WTF returns in visual form

• Marc Maron’s show WTF has resurfaced a 2011 episode with Norm Macdonald - this time, in visual form on YouTube. The show closed in October last year, but this two hour long episode is “animated, by humans,” says host Marc Maron - including additional information and photographs from the recording, but without actually animating the main interview. It’s well worth a watch as a different, and sustainable, way to visualise.

  • Other non-video visualisation examples include this BBC World Service show (visualised by 1UpMedia); HBO’s Ricky Gervais Show, or Liquid Studio’s visualisation of the Podnews daily podcast - a final episode of which will be published today as part of a week-long pilot.

• Bumper has produced a free tool that allows podcasters to “share your engaged views” with potential advertisers. YouTube changed how views are calculated in August - with less than a week’s notice - to show a bigger number, which doesn’t adequately reflect engagement. It’s a two-minute job to connect your YouTube channel, and then produce a nice page that shows views and engaged views, which you can securely share. We hereby expressly permit you, our readers and supporters, to see our YouTube views and engaged views.

• Podcasts in Africa out-engage global benchmarks: but are priced far lower, according to a new report. The “geography discount” means that the shows, which generated more than $900,000, would have been worth more than $2.3 million if they were priced at the rates in the US, UK or Australia.

  • In 2023, Will Page asked why is all the podcast money in the US?

• “If you enjoy this podcast, you should join our free newsletter”: one simple way to both lessen your reliance on advertising, and get a more lasting relationship with your audience. But, as this video shows, Spotify is now encouraging its premium listeners to skip messages in podcasts about free newsletters - this video showing the “skip ahead” button appear as soon as they’re mentioned in the Simple English News Daily podcast. The host, Stephen Devincenzi, spotted this yesterday and says it “angered” him: “it would be bad enough with an ad, but for my free newsletter?”

  • Podnews exclusively revealed Spotify’s ad-skipping tool in August; followed by evidence of unskippable ads that were sold by Spotify (the company told us that the unskippable ads were just a bug). Spotify doesn’t pay audio podcasters anything, unlike music - but all this is relatively unimportant; the company’s terms and conditions let them edit our ads out anyway.

• In the US, the Small Business Administration has "clarified that the nation’s 27 million creator-led businesses are classified under NAICS 5121 for purposes of SBA program eligibility". As Ralph Estep Jr tells us, that is good news: it means that banks and financing companies know what we do for a living. He offers four steps for any creator-led business in the US to take; and adds that now the paperwork agrees: “a podcast with sponsors, contractors, and six figures of revenue is a small business”.

• Apple bought an AI audio editing app called Samplab earlier this year, it’s emerged. The tool has stem splitting (for isolating different parts of a song), and a polyphonic audio editor.

• In New Zealand, news reaches us that four RNZ podcasts have been added to TVNZ+, the country’s main homegrown streaming service. Kim Hill Wants To Know, Context, and two comedy shows - Pacific Dark and this one (hello, corporate email services).

• iOS 27.2 is nearly here - Apple published the release candidate yesterday. Apple Podcasts has some changes to help go back to episodes you’ve already started.

• True Native Media has signed Paula Pant’s Afford Anything. The show was with the Cumulus Podcast Network … and congratulations to Noiser, which has now released more than two thousand episodes of its hit shows.

People news

Good news for companies: the Podnews jobs board is free to post your position on. No membership or payment required - our supporters pay for it for everyone. Tell your HR team!

And good news for job hunters: we only list vacancies that are actually open: not a never-ending list of outdated positions that were filled months ago; and of course the Podnews jobs board has an RSS feed - we are in podcasting, after all…

Latino soldiers fighting in Ukraine

Paid content

Why would someone risk their life for a country that is not their own? What might they be searching for? Call Sign Condor / Alias Cóndor is a podcast about the thousands of Latin Americans who are fighting in Ukraine, for Ukraine.

Through the stories of our protagonist, Condor, and his fellow soldiers, this four-part series takes us inside the lives of Latin American men and women who’ve been fighting — some of them for years — in the war in Ukraine.

Through their experiences of fear, loss, belonging and even falling in love, host Carolina Chimoy explores what brought these soldiers to the front, how they’ve experienced the war, and what they’ve found there.

From DW, LA Times Studios, and Futuro Studios, Call Sign Condor / Alias Cóndor is available now: in English and in Spanish.

Tips and tricks - with Audiencelift

• Considering switching podcast production companies? Resonate tells us how to plan ahead to avoid missing an episode.
• The Inked Psycho podcast spent $200 on Wordpress ads. He got fewer than fifteen listeners.

Podcast News - with Airwave

With Airwave: The Clark Howard Podcast receives more than one million downloads each month. The show is on a mission to empower people to take control of their personal finances by providing money-saving tips, consumer advice, hot deals and economic news to help everyone achieve financial freedom.

What have Elon Musk and Peter Thiel got in common? Apart from that, they’re also on the new Walter Isaacson podcast The Builders which launched this week. Isaacson examines the ideas, ambitions, and decisions behind the AI revolution, from its impact on jobs and misinformation to the possibility of superintelligent machines.

Listen. Obey. Survive. National Emergency returns today for a new season - and the unexplained emergency Broadcasts are still taking over devices without warning: and one mistake means you disappear forever.

93% of transformation programmes fail to deliver their full value. Today, The 7 Percent is new from Sullivan & Stanley - built entirely around the people who get it right. Senior leaders are more confident than ever in their strategy, technology budgets have never been bigger, and yet value continues to leak out of transformation programmes at an alarming rate. The average organisation loses 27% of the value it originally committed to deliver; this podcast aims to fix that. It’s hosted by Goup CEO Andy Haley.

In Rewriting the Illness Story they talk about illnesses and how they affect people on all levels; emotional, mental, spiritual and physical. Host Paula Hescock interviews practitioners, people that have had near-death experiences, people living with chronic conditions, and people who have overcome adversities and are now thriving. They’re real stories about living authentically through personal agency and accepting life even when it’s not perfect.

From the curdy world of cottage cheese to migraine hacks and homemade sunscreen, Strange Health from The Conversation is back for a second season. Hosts Katie Edwards and GP Dan Baumgardt dive into the science behind bizarre and sometimes questionable health trends going viral on social media with the help of experts. Expect honest, funny and sometimes stomach-turning discussions.

Podcasts in the wild

Podnews reader Iván says that there are plenty of traffic jams near where he lives, around Madrid in Spain. So he’s put up these signs next to the road: “This traffic jam will take a while. Put on a podcast.” Underneath, a link to his Noches de Historia podcast on Spotify. Nice.