A space for mostly short form stuff and responses to things I see elsewhere.
Eat This Podcast latest episode: Crunch Time — Insects Are Not Going to Save Us
Dustin Crummett, executive director of The Insect Institute, tells me why he thinks the puffery about eating insects to save the planet is largely hot air inflating a bubble.
https://eatthispodcast.com/no-insects
Is it possible, in my wildest dreams, that the latest XKCD from Randall was inspired by a recent episode of Eat This Podcast?
https://xkcd.com/2982/
https://www.eatthispodcast.com/water/
1 min read
Editing audio, you accumulate so much cruft it is amazing. Out-takes, duplicates, alternative mixes etc etc. You pretend you might come back to them. But you don't. Eventually you decide to save only the final mix and the sound files it needs, and you spend about 90 minutes doing every podcast from 2014, and you reduce the size of that archive from 21.3GB to 9.1GB and that is a good thing.
2015 can wait.
TIL: a well-known and well-regarded weekly podcast that puts out 40 episodes a year is made by four people each working a full-time eight-hour day. That's a lot of time.
Robert has a good solution to blocking text-to-speech narration in audiobooks, not a problem for me as I don't listen. But ... the 2023 roundup of Tyler Cowan's podcast said they were recording his voice for a custom text-to-speech. Might be worthwhile.
Very excited to have a new season of #sceneonradio appear in my #podcast feed, looking into the coup d’etat in Wilmington, North Carolina, of 1898. John Biewen and his collaborators have produced some of the most compelling podcasts on racism and sexism, and judging by episode 1 this will be every bit as good as previous series.
A new departure, after 10 years of Eat This Podcast, a Xmas quiz. With prizes.
https://www.eatthispodcast.com/2023-quiz/
See, this is the kind of thing I'm talking about: "kept me listening despite zero interest in the subject," said someone about the latest episode of Eat This Podcast, What Price Chicken Wings.
@FindThatPod "Win Apple Reviews For Your Podcast From Other Podcasters. Enter a free daily lottery-style drawing for your chance to win integrity-based listens and reviews for your podcast."
Hmmn. I wonder what's in it for them?
New edition of Eat This Newsletter is out, with a few choice items and a reminder that the next podcast episode will go live on 24 December, for reasons. Read the newsletter at https://buttondown.email/jeremycherfas/archive/exchanges/ and, if you're so inclined sign up too. Thanks./
Thanks Google. Three of the top 10 search terms that brought people to my podcast site involved wheat pennies. Alas, none wanted to hear about wheat and the growth of empires. https://www.eatthispodcast.com/empire-grain/
A very warm welcome to the [redacted] new podcast subscribers who joined via Google Podcasts this past month. https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZWF0dGhpc3BvZGNhc3QuY29tL2ZlZWQvcG9kY2FzdC8
You know where to find me.
Case in point: the Deep in the Weeds podcast network at https://deepintheweeds.com.au/ @deepintheweeds with some excellent shows and episodes that could easily interest a wider audience.
There is, in my mind at least, some confusion between discoverability and promotion. That is, I want people to be able to find my podcast, which means I both need to promote it where the ears are and, if possible, make sure the ears can find it.
I find this very interesting. As a podcast producer, I do not, generally, use a lot of music behind speech. That might be because I am a stick-in-the-mud old fart who learned that craft, such as it is, at a well-known broadcaster. Also, it is really difficult, especially when there is no-one I can ask to do it for me. Listening to track after track after track to find the right one is so time-consuming. But maybe that’s a waste of time? You seem to be suggesting that I just bung some smooth jazz under everything.
Very interesting long essay about what it is to be unseen, unheard and yet vital. But that professional podcast world? Awful.
1 min read
It's #InternationalCoffeeDay2021, the whole point of which is promotion, right? So here's a link to all previous episodes of Eat This Podcast on coffee https://www.eatthispodcast.com/coffee/
Of course I am going to resurrect my podcast episode about Celebrating Passover and Easter. Maybe a bit late for tonight's seder, but plenty of time for a little didactic baking next week.
https://www.eatthispodcast.com/passover/
Fine episode of Gravy from @southfoodways, all about horchata. A little disappointed that @rachellaudan didn't bring English barley water into the story. Or if she did, that they cut it.
https://www.southernfoodways.org/gravy/horchata-podcast/
I rant often about podcast web pages that hide their audio behind layers of obfuscation. It makes trialling an episode in huffduffer.com impossible. But ones I subscribe to, like @5x15stories, that can't even supply a decent feed are beyond my understanding.
Pleased, in a nerdy way, that tomorrow's podcast episode, in which I chat with a chef and teacher in Aoteora, will go out on a day when we all will have almost the same times for sunrise and sunset.
OK, pure confirmation bias, but I finally read something that expands and provides details on the chaotic thoughts swirling in my brain about why Joe Rogan's Spotify deal need not be the end. The open podcast ecosystem is dying — here’s how to save it https://divinations.substack.com/p/the-open-podcast-ecosystem-is-dying
How cool is this? Lego kit for Friends, just what I needed for today's podcast.
But seriously: why does it seem so weird to pay for a podcast, when I pay for music, films, TV etc?
And answer came there none.
"UK podcast listeners willing to pay £4 average for monthly subscriptions" it says here: https://podnews.net/press-release/uk-podcast-listeners-four-quid
Standing by, here: https://www.eatthispodcast.com/supporters/
Where to push for greater food safety as food supply systems change is such a difficult question, as discussed in my podcast with Shirley Tarawali and Delia Grace @ILRI https://www.eatthispodcast.com/in-praise-of-meat-milk-and-eggs/
If you care about anything apart from the audio of the podcasts you subscribe to, you may want to check that the app you use gets a good rating for how it displays show notes.
"a podcast inspired by an Instagram account, covering the dating lives, drunken escapades, and makeup lines of superstar digital citizens"
Er, no. I don't think so.
So correct. I fear we may lose the meaning of podcast, just as we lost the meaning of blog post.
1 min read
Podnews has a piece that many podcasters could usefully read. The bit that resonated was this quote from Roman Mars:
If you have 100,000 listeners and you edit out one useless minute you are saving 100,000 wasted minutes in the world. You’re practically a hero.
Not quite a hero, I can at least count myself a mini-hero.
1 min read
New podcast episode out now, tasting the delights of Nürnberger lebkuchen, at https://www.eatthispodcast.com/lebkuchen/
The value of charts -- podcast or otherwise -- as a measure of worth, as opposed to merely popularity, is deeply suspect. In all kinds of rankings, people like what other people like, so popular stuff becomes more popular. Which is why I am highly ambivalent any time I so much as glance at podcast charts. Either people like what I'm doing, or they don't, but asking whether they like my output more or less than someone else's is pointless. Mostly.
An unrelated mystery: why would someone who has their own domain in their own name not want that domain to be more popular by, you know, publishing on it?
Thanks Aaron for your mention of my wheat and bread podcasts. You raise an interesting question about aboriginal bread in Australia. I've listened to a podcast with Bruce Pascoe and read a general piece that was awfully muddled, but I have not read his book. I have no reason not to take his claims at face value, although I also think that the freight he is adding to those claims owes as much to the general status and recent past history of aboriginal people in Australia as it does to archaeology. I will certainly be including something in the book I am working on.
Tomorrow is apparently International Podcast Day. Naturally, I am spending today editing a podcast that will go out on Monday.
@journeymanhisto I find it incomprehensible why anyone would write 13 separate little tweets instead of a blog post. Luckily, @threadapp captured the story at https://threader.app/thread/1044577825091514368.
Also a central topic in my podcast series Our Daily Bread, especially episode 13.
Listened to the first episode of Bundyville, because it was on 99PI. Instant subscribe. Very fine narrative podcast about an important subject.
