Just going to say, Siracusa is the best part of any show he’s on. Casey speaks like he writes, with extreme emphasis that gets irksome to me, Marco’s “y’know” is further complicated by his habit of basically saying exactly what John just said in a different way. It stopped being a good listen for me a while back.
Honestly, I’m with you in that I’d love to see some new blood, but just try to get a podcast off the ground of any sort anymore, never mind tech in general or Apple specifically. The lines have been so well drawn that you really don’t stand a chance. Alas.
I really like Leo Laporte and folks over at TWiT. A whole range of general tech shows that can be watched or listened to. Mac Break Weekly, This week in Google, even Windows Weekly (which is funny because I don’t use Windows at all). In general a different set of voices over there. Also, Allison Sheridan’s Podfeet often digs into non-Apple stuff.
Chapter markers! I’ve no compunction about skipping segments. Even if I’m 10 minutes into a 20-minute segment, if I feel like the topic isn’t for me I’ll cut my losses and move on.
Yes, “everyone” has a podcast today. And some areas of interest, like Apple, are already saturated with podcasts, IMO. I have multiple apple related podcasts in my feed but normally only listen to two each week (MPU almost always makes the cut)
Microsoft OTOH has a number of podcasts covering everything from networking to AI. I’ve found many episodes of “Behind the Tech” interesting. But you can also find discussions about security, vaccine research, etc. and even Formula 1 in others.
I feel this as I try to get my teacher podcast off of the ground. A few colleagues and myself are building a teacher training curriculum to help new educators (and hopefully make a few bucks). We created a podcast to help promote the curriculum, but as it turns out, you really need to promote the podcast to then promote the product - lot of layers and a lot in the way of being heard/seen.
Podcasts are a peculiar medium, too. There are only a handful of dimensions to a show’s format and audio can only stray so far from a range of quality and legibility. So even if [insert wildly different demographic and industry] were talking about Apple products, they’d sound similar once they found their groove. Their success would come from reaching a different listenership rather than appealing to current listeners of their competition.
Listening to a topic being indirectly covered is a way around that (e.g., picking up a perspective on Apple the company from a film editing podcast) but you either need to be interested in the main subject matter, be patient or good at skipping segments.
Audio programming has been around more than long enough to have strong traditions and norms - almost all from Radio. The typical tech-related podcast is a “round table” discussion with one or two hosts, or an expert panel, and sometimes guest(s). This has been done for generations. It’s considered friendly, easy to listen to and people are familiar with it.
There are other approaches and you never exhaust the possibilities of a medium. I think I’d like to hear some more documentary style tech podcasts (with “reporter(s)” investigating a topic and reporting on it by interviewing people in the know) and there’s certainly space for more imaginative approaches, like fireside chats or shows with a greater diversity of short “segments”. All that costs a lot more time and money and planning than a round-table based on internet-research and podcasts have always preferred a direct person-person approach rather than more scripted and edited ones. That’s partly because there is very limited funding for most podcasts (and most Radio).
Sooner or later someone will do something so great it will become the new norm.
Indeed, not long ago I came across a recording of a talk-radio show that several Chicago writers and journalists did in the mid-1960s. One of them was the brilliant oral historian Studs Terkel, author of “The Good War” and “Working.” They sat around the studio and talked about whatever came to mind–public affairs, politics, literature, news of the day, personal affairs. It was very self-aware of being a radio program–they talked about what was going on around them in the studio, and sometimes the producer chimed in. It was wonderful because all these men (sorry, they were all men) were brilliant.
As I listened, I thought, “My gosh, this is a podcast.”
Another similar podcast is the one-on-one interview format, like “Fresh Air.”
One of my favorite tech/business news related podcasts is Pivot. Here is a brief description of this podcast from its site:
Every Tuesday and Friday, Recode’s Kara Swisher and NYU Professor Scott Galloway offer sharp, unfiltered insights into the biggest stories in tech, business, and politics. They make bold predictions, pick winners and losers, and bicker and banter like no other. After all, with great power comes great scrutiny.
