For the last few weeks I’ve been collecting your thoughts about the kind of podcasts you’d like me to make. Here are the results.
If you’re really keen, you can check out all the data. This blog posts is a summary of the key results.
Existing episode types
It’s clear that you prefer episodes where I have a guest, especially when they’re an expert discussing their single specialist area, although the solo episodes are almost as popular.
Less popular are the Public House Forum live recordings — which I guess is fine by me because they’re a lot more work — or those where I travel to a specific place to experience it. Around the same popularity level are the “livestreamed episodes produced in conjunction with specific events, possibly involving drinking”.
Then comes this category: “Livestreamed episodes which seem to involve rather a lot of drinking while reading out long documents, often for hours.” Only mild support there.
As one person put it, “I will say that I love the idea of the long livestream episodes reading through e.g., policy platforms, but in practice I found I could only take listening to so much of it (maybe I need to be drinking too!).” And maybe you do.
Worst-rating of all were “recycled episodes, basically best-of compilations”. Noted.
The comments highlight how finding a balance can be hard. One person said they really enjoyed the deep-dive about submarines (yes I know) with H I Sutton, while another said that one went too deep for them (shoosh!). But overall I really appreciated the constructive criticism.
Potential future episode types
This got interesting. There was some support for short (semi-)regular episodes on a specific topic — as long as it’s not Elon Musk, noted — and even more support for irregular 5-minute rants on a specific topical news story. I might well try doing a few of those in the coming weeks.
There was also quite a bit of support for multi-episode series visiting a place or a topic in more detail. As I mentioned, ideas which have been kicking around include a tour of Australia’s gin distilleries, or travelling on the remaining NSW TrainLink XPT routes before those trains are retired. I’ll probably do that last one anyway, so I might as well make it tax-deductible, right?
And the rest?
On the question of live-streaming the recording sessions, whether audio-only or video, the answer was a resounding “Meh”.
There were some excellent suggestions for potential guests and I’ll definitely follow up most of them. I assume, however, that whoever suggested Chris Uhlmann is a troll. If not, seriously, what is wrong with you?
Finally, there were three very important polls. Here are the results.
The dog versus cat thing really surprises me.
Now what?
There’s a lot more commentary in all the data which may trigger some thoughts. The list of suggested guests is especially interesting. I’m therefore opening comments on this post in case someone or something else occurs to you.
Thanks for your input. I’ll post further thoughts in the coming week, along with plans for the next few episodes.