Three US presidents make it onto SmartLess

• Three US presidents are united on an episode of SmartLess available today. Will Arnett, Jason Bateman and Sean Hayes were joined by Presidents Biden, Obama and Clinton in New York City. The episode was available early on Amazon Music and Wondery+. The show switches to SiriusXM later this year.

• In the UK, the True Crime Awards took place. The BBC’s Vishal took two awards for Best Podcast Community and Impact for Change. We’ve a list of all the winners.

• RedCircle has seen a 38% growth in downloads since announcing OpenRAP, a scalable technology for host-read ads.

• A BBC presenter has had her likeness cloned for an ad for insect repellant. The advertiser appears to have been the target of a scam.

• With YouTube Booming, Podcast Creators Get Camera-Ready (The New York Times)

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• Buzzsprout has made improvements to its Buzzsprout Ads product, allowing advertisers to approve individual podcasts.

The Tech Stuff

• PocketCasts has added support for Websub and Podping, so new episodes should appear almost instantly as soon as you publish them (from a websub or podping-compatible podcast host).

• “Got bored and decided to see if I could make a podcast player in an evening”. Ryan Morrison produced PodPlaza, and posts his code, in a LinkedIn post. It’s PHP and JavaScript.

• Is Apple’s Messages app the latest new podcast player? Not really - but it does play podcasts. Send someone on Messages a link to a Podnews news page (like this) it renders with the image, headline, and a little audio button - which, when pressed, plays the linked audio. It looks quite neat. It uses the og:audio meta tag, part of the Open Graph protocol, which is supported in the Messages app on iPhone and MacOS.

  • Captivate has rolled out support for it. Podpage also now supports it for any podcast episode page, like this one.
  • This will appear as AppleCoreMedia in your podcast host’s logs.

Tips and tricks - with Memberful

• Swifties? Beliebers? What is the name for your listeners? Marz Marcello suggests you should name your fanbase. What do you think, Podnewsers?

• How long should a podcast be? We’ve got science to answer for us - as well as an opinion, too.

Podcast News - with New Podcast Trailers - the podcast

Global’s The Sports Agents is now sponsored by Tesco Mobile, the company has announced. The sponsorship lasts six months. The show, which launched in February, already has over a million downloads.

Gloriously Unready back for a third season today from Charlotte Foster Podcasts - aiming to bridge the gap between public perception and the private struggles and victories of transgender people. The show was shortlisted in the Independent Podcast Awards last year.

Candy Is Dandy: The Candy Review Podcast is approaching its two-year anniversary - the show that has covered candies from Snickers to Toblerone and peach rings, it’s a show that gives a candy’s history and a review. They’re aiming to test more international candy. Let’s hope they can manage a Kinder Surprise without suffocating from the “too dangerous for America” toy inside.