm away from my truck.
36:16
Jordan: Steph from Geopats podcast said regarding Snapcast and long episodes when I lived in Germany a few years ago, I learned that three plus hour podcasts for IndiePods were common.
36:25
Jordan: Just wow, right.
36:26
Jordan: Yeah, that is pretty impressive.
36:29
Kevin: It's long.
36:29
Kevin: I don't have any three hour.
36:31
Kevin: I don't have anything more than like an hour and a half or so.
36:33
Kevin: I think that I listen to on the regular.
36:35
Jordan: Yeah.
36:36
Alban: Kevin's listening to three hour episodes just at 2X, so he gets through in the one and a half.
36:39
Alban: That's true, that's really it.
36:41
Alban: Somebody in Alaska reached out.
36:43
Alban: Jordan, jordan, are you telling me you didn't know what podgagement from Daniel J Lewis was?
36:47
Alban: It aggregates all of your iTunes ratings and reviews in one place.
36:51
Jordan: I talked about it on the last episode.
36:54
Alban: I think maybe we over-described the pain point and maybe we didn't fully describe, maybe didn't talk enough about podgagement itself.
37:04
Alban: But yeah, we recommend podgagement as one of the nice replacements to Chartable in our last episode, Though ironically this may be the issue Jordan, this person in Alaska, is the same person who wrote in six weeks ago and said Snapchat buh-bye.
37:20
Jordan: So maybe they're not listening.
37:20
Jordan: Well, you should listen to it.
37:22
Alban: Maybe they're not listening to the Snap episodes.
37:26
Kevin: We got a fan who wrote in from Trenton, New Jersey, who said there's at least five things I could have done to make my podcast better.
37:33
Kevin: But the biggest lesson I've learned is that you have to have good equipment to make your podcast sound great.
37:36
Kevin: That's my biggest takeaway.
37:38
Kevin: Also said that my podcast is a little different from most because I do both live content and pre-recorded episodes.
37:43
Kevin: The pre-recorded content is a tribute to my grandmother.
37:45
Kevin: That's nice.
37:46
Kevin: That's pretty cool.
37:47
Jordan: Derek, producer of Intentional Teaching, said I love the new Buzzsprout websites.
37:51
Jordan: I have a WordPress website for my podcast, but it's never been that pretty or functional.
37:54
Jordan: Now I'm very glad to send folks to my Buzzsprout URL Awesome.
37:59
Alban: All right, and our question two weeks ago was what are some 10 out of 10 podcast episodes, the ones that you recommend to everybody?
38:07
Alban: That are just unambiguously amazing episodes and we got a few answers over the last few days, so thanks to everyone who wrote in.
38:15
Alban: Scott, host of Talk With History, said there's an episode from Everything 80s podcast about Alban and Hobbes that I agree almost everyone will love.
38:24
Alban: The episode is called Alban and Hobbes the story of a beloved comic strip.
38:28
Alban: I listened to it and couldn't stop talking about it for weeks.
38:31
Jordan: Wow, that's cool.
38:32
Jordan: I'm excited to listen to that one too.
38:33
Kevin: Yeah, that sounds like something I'd like.
38:34
Kevin: We got a message from Australia that said the Fifty Shades of Grey episode by Talk Lit Hit perfectly captures the insanity of the book.
38:43
Kevin: Skull, emoji, skull emoji.
38:46
Kevin: I've never read the book, but I think I know what it's about.
38:55
Kevin: I've heard some things.
38:56
Kevin: Yeah, and we'll check out that podcast as well.
38:58
Jordan: Dee hosts a sparkling life coach podcast.
39:01
Jordan: When you asked for a favorite episode, I really wasn't going to reply because most of the podcasts I listen to are educational, so it's hard to pick a favorite that I'd suggest to others and I didn't want to seem like I was kissing up, even though I am a buzzcast super fan.
39:12
Jordan: But my favorite one of yours, episode 46, the day podcast, stopped.
39:18
Jordan: Y'all had me on the edge of my seat with the recounting of everything that happened.
39:21
Jordan: Yes, I agree that that is one of our best episodes, for good reason.
39:26
Alban: A lot of love and heart went into that one and it was just super cool yeah, travis worked something like 60 hours in four days or something yeah um, we said, all right, if we're gonna do it, it's got to be by next friday, and I think we the ddos attack wrapped up on monday and so then he started interviewing everyone in the company.
39:47
Alban: We didn't hear back from him.
39:48
Alban: I think Kevin did a round of revisions with him and, boom, that thing was out on Friday and it is so good, it's so good.
39:57
Alban: I think it took him about two weeks to recover after it, but it was.
40:01
Alban: It was incredible.
40:02
Alban: Yeah, great episode.
40:04
Alban: Somebody in San Jose, california, have you ever heard of Rube Waddell?
40:09
Alban: You may know baseball pitching legend Cy Young, but the Rube was even better pitcher.
40:14
Alban: So why didn't Rube get the credit he deserves?
40:17
Alban: The story of his behavior on and off the field is incredible and the Dollop podcast does the best job telling it.
40:23
Alban: So I'm a big baseball fan.
40:25
Alban: I have no idea who Rube Waddell is, and so I looked him up and in a few minutes of research I was reading about he's.
40:33
Alban: He got his outfielders to like sit down to mock people Cause he was going to strike them out.
40:38
Alban: He would chase fire engines.
40:40
Alban: He disappeared for a few months and they found out he was a alligator wrestler down in like Louisiana.
40:46
Alban: It's so ridiculous it does not sound real.
40:51
Alban: Now he played baseball at like the turn of the century, so like early 1900s.
40:57
Alban: So baseball was in a different place than when Cy Young and you know the Bay Ruth and everybody were playing, but still wild.
41:06
Alban: So I will definitely have to check out this episode on the dollop.
41:10
Kevin: Devin from Kingdom Animalia Podcasts.
41:13
Kevin: An undeniably good podcast episode I'd recommend to anyone is Conversations With Myself from Shell Game.
41:19
Kevin: In this episode the host, evan Ritliff, has two AI voice clones of himself, controlled by chat.
41:25
Kevin: Gpt talk to each other and I was laughing uncontrollably, especially when he turns up the randomness setting.
41:32
Kevin: One of those clones starts spouting nonsense and gave a link to it.
41:36
Kevin: So we can drop that in the show notes for this episode so you can listen as well.
41:40
Kevin: It sounds funny.
41:41
Kevin: He also had a quick request.
41:43
Kevin: Can you please include the usual end of episode sting in the shorter episodes?
41:48
Alban: hmm, is that the uh, the?
41:51
Jordan: noise.
41:52
Jordan: I mean, here's the thing is.
41:54
Jordan: I think he's asking for the like the outro the bump about yeah, like the outro theme, because the stink, like the actual like hang up sound is in the shorter episodes.
42:07
Kevin: But the theme is not in the shorter episodes, it's only in the bigger ones yeah, and we don't have it in the beginning of the shorter ones either, do we?
42:14
Jordan: I started adding it when we started doing like longer, 10-ish minute episodes.
42:19
Jordan: Oh, so maybe he's feeling like he's not getting closure.
42:22
Alban: You're like opening with the intro music, but you're not closing with it, so there's it's feeling unsettled, but the end of episode sting, I feel like that's got to be the thing that's closing, because that's the actual end.
42:33
Jordan: Yeah, like a sting is that?
42:35
Jordan: But the hang up is in every episode regardless.
42:38
Jordan: All right, devin, we're going to need some clarity on what you feel like you're missing.
42:42
Kevin: But if it's the ending theme, I could live without that.
42:45
Kevin: But I definitely need the hang up.
42:47
Kevin: Sound Like that gives me closure on that's the end of the episode, Because sometimes we do these post shows and sometimes we don't, you know.
42:53
Kevin: So I need to know when the episode ends.
42:54
Kevin: That's the purpose of that.
42:55
Alban: You've got a little bit of a ramble for a bit.
42:57
Alban: You kind of want something to go.
42:59
Alban: Okay, that's done.
43:01
Kevin: Yeah, hanging up on that.
43:02
Kevin: Now it's over.
43:09
Jordan: And we got a message from Barnabas of count Probably Anyway, it's from Chris Fabry live, and I believe the name is where love is.
43:16
Jordan: I can't find it at the moment so I'm not sure if it's still available.
43:19
Jordan: I'll see if I can find that.
43:21
Jordan: If so, I'll link to it in the show notes, but maybe someone else can find it.
43:25
Alban: Jordan skipped this one because I wrote it in to the show and we needed some of these.
43:29
Alban: I was trying to think of what episodes I've recommended the most, and probably three.
43:34
Alban: Eight years ago, I listened to this podcast episode with Toby Lukey, ceo and co-founder of Shopify, and I think it was on Invest Like the Best and it's a really interesting podcast.
43:46
Alban: It was about building infrastructure both digital and physical infrastructure and making decisions, but it had this whole bit about.
43:54
Alban: Toby was like a competitive video game player before he founded Shopify and talked about how video games shaped his leadership style, and every time I've heard somebody say video games are really helpful I always find it a little bit like it's a joke and they're trying to like justify playing video games.
44:14
Alban: Toby was the first time I heard it and I was like man sounds like those video games actually are pretty good for him.
44:20
Alban: So I really enjoyed that episode and it was the one that, even years later, I remembered when I asked this question last week.
44:27
Kevin: Yeah, I just spent a week with Toby up in Toronto.
44:30
Kevin: Should have come with me.
44:31
Kevin: You could have met him, did you really?
44:33
Kevin: Yeah, we were at Rails World in Toronto and Toby was one of the main keynote speakers and just hanging around the conference.
44:39
Kevin: And yeah, shopify is the world's largest production Rails app.
44:44
Kevin: It's huge.
44:45
Kevin: That's awesome.
44:46
Kevin: Did you actually meet Toby?
44:47
Kevin: I did not, but you could have if you wanted to.
44:50
Kevin: I didn't necessarily have an interest, because they were speaking mostly about technical things that were beyond my area of expertise, but a lot of people were talking to him.
44:59
Kevin: Wow, yeah, he was super approachable and around the whole time Hosted a fabulous after party at the Shopify offices in Toronto Three of the floors of their office anyway.
45:09
Kevin: Very cool it was amazing.
45:10
Alban: I could have gone and told them I don't know anything about Rails, but I know a lot about video games and I really liked this podcast you were on.
45:18
Kevin: All right, warren from Jaded HR wrote in and said I can't name a podcast episode that just made me have to share it.
45:24
Kevin: But I have an episode that I recorded where I went completely off script trying HR with Harry Potter and it was so much fun to record.
45:30
Kevin: Over four years later it's still easily the most fun I had recording an episode.
45:34
Kevin: It didn't do great on downloads but it brings back good memories.
45:37
Kevin: Well great.
45:38
Kevin: Let's drop that link in the show notes of this episode and we'll see if we can get those download numbers up for you a little bit.
45:43
Alban: That reminds me of that video we did years ago, kevin, about how to be a podcast guest, and it's a video about just like best practices to be on a podcast, but we shot the whole thing as if it was like an 80s infomercial.
45:57
Jordan: Yeah, that was the most fun.
46:00
Kevin: Yeah, sometimes you have to take big swings and yeah oftentimes you miss and maybe we missed, but it was fun.
46:06
Alban: It was a lot of fun for something that at best was a single.
46:09
Alban: It may not even have been a single the numbers never got up there but I've gone back and rewatched that a few times and been like this is so dumb and so funny.
46:20
Jordan: Oh, it's so good.
46:21
Jordan: I know it doesn't have a lot of downloads compared to some of our other YouTube videos, but I think it's created the most magic so yeah, that is.
46:29
Kevin: That is not content generated for the YouTube algorithm.
46:33
Alban: No, jordan.
46:36
Alban: What was yours, what was your recommendation?
46:38
Jordan: Yeah, so my recommendation is a reply all episode from 2017.
46:43
Jordan: And I don't know, you might remember this one called Long Distance, in which Alex Goldman gets a phone call from a scammer and he like decides to play along and then he slowly like investigates the scamming and he kind of befriends the guy and like gets deep into the seedy underbelly of like scam call centers and it is one of the wildest Reply all episodes and I think it's easily one of the best that they ever produced.
47:17
Jordan: It's a two parter, but I'm recommending part one.
47:21
Kevin: Yeah, I wonder if I listened to it or not.
47:23
Kevin: This isn't the one where Alex he didn't actually travel over to meet the scammer, did he?
47:28
Jordan: Oh, it is.
47:28
Jordan: So this is the one I'm remembering.
47:30
Alban: Yeah, and you learned all about like how they you have to pay a ransom to get them out of some of these complexes and stuff.
47:39
Alban: Or am I merging two podcasts?
47:40
Alban: I think you're merging.
47:40
Alban: There was a journal podcast recently about a guy who had been kidnapped and was being forced to send texts to people and scam people and then his family paid a ransom to get him out.
47:51
Alban: Is that maybe what you're thinking?
47:53
Kevin: I don't think I listened to that one, okay, but I heard a different one.
47:57
Kevin: I can't remember what it was.
47:58
Kevin: It might've been this reply, all one, where it could have even been what's the new engine with PJ vote search.
48:04
Jordan: It might've been a search engine one, yeah.
48:06
Kevin: Yeah, but it's.
48:06
Kevin: It is fascinating in like the worst way, fascinating in the worst way sort of the scams and the abuse and stuff that happens on the back end of these, you know texting and phone scams.
48:17
Kevin: Many of the people who are making these calls are not doing it by choice.
48:21
Kevin: They are not the scammers.
48:22
Kevin: They are being held captive and forced to run these scams in order to earn their freedom Terrible.
48:28
Jordan: Yeah, I don't think that this is quite that dark.
48:31
Jordan: Yeah, I don't think that this is quite that dark.
48:33
Jordan: It's a little bit more fun than that.
48:39
Jordan: Just because you know, he gets to know the scammer and figure out why they're okay with like scamming people out of this and how the scams work, like how they make their money, and kind of gets to the point of like who's the kingpin behind all these different companies?
48:51
Jordan: And it's just a little bit of a mystery that he, you know, tugs at the thread and it all unravels and it's just fascinating.
48:58
Alban: There are a lot of good reply.
49:00
Alban: All episodes from back in the day.
49:01
Alban: There were some that were really really special.
49:04
Kevin: All right, can I ask the sound off question for next week?
49:06
Kevin: I'd love it.
49:06
Kevin: All right.
49:07
Kevin: I am interested in people's thoughts on AI generated content in podcasting.
49:13
Kevin: So it's like, specifically have you listened to any AI generated content?
49:17
Kevin: Did you like it?
49:18
Kevin: Did you think it was good?
49:18
Kevin: Would you, would it change your thoughts?
49:21
Kevin: What if you'd listen to a podcast and you later found out it was AI generated?
49:24
Kevin: Like how would that make you feel?
49:26
Kevin: But basically, any anything that you want to tell us about your thoughts about AI generated content and podcasting, I'm game for listening and talking about it.
49:33
Kevin: So go ahead and hit the fan mail button in the episode description and send us your thoughts.
49:39
Jordan: All right guys, as always.
49:40
Jordan: Thanks for listening and keep podcasting.
49:47
Kevin: Jordan, do you know that there is another storm coming at Florida?
49:51
Jordan: That's what word on the street is in our base camp chat.
49:55
Jordan: I have a feeling I'm going to be picking up some support shifts this week while you guys have some power out.
50:00
Kevin: Yeah, it's possible.
50:02
Kevin: This one's the other one, didn't?
50:03
Kevin: It looked terrible going into the panhandle and then the panhandle, I mean obviously had a lot of devastation, but I had no idea that it was going all the way up to do devastation in Georgia and North Carolina as well, oh yeah.
50:15
Kevin: And I think it's one of those situations where, like, you get a pretty mild snowstorm in like Atlanta and like, if that same snowstorm hit out in you know Idaho or something like that, you guys would be totally fine, you're prepared for this stuff, you have all the equipment, you know how to handle it.
50:29
Jordan: Yeah.
50:33
Kevin: You're ready for them, anticipating them.
50:34
Kevin: But it's one of those deals where a snowstorm hits Atlanta and it's six inches of snow and the city is shut down for two weeks because they have no idea how to handle it.
50:40
Kevin: I think it was the same thing with that storm that came through and went all the way up into Georgia and the Carolinas, and they were not ready for it, they weren't anticipating it.
50:47
Kevin: People hadn't prepped, people didn't have supplies, people didn't have gas and generators and all that kind of stuff.
50:52
Kevin: And they are reeling and reeling, and so, of course, florida also devastated.
51:02
Alban: And now there's another storm a week later, heading right into a different part of Florida, but it looks like it's actually going to impact a lot of Florida yeah, we're recording early because it looks like we're just going to get hit, probably Wednesday, and so we're recording on Monday, where it just got upgraded to category five and Florida.
51:15
Alban: I feel like we always make jokes about hurricanes because there's tons of hurricanes and we get a handful a year and most of them are not a big deal.
51:25
Alban: They're, you know there's property damage and you lose power, but for all it's not bad Category five, possibly hitting a major city like Tampa is very scary.
51:37
Jordan: Well, that's where Cameron's located too.
51:39
Jordan: Like he's just he posted a photo.
51:40
Jordan: Like I mean, he's just like right in the middle of the path there.
51:44
Kevin: Yeah, yeah.
51:45
Kevin: He is down in the Sarasota area.
51:47
Jordan: Yeah.
51:47
Kevin: That whole west coast of Florida is definitely highly susceptible to storm surge flooding, and so it will be bad.
51:53
Kevin: A few years ago, a hurricane I can't remember the name of it went through Porta Gorda.
51:58
Kevin: Porta Gorda and the flooding from the storm surge and everything was awful, devastating Thousands and thousands of people displaced, thousands of people without power for weeks and weeks and weeks.
52:08
Kevin: Yeah, so we are anybody who lives in Florida.
52:13
Kevin: Anyway, we are on prep duty and trying to prepare as best we can.
52:18
Alban: Yeah, as silly as it sounds, I mean I always am in the group that likes to make the jokes.
52:22
Alban: And then this is one where I'm like, yep, people need to leave and it's going to be like a day before.
52:29
Alban: And there's always like interviews with people who are 80 and they're like I've, I've never left, I'm not leaving.
52:35
Alban: But you know, 50 in a row are not a big deal until the one big one hits your house and there's nothing you can do and there's no one who can come and pick you up in a helicopter.
52:47
Alban: Because when there's 120 mile an hour, winds and tons of water and floods and stuff, you know it's just, it's devastating.
52:54
Alban: So if you are in the path, make sure you leave and go inland, or go up North and take a little vacation and call in some PTO.
53:02
Jordan: Yeah, I mean, kevin, you were in North Carolina last week, right, right?
53:07
Kevin: Yeah, we have some family that has been displaced, so we went and picked them up and they're living with us right now.
53:12
Kevin: We have some family that has been displaced so we went and picked them up and they're living with us right now.
53:15
Kevin: And there's an area on West Florida that our family travels to quite often.
53:18
Kevin: I was down there last weekend looking at some of the damage from the last storm and I was talking to a guy who I know who lives across the street from the place that we normally stay and he spent the night on his kitchen cabinets because the evacuation order came in and he had the same kind of mentality that Alban was just talking about.
53:34
Kevin: Is that they always say this?
53:35
Kevin: it's usually not a big deal yeah and around 11 or 12 at night the water started coming into his house and he got up to like two feet of water in his house and so power went out.
53:45
Kevin: He said it was pitch dark, two or three feet of water in his house, you know.
53:49
Kevin: He grabbed his pillow and climbed up on the kitchen counters and him and his wife slept on their counters and he said they were never been more scared in their life and they will never do that again.
53:56
Kevin: This time they are getting out.
53:59
Jordan: Yeah, good.
54:00
Kevin: And it's.
54:01
Kevin: It's terribly scary to think like I have to pack up and leave this place and and you might not come back to it, like all your stuff could be gone.
54:07
Kevin: Um, it's terribly scary to have to do that, but the reality that at least this guy shared with me is is being there.
54:14
Kevin: You can't do anything about it anyway, and now your life is in serious danger.
54:18
Kevin: Yeah.
54:20
Kevin: And so you have to preserve your life.
54:21
Kevin: You can't save your stuff, and stuff's just stuff.
54:23
Kevin: I mean it might take a while to replace it or and it's going to be hard it can be financial impacts and everything else.
54:29
Kevin: No one is saying it's easy, but your life's not worth any of it.
54:34
Alban: The last time we got a mandatory evacuation I want to say it was like six years ago, so maybe 2018, there was some hurricane that was supposed to hit Jacksonville directly, at least at one point, and we were like, all right, we're going to leave.
54:49
Alban: We packed up a few things.
54:50
Alban: We were living in an old house one block off the ocean.
54:52
Alban: So I was like, okay, it's probably not good, we definitely need to leave.
54:56
Alban: And then my friend, who is a tornado chaser and films tornadoes and storms for a living, reached out to me a friend from college and he was like, hey, you need to get out of your house.
55:06
Alban: And I was like, yeah, we're leaving, he goes, and you need to be ready to come back and not have a house.
55:10
Alban: It's like, really, and he goes, yeah, you're in an old house, If you get hit, it's gone.
55:16
Alban: And so I went back and I grabbed a few family heirlooms that I was like, okay, if you know, I'm going to fill up the rest of the car.
55:28
Alban: What 10 things would I put in here?
55:28
Alban: But it you know the the gravity of the situation, like I don't know why the weather channel just never seems scary.
55:33
Alban: They always seem like they're overhyping the most basic storm, but then having a friend reach out and go, you need to get anything important out of the house I was like, OK, this sounds like this is legit.
55:44
Kevin: Yeah.
55:44
Jordan: Yeah.
55:45
Kevin: Usually you know there's, there's a few communities around where a storm hits and you never know exactly where it's going to be.
55:51
Kevin: It's not always directly in the direct path of the storm.
55:54
Kevin: Sometimes it's the north of the storm, sometimes it's south of the storm, whatever.
55:57
Kevin: Sometimes it's two states away, like all the way up in North Carolina with this last one where dams broke and they had to release water and stuff and towns that have never flooded before were completely flooded and underwater.
56:07
Kevin: But we get lured into this false sense of security of oh, I've been through dozens of these storms.
56:14
Kevin: I've you know, and it's never impacted me in the way that I've seen, you know, some pictures on TV and stuff that never really happens until it does, and then it happens and you know, you're sleeping on your kitchen counters and you're hoping to survive the night.
56:26
Jordan: It's, it's it's crazy.
56:28
Kevin: So you it's insurance policy Like you have to prepare for the worst and hope for the best, and you know we pray that nobody gets hit and devastated, you know, but it's inevitable, like it's.
56:37
Kevin: It's, this storm is real.
56:39
Kevin: It's right now a cat five storm off out in the Gulf of Mexico and it is headed towards Florida, and so some people we don't know where exactly, somewhere from the panhandle down to the Florida Keys, some area of Florida, and some huge number of people are going to be devastated.
56:54
Kevin: And so, uh, I don't know.
56:56
Kevin: Our hope is that somehow the storm goes away, but the reality of that happening is is probably zero.
57:01
Kevin: So, anybody listening, if you're in those areas, please take care of yourself, take care of your pets, take care of your family, take care of your community, like, get yourself squared away, get the supplies you need and get ready early so that you can help people around you, because we know that people will be ill-prepared.
57:14
Kevin: So, yeah, take care of everyone you can, and yourself first.