How A Daily News Podcast Hit 2,000 Episodes And What Recap Season Really Means For Podcasters

(This is made with AI from our sponsor, Buzzsprout)

We break down the Recap Apocalypse across Spotify, YouTube, Apple, and Amazon, then dig into craft with Brad Mielke on how Start Here reached 2,000 episodes by prioritising clarity, titles that pull, and audio-first production. Data meets discipline and the result is steady growth without burnout.

• Spotify’s Creator Wrapped as a real growth tool
• YouTube’s US-only charts and watch-time logic
• Apple Replay and Amazon Delivered compared
• Why hosts should build their own year-in-review
• Start Here’s daily format and guest booking tactics
• Titles that drive plays and timely packaging
• News avoidance, constructive journalism, balance
• Audio-only discipline vs video tradeoffs
• UK podcast charts and creator ad spend signals
• iOS auto-chapters and timed links for navigation
• V4V, boosts, and payment standard progress
• New tools, APIs, and analytics experiments

Start podcasting, keep podcasting with BuzzSprout.com

Chapters

• 0:44 Spotify Wrapped for Creators
• 10:16 YouTube - podcast chart only for the US
• 14:12 Amazon too
• 16:49 Acast's YouTube announcement
• 18:42 Interview: Brad Mielke, Start Here
• 35:31 Around the world
• 39:24 People and jobs
• 41:25 Awards and events
• 49:45 The Tech Stuff
• 53:58 You can skip this one, it's boring
• 59:30 More less-boring Tech Stuff
• 1:07:40 The inbox
• 1:14:17 Sam and James's week

Transcript

Announcer: 0:00

The Pod news Weekly Review uses chapters. The last word in podcasting news. This is the Pod news Weekly Review with James Cridland and Sam Sethi.

James Cridland: 0:11

I'm James Cridland, the editor of Pod news. And I'm Sam Sethi, the CEO of True Fans. How did we get here? It's incredible. Brad Mielke from Start Here on making 2,000 episodes of a daily podcast. Plus, it's the Recap Apocalypse. We look at Spotify, YouTube, and Amazon. This podcast is sponsored by Buzzsprout with the tool support and community to ensure you keep podcasting. Start podcasting, keep podcasting with BuzzSprout.com.

Announcer: 0:40

From your daily newsletter, the Pod news Weekly Review.

Sam Sethi: 0:44

I suppose everybody in the world is talking about it, but I'd like to talk about Spotify Wrapped as well, but with a little twist on it. It came out this week, and according to Daniel Ek, over 11 trillion minutes of global listening was done alone this year. That's that large number.

James Cridland: 1:03

It is a large number, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely.

Sam Sethi: 1:05

Absolutely. Music wise, I mean, okay, we this is a show about podcasting, but very quickly I thought it was quite interesting. Music wise, Bad Bunny. Now I'm sure that's top of your playlist. Bad Bunny has won the number one spot again, and he'll be doing the half-time entertainment at the Super Bowl. Have you heard of Bad Bunny?

James Cridland: 1:24

I I'm glad that you know that it's a he. That's more than I know. Now, K-pop demon hunters, I can tell you all about, but uh in terms of Bad Bunny, no. No, not at all.

Sam Sethi: 1:35

Could I just say I have no idea who Bad Bunny is, and I have no idea who K-pop demon hunters are.

James Cridland: 1:40

Alright, well, there you go, you see. So I'm I'm already one up on you. But yes, Bad Bunny number one. Number two, Taylor Swift, number three, the weekend. Drake is at number four, and Billy Eilish is at number five. Taylor Swift at number one in the US, by the way. What were your top three singers then, Sam?

Sam Sethi: 1:57

A Scottish, a female singer called Brooke Coombe. American Washington. Yeah, she. A feet a male singer called Jalen Ngondo, who is out of Washington. Yep. And Bruno Mars. Um come on then. Who who were yours? Kylie Monog?

James Cridland: 2:13

No. Go on. Very, very, very boring. And you may spot that there is a pattern here. Number one, Archive. It's a band uh who are a French band, but they they they sing in English because they are actually English. Uh they're very good. And interestingly, hard to find on music uh services because of the word archive. Thanks. Number two, Paul McCartney. Number three, the Beatles, number four, wings, and number five, the Beach Boys. Because it turns out I am very old. But of course, I'm not quoting from Spotify at Spotify's service. I'm quoting from YouTube Music, which is the one that I use. They call it Recap. And apparently I've listened to 9,720 minutes of music in the past year. I'm surprised ELO's not in that list. Oh, I I'm sure it is at number six. Yeah.

Sam Sethi: 3:02

Sad fact, Jeff Lynn recorded the last produced the last Beatles album. Well, kind of. Yes, kind of. Which is why they sound very similar. The ELO sounds very similar to the Beatles album.

James Cridland: 3:13

He produced he produced uh he didn't produce Now and Then, but he did produce Free as a Bird. And Free as a Bird and the other one, Real Love. They are both, they've both now been re-re-released on the brand new Beatles anthology version four. And what they've done is they've uh grabbed John Lennon's vocals and they've actually treated them properly with the AI tools now. So it's a much, much better sound. So Free as a Bird and Real Love, much, much better if you want to go and have a listen to those off the new anthology album. Go on, ask me anything about the Beatles.

Sam Sethi: 3:50

I was gonna say no. So uh your mastermind question starter for ten is the Beatles, Mr. Gridland. You've started, so you can finish.

James Cridland: 3:58

Seemingly so yes. Although interestingly, in terms of the music artist that I listened to, which is something that uh YouTube Music has done, they have this thing called My Musical Passport. And 204 of my artists were from the US, 184 from the UK, and 29 from Australia, which is quite an interesting thing.

Sam Sethi: 4:19

So do you do you think the YouTube recap is a better or similar or or doesn't it really matter?

James Cridland: 4:29

No, I mean everybody has to do a recap, and we'll talk about some of the others in in just a second. Everybody has to do a recap because Spotify ends up doing a recap. But I think it's interesting because you are seeing first-party data, you're seeing what you have consumed on these devices. And as we jump into podcasting in just a second, I think this is super useful data for us. So, you know, I mean, in terms of podcasting, what Spotify have shared is that the Joe Rogan experience was Spotify's top podcast globally, you don't say, followed by the Diary of a CEO with Stephen Barlett at number two, and the Mel Robbins podcast at number three. How many of those do you regularly listen to? Uh, your answer for ten, Ms. Criddle, is zero. Zero, nothing. Oh, yeah. I might watch a clip. All the Americans are going to be going, why is it? Why does he keep on saying uh answer for ten?

Bamber Gascgoine: 5:21

So here, all age with your fingers on the buzzer is your first start of a ten.

Sam Sethi: 5:26

Okay, sorry. Yes. Remember, international. International. Yes.

James Cridland: 5:32

Yes, no, indeed. Yes, I I yes, I've never listened to any of those all the all the way through either. So there you go. There's a there's a thing. I mean, to me, the more interesting thing wasn't the details of the music or the overall podcast uh information. To me, the more interesting data was the data that they gave us creators. And Spotify Wraps for Creators is really, really good. So it gives you a year's data for your show. Obviously, all of the consumption data is from the Spotify app, because the Spotify app knows nothing more. But it's got a ton of information, uh, for example, about this particular show. So we managed to uh more than double our listening time over the last year. So thank you for listening to us longer. 131% it went up. So that's good news. Total new audience 905%, and total audience went up 88%. So we've had a pretty good amount of growth, which we should feed back to our sponsors, Bug Sprout, and let them know, because that would be a good thing. Followers went up by 75% as well, and 76 people on Spotify have our daily podcast, that's the Pod News Daily, as their number one show.

Speaker 6: 6:55

Congratulations to you, well done.

James Cridland: 6:57

So there's a thing, yes, and it's uh I'm afraid only 36 for this show. But I'll take it. Yeah, and and the interesting thing is our numbers aren't very big on Spotify. This show doesn't do well, nor do any podcasts about podcasting on uh Spotify for various, you know, sensible reasons, I think. And so the fact that they've been able to pull all of this information out from relatively scant data is I think really good. And I personally I think that all podcast hosts should be doing this. And you know, I mean, our sponsor Buzz Sprout talks about start podcasting, keep podcasting. I think for any podcast host, the best way to keep people podcasting and to lower the amount of churn going on is to give encouraging detail like that. Because, you know, I mean, seeing the fact that our total new audience, whatever that means, is up by 900%. Because I put the word Taylor Swift in a in a show title. You know, I mean, that is that is a wonderful figure, and that sort of makes you want to keep on going. So, yeah, so I I I I I think this is really good data. And I'm really surprised to see uh I think there was one podcast host last year that did something vaguely like that.

Sam Sethi: 8:15

Um Pocket Cast doing something like this though.

James Cridland: 8:19

Well, I mean, Pocket Cast will do it, YouTube is doing it as well, and and there's various other things. In fact, YouTube is doing it for the first time for video as well, so you'll actually be able to see uh oh in terms of in terms of users, but in terms of creators, no. I don't I I don't think that anybody's doing this.

Sam Sethi: 8:35

I I agree with you, I think this is really good, and I agree. Hosts have that data. They should be able to actually hosts don't have that data, not all of them. They don't have listen time.

James Cridland: 8:47

Sorry, just what I'm pointing out. Hosts have got downloads, hosts have got countries, hosts have got various other things as well, and they can produce a lot of the data that Spotify had. Of course, they don't have first first party data such as uh Spotify as well, but hosts can still produce an awful lot of this information, and I and I'm you know quite quite surprised that we don't see hosts doing that. To me, that that is an obvious way of keeping your podcast clients going. And I'm sure that you know the likes of Lower Street and everybody else who rely on that sort of thing would like to end up seeing that too. So yeah, so great stuff from the Spotify for creators uh stuff. If you are, I mean, you will be on Spotify, and so if you want to check that, creators.spotify.com is where to log in, and that's where you'll be taken, you'll be handholded to Spotify for Creators Wrapped, and you can learn more about that. What's Apple doing then, James? Can't be left out, can they? Well, Apple, I mean, Apple have a thing called Apple Music Replay. I used Apple Music for a month or so in the middle of the year, or a couple of months in the middle of the year, and yeah, it was it was alright. And they're doing something quite similar to Spotify, as is YouTube as well, in terms of music consumption. YouTube is also doing a full recap in terms of your main consumption as well, in terms of the the video app on there as well. Interesting around YouTube is that they have a list of top podcasts calculated by total watch time, but only for the US. So nowhere else in the world will you actually learn any information about podcasting. Again, it's Google being typical Google. The only company that matters, the only country that matters is the US. And from that point of view, yeah, yeah, we've we've released a chart, The Joe Rogan Experience at number one, Kill Tony at number two, and Good Mythical Morning is at number three in their podcast chart. A show which is not a podcast, does not have an RSS feed, is not available in Apple Podcasts, which I think tells you quite a lot. And I'd love to tell you what the top podcasts are here in Australia or over there with you in the UK, but YouTube don't care. More to the point, YouTube actually released their recap thing in the US a day before they released it everywhere else, because they don't care about us. So I don't care about them, so I've just cancelled.

Sam Sethi: 11:16

So they're but nothing nothing from Apple on podcasting, though, because it says Apple Music Replay, not Apple Podcast Replay.

James Cridland: 11:25

Yeah, so nothing from Apple in terms of direct information to creators, no. So we don't get any information. And again, that would be brilliant if Apple was to do the same thing as Creators Unwrapped that Spotify has done. That would be super cool, and of course, you know, that that will keep us going. But in terms of Apple Podcasts, not from that, but of course, they did release the most popular shows of 2025 in the middle of November. So the most popular shows of about uh about 17% of 2025. Um but and if if you need reminding uh Joe Rogan at number one in the US, the rest is politics at number one in the UK, and and uh we have a full list of all of the countries in the Pod News new newsletter as well. So, yeah, quite a lot of information there.

Sam Sethi: 12:17

So, although YouTube didn't release an international report for the replay, they've released a global culture and trends report, James. What's that one?

James Cridland: 12:26

Yeah, they did. There's it it's got top ten lists of topics, of songs, of creators, and no podcast unless you're in the US. And yeah, so you know that that sort of you know relatively interesting if you are a creator and you want to understand what's actually going on. But you know, I mean, obviously at the end of the day, this is quite this is quite focused information. But the top songs on shorts, for example, song number one was Forrest Frank, Your Ways Better, All in Capitals, never heard of it. No, Atlas at number two, Paso Bem, Solto, and Black Eyed Peas, and Rock That Body at number three. Right. So never heard of any of those.

Sam Sethi: 13:12

I'm not sure why that's current and in vogue.

unknown: 13:14

Yeah.

James Cridland: 13:15

Well, yes, I I don't understand that. And and although top songs, Bruno Mars and Lady Garga die with a smile at number one with YouTube as well, and another Bruno Mars song at number two called APT after the after the train. Worst song you did of the year.

Sam Sethi: 13:30

I would imagine. Worst song you did of the year.

James Cridland: 13:34

And and number three, number four, and number five are all from the K-pop Demon Hunters cast. Golden, followed by Sodopop, followed by your idol. Right. Um, and being the owner of a 13-year-old uh girl, also the father. Uh I've heard quite a lot of that. Yes. Yes. No need to call the police. Underover, yes. Yes, you're absolutely fine. So, yeah, so there's there's information there, but not particularly useful for for podcasters. And I think it says everything when the number three biggest podcast on YouTube isn't a podcast. Right. Still, there we are.

Sam Sethi: 14:10

Well, let's move on then, James. Amazon, let's not leave them out of the party. Have they done anything?

James Cridland: 14:16

No, let's not leave them out of the party. They released their delivered, which is their recap.

Sam Sethi: 14:23

You could you imagine the marketing teams, right? What will Spotify call this replay? Right. What other word can we use? Rat, right, we've got that one. Yes. Amazon. What have we got one? No, I don't know what's left in the words. Oh, delivered, right. We'll use that one. Here we go.

James Cridland: 14:36

Delivered, yeah. Well, what it is delivered. Well, I didn't I didn't bother, I didn't bother. You know, the delivered information came out on Tuesday. I didn't bother reporting it until Friday because we had YouTube and then we had Spotify. And and I thought, you know what? Either I'll mention it as one line, or I can actually get a proper story out of that. So that's what I did. And I managed to get the the global charts from Amazon because true to form, they only released the US charts. In fact, they didn't even release that. They said, go and have a look in the app and you'll see the top lists. And I said, hello, I'm I'm in Australia. I can't see the top list in the US. You probably want me to report that. So top podcasts in the US, Mr. Ballon podcast, Morbid, Crime Junkie, and the Mel Robbins podcast. In the UK, Red Handed, Mr. Ballon and Shagged Married Annoyed. In Germany, Dick and Doof was number one. And in India, the Desi Crime podcast was number one. I have put Morbid and Red Handed in in uh red in the uh notes uh here. Sam, have you any idea why? They're podcasts you listen to. No. No, they are podcasts published by Amazon. Oh, surprise, surprise. They're in the top list. And how have Amazon's top podcasts been chosen? Curated through a combination of editorial insights and performance metrics. Or if you would like me to rephrase that into something that you would understand, made up. So that's basically where they are. I mean, there really is no other way of say that, is there? Right. I mean, that's what they've basically done. But why not? So uh if you want to see all of the countries for Amazon, you'll find that in the pod news uh newsletter today. If you want to see all of the countries from Apple, uh you'll see those from a couple of of weeks ago. And all of the countries from YouTube, tough, because there aren't any. And all of the countries from Spotify. I think we've got that data, and you should be able to find that in the pod news newsletter as well.

Sam Sethi: 16:44

Let's move on from this. I mean, I'm sure that everyone else is going to be talking about it. So let's move on. I didn't understand this next story. I'll be honest. Okay. ACast has announced a dramatically enhanced YouTube programme in the UK, allowing advertisers to access some of the largest YouTube podcasts. And I sat there and I went, okay, what's ACAST doing and how does this work? So over to you.

James Cridland: 17:08

Well, what are they doing? They they are doing a very good job of sending a press release which looked very exciting. Look, they're working with a company called Little Dot Studios. Little Dot Studios totally understands YouTube. Little Dot Studios has 11 billion monthly views on the platform. And so, firstly, ACast has signed an inventory partnership, which I suspect means that both they will get advertising on those shows, but they will also be able to sell advertising on those shows, you would have thought. But also, Little Dot Studios will be working with ACast, with ACast's UK creators, to basically beef them up in terms of YouTube and make sure that they are both selling advertising on their YouTube platforms, but also to grow their video podcasts as well. So, really, the the the story really here is if you want to succeed in YouTube, then ACast are now the company that understands how YouTube works, and that's what they probably want you to know. Right.

Sam Sethi: 18:11

Well, I'll ask them next week at their party. But other than that, I really didn't understand. Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah, it says uh Mr. Cridland on it, but that's fine. That's fine. They will never know. Very good. You know what the joy of doing podcasting is no one knows what we look like. It's great, I can go in and do anything.

James Cridland: 18:30

Oh, I well, yes. Good luck with that. Yes.

Sam Sethi: 18:33

That's all I'll say. Yes. Six foot seven white man. That's what I'm going for. Um anyway. Wow. Now, here's a story. Tell me more about who Start Here is.

James Cridland: 18:46

I'm not alone in doing quite a lot of episodes because Start Here, which started in March 2018, it's the daily news podcast from ABC News in the US. And it's published its 2000th episode earlier in the week. We've spoken to Brad Milke, the host of that very show, on this show before, and I thought, given that he's now managed to do 2,000 episodes, well, or has he managed to do 2,000 episodes? There's a good question.

Brad Mielke: 19:18

I thought, who better to ask than I'm Brad Milke, and I'm the host and managing editor of ABC's daily podcast Start Here.

James Cridland: 19:26

Now you launched that podcast in 2018, but on December the first, you will hit 2,000 episodes. That's that's quite a hit.

Brad Mielke: 19:37

I'm exhausted just listening to you say it, James. How did how did we get here? It's incredible. Like to think of and I'm somebody who had been around the podcasting scene even before working in ABC radio. So I know the care it takes to put together a podcast episode of any sort. And so then to think to myself, oh, it's not just like 2000. Episodes. It's 2,000 podcasts that we put together. And that sounds just unreasonable. Sounds unreal when you say it like that.

James Cridland: 20:08

Yeah. And each one of those podcasts being significantly, I mean, I've put more than 2,000, but mine are only five minutes long. And my idea of reporting is not quite your idea. How many of those 2,000 episodes have you done yourself, Brad?

Brad Mielke: 20:23

Oh, that's a great question. It's it's definitely more than 1900. And then our top correspondent has more than 237 appearances. That's just for a guest.

James Cridland: 20:31

So you've been doing pretty well all of these. It isn't it it isn't a part-time job at all. You've been traveling around the US, doing them, and reporting them from and reporting from a lot of different places around the US and uh and outside as well.

Brad Mielke: 20:44

Well, yeah, I mean, we primarily have me anchoring the show from New York. And every day I'm speaking to, you know, several of our many, many correspondents fanned out across the world across the world. So over the course of the last, what is it, seven years, we have done segments from literally every continent. That includes Antarctica. We've done segments featuring an astronaut while in space. We've even done a segment with a diver while he was underwater, setting a Guinness world record for the amount of time spent underwater. So literally heavens and earth is the expanse of the start here uh destination list.

James Cridland: 21:23

Wow. Wow. And so how do you keep fresh every single day? Because doing a daily show every single day takes its toll, doesn't it?

Brad Mielke: 21:33

It it does. And I think it's it really is just about trying to keep the listener in mind. The listener is like first, second, and third priority here. And so when we think about start here, it's all about taking what we find to be the most interesting news of the day, and then trying to think about why should you care? Why should the listener actually care? We know that they get headlines pushed to them on their phone every minute of the day. Why should they actually care enough to spend five or six or seven minutes on a given topic? What makes it interesting? What pushes it forward for them? And I think that's what keeps it fresh every day is there are so many storylines that feel, even though you're constantly hearing them, they still somehow manage to feel nebulous, right? They still somehow manage to feel like beyond your grasp, as if you're supposed to know a lot of background history that no one has told you about. And when I'm sitting around talking about the news with my colleagues, that's not necessarily what we're doing. There's lots of stupid questions between journalists where you go, like, wait, wait, wait, wait. How did the this war start? Or like, what wait, what was the law that he was supposed to have broken in the first place? That's what that's where clarity comes from. And the thing that I keep hearing from listeners over and over again is thank you for asking the questions that I would actually ask this person if I were there in the moment. And to me, that's like the exciting part that makes this a dream job is I just keep getting to ask those questions of both my own colleagues and of newsmakers.

James Cridland: 23:02

Yeah, yeah. You can uh you can absolutely see that. How has um how has audience uh grown or changed since 2018?

Brad Mielke: 23:10

It's interesting. It's been there are moments where it grows exponentially, then there are moments where it levels off, then there are moments where it grows again, and then it levels off. We actually have never really seen a real dip in listenership, which is interesting. Like we're apparently a very grabby show. Like once you hear us, you stick with it. We've seen that in our in our analytics. And then it's so interesting, too. I think your audience would know this better than anyone, is like podcasts to get other podcasts, right? So when we have successful ABC podcasts where we are featured or where we feature other podcasts, like those grow with each other exponentially. So I remember we we were doing quite well. We were doing, you know, we were seeing a steady growth in listeners, but we were still small-ish. And then all of a sudden, ABC's the dropout happened. That was the true crime podcast about Elizabeth Holmes. And we saw our numbers spike because we were always being mentioned in the ad breaks of that. So that's like an example of how rising tide lifts all boats, right? And then we've done that for other podcasts within ABC, but you really see like the kind of ecosystem. And then there's also the news itself. So then when there were sort of tectonic moments in the news cycle, we see our numbers again take a big rise and then not let up. So with this new administration, we've actually seen a significant rise in listenership just since Trump started his second term.

James Cridland: 24:28

Can you see when a good story or a good episode title has driven to more listeners? I mean, certainly I I I always find myself I I subscribe to a number of daily shows. I don't I don't listen to every single one, but I do choose them in terms of the episode title, in terms of what story is going to be is going to be covered. Do you see that too?

Brad Mielke: 24:51

Well, it's weird because, as you know, like the downloads, we like somebody might download it and not necessarily listen to it, or somebody might download and not listen to all of it or something, but we do indeed see like a huge uptick in listenership for certain episodes. Like I think one of our biggest episodes of the year was the Diddy verdict. I think that's what the episode title was called, just the Diddy verdict. Because again, these are the things that you want to know, like, oh, it's been floating around in the ether. I want to know more about it. How do I just get smarter faster? Oh, great. Here's that 20-minute show that I I probably already subscribed to it, but today I need to make extra sure to listen to it. Or that's the day that it's being shared a lot amongst friends, or it's being highlighted in other platforms. So you do see the news itself sometimes drive listenership, and then you've got diehards who listen every day. Are you audio only still? We are. We are. We have had we we'll do features with videos sometimes when there's a particularly interesting interview or something like that. We'll make sure to tape the video of it. And sometimes that gets clipped into use, even for ABC Network, might use that video sometimes as well if it's an exclusive interview. But generally we're audio only, and there's a good reason for that, which is like we are a produced show. Like it is very different from like two dudes sitting and chatting for two and a half hours. Like, this is something that we take a lot of pains to condense into the best possible 20 minutes we can. And if that means that we are getting a grade level talent to call us from their pajamas in their closet, and that's the only way they will talk to me. We'll take them like that. And mercifully, we will not ask them to put themselves on video for that. But that's how we end up getting so many of our best interviews in the moment, is because we are calling people at all hours of the day and in all parts of the country, like often when they're on scene and not in a position to have any sort of film team with them.

James Cridland: 26:37

Yeah, no, indeed. Indeed. And you travel around the world and travel around the US in particular. Are you now being re recognized as, you know, as the man that does start here? Is is that something that people come up to you and say?

Brad Mielke: 26:53

Rarely, but it has happened. And one of my favorite moments was I'm at the Iowa caucuses and I'm interviewing a young woman. It's her first time caucusing. She's a first-time voter, basically. She's 18 years old, and she asks me where I'm from, and I say ABC. And she says, Wait, are you Brad Milky? This is an 18-year-old who listens, who manages to listen to the news every day. And I always say this is how you know Iowa voters are like a different breed, is even their high schoolers are listening to the new, like a daily news podcast. But that made me go, like, oh wow, like this really does like shape people's mornings in so many ways.

James Cridland: 27:27

Yeah, it's always weird uh going around, obviously we're not quite the same scale, but it's always weird going around a podcast conference and and and having people coming up to you and saying, I wake up to you every single morning.

Brad Mielke: 27:40

And I I have family members who think they don't need to call me or chat with me because they just talked to me this morning is how they feel about it. I haven't heard their voice in weeks. Yeah, but they think that they're off the hook because in because, like you say, it's so intimate that it really does feel like you are having a chat with that person that day.

James Cridland: 27:57

So, what happens in the next 2,000 episodes, right?

Brad Mielke: 28:01

I've got so many big dreams, James. So I I still continue to think that that Start Here is at its best when it's explaining big, urgent national and international news the day that you need context for it. Like when October 7th happened in Gaza and in Israel, by October 8th, we had a show up explaining here's why this was such a big deal. And I still think that we can do better as a show in taking our like in doing unilateral coverage from these moments that are unfolding as they happen. Generally, I'm the one talking to a correspondent in the field, as it should be, right? These are our experts that are fanned out across the world and they have this expertise. But my dream is that we're able to continue turning this into a platform at ABC that is both packaging news for you, but also reporting the news the very first time out there, that we are a news gathering and news making platform as well as sort of a uh summarizing product, you know.

James Cridland: 29:02

And will you be doing another 1900 shows in that 2000 uh shows to come?

Brad Mielke: 29:08

I'm in my dream job right now. Like, I I truly don't know how they've allowed me to do this. Like they they took a reporter who had just come off the campaign trail, who like had just sort of like learned what it was to be a you know reporter in the field for the last couple years. They uh said, Hey, would you ever want to host this podcast? Podcasts are becoming interesting. I was like, Yeah, hello, of course. And then we've managed to somehow make success make it successful, and I'm somehow like still the host of it. Yeah, yes, please. So I'm I'm very uh happy and excited to keep rolling here.

James Cridland: 29:43

There's an awful lot of talk at the moment, isn't there, about news avoidance and people who are who uh uh you know don't uh catch up with the news as much as they used to, because it's kind of I don't know what the audio equivalent of doom scrolling is, but it kind of is a little bit like that, isn't it? Is that something that you you you and your team are aware of and want to change in some way?

Brad Mielke: 30:08

Well, very much so. It it's almost surprising to us sometimes that our numbers have actually done so much better over the last year or two because we keep hearing from our colleagues about how everyone is completely exhausted by the news. We hear from our listeners that they're exhausted by the news. It's a very real phenomenon, and yet people still are like clicking us, which is helpful. It shows that we're probably doing things in a way that is not too exhausting, but it's like very much on my mind when I think about how we select our stories, how we report them in just like the most straightforward way that we can, like get people just the facts, ma'am. That's what people should be hearing without too much critique or editorializing. And I think it's also just important to remember like what people want to know. There's the stuff that they need to know every day, and there's the stuff that they want to know every day. Often they're the same, sometimes they're different, and you're trying to offer them like a little bit of all of the above. So that means that you might have several big political stories today, but we've tried very hard not to make this an exclusively political show. Or on days, you know, when when we know that there's kind of one big story that's been out there all week, of course, we're gonna keep leading with that. And but if there's a way we can highlight a story that you that might not be on your radar, we're very much gonna take a look at that and like spend significant time to it too, in a way that's not just like a throwaway. But we always are trying to make sure that even our off-beat news uh is not just like quirky and silly, like it still is telling you something interesting about the world around you because it's all there all the time.

James Cridland: 31:39

Yeah, there's a the there's a number of uh radio conferences that I go to and there's a lot of talk about constructive journalism. And instead of telling the story as if you're telling, you know, a really another really bad thing has happened, uh to actually tell the the story in a way that actually there is some constructive goodness that comes out of all of this.

Brad Mielke: 32:00

And and like kind of a respect for all people involved. Like there aren't generally like super villains out there, right? So even if there's like a part of the political spectrum or a part of the country or something that you disagree with, no one everyone's generally coming from a place of good faith. Like most normal human beings are coming from a place of good faith. They might have just have different ideas of how you get there or different assumptions of what have now shaped their ideas. And I think the key is to like pay respect to all of those ideas and to treat as many people as you can like they are coming from a place of good faith, and like we can like figure this out together and arrive some sort of it doesn't have to be a common truth, but at least a common narrative as to what the heck is happening.

James Cridland: 32:37

And you mention obviously doing a daily news show. You can't necessarily dive into individual stories as as deeply as you would like. One of the things that I've noticed a number of the other shows that I listen to are doing is they are beginning to do longer, more investigative shows, really focusing on specific stories. Is that part of where Start Here is going, or is that part of where you're going in terms of what you might be doing in the next few years as well?

Brad Mielke: 33:10

I do think it's really difficult to put together a daily show that covers all the news and that makes it all seem fresh. And so I actually think part of the challenge that we've actually decided to stick with is the tough challenge of like delivering multiple stories a day, unless there is one story that is absolutely blocking out the sun. I think it's like an actually unique challenge to deliver on multiple stories a day, give people a broad sense of what the news is that's percolating around them, and to do it interestingly in a way that doesn't just exhaust everyone. We have, though, done several kind of standalone episodes, and we'll often do these on a weekend or something like that. Like we'll we treat, we think of it more like bonus content than we do our supplanting our regular show. And in those sort of bonus episodes, we've had like producer-led segments where they're going around with like war reenactors and going on hunting trips with people reporting on these sort of niche interests. We've done award-winning work on like the the specter of long COVID in America. We've looked at, you know, Americans being priced out of the real estate market. So we do do these like really interesting deep dives on things, but generally, I think the key for us is to deliver on our original mission, which is like it is hard to do multiple stories a day, year after year after year, and we're gonna keep doing it like in an interesting way.

James Cridland: 34:31

The last time I saw you was three years ago, and uh I was trying to convince you to come to uh sunny Australia. Yes, because it was 10 years to the Olympics, it's now what, seven years to the Olympics? We've not actually started building anything. We're still we're still arguing about budgets and things. Are we gonna see you? Are we gonna see you down here covering our Olympics at some stage in the future?

Brad Mielke: 34:55

I had to see you in Los Angeles then, James. Then that well, now now you you're painting yourself into a corner because now we've got to hang out in Los Angeles or something like that before then. I would love to go to Australia, man. That's the key, the key for both of us, as you know, is like if you're gonna do it, you gotta do it right. So we gotta like you gotta give me like a two-week itinerary, right? You can't just I can't just swing in for a weekend.

James Cridland: 35:16

Exactly right. Brian, it's always good to have a chat with you. Thank you so much, and uh well done on uh 2000 episodes.

Brad Mielke: 35:23

Thank you so much. It's really truly a a dream to be doing it, and it's like been a joy to talk to you over these last several years since we've been on the scene. So thank you so much.

Announcer: 35:31

The pod news weekly review with Buzz with BuzzSprout. Start podcasting, keep podcasting.

Sam Sethi: 35:41

Edison Research released the top 25 podcasts in the UK. Was it a snore fest? Is it the same as ever, or is there anything new?

James Cridland: 35:48

Well, 24 of the 25 were the same as ever. But actually, I mean there were a few re-entries, but Red Handed from uh Amazon's Wondering made it into the top 25 for the first time. So congratulations to them. You may remember that they were number two in the Amazon list. Goldhanger also have four shows in the list. The BBC has uh five as well. It's a decent chart. I think uh the the reason why I like it and the reason why I think it's the gold standard for this sort of thing is that it doesn't change. And actually people's habits don't change that much. And to see something which is really consistent every quarter is pretty good, I think. So yeah, it's a good it's a good list. There are a couple of of little of little changes in it, but in terms of uh where where they in terms of you know what what the full list is, it is, you know, as ever, lots and lots of gold hanger shows in the top ten. Joe Rogan at number one, Diary of a CEO, your favorite show with Stephen Bartlett at number two, Sam, and uh the rest is politics, which I do uh I do that with. That's one of mine. Yes, number three. So many congratulations to uh Goldhanger for that.

Sam Sethi: 37:03

Now, talking about bodies that measure things, the IAB has got their 2025 Creator Economy Ad Spend and Strategy Report. Uh what was the highlight in that one?

James Cridland: 37:14

I mean the real highlight is that creator ad spend, so that's ad spend with influencers, if you like, is projected to reach $37 billion in 2025. That's up 26% year on year. I guess quite a lot of this is down to whatever creator ad spend really is, because it sounds as uh difficult to uh work out what creator ad spend is as to what a podcast is, to be honest. But over the last three years, creator advertising has more than doubled. It's gone up from 13.9 billion in 2021 to 37 billion now. So yeah, it's interesting seeing that and interesting seeing ad results media's take, which is that you still need to do the other advertising. You don't replace your advertising with giving your product to Kim Kardashian and hoping that Kim Kardashian will use it. That that's not how advertising works. You still need to do the rest of that. And so it it's still a good job to advertise on audio, and I think that that's probably a fair enough thing to say.

Sam Sethi: 38:17

Just an anecdotal story. My wife is on the board of two companies of which I won't mention. But a third of their marketing spend is to influencers now. That's quite amazing. Um the number when she told me, I was like, really? Spend that much. But they do.

James Cridland: 38:34

Yeah, and I guess you know, when you look at a ton of companies, actually they are spending quite a lot on, you know, what they call influencers. I know I'm down on the list as being an influencer with uh some uh folks, so rather bizarre. You know, so you know, so occasionally I'll be I'll be sent a thing and um you know, with the idea that I might I might talk about it like a microphone or something.

Sam Sethi: 38:58

But I'll still send you money.

unknown: 39:00

Wow.

James Cridland: 39:02

Yes, money maybe not. But uh but uh yes. Yeah, so I get sent the occasional thing, although sadly roads still don't know where I live. So uh there you go. How far are they away from you? Exactly.

Sam Sethi: 39:17

Walk one around if they want to.

James Cridland: 39:19

Not not a not a very charming company. Anyway, let's move on.

Sam Sethi: 39:24

People in jobs, James. I noticed this one actually. Obviously, we mentioned I store leaving the Audio UK, but actually on the PodNews Daily Jobs board, uh they're advertising for the new CEO.

James Cridland: 39:37

That's right. Podnews.net slash jobs. If you want to be the CEO of Audio UK, it is a fully remote job, although one would assume that you probably need to live in the UK, because otherwise that might be a little bit difficult. They are looking for an ambitious commercial. Yeah, no, no, oh my goodness, no. They are looking for An ambitious, commercially savvy, and future-facing chief executive officer to lead Audio UK into its next phase of growth. It's big shoes to fill from Chloe Straw, who we've had on this podcast before. But there's more information, of course, in the pod news newsletter you've got until next Tuesday to apply. So you should probably end up doing that. Somebody that has got a job is Kate Fit is Kate FitzSimons. Now, she used to be the editor of Five News. Five News is, you know, one of the big tent pole news shows in the UK on TV on Channel 5. She has now left that and gone to work for Pod Save the UK as executive producer, which is quite a quite a move. And so looking forward to seeing. I think Pod Save the UK seems to do quite well. It's one of those sort of hidden away shows that probably more people should be talking about. Nish Kumar and Coco, Coco Khan. And yeah, it's a good, it's a good old show. So yeah, uh interesting to end up seeing that. And Les Hollander is leaving Global's Dax after six years. He's been all over the world and all over audio and is seemingly a very uh good egg. We interviewed Brian Conlan from Dax a couple of weeks ago on this very show.

Sam Sethi: 41:25

Now, awards and events, James. What's going on in the awards and events? Because it must be the season now.

James Cridland: 41:31

It's definitely the season. So we had the winners of the APAs from Audio UK, that's the Audio Production Awards. The organizers of Sheffield's Crosswires Festival were presented with the Audio UK Award. And we've also got a full list of the winners. A lot of the awards this year went to radio, not to podcasting, because it's um, you know, you couldn't you can enter from either. Uh so it was interesting uh uh seeing that because I think it was the other way around a year or so ago. The Scottish Podcast Awards have been announced for June 2026. Apparently, according to the organization behind it, more people in Scotland listen to podcasts than any other part of the UK. I don't know where that information's from, but it sounds very exciting. I don't know whether it's particularly helpful to sort of dilute the British Podcast Awards with the Scottish Podcast Awards. Are we going to have the Marlowe Podcast Awards? And in which case, we'd better enter this one because that would be a good idea. But take it to come second. So I'm not quite sure. I'm not quite sure whether or not that's a particularly good idea, to be honest. But you know, uh fine, go ahead and do that. It's cultural, James. They they just want highlights. I know, I know. And of course, the 30th annual Webby Awards are open. I've already got two, I don't need any more. You can enter before three strikes and L. You can enter before the final entry deadline, which is December the 19th. So you've got a couple of weeks to end up doing that. Before we come back properly on this very show, I think maybe we'll just be doing our first show from it. But Podfest is uh happening January the 15th to the 18th. It's in Orlando in Florida. It is the world's longest running annual in-person podcasting conference. You can find the uh schedule on their website. And if you would like to go, then I will give you a discount. No, not me personally, but you can get a discount. Podnews.net slash extras is where to go. You need to be a subscriber to the pod news newsletter, otherwise you don't get it. But it is free to do that. So you can get a discount to go to PodFest. I'm looking forward to it. I am speaking, I'm speaking at some sort of fancy VIP lunch event that most people won't be able to go to. But nevertheless, I am speaking and I'll be talking a little bit about where we've come from and where we're going. So that might be fun. And another place where I am also speaking again is the podcast show in 2026 in London, which I'm looking forward to as well. You will be there as well, Sam, I hope. I will. Yes, though.

Sam Sethi: 44:12

I will be we I'll be speaking, you'll be speaking, and we'll be speaking. Yes, we'll be doing a live show then.

James Cridland: 44:18

We will. We'll be doing a live show at the end of the podcast show as well. There are more stages. They've taken a leaf out of the podcast movement book, and they have what they call the ultimate networking party in a historic London venue. I am going to guess that the historic London venue is going to be the roundhouse and they're going to do something big with music up there. That's just a guess. I don't know anything more. I am an advisor to them. But I don't know anything more. But if if if it was me, I would be choosing the the roundhouse, which is relatively close to where the Islington Business Center is, and that might be fun. But yeah, one of the other things that they're doing is they have an international stage which is curated by our friends at Podimo. And I think that's a really good move to actually get something which is properly looking at podcasting outside of the UK and the US. I think that'll be really helpful. So looking forward to Podimo helping do all of that. And again, there's a discount on our passes as well. Podnews.net slash extras is where to go.

Sam Sethi: 45:27

Now, Goalhanger, who we mentioned multiple times already on this show, they have announced way early, but well done. They've called a festival called the Rest is Fest, which is coming out in September 2026. What's this one, James?

James Cridland: 45:42

Wow, yes, exactly. So they're basically taking over the South Bank Centre next year. 28 shows, four stages, three days of all of the big shows that Goldhanger do, uh including their newest one, which is the rest is science, which is uh very good, which I've been enjoying. And uh, yeah, you'll be able to buy tickets for that next week or next uh Thursday. So there's a thing. Very clever of Goldhanger to be pulling together all of their shows, and it just makes it much, much cheaper for them to put on a number of a number of big shows like this. And let's hope that nobody gets uh cancelled in the meantime. That would be a that would be a mistake, wouldn't it? Yes. But it's a big thing in terms of goal hanger. So not only have Goldhanger done that, they've also uh done a deal with Netflix because that seems to be the thing that everybody does. Gary Lineker's show, the rest is football, will be coming live from North America during the World Cup and will be available on Netflix. Apparently, reportedly, he's gonna get paid significantly more than he was for BBC match of the day, which he was already earning an awful lot for. I'm not so sure that I entirely believe that. I think that that that uh the the newspapers have done their usual thing and uh looked at the whole money going to Goldhanger and assume that that's all going to Gary Lineker, which I don't think is going to be the case. But yeah.

Sam Sethi: 47:11

Well he does own Goldhanger, though.

James Cridland: 47:13

I mean he does own it, yes, but he's not he's not gonna trouser all of that money. Uh I don't think that that's uh quite going to go. What would be really helpful, Sam, uh, if you wouldn't mind just sort of organizing this, is now I know that we don't have a full show next week, but we will I'm sure that I could put it into the into the feed if you if you were able to get hold of the CEO of Goalhanger, a nice man called Tony Pasteur, uh, to find out more about this. That would be super awesome. Would you mind doing that in the next seven days?

Sam Sethi: 47:39

Yeah, no problem. As always, your wish is my command. Yes, we will have Tony on next week.

James Cridland: 47:44

Yes. Excellent. Well, I'm looking forward to hearing what he has to say. And also looking forward to seeing what Crossed Wires is doing. It's a fantastic podcast listeners festival. It happens in Sheffield. They've released their first wave of acts for 2026. It's in early July. They've got an extra day of live shows and all kinds of things. Interestingly, BBC Radio 4 is actually doing its own thing at the festival. So they are taking over a theatre space in Sheffield as well to go alongside the stuff that they're doing in the old Coles Brothers building, which still hasn't been let by the looks of things. So uh yeah, it's a tremendous event last year. It'd be nice if I could actually get to it this year. That might be a nice thing. So we'll see what happens there. But uh yeah, they they are doing fantastic stuff. Crosswires.live is where to go if you want to find out more information about that, and that's crossed as in C O. That's crossed as in C-R O S E D. I'm glad that I know how to spell crossed crossedwires.live, and that's and that's a good thing.

Sam Sethi: 48:53

And finally, with a hundred days until the event, Podcast a thon has revealed that it already has more than 1,000 registrations. Remind me, what is Podcast a thon?

James Cridland: 49:04

So this is a thing where you give one of your shows, one of your normal shows that you do, over to talk about a charity of your choice, which is such a simple idea, such a really easy idea. It was a French thing initially, or a French language thing. It's actually from Montreal in Canada. It's then emerged into French and English and now is in all kinds of different languages, 40 different countries already taking part. And it's got support now from companies like Apple Podcasts and Spotify as well. So many congratulations to that. Pod News once again is a media partner and looking forward to seeing if we can push more people to sign up for that.

Announcer: 49:45

The tech stuff on the Pod News Weekly Review.

James Cridland: 49:49

Yes, it's the stuff you'll find every Monday in the Pod News newsletter. Here's where Sam talks technology, and there's quite a lot of it, Sam, isn't there? There is this week, yes.

Sam Sethi: 49:56

Um surprisingly, as we're coming up to Christmas. Apple this week seeded or released, pick your word, their iOS 26.2. They did it for also for MS Tahoe and they've also done it for the iPad. What's the actual podcasting features that have come out in this release, James?

James Cridland: 50:15

So these are the exciting podcasting features of the automatically created chapters. So you get to see chapters for every single show, which is a good thing. You also have uh timed links, so links appear. If I mention a podcast name, it'll appear automatically in your podcast app. So you can uh instantly pop over there and get that. And that's particularly good for guests and things like that. And yeah, so there's a bunch of uh a bunch of that uh new stuff. Uh it comes out with uh obviously all kinds of other upgrades as well. The release candidate is available now. If you can work out how to actually press the press the terms and conditions agree button, which I am literally, as we speak, hammering the agree button, and it's not letting me it's not letting me actually agree the terms and conditions maybe.

Sam Sethi: 51:04

Scroll further, scroll further, reading.

Speaker 6: 51:07

I've scrolled to the bottom of the page. Oh, happy. I've scrolled all the way to the bottom of the page and it's not actually working. Well, there's a bug. Tim Apple. Please, please fix it. I think I'm gonna go.

Sam Sethi: 51:17

It's not a problem anymore.

James Cridland: 51:18

He's gone. Well, not just not just him, but also the man who was in charge of Apple's UX, the guy who was in charge of the the liquid glass rollout. Stevie Wonder. He he is actually gone as well. So yes, I was reading a good long blog post from the Six Colours blog earlier on in the in the day talking about talking about that and talking about it it was a really interesting, interesting article, actually, because he he was basically saying, Look, I I don't want to say rude things about Alan Dye, who was his name. I don't I don't want to say rude things about him. He was VP of Human Interface, but he then goes on to say quite a lot of rude things about him. Because at the end of the day, he was the man that was in charge of quite a lot of missteps, and certainly when you have a look at uh the the liquid glass thing, which nobody really likes, but you know, we've kind of got to have it'll be gone, it'll be gone in the next version. Yeah, well, he is going off to ruin your your special glasses, Sam, I'm afraid.

Sam Sethi: 52:27

I have heard, yes, yes, Mr. Zuckerberg has poached him, yes.

James Cridland: 52:30

Yes, he's been poached, and I I like the uh I like the phrase, you know, in the in the article that, you know, I mean, you you know, y yes, he was offered a truckload of money, but he he you know, Apple could have could have given him quite a lot of money to stay, but they didn't, which I think probably says quite a lot.

Sam Sethi: 52:52

Yeah, the the worrying thing was the person who's replacing him has been there 25 years at Apple. So not a newbie, not somebody with any new ideas, the same old.

James Cridland: 53:02

Yeah, well, there you go. Anyway, moving on to other apps then.

Sam Sethi: 53:07

Yes, let's do that. Castomatic, congratulations. Castomatic 12 is out. Oh dear. I I say oh dear because I just read the next bit, which is they've updated it to support liquid glass, the UI. Oh, well, there you go. But no, congratulations seriously to Franco getting any new version out a milestone. So Castomatic 12 is out. It's got adaptive player colours, it's got new animations, improved new sleep timer UIs, and many bug fixes. So give it a go.

James Cridland: 53:36

Yeah, yeah, indeed. And you know, liquid glass isn't for everybody, but the benefit of upgrading to that is that you get all of the changes to to liquid glass as Apple makes them, because you're using exactly the same SDK. So it does make sense and it makes for a much more cohesive experience on the on the phone as well.

Sam Sethi: 53:58

Now, Olby, yes, James, it's still alive.

James Cridland: 54:01

Right, I'm I'm I'm just I'm just off to make myself a cup of tea.

Sam Sethi: 54:08

Come back, it's about money. You know that you love it. Talk to us about bit177. Yes, the uh Bitcoin improvement what was it? It's a Bitcoin improvement uh proposal. It's basically all be a new release of their hubs come out to support bit 177. What is bit177? It really is trying to get rid of some of the confusion around Bitcoin numbers. So, for example, you might see a transaction that says 0.0000043 Bitcoin. Uh-huh. And of course, that is a really awful thing to write. So now what they're suggesting is you just put that as 43 bitcoins. Uh-huh. And what they are actually suggesting is the removal of the word SATS or Satoshis and replacing it just with Bitcoin. So you won't be talking about a Bitcoin being a one big number and then decimal points of it being SATS, you'll talk about bitcoins and that's the only thing. And already Olby supported this as a proposal. Cash App has supported this proposal as well. So if you go into your Olby hub now, you can actually see it in action where they've changed all the numbers to Bitcoin. But you can, if you are still inclined, switch it back to SATS if there is a setting available. I quite like the idea of just going to Bitcoin as a single number. I think SATS as a word I don't think is caught on in the mainstream. I don't think I ever really hear people in the press or on TV or in the news talking about it. But you you know that you could walk down the high street and 99% of people will say they know what the word Bitcoin means, even if they don't know how to buy it or use it.

James Cridland: 55:55

Yeah, so it's a it's a revaluation, uh kind of to stop us from talking uh yeah, about uh all of these not point, not not not one, which of course has happened with other currencies as well.

Sam Sethi: 56:08

So that's a bit 177. Uh also Square, which is Jack Dorsey's company, uh, has already uh said they're going to accept Bitcoin payments. So uh uh again how many um they've got four million plus small businesses using the Square terminal. Again, that's nice. Um I'll go up to the village store on Friday. Lots of the people have Square. I'll see if I can get my um wallet to work there.

James Cridland: 56:34

Yes, I think I think will will accept Bitcoin payments, but I I wouldn't have imagined that they will instantly accept Bitcoin payments, and certainly that may well be a US only and not available everywhere else. So yeah. It's also going to be free to accept Bitcoin and it's for the first year, and after that it's gonna be one percent, which is interesting because obviously credit cards are three percent, so you know one percent is better than three percent, certainly. Oh, yes, and I've just found the small print. Square Bitcoin functionality is not available to sellers that are located in New York State or outside the US. Right. There we are.

Sam Sethi: 57:19

Won't be going out to the village store and trying that one then.

Speaker 6: 57:22

You won't be.

Sam Sethi: 57:23

No. But look, you know, again, it's it's along the path of progress. I mean, you know, uh I think what we're seeing here is uh people normalizing it, trying to make it much more acceptable to the mainstream. And again, the more that it's available in outlets or in square terminals, even if it's not available internationally, I think it's got to be a good thing. I saw Cash App this week have announced that you can now use either your local currency or Bitcoin to pay, and they will do the uh translation in the background to whatever wallet switching or splits might be occurring in the background. So yeah, you can you can just pay in a normal fiat currency and then they will work out the um uh Bitcoin translation. Yeah, that's nice. That's nice. Uh now the other thing that uh struck me, sticking with money just for a second, was Stripe has agreed to acquire a company called Metronome, which I'd never heard of, which offers APIs to help SaaS companies charge customers based on usage. And I uh originally I looked at it and I was like, oh, okay, this is really clever. Nathan Gathright, when he first came out with his transcribe.fm, uh used L402, the protocol to allow you to basically uh use his API to get a transcription based on usage, and it was quite clever. So you would upload your transcription, he would see how big the file size was, and based on that size, he would then give you a price for transcribing it. And it looks like Stripe have bought this company for a similar reason. It's real-time API usage. Uh-huh. And I think this is where we're going with the industry. We're going from a place where people charge just a fixed fee to a company or service that will charge you based on usage. And I just thought it was interesting that Stripe had bought this company.

James Cridland: 59:12

Yeah, it's certainly interesting seeing, you know, a bunch of changes here and a bunch of, you know, charging customers based on usage sounds so easy, but I know that it it isn't easy to do that at all. So yeah, it's it it you know, it's always fascinating watching the different payment models in there as well. Talking about different payment models, Podcast Guru has uh just done a little bit of work with their boosts. So if you get a boost through uh Podcast Guru, you will be able to uh currently just click a link and uh see what the message was. And it says here, I've been working in isolation too much and wasn't really aware that everyone else was trying to solve this problem, too. Hello. We'll consider our own API endpoint alpha state. And hopefully we'll all coalesce on a working standard. I mean, you know, podcast gurus sats are still coming through. Just more than you can say for some others. So that that's a wonderful thing. But uh no, I it's it's been good to see their information certainly is appearing in my strike app, and it'll be good to have a little link that will be clickable at some point in the future. So uh yeah, I think uh the more of that, the better.

Sam Sethi: 1:00:26

Now, here's another one that came up that um I was interested in. Chad F, who does a lot of work on the MasterDon with a lot of the podcasting 2.0 companies, launched a platform last night called Stablecraft. Stablecraft is a V for V music app which supports singles, albums, playlists, and thankfully publisher feeds as well. Now, Chad's done a little video as well, so if you want, you can go and find that on YouTube. But stablecraft.app is really nice. He's basically taken in several hundred music tracks. Uh huh. He shows them uh singles as you would expect, but you can then which is the one benefit of the publisher feed, because most people haven't adopted it. You can now group all the artists around their uh what's the word I'm looking for? Sorry. Discography, that's the word. Yeah, um yeah. So you can basically the publisher feed will then show you all of the tracks from that artist. Uh-huh. And he's done a really nice job, but also you can do boosts, you can do uh streaming payments. That's a really good demo because it's not it's not a real-time thing, it's Chad feeding and updating it. You can't really update it yourself yet. But uh it's a lovely little uh demo of what we can do with music.

James Cridland: 1:01:44

Nice. So stablecraft with a K, stablecraft.app is where you can go to uh play with that, both on mobile and on desktop.

Sam Sethi: 1:01:53

And you've also got stablecraft.app forward slash radio, where you can just put it on and leave it on in the background, which is an equally nice thing to do.

Speaker 5: 1:02:01

Yeah.

Sam Sethi: 1:02:02

And not to be left out, Sir Libra has also implemented a for his own platform called V for V Music. He is also supporting the publisher feed. Uh and again, it's good to see people beginning to finally understand what the publisher feed is. I know we at TrueFound have done it for a while. Oscar and DobbyDaz came up with the idea originally from Fountain, but uh I haven't seen much work implemented in Fountain itself, which is a shame. But yeah, it's good to see people finally understanding how publisher feeds work and where they fit within the podcasting ecosystem.

James Cridland: 1:02:36

Yeah, well, maybe I should be doing a little bit of integration with the publisher feed into the Pod News Podcast pages, and at least it will be visible there as well, I suppose.

Sam Sethi: 1:02:45

Yeah, no, that'd be lovely. Now, Podverse, yes, they're still alive, James. Mitch Downey posted it's long overdue, but I think the Podverse 2.0 website will be finally available in beta before the end of this month. And so congratulations, Mitch. He's been working hard on a new version and it looks like it's gonna come alive very soon. He's also supporting podcasting as we would expect, but also video and music. He's supporting the alternative enclosure. Congratulations. And live streams as well. So great news that Podverse 2.0 is alive and it will be available very soon.

James Cridland: 1:03:24

Very cool. Yeah, it's it's a it's a great looking app as well. If you use Android, you'll feel right at home with this. It's very cool.

Sam Sethi: 1:03:33

Other news, James, Pod Radar has launched uh a pod hunt-like product for podcasts. Tell me more about this one.

James Cridland: 1:03:41

Yeah, so it's it's a bit like product hunt, you know, that sort of thing, where you submit new episodes. If you're an indie podcaster and people, and you can then encourage your listeners to vote for it, and it will appear at the top of the ranker the next week, is the idea. It's quite a nice idea, so it's uh worthwhile taking a peek at that. It's free to submit a show. Not quite sure how it's going to pay its way in the future, but you know, they these things are probably a good thing. But anyway, thepodradar.com is where you go for that. AudienceLift is doing something quite neat. They are a company that helps you advertise your podcast on a bunch of websites like the Wall Street Journal and Yahoo and the New York Times and everything else. So that if there is a story about cheese and you are doing a podcast about cheese, then your podcast might appear in the advert, which is very neat. Anyway, Audience Lyft have launched an API now. So that will allow podcast hosting platforms and big networks to automate all of that stuff rather than annoy some of the people via email. So I'm sure that they'll be delighted about that. You can go and take a uh peek at that. And in fact, newpodcasts.net, uh, which is our new podcasts feed, is uh powered by AudienceLift. So thank you to them for that. Now, this was very cool, wasn't it? Matt Medeiros. He has produced an automated AI-powered analysis tool for podcasts. Now he is not a developer, but he has uh you know vibe coded this thing. Yes. Yeah, yeah. Go, Adam Curry, eat your heart out. Matt Medeiros. Yeah. But he has done a tremendous job on this show. And he's he's done a full YouTube video all about it. It's a full report showing all of what we have talked about this year. He's even posted the code in which he ended up doing it. So unique brands are in there. How many people we've talked about? 50. Uh, how many hosting platforms we've talked about, 35. Thankfully, the number one hosting platform that we talked about was Buzzsprout. That was the first thing that I went to check. Renew. Reneal time. And and the amount of podcast apps we talked about, 33 podcast apps, apparently. So really, really nice, really, really neat. John McDermott is the person who we have spoken about the most, which uh John sent me an email saying that he was absolutely he found this absolutely hilarious. So, yes, who'd who would have thought it? Who would have thought it?

Sam Sethi: 1:06:17

I think he I think John's gone down to Prontoprint and got a poster made up for his wall now.

James Cridland: 1:06:22

Yes, yes, exactly. Yes, exactly. Kinko's, by the way, he means he do you just mean prontoprint. You've you've never heard of prontoprint in the in the US.

Sam Sethi: 1:06:32

I haven't been to Trump's Danistan for ages.

James Cridland: 1:06:34

I don't know. Prontoprint. Kinko's or FedEx. Anyway, yeah, um uh really cool. What did you think?

Sam Sethi: 1:06:43

No, I really liked it. And I I think what I love about it more is it's a bit like when Apple transcribed everything, right? And you go, oh, okay, what are you gonna do with this? And then they come up with timed links, right? As a valued feature from the base work they did, and then you know, they've added chapters. And I I've always said that, you know, once you get all that data in place, what you can do with it is gonna be amazing. And what Matt's done is actually shown just for this podcast, but imagine now if you could do that across multiple podcasts, you know, abstracting data, not just uh on the individual podcast, but across all, you know, has this person appeared in 10 different podcasts? Has what's the hottest topic this week? I mean, there's so much that you could do once you've got that base data. So yeah, I was very excited about what he showed.

James Cridland: 1:07:34

Yeah, no, it's uh very cool. So it's well worth a peek. You'll find that linked in the pod news newsletter.

Announcer: 1:07:40

Booster, boostergram, booster grand, super comments, zaps, fan mail, fan mail, super chats, and email. Our favorite time of the week, it's the Pod News Weekly Review Inbox.

James Cridland: 1:07:53

Yeah, so many different ways to get in touch with us. Fan mail by using the link in our show notes or super comments on TrueFans or boosts everywhere else or email. Uh, we share the money that we make as well. So thank you for that. We've uh received a number of things from the using TrueFans. What does this say? I agree. This is from Neil Vellio. I agree. My fan mail was harsh and a bit overpersonal towards Kendall. And that's me saying that, says Neil Vellio. But the Riverside hosting offer is as disappointing as everything else, rushed out, covered in glitter, and needing far more time to develop. I think I would probably agree with that. I don't think I've made particularly many friends Riverside by saying that, but yeah, I don't think that was ready for prime time quite yet. But I'm sure it will be. Uh, they're a very they're a very decent company. So yeah.

Sam Sethi: 1:08:42

Martin Linderskog, Lyceum, said, James, I wouldn't mind a free pass for cargi search of the service that you use. So yes, there you go.

James Cridland: 1:08:50

Yes, I sent you one. You did? Yes. I bet you haven't used it. Nope.

Sam Sethi: 1:08:54

There you go. Thank you very much. Very kind.

James Cridland: 1:08:58

He also says you have you mentioned that you have tabs on incoming donations via Fountain and TrueFans. Which service do you use? Is it possible to integrate a similar service like Helipad into TrueFans in the future? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, look, I will tell you what's going on with the messages that we are getting at the moment. I am getting boosts and things which some of the from Fountain, for example, have a complicated looking URL that I can copy and paste into a browser and see what the message is, which is pretty cool. So thank you to Fountain for doing that. And one day uh Stripe will Strike will integrate with that. If you send us a boost via podcast guru, then currently I can't see what the boost is, but I can know that at least you have sent it. So Brian and Sminger, thank you very much for listening. So that's where we are, and in terms of TrueFans, well, I should be able to see the the sats coming into my strike account. Not sure I can at the moment, but I know that Sam's working on it, so that's okay. But um actually, but that will have a that will have a link in the future because that will use the same tech as Fountain is, I believe.

Sam Sethi: 1:10:12

Yeah, now I mean James, if you scroll up in our script back up to where we were talking about Albi. I left a screenshot. Now, from that Bitcoin payment, that's from the Albi hub. Uh you will see there's a received payment there, which is from Fountain, and it says RSS colon payment with a that's what I see in my strike account. Yeah. Now, what we intend to do is also support the same model that Fountain have done, which is a way of attaching them the boost message inside of the map payment. It's a separate uh link, but it's with the payment. And what that will allow us all to do is to then abstract what that URL is and then display the comments. So this isn't quite cross-app comments, but it's close to cross app comments because what we can do in the same uh Albi hub, which is what the TrueFans want here, is we can see all the payments that are received and sent, and we can therefore uh try and abstract them. So this is uh something that we will work on over the Christmas period. So hopefully have it in the new year. But yeah, that's what we need to all do. So when Podcast Guru is talking about working in isolation and having their own boost bot, um that's very similar to what uh the Stephen B was doing, and I think we've moved on from that now, sadly. Um so Podcast Guru, you need to probably jump on board to what Fountain have done, because I think that's the right way forward.

James Cridland: 1:11:43

Yeah, but it's very easy as soon as you get that link and you just uh go and visit that link, then you can actually see all of the details around what was sent and who sent it and everything else. Yeah, and so it's a super easy way of actually uh seeing seeing uh stuff. So so uh yeah, certainly good to to end up seeing more of that. So that's what we're currently using. So there's what we've had to do, Martin, really is we've had to kind of move before we were ready because everybody wanted the LN address, everybody wanted a way of paying that wasn't a you know a random number, an IP address if you like, but is but that is instead just a domain or or an email address. It's it's as easy as that. And then that then puts the onus on to people like Sam and and and Oscar and everybody else to look up that and work out where to send that particular payment. Exactly. But that's currently where we are, and yes, it would be lovely if it was all fixed, but currently probably isn't very fixed.

Sam Sethi: 1:12:45

Let's say the word transition.

James Cridland: 1:12:47

Yes, let's say that. And two messages from Seth Goldstein. Returning listeners would be an amazing metric. Yeah, it would be an amazing metric. I bet Sam would work that one out for you. Uh as well as saying that bumper's metrics sound so good. Uh, they are pretty good. They are pretty good information. So, yeah, definitely worth having a look at that, Seth, or indeed having a look at Pod Analyst. And uh, we were going to hear from George Legneen. We will next week. Sorry, we will uh well I was gonna say next week, but we probably won't, will we? We will next year, at the beginning of next, at the beginning of 2026.

Sam Sethi: 1:13:25

Yeah, he's got a new version coming out, and so we thought it'd be best to delay the interview until that new version. And so, yeah, we'll probably hold that interview. We'll do it next week, but we'll hold that interview till new year.

James Cridland: 1:13:37

Well, that makes sense, and thank you so much to the 22 Power supporters, people like Matt Medeiros. Matt Medeiros. Gotta keep saying it. Skew skewers numbers. Yes, exactly. Matt Medeiros and Matt Medeiros. Um, so thank you, Matt Medeiros, and everybody like Matt Medeiros if you're very kind. He he was complaining on the YouTube video. I don't know if you noticed. Uh also Star Tempest, Elias Strand, Ralph Astep Jr., and Will Clark. Thank you all so much for your support. Really appreciate it. It goes into Sam's wine fund and into my beer fund and other things as well. So thank you for that. So, what's been happening for you this week, Sam?

Sam Sethi: 1:14:19

Well, one thing I wanted to note was the return of two podcasts, which is good to see. The new media show, obviously absent since Todd's sudden passing, uh, came back last night, co-host with Rob Greenleaf for the first show, as we predicted, was Rob Walsh.

Speaker 6: 1:14:35

That's right, Rob.

Sam Sethi: 1:14:38

I'm imagining it's how it doesn't sound like that when I have it on 2X. Um But yeah, no, it was good to see it back, and good luck to the show. Uh, there's gonna be numerous different people replacing Todd's hot seat. Rob was in it last night. I'm not sure who else will do it. It's gonna be a video first live, very similar to what they did before. Good luck, that's all I'd say.

James Cridland: 1:15:03

And that's available wherever you get your podcasts and on YouTube as well.

Sam Sethi: 1:15:06

And it was also good to see Dave Jackson and Daniel J. Lewis return with the future of podcasting. Episode 63 was out. Again, always good to hear from them. And so, yeah, nice to see them back as well. I'm not sure what's happened to Mark Asquith at Captivate with Danny Brown. Their show seems to have gone offline, but I'm probably really busy, mate. I'm really busy. Well, counting my money as about to exit, no.

James Cridland: 1:15:31

No, I don't think so. Hey, he's bees bees a busy bee. He's a busy bees doing all kinds of stuff. Uh yes, the the episode of uh the future of uh podcasting was uh all about the present of podcasting and the changes that they've seen in the last six or so months. It's uh definitely worth a definitely worth a listen.

Sam Sethi: 1:15:52

Then I had a a lovely surprise this week. I was researching you know the news for this podcast, doing my my producer bit, and uh in my email was a report that simply said podcast hosting in 2025. And I thought, ooh. It said uh well, I thought I'd better read it and it had news about rss.com and various others. And much to my surprise and joy, little old true fans got a mention in there as the most interesting experiment in podcast monetization, we got the editor's pick. So it gave me a little skip. So thank you very much, Cody McLaughlin. It's in the podcast tech stack if you want to read about it as well. And of course, it'll be in pod news daily, I'm sure. Yes, I'm sure it will. I'm sure it will. And finally, James, what's the Oxford word of the year this year? Don't look in the notes.

James Cridland: 1:16:43

I had already heard. It's not one word, it's two words. Rage bait. How can you have a word of the year which is two words? Uh I don't know. Brain rot. Two words. There you go. Do do they do they know nothing?

Sam Sethi: 1:16:58

No. Ah, dear.

James Cridland: 1:16:59

Can't get in staff.

Sam Sethi: 1:17:01

No. But rage, I thought it was gonna be AI slop. I really thought that would be the word of the year.

James Cridland: 1:17:07

Yes, well, I mean, it would kind of make sense, wouldn't it? But yeah, no, it's uh strange old thing.

Sam Sethi: 1:17:13

Yeah, Yuri Novell Harare, who I like reading. He's he calls social media the junk food for the brain, and we all know what junk food does for your body. So again, I think rage baiting is what the algorithms try and do, certainly for the meta platforms. And yeah, I think it is brain rot, rage bait, AI slop. It does worry that they're the words that are coming out for the words of the year, really.

James Cridland: 1:17:37

Yeah, and it was interesting. I was I was at a I was at a big sort of get-together thing for a radio station, which which, you know, and we were asking them what the future of that particular radio station was, and and they were really concerned about what AI is going to do. Really concerned. And you know, the amount of AI slop out there is is quite a thing. It's quite a thing. So yeah, there's a thing.

Sam Sethi: 1:18:02

I think what it's doing is turning people off to technology. I I I I find, well, we've talked about it before. I find I don't spend any time now on social media. I I which is a good thing, I think, for me. But you know, I I very well I don't go on to X, I I I'm not on threads, and I'm not on Blue Sky. I mean, I am physically, I've got an account to stop someone hijacking it, but I don't spend any time looking at it. And I don't miss it, if I'm honest.

James Cridland: 1:18:31

No, well, there you go. So, what's happened for you this week, James? I've been having a really, a really interesting week. So YouTube is about to be banned here in Australia for under-16s. Well, actually, no. It I mean, it's worse than that. You YouTube isn't going to be banned for under-16s, but YouTube accounts are being banned for under-16s. So instead of YouTube knowing that somebody is logged in as an under-16 and and is therefore going to, you know, and therefore we'll we'll only show them this stuff, YouTube doesn't know at all. And which to me is worse. But still, anyway, you know, I'm sure that the Australian, I'm sure that the Australian government knows knows what they're doing. But anyway, so we ended up shifting as a family over from YouTube Music onto Spotify, and that's been a really interesting experience because I had no idea how popular Spotify is with kids of my of my daughter's age, but also how much of a social experience it is. She instantly went to find all of her friends on there, she's instantly listening to her friends' playlists. All of a sudden, all of that is going on. And interestingly, Sam, she said, We'll get rid of YouTube music once the recap is out, because I want to see my my numbers. And as soon as we see that, then I can get rid of it. And I thought, There you go, there's an interesting thing. So yeah, so that was fascinating. And it's been really interesting just sort of having a play with you with uh Spotify and seeing what all of the new features are and all of that. They've got this thing, I'm I'm sure that you know, but they've got this thing when you're driving in the car and you're using Apple CarPlay, there's this thing called a jam where you can basically, you know, allow my daughter to also have control of the music that gets played in the car. Yeah. So uh yeah, I think it's a really good, really smart thing. So I've been enjoying being back in the Spotify world, you know, paying for a full family m membership and you know, and shifting all of the all of her playlists over and everything else. So that's been that's been a fun thing to do.

Sam Sethi: 1:20:41

Yeah, and part of uh Spotify rap for the first time this year, they allowed you to start a jam with it. So right at the end of it, you could then start sharing your music taste with your friends.

James Cridland: 1:20:51

Great. Yeah, no, I think I I think it's a really smart thing. So so that was that was really interesting just to play around with. Thing number two is I have uh switched microphone this week. I've switched back to the Shaw MV7.

Sam Sethi: 1:21:04

So I thought you sounded clearer.

James Cridland: 1:21:07

So in case you're wondering why I sounded a little bit different, that's why. I can't work out. It sounds quite compressed to me, and I can't work out whether or not, but I'm connected into the roadcaster and and all of that. I I don't really understand what's going on. But anyway, it's uh to me it sounds much better at my ears, so that's all okay. And the other thing is I don't know if you heard the uh the BuzzCast podcast from a couple of weeks ago, which is of course the podcast that is uh released from our sponsor, Buzz Sprout, and and they were talking about the sponsorship of this show.

Sam Sethi: 1:21:42

Um trying to find this, I couldn't find it. So yes, I'm glad you found it.

Kevin at Buzzsprout: 1:21:45

Yeah, so here's a here's a little clip. If you can be strategic about finding who these companies are and then presenting an opportunity to them to be a sponsor of the show, and sponsorships are they're like a partnership, they're not at least we don't view them. Um when I say we, like we Buzz Sprout, we don't view our sponsorship of the Pod Newsweekly Review as something where to us it's not strictly a business transaction. It's not us wanting to put our name on the Pod News Weekly Review and run an advertisement that then returns more than we're investing. I mean, that's part of it for sure, but there's also this we like what the Pod News Weekly Review is doing. Like they're covering all the news and and happenings in the podcasting industry, they're talking about interesting things, they're raising up new people who are starting in podcasting and giving them the voice and giving them an opportunity to introduce themselves to the podcasting community. So they're doing a lot of good things in a space that we're passionate about, and we've got to know the people behind us. So we know James and we know Sam and and we we like them personally, so we want to support them personally as well. So there's a whole bunch of stuff that goes into that equation for us. And if it was strictly a, oh, this sponsorship is going to cost us this much, we have to see that much come back, it may or may not make sense. I don't know. But Alvin and I don't run those numbers. We listen to the show, we listen, we read the newsletter, we're fans of what they're doing, and then we ask them what would it cost for us to support this in a sponsorship type package. They run numbers on their side and they say, How does this sound? And we said, That sounds great. It's as simple as that for us as a business to come in and support something that we like that's happening in our industry.

James Cridland: 1:23:13

But isn't that a lovely thing? So we're we're super excited that the Pod News Weekly Review will move on into 2026, being sponsored by Buzz Sprout. Start podcasting, keep podcasting. And I'm sure that when they were saying that you might only be reaching 50 people, they're not talking about this show. Uh but no, it's uh it's a really good, it was it was really nice to hear them. So thank you, Kevin. And yeah, it's a wonderful thing to be still here, still on the Buzzsprout platform. We like it, it works. So so hurrah.

Sam Sethi: 1:23:46

Indeed. Thank you.

James Cridland: 1:23:48

And that's it for this week. All of our podcast stories taken from the Pod News Daily Newsletter at Podnews.net.

Sam Sethi: 1:23:55

You can support this show by streaming Sats. You can give us feedback using the Buzzsprout fan mail link in our show notes, and you can send us a super comment. Good luck. Uh or a boost. Well done. Or become a power supporter like the 22 Power Supporters at weekly.podnews.net.

James Cridland: 1:24:10

Yes, our music is from TM Studios. Our voiceover is Sheila D, which is why she appears quite highly in Matt Madeiros's list, because I I I say our voiceover is Sheila D every episode. So that would explain that one. Our audio is recorded using CleanFeed. We edit with Hindenburg, and we're hosted and sponsored by Buzz Sprout. Start podcasting, keep podcasting.

Announcer: 1:24:31

Get updated every day. Subscribe to our newsletter at podnews.net. Tell your friends and grow the show. And support us and support us. The pod news weekly review will return next week. Keep listening.