Terry GodierNew essay:
Phantom Fluency
Why listening to smart people doesn't make you more thoughtful. You're not bad at remembering podcasts. Podcasts are bad at being remembered.
Oiva Eskola@tg small quibbles, but I think it depends on the podcasts you listen to. It’s not unusual for tech/nerd podcasts to have show notes which are also searchable on a website. And the more topical shows I listen to have chapter markers dividing each episode into topics.
But more often I’m just listening to hear my “friends” shoot the shit for an hour. I listen just because I’ve listened to the same guys for 5–10 years.
@oivaeskola totally, this could absolutely be n=1 for me and that’s ok! I do like show notes and chapters but are those really reference-able a few months later?
cuddlyanarchist 🎓 MMus@tg
I'm in a similar boat to @oivaeskola . I think podcasts can be really good in terms of information and research and learning, in the same way that interviews, lectures and speeches can, they just ask for a different type of engagement than text. I can't go and reference every sentence of my lectures at uni, but if the lecturer was good I understood a concept better, and knew where to go to read more and *how* to read that resource. With recordings and chapters, I can go back, listen again with new ears. The learning is part of a process of learning, and in that sense I think the words can be very alive. The podcast Bloodwork puts it well, at the end of each episode: “Bloodwork is a discussion, consider this your invitation”.
Of course, not all podcasts work this way, but the ones I find myself wanting to listen to (that aren't entertainment focused) do.
And with regards to referencing, so long as I can find the episode (and preferably thewsegment), I don't have anything wrong with podcasts being difficult to find references for. If I'm looking for a specific piece of information, that should be in text as a reference material, and likely already is somewhere. Otherwise, if I'm looking for a quote or an observation, I think there's a value in re-listening.
GunChleoc@cuddlyanarchist @tg @oivaeskola I think the problem here is the "as long as I can find the episode" bit. A global index of chapter titles and making show notes searchable would go a long way here I guess.
@gunchleoc @cuddlyanarchist @tg yeah. I just take issue saying this is a limitation of podcasts (“MP3 does not know what the episode is about, who is speaking, when topics change”)
I see it more a producer problem. There’s nothing stopping you from adding a transcript to show notes, or dividing an episode into a hundred chapters, and then surfacing that information also on web. Some podcast services already publish the show notes.
@gunchleoc @cuddlyanarchist @tg But again that depends on the podcast if that makes sense. There’s no adding chapters to Roderick on the Line 😅
@oivaeskola i agree, i could have been more nuanced here. But most podcast players won’t be showing transcrpts online. It’ll be a secondary thing to keep open and reference.