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Issue with the sheer volume of LTB podcasts

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goocy

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Location: Germany

I don't know if I'm in the minority, but I have a zero-episodes policy: I try to listen to everything I download, in full.
I think of myself as an above-average podcast listener, at about 12 hours per week (coming from 30 sources).
Of course, there are long episodes (e.g., 4+ hours) that come out rarely (e.g., every two weeks) and short episodes that appear daily. But on average I listen to each podcast for approximately the same combined time.

LTB is the big exception. Hour-long podcasts coming out daily, this is something that strains my schedule. I'm fascinated by the topic, but I can only barely deal with the volume. When I already have a problem with the sheer volume, it will be overwhelming for the average new podcast listener.
The usual strategy, skipping certain episodes, doesn't work here because I don't know from the title which topics I could safely skip. Subscribing to individual channels also doesn't help because each has some excellent content I don't want to miss.

Very recently, each episode started to include a short summary at the beginning. This already helps a bit because it allows me to skip the episode if I'm not interested in anything.
But I'd like to brainstorm about other ideas that make the LTB podcast more accessible.

Posted on March 26, 2014 at 4:15 PM
Last Edited: March 26, 2014 at 4:39 PM

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• goocy

  

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  Here are some of my own:
  Include chapter marks into the podcast, each corresponding to a topic point in the initial summary. That allows me to skip directly to the content I'm interested in.Introduce much shorter channels (for example, a 5 minute channel that only deals with news). Even the NXT news could be individual episodes.Categorize (and re-release) the individual segments from existing shows into different categories (and separate podcast feeds). Off the top of my head, these feeds could be called:Background (for example, MMM's segment about Satoshi's paper)US Politics (discussions about regulation and status of Bitcoin in the law)Old finance (covering big new projects from people with a Wall Street background)Altcoins (interviews with the founders, announcing important recent changes)Bitcoin 2.0 (in-depth discussions and explanations about Mastercoin, Ethereum etc.)
  

  Posted on March 26, 2014 at 4:23 PM
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• fastfinge

  

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  As a Canadian listener, I always skip Sovereign BTC and bitcoins and gravy, because it's mostly political and/or US based content. I also skip the Sex and Science Hour, because I'm not at all interested in that kind of thing. So listening to all of the rest (Mad Money Machine, Ed and Ethan's Bitcoin Report, Let's Talk Bitcoin, and the recent Q&A sessions) is totally manageable for me. But I agree that, as the network grows, this is going to become a problem.

  There has already been some discussion of content curators here, and I know it's come up in other threads that I can't seem to find right now. The trouble with adding chapter markers is that I think the vast number of podcast clients don't support them. Also, segmenting the podcasts could create even more work for publishers. Perhaps, until curating gets built into the new website, as Adam has already said it eventually will, the best solution is to create a section on the Wiki that was recently announced. A page could be made for each episode of every show, and the community could add the times of each segment, so people could jump directly there. Kind of a podcast topical index, if you will. This would have the side effect of making it easy to search for information that has already been covered in the past.

  Posted on March 26, 2014 at 5:21 PM
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• goocy

  

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  User-generated chapter marks in the wiki? That can work.
  Any chance of automatically generating a few feeds from the tags associated with those chapters?
  

  Posted on March 26, 2014 at 5:47 PM
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• fastfinge

  

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  Maybe. I had a quick check, but I can't find the license the podcast is under. If it's some kind of creative commons, in theory it would be possible to generate cue sheets from the wiki, and have a command line script split the files based on the community generated cue sheets, and rehost the new split files somewhere like archive.org. I think page templates should be able to handle getting correctly formatted output in MediaWiki? I don't know as much about that software as I would like. But I know once we have a community generated cue sheet, the file splitting and the rest can be totally automated.

  Posted on March 26, 2014 at 6:26 PM
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• Logan

  

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  You need to have people build a habit around coming to LTB to read, to listen, and this is working really well right now. I don't see them changing it.

  Posted on March 27, 2014 at 3:36 AM
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• Mutatu

  

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  Location: Dorset UK

  I am in the fortunate position of having work that allows me to listen to podcasts for most of my ten hour shift. Been doing this for about two years. Turned me into a total economic/monetary/libertarian/bitcoin nerd. Have to say that LTB has become my favorite. I'm English and still appreciate the libertarian side of it (after all you did inherit much of Libertarian thought from us)
  Looking forward to the day when LTB expands into a 24/7 competitor to the BBC - Except don't want you threatening listeners(and non listeners) with a prison term if they they don't pay a poll tax.
  

  Posted on March 27, 2014 at 9:10 AM
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• neoranga

  

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  I also vote for the option to have markers on sections of the podcast, this request dates back to last summer and Adam already provided a solution in youtube where episodes are divided in parts
  

  Posted on March 27, 2014 at 10:03 AM
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• Spengler

  

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  I was managing to listen to all of the podcasts from LTB until I went on holiday in April. Since then I've been trying to catch up with it all. I've been listening to any new stuff and then trying to cross the older ones off the list as and when I can. The problem is I have another holiday approaching!! What a problem to have hey?!

  Having said this, I wouldn't want Adam to put a cap on the amount of podcasts because I enjoy them too much.

  Posted on July 16, 2014 at 1:16 PM
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• CrimsonRoze

  

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  Location: Göteborg, Sweden

  I've mostly run out of LTB podcasts to listen to and are starting to go through older episodes now. I'm in no way representative for the broader mass out there but I thought I should add my view on things as well.

  Posted on July 16, 2014 at 1:30 PM
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• adam

  

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  First we built the hydrant, now we're turning on the hose, then we'll apply the nozzle.

  I'm aware it's not how things are normally built, but it's how this is happening :)

  Posted on July 16, 2014 at 2:04 PM
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