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At the risk of pedantically zooming in on your choice of words: > I only listen to podcasts that are well-produced and edited. Very few actually are. I disagr

At the risk of pedantically zooming in on your choice of words: > I only listen to podcasts that are well-produced and edited. Very few actually are. I disagree. Good production is a nice extra, but it's secondary. I'd rather listen to Miles Davis on vinyl, than a mediocre musician on high-bitrate FLAC. Some examples: I recently discovered the Happy Path Programming podcast. It's a good listen as the hosts are knowledgeable and insightful. The production quality is fine, but isn't at the professional standard. The hosts acknowledge this, but make no apology for it, on the grounds that they don't want their podcast to turn into a chore. In contrast, the Security Now podcast has professional production. Again that's a plus, but that's all. If the podcast were no good, their high production budget wouldn't be enough to save it. Good production quality doesn't turn a boring podcast into a worthwhile one, and mediocre production rarely spoils a worthwhile one. > There are way too many people who think podcasting is just turning on a microphone and babbling away with a friend or guest for however long they can do it. I only have a few hours a day I can spend on podcasts and I'm not going to waste it listening to some inane meandering chitchat. Sure, it makes sense to insist on good quality podcasts. The hosts need certain soft skills to deliver a good podcast. Not everyone has them, but it must be easy to convince yourself you do. People may be tempted to think I could easily do a podcast, or comedy, or acting. The skills aren't as immediately obvious as in, say, gymnastics or theoretical physics. Podcasting may be the victim of Sturgeon's Law, 90% of everything is crud, but fortunately it's pretty easy to filter out the ocean of poor-quality podcasts and find a few you like.

jgwil2 6y ago
I think high production value is probably decently correlated to content; after all, people usually won't invest in something they believe to be low-quality. So in that sense it may be good enough a filter for a world awash in crud.
- MaxBarraclough 6y ago
  True, there's most likely a correlation. A bit like 'honest signalling' in evolutionary theory.
theshrike79 6y ago
What I was getting at was more the fact that even if you record 3 hours of stuff, you don't need to put the unedited 3 hours out. It can be recorded on a potato microphone on a clay disk for all I care, just spend some time in the edit and cut it down to a manageable size. There are very few podcasts that can stay on topic and interesting past the 1 - 1.5 hour mark. The only exception to this rule are the Christopher McQuarrie Spoiler Special episodes of the Empire Podcast (now behind a firewall). The dude can keep spewing fascinating stuff about his movies longer than the movies' combined runtime =)

jgwil2 6y ago

I think high production value is probably decently correlated to content; after all, people usually won't invest in something they believe to be low-quality. So in that sense it may be good enough a filter for a world awash in crud.

MaxBarraclough 6y ago
True, there's most likely a correlation. A bit like 'honest signalling' in evolutionary theory.

theshrike79 6y ago

What I was getting at was more the fact that even if you record 3 hours of stuff, you don't need to put the unedited 3 hours out. It can be recorded on a potato microphone on a clay disk for all I care, just spend some time in the edit and cut it down to a manageable size. There are very few podcasts that can stay on topic and interesting past the 1 - 1.5 hour mark. The only exception to this rule are the Christopher McQuarrie Spoiler Special episodes of the Empire Podcast (now behind a firewall). The dude can keep spewing fascinating stuff about his movies longer than the movies' combined runtime =)