EMBA的小眼睛

The coming podcast surplus

As of now, there are more minutes produced by the podcasts I listen to each day than there is time to listen to them.

I can't listen to something new without not listening to something else. Which makes it challenging to find the energy to seek out new ones. Rebroadcasts of radio shows rarely keep my attention any more, because the podcast-focused audio is so much more focused (but they are still popular on most lists, because they're initially more well known).

Blogging has worked for so long for two reasons: A. it's really easy to subscribe and to scan for the posts you like, and B. The good posts get shared.

Both of these are a challenge for podcasters now.

The New York Times says it prints "All the News That's Fit to Print" but it actually prints what fits, and what fits is what advertisers will support and readers have time to consume. Stories have to fight to get a spot.

Podcasts have the opposite problem--there's room for an infinity of stories, from an infinity of podcasters. But we're crossing a line and from now on, the game is less infinite than it was, because our time is finite.

Now, it's difficult to get on someone's list, and hard to stay there. The game is becoming zero sum.

[Here's a list of some of my favorites, by the way:]

99% Invisible, On Being, The Moment with Brian Koppelman, Mystery Show (particularly episode 3), The Gist, Dan Carlin's Hardcover History, Bullseye, Radiolab (of course), SDCF Masters of the Stage, and Cool Tools. There's also a fun Gastropod episode about my aversion to cilantro. And I just found out Christopher Lydon is doing a podcast, so that's now on the list.

The magic of Overcast is that they magically appear, one after another.

And the curse is that I'll never again be caught up. I'm okay with that, but it changes everything.