Glog

Glenn Fleishman Interrogates the Past

Podcasting

Podcasting

Podcast, Podcast, Podcast! I'm Talking All over the Place

I had a spate of podcasts (some taped weeks ago) go up recently:

  • Clockwise #112: A 30-minute dash through four tech topics and one bonus question! I frighten everyone in this episode. (Yes, I am available to wash your dishes.)
  • Low Definition: Space Blobs: The Game Show podcast that's part of the Incomparable Network did a game that is absolutely not a popular word game in which you provide meanings to words. It was hilarious, and raccoons were not harmed, I swear. Seriously. Maybe squirrels, though.
  • Afoot: a mystery-genre podcast: I just launched this at the Incomparable. This was our introductory episode, and we'll be putting out new episodes every few weeks.
  • Doctor Who S9E8 review: “The Zygon Inversion”: A "flashcast" at the Incomparable, recorded just after watching the episode (with Jason Snell).
  • Love Blooms Naturally on a Vespa: A Rocket Surgery sub-podcast outing on the Incomparable in which we

Podcasting

What's That? It's…Afoot! The Game, That Is

Over at The Incomparable network, I've just launched a podcast about mysteries—anything within the genre and related—called Afoot! No, it's not just about Sherlock Holmes, though you can imagine the great ratiocinator will come up. I've assembled a set of panelists, and different members (plus special guests) will appear in each episode depending on the topic.

The first episode is live! It's an introductory one in which six of us talk about what got us hooked on mysteries, our favorites, and what makes a mystery a mystery. We're planning on having new episodes at least every month, possibly more frequently.

The artwork is by Antony Johnston (based on my feeble imaginings), writer and podcast host; the intro and outdo sound-effect "play" by David J. Loehr, playwright and panelist.

audio-thumbnail
Afoot, Episode 1
0:00
/0:00

Podcasting

Listen Up! Latest Podcast Appearances

I had a busy run of talking to invisible people the last few weeks, and several episodes have dropped:

  • The Committed (Ian Schray, Rob Griffiths, Kirk McElhearn): We talked security, Apple Pay, and Windows 10.
  • Systematic (Brett Terpstra): Brett asked me about my work and how I report, and we compared notes on how we approach tasks. We also talked cryptocurrency and a kid-derived currency.

In the next few weeks, you'll find me in an episode each of:

  • The Internet History Podcast: I talk with host Brian McCullough about myths of Amazon that are perpetuated even when Amazon itself denies them, my examination of the New York Times article detailing a culture that appears to thrive on conflict, and whether journalism is better off now than before the 2001 dotcom crash.
  • Cool Tools: Kevin Kelly and Mark Frauenfelder host this show in which a guest brings some of her or
There's No Use Crying over a Podcast

Podcasting

There's No Use Crying over a Podcast

This week, I pinch-hit to write an issue of a favorite email newsletter, Hot Pod by Nick Quah. I discovered it a few months ago, and it is like ambrosia to those like me who want more insight into the broad podcast "industry," especially the parts I don't know in public radio. Nick just got a new job and was going to take this week off, so I offered to write an issue, which you can read here.

For the issue, I decided to interview Matthew Amster-Burton and Molly Wizenberg, who co-host the weekly podcast Spilled Milk. They're fellow Seattleites, and Matthew consulted me for advice on equipment and editing before starting the show, and I gave him what little wisdom I had at that point. Now I often consult him, instead.

I gave them a jingle on a day they were recording three episodes of the show to talk

Podcasting

Live! Moltz! Minecraft!

On March 3, I did a live event with John Moltz about Minecraft, a subject about which he's co-written a book: A Visual Guide to Minecraft. We talked with an audience about the basics of Minecraft, and the kids present—all experts, including mine!—chimed in with suggestions and feedback. It was a hoot, and you can listen to the fun (and get up to speed on Minecraft) below or download the audio.

Podcasts Need Fragments for Citation

Podcasting

Podcasts Need Fragments for Citation

There has been a lot of discussion on podcasts and blog posts in the last few weeks about the difference in audiences between podcasts and written media. Jason Snell summed it up neatly at Six Colors in "Nobody's Listening," discussing in part how ideas related to Apple's increasing difficulties in keeping its software quality high were talked about for years by John Siracusa, Marco Arment, and Casey Liss on Accidental Tech Podcast (and elsewhere) — but the same ideas only lit a match to become a worldwide firestorm when Marco wrote a blog post about it. Jason wrote:

Serialpodcast content doesn’t

But there is a standard way, as Kevin Marks pointed out to me this morning. The Media Fragments URI defines precisely how to identify stretches of audio and video through a standard URI. In fact, Jason is experimenting with using such links at The Incomparable. Some embedded audio

Podcasting

There Is Not Enough Time in the Week for My New Co-Hosted Podcast!

Update: We had to put this on hiatus after just two episodes. I was signed on to the Macworld podcast as a regular host, which has quite a bit of overlap; and Christina wound up competing commitments for her time as well. Thanks for everyone's interest!

I've been absent from a regular podcast for a while as I wrapped up The Magazine and sorted out my freelance career. But I'd been incubating an idea for a while, and enlisted my friend, Christina Bonnington, a staff writer at Wired, to co-host Not Enough Time in the Week. She and I have complementary technical backgrounds and interests, and we'll quiz each other each week to explain the events of the last few days — why is China blocking VPNs (and what is a VPN)? If Uber is planning self-driving cars, is that realistic in the near future? The FCC is changing how it

Show Me the Numbers: Serial's Data Transfer Costs

Business

Show Me the Numbers: Serial's Data Transfer Costs

Serial is the most accessed podcast ever from iTunes, according to Apple. By November 18, it was downloaded and streamed 5 million times. The show claims some 1.5 million listeners per episode, of which nine have so far been produced. That would mean nearly 9 million downloads or streaming sessions (assuming people went back to listen to the whole thing) from non-iTunes sources, which seems high, but would also indicate a better distribution of means by which people obtain podcasts, which is good for all podcasters!

David Carr, the lead media reporter at the New York Times, wrote that the episodes were downloaded "at a cost of nothing," which may refer to what it costs to deliver or what listeners pay; hard to tell. But I'd like to guess at the amount. What does it cost to deliver that many episodes?

Let's take the notion for simplicity that roughly

Financial

Pick a Peck of Podcasts: Are Networks Still Relevant?

My friend, mentor (the goddamn whippersnapper), colleague, and former boss Marco Arment wrote three posts about producing podcasts and the value of podcast networks over the last month, two in the last day, that I think warrant a response that is milder than you might imagine. He and I have gone hammer and tongs on Twitter about this at times, but his latest posts come closer to what I believe the statistics show it's all about. (His posts are about Mule Radio shrinking [May 29], "Podcast Networks Are The Wrong Model" [June 22], and "The Elephant In the Podcast Studio" [June 23].)

Podcast networks rose, as Marco notes, when things were hard. He made two main points yesterday related to blogging that he says are now true for podcasting:

Writers don’t need blog networks to be successful today because of two major shifts since blogging began:
The tools required

Podcasting

Future of Publishing Podcast

I've just launched a new podcast about the future of publishing (analog, digital, periodical, books, games — everything) called The Periodicalist. A lot of friends and colleagues have helped make this happen. Our first episode is "The Netflix of Ebooks," about how some startups offer subscription access to large libraries of ebooks on an all-you-can-read basis. Is this sustainable? Can publishers afford to be involved? Do readers benefit from this model? My co-host for this episode, Jane Friedman, and I discuss the ins and outs for authors, publishers, and readers.

You can listen or download below or at the site. The RSS feed to subscribe to the podcast is available, and it will be listed in iTunes shortly!

Buddies

2013 in Review

Last year, inspired by Joe Kissell, I wrote a summary of the enormity of what 2012 had encompassed. It was freaking huge. Joe enumerated for years all the words, books, articles, and such like he worked on. This year, I'm inspired again by Joe: he decided to stop the extensive documentation of his year, having felt he'd proven his productivity. I'm somewhere in between: less documentation than last year, but still quite a bit to share.

In June, I bought The Magazine from Marco Arment. It's been one of the greatest things I've worked on in my life, and it's a constant joy of collaboration with contributors both before and after the purchase. We just put out Issue #33 — we produced 26 issues during 2013, and now have some subscribers who are paid up though the end of 2015. We'd better deliver.

I launched the weekly podcast The New Disruptors