 Thanks everybody for coming. My name is Chris Bavitz. I'm one of the faculty co-directors at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society which is a university-wide research center here at Harvard as some of you may know. We have an amazing crowd in the room today, an incredible panel. I just want to make a couple of really quick announcements upfront before we get going. In addition to the folks who are physically here, we have people joining us online, hello internet, and we mentioned that we are live-streaming and recording in case you stand up and ask a question which we hope you will do, just be aware that will be preserved for posterity. And I also just want to extend a special announcement to those folks who are here because of Hub Week in the Boston area. You may or may not know that the Berkman Center has hosted these events Tuesday at noon of various sizes and scales for over a decade at this point. So pretty much every Tuesday at 12 if you go to the Berkman Center website, both live here at Harvard and then live-streamed on the internet, we have a pretty wide variety of folks who are interested in technology, media, people from the academic community's business law policy. It's a great program put together by people like Amar Asher and Kerry Anderson and Dan Jones at Berkman. And I encourage you to follow up after today and check that out. Next week for that event we have Corey Doctorow here who's going to be talking to Jonathan Zittrain in the week after that. We have a presentation from a Berkman fellow, Patrick Merck, about Bitcoin and digital currency. So we are here today to talk about a subject that's near and dear to the hearts of a lot of people at the Berkman Center. A lot of folks at Berkman think about how and why people make and distribute creative content online and if we go back a decade or so we had people at the Center including people like Christopher Leiden and Benjamin Walker and Jake Shapiro who were addressing those issues specifically in the context of audio content and really paid a key role in the creation and development of podcasting as a medium. And as we have been looking at the headlines in the last year or two about this sort of renaissance, this wave of popularity in podcasting programs like Serial and Mark Marin hosting President Obama in his garage for the WTF podcast, we thought Hub Week gave us a great opportunity here to bring a group together and kind of look back. I'm going to give four really quick introductions and then I'm going to turn it over to Christopher to talk a little bit about his earliest experiences here. Christopher Leiden, former journalist with the New York Times, anchored the 10 o'clock news on WGBH here in Boston and in 1994 became host of the Connection on WBUR. He's currently the host of Radio Open Source on WBUR in Boston. Next to him is Kerry Hoffman. Kerry and Jake Shapiro next to Kerry are both with PRX, the Public Radio Exchange, which is located right down the block here in Harvard Square. PRX is an award-winning non-profit whose mission is to deliver significant stories to millions of people. Since it was launched in 2003, it's been an innovator in public media and its programs include the Moth Radio Hour, This American Life, Snap Judgment, and Reveal. PRX also relatively recently launched the Radiotopia podcast network, which includes programs like Benjamin Walker's Theory of Everything. Roman Mars is 99% invisible and Song Exploder. And last but not least at the end, Benjamin Walker also has Berkman Connections from back in 2005 where he worked at Berkman on projects like Global Voices and with Berkman Center founder Charlie Nesson on a wide range of audio and multimedia projects. He's hosted the Too Much Information Show at WFMU in New Jersey and then the Theory of Everything podcast. Christopher, I'm gonna ask if you could just orient us and maybe talk a little bit about sort of the early days here. Delighted, Chris, and thank you for being here. Thank you for setting the pace with a lot of fast talk. On my, on our website, Radio Open Source, you can still find something I attacked, a little short essay about the first, that accompanied the first podcast, which was a conversation with Dave Weiner. And I thought it's a way to begin. I identified myself as a journalist, an all-purpose searcher, not at all a techie, but very much fascinated with blogging in the trendstorm of media. Blogging being the the first run of the podcast phenomenon. But I said blog world has the crackle and pop the traditional media conspicuously do not these days. It's cheap and easy at entry. It's politically free, wildly opinionated, but also information rich. It's literary, it's musical, it's poetic. It has the full range of human curiosity and passion about it. A lot of it is funny, feminist, futurist, cosmopolitan, confident, and all those other good buzzy things like edgy, enthusiastic, highly energized. The adrenal elite is here, said I, about blog world. And it's here again today in this room. That's the most important thing. I mean, we could talk about so many things, including what a pleasure it is to work on your own with a brilliant staff, friendly audience, some still in broadcasting in some degree, but out in podcast world. I mean, it is everything I could have hoped for when I went into journalism in the first place. We can also talk about problems. We can also talk, I hope, about the history of the thing. For me, the history of the blog and digital journalism is inseparable from the war in Iraq. I mean, I wrote this in July 2003. Dave Weiner and I started trying to dope out what a podcast would look like. I mean, I met Dave Weiner here. He said, you know radio, I know, you know, programming. What the world needs is an MP3 that can be syndicated. I said, what's an MP3? Anyway, we worked on it. Finally, we hatched it. He said, I think we've got it. I said, now what do we do? He said, well, it's obvious. You're going to interview me and we're going to put it out on the web. So anyway, all that time was the beginning of the war in Iraq against a total blank of public conversation. Not one journalistic institution that you can name opposed the war in Iraq. The elite was totally asleep or out to lunch or corrupted. And to me, the whole point of the thing, it was not a technical trick. It was not a commercial opportunity. It was a way to explore the possibility of restoring a public conversation in this country. You look at the public conversation today and you say, what the hell have we done? Why has it just gone into the toilet and stayed there? And to me, that is still the riddle. For me, just for starters, and I'll get off in a moment, Mark Marin talking to the president is much more interesting than almost the other kinds of stuff that's now blooming commercially on the web. Or for that matter, David Axelrod talking to Bernie Sanders. I mean, this is the sort of conversation that, well, it's what we need and what the blog world did start to restore in 2003. At the blogger con, Charlie Nesson and Dave Weiner pulled together an important event. But we needed, again, one thing we didn't have in those days was investors. I think obviously the world has gotten incredibly hot commercially for this medium, which is in many ways to be celebrated. But as we get into it, I will also say, I think it's something very much to be aware of. That's my short form. Look back, look forward. Terrific. That's great. Benjamin, maybe I'll reach down to the other end of the aisle for you. Talk a little bit about your beginnings and your earliest experiences with this as a medium. What excited you about it? It's so good to hear Chris again on all of this. But it was here, Mary McGrath, who's sitting over there in the audience, Chris Leiden's producer. Other half of radio open source. It was 11 years ago, like this week, it was October 2004. I was doing an hour long radio show as one of the side things I was working on here on WZBC here in Boston. And my friend Roman Mars was doing an hour show on KOW in San Francisco. And we came up with this plan that if we made our show the half hour each, we could like be on both coasts. That was like our innovation at that moment. And then Mary McGrath calls me, she says, you know, you better make your show a podcast or you're going to be the biggest loser ever. And I didn't I just I knew that Chris and Dave Weiner were doing all this weird stuff with this MP3 and RSS. But I just I wasn't really paying attention until Mary ordered me to and I sat down. I looked this up, all of these links are gone. Like you have to use the internet archive for all of it except the end gadget post that has like the how to podcast from October 2004. And it was off to the races. And it's I was thinking about how one year later from then in 2005, I was getting all these jobs as podcast consultants. I remember all those, Jake. And now like how that year excitement has almost been like this year, post serial, you know, sort of been another a lot of hype. And I'm wondering, yeah, I see a lot of parallels and I and that makes me fear the one that sort of the crash that happened after that, because you know, there was a lot of excitement about podcasting starting from 2004 to 2006. And then there was the dead time. And I'm, you know, I could, you know, who's to say that couldn't happen again. We have so many podcasts getting so excited about all of the advertising that's come right our way. I mean, there are money trucks literally dumping money on us right now. It's kind of crazy. But how many content businesses have not about, you know, had that money disappear overnight overnight. And I feel that, you know, as, as everyone's trying to, you know, party and have a good time and figure out what's next, I do sometimes think that maybe we should be still thinking about what's next. That's my little short rap. Jake, I've heard you talk about sort of the waves of creative energy in this space. Can you kind of start where these guys have started to maybe bring it up to date a little bit? Sure. It's kind of amazing, because actually all of us were around in that moment. Kerry and I, too, because Purex was launched in the fall of 2003. I had been at Berkman and watching this like technology take shape, the RSS with enclosure seemed like a really silly trivial thing at the moment, and then suddenly caught on in a way that surprised us all. I remember Dave Weiner, as he's want to do, beating me up pretty badly about why we had this crazy idea of like taking those same beautiful audio files and like just delivering to these local stations for broadcast when we could tear the cover off and push it out to the world, which we did begin doing right back then. And when I sort of take a stand back from it, like I feel like we're experiencing now in this real convergent moment around podcasting, essentially the third wave. This is like the third attempt, which I believe is going to stick. So actually I'm not as worried as Benjamin might be, although some of it is hype. That first wave was the origin moment, you know, 2003, 2004, 2005. And interestingly, so even though it was called podcasting, which is a word I think collectively, we all really don't like but are stuck with permanently, the pod itself is no longer even part of the apparatus. And you might as well, for most people, the phrase subscribe to podcast might as well be install ethernet card, like it makes no sense. But essentially in 2005, Apple woke up to something that they hadn't invented and they incorporated it into iTunes. And I was remembering this because it was just 10 years ago, that summer of 2005, that Odio, which was the first kind of interesting startup in the space around podcasting was like creating this really beautiful way to publish and discover podcasts. And we were visiting them trying to, you know, do a deal with PRX and Odio and Apple had stepped in. And essentially at that moment, the way we describe it is they licked the cookie. They like touched podcasting, but then never really invested in it. And everybody else kind of just stood away from it. And Odio collapsed and then the sort of sip and wave that like had begun kind of flatlined for a while. And this sort of moment where we had all these pod camps and podcast consulting just sort of petered out. The second wave was also sort of accidentally triggered by Apple. And that was the iPhone. The smartphones 2008, the App Store launched. And it's like new wave, like those of us in audio and radio finally sort of said, Oh my God, these are radios. These are not just smartphones. These are radios and they're going to be in everybody's pocket. And it could finally fix the thing, which is that audio has just been a bad fit for the web. I mean, everybody remembers like the terrible like real players and quick time players and like audio just never get fit for the web. And mobile was suddenly going to solve that. And so there's this rush to say, you know, podcasting has a second chance. And that's when Stitcher started like right around that era, sort of a second wave. And it's just taken this long for that all to actually be true. So mobile is the driver for that. And it has become a way for these billions of devices to become a listening platform for audio. And this about 18 months ago started to converge where the trend of mobile adoption, the interest of all these advertisers and the big trucks of money that Ben seems to know where they are, like I would like to know where they are to started pulling up because, you know, advertising and audio is actually a good fit for mobile, which is otherwise like a painful kind of thing for display ads. And talent, which I think is really the secret of it all, which is great storytellers and sort of adjacent creative fields now recognizing that while podcasting was always possible, now it's also viable. And we're starting to see this influx of some really terrific stuff with public radio. The tradition of like really great, excellent, high quality story driven, rich production has led the way. But that is not necessarily a position it will retain as this really transforms who's in the game. Kerry, maybe try to talk a little bit about this distribution platform topic. Thank you. I am Ben Walker's driver of the money truck. We got a lot of work to do on that. But the, you know, the thing that this summer I was on a podcast panel and they sent us around a question that said, you know, finish this sentence, you know, the future of audio storytelling is. And so I sent back the answer now. It just is now. And this is this is kind of what for purex, we've certainly been doing this for a while. We find ourselves at this interesting nexus of many great things of both the great storytelling, great talent and the technology to be able to enable it all to reach the people that we hope. And way back in 2003, we had a tag line that we use, there's, you know, purex, you know, making public radio more public. And while we can drop the public radio part, like this piece of making everything public, I really agree with what you said, which is like this moment of having direct to consumer consumption of media and stories and news and investigations, etc. is really a fabulous thing that the podcasts have all enabled. We call them shows when we are not in rooms like this. In 2014, we launched Radiotopia. And the idea behind Radiotopia was to take, just to build that platform for talent. People like Ben, we now have 13 shows. And when we started, the idea was to consolidate some of the back office things of marketing and monetization, etc. And, you know, bandied together and cross promote. And when we started in January of 2014, we had just under a million downloads, and we've been able to increase that by 10 fold inside of two years, inside of two years, about 18 months. So, like, that kind of growth tells us a lot of things. It tells us a lot of things about the public's interest in consuming this kind of content. It tells us a lot about the sort of ubiquity of the technology that they are using to get it. And it tells us that, like, we've been able to make these shows survive. Because for a long time, podcasts would get to a certain size and sort of pitter out and not be able to break through with enough finances to continue to and even out their production schedules. So, like, this is a really exciting time for what comes next. And I'm, you know, happy to hear what you have to say about the next wave. Well, Chris, maybe talk about that a little bit about sort of the next wave. I've heard sort of two origin stories in there. One, the rich tradition of public radio narrative storytelling, all of that. And then I love the reference to sort of blogging this democratized ability of everybody to grab hold of the media and post their own thing. It does feel like as a medium, as a creative medium, it remains very much modeled on public radio broadcast. Is that right? Is that sticking? Is that going to continue? Chris, I can only say that is not my start. For me, again, going back to Iraq. When we were hatching the podcast, the war in Iraq was heading into its first of many, you know, gutters. And 70% of the people in this country thought Saddam Hussein had been behind 9-11. We knew then, we know absolutely now it was a complete wrong statement. I mean, it was propaganda. It was bullshit, for lack of a better term. It was, we were being used, we were being stampeded into incredible, historic folly. That to me is the problem. And, you know, I wrote at the time. If the New York Times, the New York Times should have done banner headlines saying it is not about Saddam Hussein. 9-11 was not about, until people flushed out the truth and came to understand what we were doing. I mean, I, it sounds like such an old school, but, you know, I go by Tony Judt's line. You know, we have big problems in this country. Money worship is for one. The, the erosion of a social democracy is another big one. And a dilapidated public conversation is the third and it makes the others possible. We're not talking about real stuff in this country, even now. And, and with all due respect to the heroic entertainer Donald Trump, you know, we're not getting it out of this political campaign. And I, I get sort of frantic thinking who's going to speak for the people. And I think the people, part of the reason they discussed it, as Tony Judt said, there's no place to have a reasonable kitchen table conversation about real stuff. I think it's behind the Tea Party. I think it's behind Occupy. There's this immense vacuum of reality conversation in us, among us, the reality community. Okay. So where's it going? But podcasts? Where's the podcast going? Okay. Where am I going? No, the forum. No, no, no. I think this does tie in, but one of the things about the podcast, let's remember, it's it's public radio or not. It's the voice. It's the human voice. Studs Turkle called it Vox Humana, that fabulous instrument. Why do we love radio? Why do we love podcasts? Because you hear a human voice in all this incredible variety and contradiction and accidental revelation, blah, blah, blah. So the question is how to enliven the human voice in a conversation that matters. That's interesting, can be entertaining, can be poetic, musical, whatever, but there's on reality. So I just say two things about the future. As I say, the commercial thing is fascinating. I'm glad you've got an army truck, Ben. I don't have a big one. They're here. You deserve it. You deserve it. There's no question about that. At the same time, you know, this country can make money on shit without trying. That's what we do. That's what we do. And so big deal. Yeah, we did it with broadcasting. The Brits, you know, got the BBC. We got commercial broadcasting. And it's a bit of a problem, but it's a reflex. And it does not address anything that I'm interested in. The other side of it is, I think the problem that I'm really fascinated by, including PRX's great efforts, is how do we aggregate great voices? I mean, I never stopped podcasting even, you know, even a week through the through the downtime. But I was always looking for, you know, Tim Leary said, find the others, find other people, not necessarily the degree with me, but in different countries, different cultures, different angles, but that would begin to amass the what became very phony authority of the New York Times. I mean, sort of all the all the news, all the ideas we think of as the original, all things considered, Stamburg glory days. But I think with podcasting right now, we're getting that that plethora of voices. I really do. I think that's what you know, we have no question. And for intelligent searcher, it's an unbelievable time to want information. You can get it. You can hear voices, but to get to find the others, to aggregate them without smothering each other, that to me is the riddle ahead. I mean, I coming back to your question there, I just want to jump in on that. I feel that I just want to say that I'm not worried about the future because Jake's not worried. I mean, really, like, I'm not worried about anything. I just when I when I see that, so I just want to make that clear. But I, you know, thinking about the the waves, you know, you're the way you see it in terms of years. I've always seen it more kind of almost like a Rashman narrative where they're all happening at the same time. So you have podcasting is a story about technology that starts with Dave Weiner and Chris here at the Berkman Center with, you know, RSS, MP3 enclosures. Then you have the business model money story, which really doesn't take off until Roman hijacks the public radio business model in 2011 with his Kickstarter. And then you have the art form story. And to me, that's the only one that's interesting. I think the technology boring money's boring. The art form one is actually the one that is so exciting right now. And to your question about, you know, public radio and the other types of shows out there, I feel that because serial was connected to a public radio institution, that's why we're still focused on on on the connections to radio. But that was that is a thread that doesn't really exist. I feel something really interesting in 2004, Dave Weiner and I got in a big fight because he said I wasn't a podcast. I was too good to be a podcast. I was I was radio. I was like, I didn't fit in his definition of podcasting. And this was like the day after he had just aired like his own podcast where he'd left the microphone on like went to the bathroom. So I was like, all right, you know, we just had it out. But you know, I was on a panel with Sarah Canning last year, and she said the same thing, like there's no difference between radio and podcasting, which is what I had said back to David then. And I realized that I don't believe that anymore. I actually think that there is something to this actual medium itself, which is different than radio, that you can't use the same tricks. You have to approach it in a certain way. It speaks to what you mentioned, Chris, about the voice and about getting people together around conversation and personality. And I think that, you know, I feel a podcast that doesn't get enough love is the Welcome to Night Vale podcast, which is not connected to public radio, which is done extremely well, like knocked it out of the park in terms of numbers, in terms of monetization started. They do tours, they sell stuff. And yet you see a lot of the media stories about the ones that are connected to the public radio world. And I feel that just as, you know, the podcasting stole the business model from public radio or ran with it, that you're going to see that in the future. Like that, we don't really have an ownership of that moving forward. I think we're going to see an explosion of really amazing. How has your show changed? So like you did one in 2004 and now you're doing one now? What's the story? I think I really made it more like a radio show. I felt that one of the things I've noticed this year, especially sort of with the Gimlet with their startup podcast, the idea, you know, I like to just start mine. And you know, it's kind of confused. You don't know exactly what's going on. And I felt that worked in the age of radio because as a show's over and the next one comes on, you're going to have to get up to turn the radio off. And I like to always play with that idea like, oh, I'm going to keep people listening, like, you know, by disorienting them. Yeah, we're just like, you know, it's trying my thing. And I feel that in the podcast, real man, you have to get people to turn you on and like to do that, they kind of really do need to know what's going on. So there's like a more of a tug to like being guided that really didn't exist, I feel, in the in the old radio way, which is fine. I mean, I think we have a narrative personality driven tradition that's awesome and we can lead to all kinds of great things. But I do I feel like my eyes have been opened up to the idea that it is different, which is what Dave Weiner had argued to me here at the Berkman Center in 2004. And I didn't believe him. I mean, I think I think that an important point here, too, is that the the public radio and the all the stations and all the networks included are centers for excellent audio making. So it makes sense that some of the stories that that are doing the best on in podcasting come from all of those excellent institutions. There's also a high overlap of the demographic of public radio listeners and people who own iPhones. And since iTunes and Apple is so dominant in this field, like that's not a mystery. And one of the things that I look forward to in the next wave, and I think it actually will increase the democratization of this is the Android side because there are more Android users in the world than iPhone users. And so I think that that's going to really change the access and the kinds of conversations that we're going to hear. The signal to noise ratio is still an important reality. It's important for Ali for us, even though we have a we occupy a lot of this sort of one percent of these top podcasts in the iTunes store. But the the next the next wave is going to see what happens when really there's a very different conversation going on with women, people of color, different communities and the Android users have full access in a really different way. I think it's going to really change things. Yeah, I think I mean, that's that's one of the great hopes for this is that it both has the potential to transcend its public radio origins, which is public radios famously kind of been caught in a sort of self-fulfilling format. The dominant franchise has served a particular audience and that's created a sound that is successful, but not appealing to all kinds of people who don't either hear themselves reflected or have a chance to get on the air. So both the sort of gatekeepers of broadcasts, but also the sounds that are being produced. And it also has a chance to transcend its technology origins. So the early adopters, both of like who could figure out how to make a feed and who could figure out how to subscribe to one is tends to skew as many internet technologies due to a particular kind of dominant white male techie crowd. And we're starting to see that really transform. And I think that is one of the big opportunities ahead of all of us that we're trying to intentionally, you know, do things that the public radio could never do because of its constraints around broadcast. And that's still in the early days. I think there is an interesting facet of the technology story, even though Ben finds the technology part of the business part is boring for Ben, which is why Harry and I manage that part. And he does the awesome story time. But this bit about RSS. So this is like actually RSS 2.0. It's a standard that is like actually, you know, housed at the Berkman Center. And in media, it's one of the last remaining open standards protocols that's actually driving significant media type. So video has been carved off into sort of islands of of, you know, access. So YouTube being the dominant one, but you've got their Netflix and others of the world. Even blogging has, while still huge, you know, you've got Facebook, basically, where all publishing happens and you've got Medium now trying to create a different sort of island around it. We still have this moment where RSS and podcasting is an open-ended system. And I love the idea that that's still part of its participatory promise and origin story. It's part of a public radio and it's in its theory. It was always part with the public piece of it. And to Chris's first point, like this is exactly how the hope for, you know, everybody being a blogger is still part of the podcast story. And I'm worried about that if I'm going to be worried, I'll be worrying about that, which is sort of what has started to happen in video will happen in podcasting. You'll start to have to go here for Ben's show and there, you know, for Roman show. And that would be a problem. But as it gets more popular and valuable, that tends to be a trend of successful internet companies, which is to fold, you know, close the doors after everybody's left. But we already have some of that. You think like Audible's plan, which is another very successful audio company. I mean, you kind of have to go there to get their shows and and books. Yeah. Well, they're investing heavily in. I just want to say that when you said institutions, though, I have to say that I feel like a lot of that is not the public radio institutions that are making the great podcasting. It's people who left those institutions. And I think that's an important distinction. I mean, I was at Gimlitz one year anniversary party the last couple of weeks ago in New York and I kind of like 26 people who are now working in podcasts who left public radio left it because like they could do more and like make more of an impact and do the things that they wanted to do. So I kind of feel that like I'm watching the public radio infrastructure almost trying to like catch up by they're not even like taking risks at this point. Like I feel like a lot of the risks that were taken on a lot of this content was more on the margins. That's just a minor point. But I think it's important in the story. I think that the risk point is a good one too. So because of the lessening expenses of creating podcasts and creating an hour long broadcast show, which is really out of the reach of most people, the the piece that will be part of the future too is there's going to be a lot more experimentation. There's going to be a lot more fails. And that's not something that public radio is super accustomed to because by the time they launch a broadcast radio show, they've done a million polls, lots of focus group studies, et cetera. And so we're absolutely moving into much more experimental time frame that is exciting. But also like we're going to have to work through what works and what doesn't. And we're going to have to be very nimble about that in show development. It's still hard to get a show with zero audience to get a big audience. It's it's still extremely hard in podcasting where it's digital only. It's you really have to be like there are there are exceptions, but a network effect of like minded shows or talent is really what's going to get the lift. How is we talked a lot about the trucks full of money that don't actually exist? I think everyone would stipulate to that. But certainly we're playing a lot more to advertisers and underwriters I think than we ever did before. Kerry talked about the birth of podcasts at public radio stations being maybe partly a function of the existence of studios and equipment where you could record things. And now we can all do that on our laptops. But the other thing public radio stations have is sort of a business model and an existing way of supporting their programming. And as we all know now we are the Kerry and Jake in particular spending a lot of time thinking about how to bring advertisers into the story. Does that cut against the kind of experimentation you're talking about Kerry or people going to be less likely to engage in experimentation if they're also worried about bringing in more advertisers? Are we moving more toward a commercial media model where we have to take the commercial advertisers interests into account? Or anyone? Anyone have any thoughts? I don't think so. I mean I think that there are there are and this question is a little challenging because there's so many different kinds of content and I do think that investigative journalism shows are going to operate very differently than other shows. The producers we work with can always say no to advertisers which we which we use liberally when when we feel it's appropriate. But the what what advertisers are waking up to is that the listeners of podcasts to Ben's point earlier they're they're they're subscribing they're selecting there's choosing saying I want to listen to this. That's a more intimate experience and it's a it's a more dedicated fan base that we've been able to secure. And so the advertisers are waking up to that reality. There's still a lot of work we all have to do on measurement etc. But but there is there is much more interest we've seen since we work in both broadcast and posking we've seen a shift in broadcast dollars being shifted to podcasting. That's a totally new that's totally new. That was not the way it used to be even just two or three years ago. And more is coming I think because of the ad blocking story. I get everything that's in the news right now with what's going on with web publishing and ad blockers. I feel that in podcasting you know a lot of that excitement that advertisers have to sort of you know jumping on the hype train. I feel like that's going to benefit what we do as well. As a maker I mean just this year has been so instructional but I'm not exactly the biggest fan of advertising. But I will say that you know the discovery piece and that's that's an interesting piece of the technology story I feel the technology the discovery piece is so hard with so many podcasts out there it blew my mind to realize that some people will hear an ad at the beginning of a podcast as a sign that oh this must be a good podcast. And so I mean you just yeah my brain just melts when I when that research kind of came my way I just yeah. And the other piece of the other pieces of the business model like some of them are tried and true you know we we think of it as a three-legged stool of you know philanthropic dollars and donations and sponsorships we kind of have to balance everything out we work hard on all three fronts and so that's the strategy that we take some take a membership model some use paywalls there's all kinds of strategies that people are experiment with I mean the one of the exciting things for us and this I think is born out in examples like Kickstarter is the power of the micro donation that is a new thing so in public radio you're really looking for the sustainer donor the people that'll give you sort of an average of a hundred dollars over a year and then you ask them for a lot of information and then you have you send them mature you know fulfillment gifts and you have you're really kind of banking on them to mature with you and what we were learning with our shows is that people just give five dollars or ten dollars because they're inspired in a in a moment to do so and we have to be very careful to not ruin that moment by asking them too many details about themselves just accept it keep building good good shows and good audience and move on to the next and so that though all of that has really changed for us that's a very much against standard fundraising just picking up I mean the advertising story is a fascinating one because it's you know so challenged in the digital space the ad blocking thing is like clearly basically the counter trend to the entire saturation we're experiencing the hope is that we are not going to be reliant on advertising as media and journalism forever because that actually could really skew the entire internet if that becomes the sole source and then the less you know the audio engagement and the sort of CPMs from advertisers has been chasing like wherever they can find some value and that you know podcasting is relatively new and that especially mobile which otherwise is like a really painful thing for advertisers to get to you but the inevitable trend for most digital media is that those go down over time as people figure out more efficient ways of selling it and there's more inventory and there's more programmatic ways of fulfilling it so we're in what I do think is maybe a temporary maybe several years hopefully for your sake to bubble around that but what's amazing is that the crowdfunding trend has emerged in a way that like you know public radio had pioneered 40 years ago and managed to sort of cultivate still without you know any data but has managed to do sort of through brute force and pledge drives for years and here's comes crowdfunding with both Kickstarter and Patreon and now there's like multiple sort of ones around different communities and constituencies and we see that as something that could really start to evolve in a different way where the fans of shows or the fans of Ben's show not just through a one-time campaign but for something that's connected how you talk to them can support this in a way that isn't just merely about you know the transaction and on the front side too I feel like the planet money t-shirt thing they did which you know funded all of that programming was on you know like was basically asking listeners to invest in like the front and not even reward it that to me was still like so one of the most exciting things I've seen and I'm hoping you know I think you know as Carrie mentioned you know the three-legged stool I feel that because of that you know the advertising sort of money truck thing we it's almost like it's it's been hard to focus on that other stool you know like we did our Kickstarter campaign last year which can't which obviously is part of that but I'm really excited to seeing you know especially you know since I know some about it like some of the the more work that we're doing especially organizations like Radiotopia and you know maybe others in this space and in terms of developing that's that leg of the stool Chris I got a quick question comment and then a question maybe for Ben especially but the comment I mean I feel always compelled to to thank Ralph Aldo Emerson for inventing the internet in 1850 or so but basically you read Emerson what is it about it's about trust thyself every heart vibrates to that iron string write it now don't read it in somebody else under somebody else's name change your mind if you must don't be a conformist but the whole idea of an expressive democracy is all there in Emerson he was a he was a genome guy one species way ahead of his time he was a global guy student of Indian theology and Persian poetry way ahead of his time but he believed in conversation he believed in democratic conversation and seems to me the internet is just the fulfillment of a vision of a Gabby species that loves all manner of culture, politics, interaction and and now we have it for the whole bloody world that's that's a short comment so we have to live up to that gift I think that's mission but we all feel this sort of tide of audience talent as Ben says you know a lot of the best people are getting out of this promised land and and money out of public broadcasting into podcast world and I just want to all of us to sort of stop for a moment and say you know is this what we want what are we what are we losing and to think hard about it but also to hold the public broadcasting to account I mean I still think did the newspapers have to die they were all wrong on the on the gigantic issue of our of their moment you know the war in Iraq and they never asterisked George Bush that pissed me off to begin with as you know the Roger Maris of our president selected not elected he should have been asterisk and he should have been held under close check but they weren't they may and every single one of them and the New Yorker and the Washington Post and the Boston Globe they all lemmings into that disaster and most of them have never said mayor culpa mayor culpa and a lot of the worst writers are still writing telling us about the world they know nothing about the world so people left the newspapers for good reason if the newspapers had another chance could they save themselves could they could they rebuild the credibility could public radio institutions then make it more interesting make it more welcoming to talents like yours and make it more true make it feel like podcast world is it too late to say we had something brilliant there it works like crazy it's you know I don't work in public media I do halfway well I just it's just not my problem I feel like if they really you're a citizen man come on no they have a lot of money for their board meetings they have nice offices they can figure this out on their own time I'm not where the newspapers did yeah all I know is that it's just not my problem and maybe they could fix it out but like rock out like I'm just gonna I'm I think it's much more interesting to talk about where all those people who left are going rather than can like the people who are left where are the managers in the office people that are just good luck so we have a little more we have a little more sympathy than Benjamin does and you know we peer X really was born out of public radio institutions a lot of ways but designed to help bridge this gap to something brand new so we don't have a tower we're not you know run by NPR we're independent and based on the web and built digital from the get go but have seen and feel and respect a huge amount of the institutional value that we continue to actually be part of so we continue to distribute broadcast shows the moth is on over 500 public radio stations and the reach of those stations and the power of that broadcast has helped them create events and communities and slams and storytelling hours that are now you know a huge part of actually how people are connecting around storytelling and the best of those stations have embraced their role as civic institutions and not just sort of simple pass through of audio programs and some of them in particular are trying to you know jump into this fray in a way that I think will have a positive role and when we talk about in podcasting particular for them there's a couple of opportunities one is some of them really can be incubators for the next generation of this there are talented people in their walls who are not getting a shot at the mic and could Radio Lab famously started as like a Sunday night show in the off hours of WNYC and turned into something phenomenal that is like transcended both broadcast and podcast there are also people that is just as it was starting and their podcast started out of the gate and then there are also people in our communities that if they wanted to invite in because they do have some of that same thing that Radio Topia offers which is sort of a platform and a back office and some sort of ways to help them with skills that would be a good role as another kind of you know lift and I think their opportunity to Chris's point is to change their air and to reflect something that's happening that's wildly different than what the sort of stable of programs that we've heard for decades on public radio are and now is the opportunity to do that role which is they've been a curator and a connector of great stuff for their audiences much many of whom still are not yet hip to you know downloading the right app and connecting around this kind of stuff and it would be a great role as some of them are starting to do to say hey there's incredible diverse new interesting things and you should hear about it and we'll help you find it you know when you say it could be an incubator I mean that's like yes anything is possible but I mean I just want to say like from the point of view of like a young 20 something producer where so many of them right now so excited about like becoming like the next Roman when they think you know they see Kickstarter dollars as Kerry famously said and think that's all they need to to to make a show when it actually takes a lot more investment and a lot more time and a lot more strategy which is true but that said I don't think any of the young producers I know especially living in New York and which are so many of them and then the ones we interact with they're inspired by people like you with like radio topia and organizations sort of on the margins but like no one is looking at a radio station as a way that WNYC podcast accelerator had a huge number of applicants because they are excited about the lift the visibility the talent they have been for sure like we think radio topia and sort of breaking out of all of those institutional constraints is like that's our bet like we are doing that but I think there's no reason not to try to lift and pull the parts of this industry that has such tremendous reach and value and tradition into this world and we're not giving up on them we're not waiting for them to get it yeah no I'm just saying from the point of view of the producer type I feel that they see they see more opportunity for sure in this explosion of podcasting than the other model I agree I mean I guess I just want to add I just want to add to this because I feel so I so agree with what Chris is saying and my answer is I hope so because public broadcasting like if it is very harmful to us to live in a society where all of the media outlets that reach the biggest audience are owned by such a you know a small number of corporations and so let's hope so let's hope they actually make better news make better shows like stop being so vanilla ice cream sometimes and like it's just it's an imperative now that doesn't and sometimes when things like podcasting come around where advertising dollars start shifting around that is actually a good disruptive moment because it's a reminder to public broadcasting who's losing talent losing some advertising dollars say okay wait we have a mission and we have to fulfill it because we have to provide for ourselves to continue to do this because it's so imperative to a civil democracy for us to have a good public broadcasting system that's a great moment maybe we probably have 20ish minutes left to segue out to you all if the word podcast is dated then the reference to playing Phil Donahue when you have a wireless mic maybe did as well I have to say that so we've got a couple of them in the room if anyone wants to dive in and ask some questions let's go start right up here and introduce yourself alright introduce yourself you've got to only get 999 questions say again introduce yourself too oh hi I'm Karen I help young I help parents of young children worry more and enjoy less with my podcast we turned out okay and I that's a great name I have a thousand questions but I'm going to ask one so I am a podcaster because I have well I came on this path because I have a disorder which I can't use my hands and my arms as well as most people and I used to be like a quilter and then I was a knitter and getting to your point I this is an art for me I mean it's not you know it's not like a like painting or something like that but it's using my voice to help people and tell stories and hear stories is the best thing ever and so my question is how do I make that not go away like my what what lessons do you guys have from this sort of like downtime and podcasting this scary time and how do I what do I do like next week and as I'm planning to keep podcasting because it's so important it's so important so that's my question thanks I would turn to these two in the middle it's a craft oh the I thought you were talking about the craft I thought our question was more about how does she make it through the downtime I think you guys might be so I mean one of the things when we were first starting Radiotopia we would cite a couple of influential sort of ideas one was the whole idea of being a platform for talent so finding the best talent but the other one was Kevin Kelly's article about a thousand true fans and that part of this recalibration is that to be successful you don't need to reach a hundred thousand people and sell ads to make sure that you're sustainable but that part of the joy of the internet is having the match between artists and audiences that are you know far more fragmented and that a thousand people who love what you do might find a way to support it and then what's been actually surprisingly missing from podcasting given that it's a digital medium is that we actually don't know much about who's listening and we should know more and is the next set of investments in these platforms and now that Spotify has podcasting in it and knows everything about what you're listening to the hope is that some of that becomes feedback that you can use and that you would actually be able to appeal to your listeners and perhaps it's a small crowdfunding campaign or perhaps it's a subscription to your newsletter but those are the things that I think at the and the long tail of this like growing world of podcasting can help sustain things that are really good but are designed for a small audience. Other thoughts on that from the maker side? Yeah, I think that what what we've done with Radio Topia which is sort of aggregate a few shows like Minded Souls together, we've seen a few other podcasting collectives pop up. I mean, it seems that in the niche that you're interested in, there are a lot of podcast popping like parenting or you know, like it seems that there's maybe yeah, look for as Chris even said find the others and band together. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, why not? Sure. Yeah. I would just say keep doing it. Your spirit is so beautiful. You've got the idea. You do it with passion. Just keep doing it. Good. Tell people. I mean, if you told your listeners just that. You'll find ones that love you to death across the room there. Yep. Hey, my name is Mary Dew. I'm actually a producer of both a radio show and a podcast at WGBH. You guys touch on this a little bit, but I'm curious to think about what you think about the white noise issue that being every time you look in iTunes, there's 100 new podcasts every week. And I find that a lot of my friends who are discovering new podcasts basically look at the top 10 in iTunes. And you touch on this a little bit with, you know, iTunes might not be the player anymore. But if you're not, you know, getting featured on This American Life or in the top 10, is it really possible for a lot of people to break through as more and more and more podcasts start getting made? Yes, it is. And touching on what Jake just said, you know, you have to find your your community and your niche audience. You look for those echo opportunities too. So like you, I don't know what type of show you're doing necessarily, but, you know, finding people who can guest on your show or whatever like the just that echo effect of their audience. There's a podcast called Longest Shortest Time. It's a parenting podcast. And she found a huge community by creating Facebook groups around the country. And then they started to be created without her. So she had started started a real movement like like that. But just a marker here the in like Lipson, which is a popular podcast host, they have been public that only 1% of the podcasts that they host have greater than 50,000 downloads and episodes. So just so just to put some reality around that $50,000, excuse me, 50,000 downloads per episode is about where you can start to monetize a podcast, not exclusively if you have a niche, but it's around that. So only 1% exceed that. So there is a lot of noise out there. That is absolutely true. And finding that way is partly through networks, partly through really creative marketing, you know, podcasters today, and this is true for Ben too. I mean, they have to be fundraisers, they have to be marketers, they have to be good producers, they have to be audio engineers, and they have to be pretty good hosts. So it's like there's a full stack of skills that are happening. And I think that the other piece is making sure that if your goal is like the goal should always be audience first. Money will come when the audience comes. Audience is the currency that propels the revenue. So just keep on that and keep them and could care of them and always have a newsletter. And always use very good metadata. This is an often missed opportunity for podcasters that are putting their stuff up. Because if people hear something, you know, most podcasters are recommended by a friend, maybe people listen to, they can only retain so much. But they're only going to retain one thing about your show. And if it isn't one of your keywords, by the time they get back to their, you know, desktop computer to check Google, you know, you've lost that you've lost that opportunity. So this is one of the most commonly sort of observed broken bits of podcasting, which is discovery. And and it's true that other than word of mouth and a few recommendations and cross promotion, like in networks, that is actually lagged behind the growth. But we're starting to see a lot more interesting innovation investments in that we're seeing these email newsletters that are just like the weekly here's the review of the best podcast. There's going to soon be a podcast about podcasts that's coming out pretty soon. There's going to try to do the same thing. Apple's trying to do a better job. Although Apple, again, is like surprisingly small team who's managing this entire thing. And someone was asking me like, what's their way of doing all the marketing and recommendations for podcasts? And I said, it's it's Steve. And it is, it's just one guy at Steve. And he has an astonishing amount of things that he listens to and promotes, but it's really just Steve. And so I think there's going to be like partly I think this is what's going to if you watch this space like the discovery piece and how that for weaves into how things are shared and social will be part of the most advanced innovation in this next year. Just to add to that, the most people are learning about podcasts for through a friend. They just are. So all of that. That's why the social media is so powerful. But remember to promote your episodes, not your not only your podcast, because the episodes are really what people will remember and be attracted to. You have to give them the gateways. Yes. Thank you. My name is Laurel, and I'm the Dean of a School of Communication at an institution of higher education in the Boston area. And we have a digital journalism program and I've watched over the years are numbers drop to the point where I'm concerned that the upper level administration is going to be considering getting rid of our digital journalism program, which I think is very sad. And one of the things that I've been talking about and thinking about is podcasting as a profession and a profession under the umbrella of journalism. And I've started to try to promote our program and we do have classes in podcasting. We've had them for a number of years. And I'm wondering if you think this is realistic and perhaps because I know I'm not alone in terms of the dropping numbers of new students entering the profession of journalism. Is it realistic? Do you think to promote podcasting as a way under the journalism profession? Would you apply? I'm actually teaching a podcasting class in a journalism program in New York for a semester as part of a journalism and design at the school program. And there's 15 students and yeah, they all see similar to why I was kind of pushing back with Jake talking about public radio stations. Yeah, their goal is all of them they want to be like they want to be Roman Mars. None of them want to go work at a radio station. They all want to create their own podcast. So I think so, absolutely. I mean, it is important to be able to tell anybody who's going to put in resources to get an education. You do have to tell that other side of the story of where where do you go with that? And I just think while my first answer when I heard your question was yes, it's good. You should focus on that. It was almost a little bit of an over emphasis on the technology. The journalism part is still the most important part of the content is still the most valuable valuable part. And the network effect is one thing, but in the technology enables it. So the, you know, you have to I don't know that the word podcasting is going to increase the traffic for students necessarily. There still has to be a promising job market outside of any investment in education. But but I do think that you have to figure out a way to describe that that's very multi-platform because that's the reality that we're working in. That's anybody who's studying journalism. They've got to be adept at all of these all of these different platforms. I think it's it is a good time to start creating those classes. Ben's teaching them Transom Workshop is doing a great job of it. Air is doing it. Third Coast is doing it. Center for Documentary Studies. There are these pathways in and a clear surge of like interest in it. And still, of course, the worry this would be for any professional program that there's not enough jobs on the other side of that which is still true of all this sector is growing. And so now is a good time to begin facilitating that. It's steadily growing at 20 percent a year. So We pass right over here and then across the room. Hi, my name is Anton. I'm an emergency physician and emergency medicine educator and podcaster from Toronto. And I've got a podcast that I've been going for about five years with about two million downloads. What's it called? It's called emergency medicine cases. My question is we haven't really touched on education and I was wondering what you thought the role of podcasting in education in general was for the future? Anyone? Chris? Chris, do you want to? Uh, no. Anybody? I mean podcasting to educate people or in an organized way or in schools and whatnot. Yeah. I mean much, yeah. I would just say like much like journalism. I mean, it's as a pathway or as a particular mode or format, it's a good one. So, you know, given that it's designed for information and storytelling and retention and basically people who said like audio delivered through voice actually is a very good way to be learning and teaching and there's like tons of apps and stories that are working on that not necessarily in podcasting. You know iTunes has the entire education. You know iTunes use side of it, which is audio lectures. There's like an equivalent of like the Khan Academy video stuff that's in audio form. I feel like it's a natural segue from that format to an educational use. I don't know if there's any particular about like how you'd format for an educational purpose. Part of the trick with podcasting is that it has this sort of designed in kind of rhythm to a regularity like you have to publish a series or make it something where you build an audience or on a subscription base and that's actually been kind of a hindrance. So it might be that you have an awesome one-time lecture and like you don't want to create a whole show out of it. And so that's actually one of the kind of gaps in the interface. Hi, my name is Charlie Warren. I'm a producer of public radio programs have been for the last six or seven years after a full career in commercial broadcast. What I'm getting, the basis between the difference between podcasts and radio basically seems to be individual versus group. In other words, one individual creating a digital means of broadcast is that the term? And then the other being the radio stations having not only broadcast now but the digital medium also. Is that a little bit too simplified to think of it as one is created by an individual and the other as a group operation? Yes. It's also just because you know the investment like Radio Topia started with a lot of shows that were already in progress that had already been created. I think that now I mean you're seeing instead some of these podcasting operations looking at investing in creating new shows that will have staffs that will have more than one individual. So I think it's just that it just that the industry it was the beginning of something but as we move forward I think you're going to see some pretty intense bigger than an individual podcast coming along. And if someone's doing a podcast on an individual basis it seems like most of them start from this aspect. If one were to play a Whitney Houston record from 1991 or something like that isn't there a licensing problem here? Who's going to chant? Who's going to take care of the an expert moderator who can answer that question? It's an interesting conversation we've all been having about sort of the very different music licensing landscape when you're wrapping things up in a podcast and offering it for download than if you're putting it out over the air and we could have a whole day long session as we may ultimately do on that exact issue. More? Other thoughts here? Hi my name is Mabel Chan I also have a long history of producing for Network News actually and trying to develop a podcast right now. Just following up on the distinction between podcasting and radio show would you feeling to share your experiences? What have you been right about and wrong about in terms of characteristics that sell? You talked about narrative personality and different voices. I mean have you been right about if you sound really edgy if you sound really fast or characteristics that you think actually can work but they actually didn't work or that you you were wrong that this kind of voice will not work and it does. So I'm looking for examples and sort of essential elements of what make a podcast work and that is not what you find in radio now. I can start with I'm not a producer but I have some observations on this because and this is tied to Charlie's question about so the the broadcast objective is to sort of create the buzz like you're reaching one to many and you're creating a buzz in conversation and the podcast audiences is kind of can only be considered like together but alone and so you are still trying to create a buzz but people are experiencing you very very much alone and often when they're doing other things you're right in their earbuds. So that gives you a narrative opportunity to be very different than you would on broadcast and so we have two shows in our network that came from the years of public radio radio diaries and the kitchen sisters have a podcast called Fugitive Waves. So they're award-winning producers everything they do is beautiful they are they're sophisticated the sound engineering is really incredible and the switch to podcasting has been very challenging for them. They never put themselves in anything they've produced up until now their own voices they they we're always telling the stories of the world and others and they're struggling a little bit with how to put themselves what do they do just like put themselves at the top and maybe in the credits or do they weave themselves through this is a this is definitely a very interesting skill set shift that we've seen and the people that are native to podcasting the younger folks are just like start out doing this they don't even they don't even pause on this and there's some they don't have trouble talking about themselves in this way either so that is it's a real tension and I would just recommend like listening to a couple of podcasts that are different so that you can pick up on like what they might do well and what what they don't what or not what they don't do well but sort of how they're how they're a little bit different so in our network like on two examples would be well Ben's show of course is one it's all Ben the whole show it's Ben's thoughts it's Ben's opinions it's I have other people no I'm not no he's he's reporting don't get me wrong but it's it's absolutely his perspective and then if you listen to radio diaries or kitchen sisters you can really see the difference and how they might think about that so hopefully that's helpful I think one that I would just notice that might be helpful to you to think about is I think the archive thing is something a lot of folks might be wrong about the idea is that when you can have everything on on the back end that you find a show you like you hear an episode you're going to go back and listen to all of that right away I think it's kind of wrong like I continually have had emails from some listeners who discovered the show and they'll write me every week and like I'm assuming that they like the show the much this much they must have gone back and and hurt so the question of repeats what do you do which is different in radio you know are you really going to put another one in your feed considering it's still right there the archive I will get emails from the same listeners saying oh my god this is my new favorite episode so that means you never went back and heard that one before which I found surprising and I don't I mean there's still research going into this question about it what do you think Jake is it that's a real recent are the is the archives are people are the superfans going back and hearing this the superfans are and I think part of what's interesting about the new you have fake superfans spent I am I go back and listen to all of them and I skip there was another question over there right in the back there and then we'll wrap it up he had his hand up too well whatever my name is Lana I'm not in any way affiliated with making podcasts nor and but I definitely enjoy listening to them I am a communication researcher and educator which means I think about things like the public sphere and the social role or the democratic role of communication technologies to shape public discourse and that kind of thing and I think that well some of the research from my field has shown that one of the functions of media is to make people feel integrated into their local communities and to understand the issues and be invested in them at play and also to do the same to shape like global scale making to allow us to have global kinds of imaginations and one of the things that the present leading podcasts kind of do is not really focus on community concerns or on global kind of journalism type things but to kind of create a trans local community the of people who could be living in Brooklyn or could be looking living in Silver Lake or Cambridge who are all listening to the same things and talking about them but not necessarily integrating them with other people who live in the same community as them so while it may not be Ben's business to think about like you know the future of public radio I do think it's all of our business to think about like what kinds of deliberative democracy material we are producing and whether we think that's an important function or not and whether or not there is a vision for creating more kind of just journalism type things that are focused more on local issues or on the kind of like global international politics type stuff I have a couple thoughts so good say so as more and more public radio stations get into podcasting I think we will see more local content coming out and so this all gets back to the goals so some of our shows their goal is to become independent from a public radio station so that they can have enough resources to be able to produce those 99% podcasts that are not in the 1% of a lot of those are actually marketers and people who are using podcasts for a different goal it's not to not to make money it's to extend a a message and branding of a different business like a real estate business or something like that there's still an enormous amount most of the podcasts are doing that so therefore I think that we will see more and more niche local pieces of content coming up that are audio based because they're they're not designed to you know make a lot of money they're designed to extend a message and that I think we're going to see a lot of I think that the the tools are there the educational institutions like we were just talking about are there the training is there and I just think it's a matter of time so I mean I think um it is one of those questions about that public radio feels like it has tried to create a town square and some sort of a civic space which it sort of prides itself on but also has come up short and in many ways podcasting is not seemingly solving that yet the local piece is a challenging one for any digital media business model and that's one of the reasons why it hasn't succeeded or really been attempted in podcasting we see shows like reveal and other ones that are taking root that do a sort of attack sort of a genre or a topic or a journalism sphere that can be actually done better in podcasting than public radio could do because it draws on talent from all of those kind of quadrants I do think there's going to be a role for some sort of institutions and new intermediaries that like actually take that civic role meaningfully and they might not be the ones that we've had in the past but if this becomes a channel that more people are listening and consuming and participating through that form will elevate within it and hopefully shape some of exactly that same thing that's taking root in public radio I think we'll leave it there join me in thanking Christopher Leiden Kerry Hoffman Jake Shapiro I'm the new walker and thanks to all of you for coming appreciate it