The State of Podcasting and Apple’s Directory Issues

You're tuned in to Altered Geek. Hello and welcome

to Altered Geek. I'm your host, Steve Megatron,

the producer, Phillips. Yes, it's convoluted,

but I don't care. And joining me in this week's

episode is Alex. Hello, I was actually going

to say Alex Megatron Phillips, but then that

doesn't work now that you said your... That just

sounds weird if you throw in my last name though.

yeah but then i don't know it's gonna make people

question things like are we related am i a crazy

stalker fan did i forget my own last name something

like that all of the above i don't know sure

why not uh so as as some may have been wondering

what we were talking about we were talking about

podcasts and uh the whole social networking aspect

of it and kind of trying to create the whole

networks and because there's a multitude of different

things that have been kind of popping up over

the last several months, if anything, trying

to garner attention, whether it's professional

critics with user generated podcast reviews or

things like pod chaser, which is a pod. It's

basically a podcast social feed that allows users

to register. and have like a personalized timeline

with like real time guest appearances and reviews

and releases and everything else. So basically

what that allows you to do is you pull up your

profile on Pond Chaser. So, for instance, mine

has, you know, a brief about and then it says

appearances and it shows like every show you're

associated with. Now granted, you have to add

them and then they vet them afterward. Okay.

But you do this and then it says, you know, you

mark whether the host, whether you're the producer,

you're the editor, you're the voice actor, you

know, whatever. And then you tag the episodes

of the whole series or however it breaks down.

And then they add it to your appearances log.

or if you've guessed it on somebody's podcast

and then it gives you their total podcast show

count and then like an episode count of how many

episodes they've been on and then like total

air time that they've, you know, been breathing

air on podcasts. And although mine's not 100

percent accurate because there's a lot of shows,

I just was like, I'm not adding these because

it's take too much time to go back. It says my

episode count is twelve hundred and five. Yeah,

it's like 13, 1400 for Mike, for Furman. So it's

like, there's no way. Yeah. And so back that

far. Yeah. And it says like, I've been in like

30, you know, associated with, you know, 3 ,539

podcasts or something, which I think somewhat

counts like the producer and the host and the

voice acting role for the same shows. So you

get almost like a double triple. So. But it's

it's all I can check it out because Because I

know doing crossovers and then doing Twig for,

what have I been doing now, probably two and

a half years, nearly three years probably now.

You add all that up and I'm on an average of

one and a half to two hours per week, probably,

if you added up my times. Maybe sometimes more

than that, but it doesn't feel like much until

you start looking at like, wow, I've done like

200 episodes already. Yeah, it was crazy when

we did like the the basically, you know podcasting,

you know, this is your life or the history of

the gcrn and Kevin went through this He went

through this massive massive document that he

created And it essentially was and I'm trying

to see if I can find it although I'm probably

not going to be able to on the air But anyways,

he crafted this giant network stats type of thing

of the history, the master list, here it is,

of the network. And he, through tedious work,

went through every show and checked all of the

descriptions to see what hosts were on what program.

Oh, wow. And, you know, like when that show ran,

And, you know, how many podcasts they had under

their belt at that particular point in time.

It's sadly been neglected by Mike and myself

because, you know, life happens. But he's also

listed like interviews, you know, all the individual

shows and then and tag them in there. And there

were shows that were missing because. Purged

them when we were trying to create space on the

web server when we were hosting our own stuff

But he even went as far as to like any guests

or any guest hosts or co -hosts that were even

minutely Associated with the network he put you

know their names in and The the long list of

everything it's just crazy. But anyways It came

to a total at this particular point in time When

we recorded this and I want to say it was Last

year Mike had 2011 episodes. I had 985 and this

was like recorded I want to say like june of

last year Okay, so kind of it was insane But

yeah, it was kind of cool to kind of see that

and you know, I've been on other Podcasting platforms

like I've guest hosted on you know, like what's

on Joe mind or the podcasters roundtable or this

one's super old and defunct from like 2007 but

TF anonymous and which was Transformers anonymous

and they They had me narrate their their Christmas

story which was kind of funny and Don't remember

if it was his me or his Megatron, but it was

one of the two But I mean I've done a lot of

guests, you know hosting or I was a host of a

show and a guest host on other programs on TF

wire Back when that was a thing Because I'm thinking

back to when I was listening to podcasts the

beginning I stumbled across you guys. Yeah, you

were Yeah, you guys were not just doing GC like

the GC are and you were doing a lot of others

and you guys would Just remember well answer

talking nauseam about Was it earth to earth to

yeah, yeah, it was that and then you were credit

on Empire It was it was my Transformers website

and all things transformers with it Although

I let the name laps and I was like forget it

and I have all things transformers calm down.

So Okay, which goes right to it. I mean it goes

right to the post I don't even back in the days

where every podcast was mono and was only like

25 megs of download and sounded like bad AM radio.

You want to know what's funny about Altered Geek?

Sure. I exported his mono. But you would never

know because I export down, you know, everything.

And the thing is now that we record each person

on multiple tracks, it means you can have everything

leveled right before you end up downsampling.

Always record at the highest quality possible

and then Convert it after the biggest thing people

make is recording at low quality then editing

then saving it again at low quality and then

exporting Yeah, and that's that's the thing is

you're better off and that's that's the difference

to between Skype and Discord Skype while you

do have mp3 Skype call recorder and it does work

if you do the stereo thing It still doesn't break

down or level anyone's audio It records the whole

track at 128k a second, which is roughly what

you would set your MP3 to when you put it on

any platform anyway. But then any editing that

you do further lowers it. You're like compounding

your compression each time. Whereas, yeah, it's

compressed when you record it through Discord,

but they use a much, much more modern compression

algorithm. it just sounds better. You don't have

to be an audio nerd or anything just to hear

how much better it sounds, even without taking

into account that you record everything on separate

tracks. Yeah, and that's the nice thing about

Discord is that when you use its call recorder,

it allows you to save it as all the raw formats.

So like AAC, WAV, FLAC, there's a couple other

formats, M4A. So it does all these... high, high

uncompressed quality files. And, you know, it's

it's and I kind of refer to this of what Mike

Booth Ninja Powers used to say on the show is

garbage in garbage out. You recorded, you know,

low end, like you just said, you know, and you

get low end, you get crap, you know, just like

you would have going in. So if you recorded high

levels and then you export it lower, it's still

going to sound good. Well, and the other thing

to consider, too, is any time that one of us

goes off the rails of swears, it's a lot easier

if you're going to put your Barnard sounds on

one person's track than having to, like, overlap

everybody. Oh, definitely. Yeah. And that's a

nice thing, too, is when you're messing around

with it and, like, say Adobe Audition, I can

mute everyone else's track except for the person

in question. Yep. And... and edit only that person.

Although the last episode, I was like, I'm too

lazy for the binary signs this week. I just was

like, I'll just do ripple edits and did ripple

deletes on voices. And so I made them disappear

without necessarily making it obvious. We have

a tone favorite. pulling back the curtain, when

Birdman edits, he still uses Cooladder Pro because

he thinks it's 2002. Cooladder Pro evolved into

Adobe Audition. Here's the thing, it works. It's

abandonware now. There's actually many sites

you can just get it from because eventually it'll

stop working. It has trouble with some versions

of some of the newer creator updates of Windows

10, it'll crash sometimes. But he's like, I'm

going to use that to physically can't because

it's what he was trained in school on. I've used

it and it has it has some good parts to it but

it doesn't allow you to import certain formats

like if you if you get like a royalty -free music

clip and it's in something anything other than

mp3 or wave it will not work period and you then

you have to use an intermediary to convert it.

Whereas if you get a hold of audition any any

version doesn't matter any version of audition

will be significantly better. Some of the older

ones I've noticed, though, do not like, well,

actually, Audition's always been good. It's Adobe

Soundbooth, which they merged the good stuff

into Audition and then they phased it out. It's

honestly not much better than using Audacity

for a lot of the editing. We use Audacity if

we're recording the vocal. It will usually get

recorded as a mono file because just At Birdman

Studio, we don't have the space nor the cash

to go with a high -end mixing board anymore.

He had a really good one that died. We're not

spending 900 bucks or whatever he originally

spent on it to get a high -end mixing board to

let you have multi -tracks. Because most mixing

boards are either going to be just stereo using

analog out. or if they have a USB interface,

for the most part, the maximum you can do is

two tracks, like a left and right only. You have

to go to a significantly higher cost to have

every single person record on a separate track.

Well, yeah, and you can't use USB microphones.

You have to use the old method. Yeah, which we

have. Right now I'm using a USB microphone, but

I do have other dynamic mics and everything,

which is cool. But that adds more cabling, more

wires, more errors, more things that can happen.

When we're local, we'll record that way using

a few inputs, but it records mono. But again,

it's recording a full wave file on compressed

because you're local, which is cool. We've actually

gotten to the part where we prefer using Discord

because for anybody on a budget that doesn't

have a high -end recording studio, it does allow

up to, I think it's eight people can be recorded

on separate tracks or more. the nominal quality

drop that you get from going online with it,

it sure makes up for in the fact that you can

save it as an audacity file and you can go in

like, I will generally record everything, go

in, do some leveling for whatever needs to be

done, removing the audio, hiss, anything that

happens in the background, and then save that

multi -track file into a stereo file that then

we can use in whatever our choice of editing

software is. It's that little intermediary step

that would be a pain in the butt if you were

using traditional Skype recording calls. The

built -in recording feature that they have in

Skype now is horrendous. I've never used it,

mostly because I can't find it. Honestly, I don't

miss. I don't like Skype anymore. You just click

there's a plus button. You just click that and

then click record, and it does it. The issue

though, it is - It does it at like 32k, doesn't

it? Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. It is 16k per

second mono with a sample rate of, I think, 22

kHz. That's horrible. So it's half or less the

frequency response that you get out of any other

recording, and then like - a fifth or sixth of

the data rate that you get out of even the normal

Skype recorder, if you use a third party. So

it's like five percent of the quality that we

get when we record over Discord. They thought

that was a good solution. That's horrible. I

haven't been a fan of Skype since Microsoft bought

it, to be honest, because it's just pure garbage.

It's amazing how bad it is considering how good

their voice chat features are on their gaming

hardware. It's because one hand doesn't talk

to the other. You would have figured it would

have been integrated. Get the Xbox team to work

on it. Because if they did, you'd have crystal

clear audio. But for whatever reason, they've

kept it as a separate division. Yeah, and that's

part of the problem is it's just Microsoft. Yeah,

so Discord is like a lifesaver. I never thought

I'd ever use it for... I was not a Discord person.

I was like... Why would I want to do that? Is

it bent? Then people are like, you're old. Then

I was like, okay, well, what's it good for? Oh,

you can use it to record. I'm like, what? Then

looking it up and I went, oh, it's so easy. It

does so much work for you and then you can play

with whatever files you get when you're done.

Yeah. I vastly prefer. Discord at this point

for just cleaner audio. It's just it's so much

nicer to mess around with and You know, I'm not

paid off by by them and by any means but it's

yeah, I mean I I just I don't know I find it

to be much just much cleaner audio like in general

and and honestly like the levels are almost They

even have a capability that they can auto -level

and auto -clean up your audio right on their

plugin. I generally will use the audacity file

download for it because it does a bit of that.

It gets rid of most of the background noise without

losing any quality. What I usually have to do

is my microphone is usually a tad quieter than

everybody else's and I do that on purpose so

it doesn't ever peak at all. But when I record

with Birdman, he, due to the nature of how his

setup is at home, and because he's not at like

a normal computer desk because of his disability,

he records in his living room. And he's about

a foot and a half away from his microphone. So

his mic is always a little, he always sounds

a little thinner. And I usually have to do a

little boosting to his. lower end bass and cut

out some of the high end, do a little tweaking,

it's so much easier just to grab his stream and

just go, I have a macro that I run where it does

like a couple filters and then bam, it basically

sounds the same as mine. And it's just, it's

so much easier to do that than record everything

the traditional podcasting way of everybody's

all in one singular track and now we're screwed

or you have to spend like 40 minutes having one

person turn up their mic. No, no, turn it down

a little bit. Turn it up a little bit. Oh, make

sure that you're close enough to the microphone.

Don't talk away from it. There's a nice little

program, and I'm not sure you're aware of it.

It's from the conversions network. It's a defunct

software now at this point, but it's called the

Levelator 2. Never heard of it. I didn't even

know about it until about a week ago. I was talking

to a friend of mine that uses it. And he said,

so basically what it does is you drag a WAV or

AIFF file. so it will auto level the entire track

and it creates a new exported output file like

it'll be the same file name dot output and With

the still original extension. So if it's a wave

it'll say dot output dot wave and and so you'd

be able to still use it But what I've been doing

to level the podcast is it saves a little bit

of time especially when there's elements where

I'm not directly speaking in my microphone or

somebody else isn't. I will attempt to level

or boost as needed in the software and clean

it up. And then I will export the entire file.

And then I put it through as an AIFF file. and

it will reconvert. And then I re -import that

into Audition and export it as an MP3. And so

everything is pretty well -leveled when it goes

to the final export. It's an extra step, and

I'm sure it could be done in Audition. It auto

does everything, and I don't have to mess with

it. So I just dump it in there, and it works.

But it's free. It's totally free. Sounds like

there's a lot of tools out there that I think

go unnoticed by people or like if you're trying

to start a podcast there's a lot of people like

grasping at straws like where do I go? What do

I start with and I think a good recommendation

I would give because we've had people ask like,

you know, I want to start my own How do I do

it? And you know, you don't have to go with a

big content platform Just like you can you can

do it. Like there are guides out there and how

to if it's a small enough show and you're not

going to be having a ton like you're not doing

daily shows or anything and you want to just

sort of get your foot in the water you can go

with a like a blogger site from like google provides

it for free when you sign up for gmail and you

could actually use you know your 10 or 20 gigs

of gmail storage to host your files because for

the most part if you can press them and you're

posting them yourself the your episodes are going

to be less than 50 megabytes and you're not going

to be using a ton of data, and there's unlimited

bandwidth when you use Google Drive for it to

host it. The only problem with that is you can't

get accurate metrics from that. Again, this is

just for people starting out, right? Well, just

starting out, there's another option too. There's

podcast .com. Yeah, that's true. You can go with

one of those, and then it's just a matter of

the recording of it. If you're just doing it

singularly on your own, easiest way to do it

is just use Audacity to record your microphone

and you talking. You can play around with your

settings to see how it sounds. Just for the pure

recording, you can try editing. It's not going

to be pretty. It's going to be more difficult

to add in layers of music and different things.

There's going to be free options out there to

try. You can go with something like CoolEdit

Pro if you find a copy because, again, it's complete

abandonware now. Do you remember GoldWave? Yeah.

I had that before I even got Audacity because

somebody was like, get GoldWave because we were

doing voice acting for this Transformers dub.

And they're like, because I was like, I want

to do it. I can do the voice. And I was like,

I just don't have any software. And they're like,

yeah, go with GoldWave. And they sent me a link

to it because it was like pretty much abandonware

at the time in 2005. And so I downloaded it and

used it. And it was super difficult to use by

any standards. And I found Audacity to be much

easier to use, although you had to import the

MP3 capability, which is built in now. Oh, okay.

And I remember starting out with that and recording...

I recorded war stories for tfwire .com, which

was essentially I read fanfics submitted by users

to the website and I would do them in different

voices and narrate and everything else. So it

was completely me doing the audio play. There

was literally no sound effects or anything, which

at the time I was like... Didn't really know

what I was doing. It was the first foray into

the podcast world. And so it totally sucks. I

still have it Well, it's a good stepping stone.

It's a good thing to see how far you've come

Yeah, I should actually go back and listen to

that and then like have a cringe -worthy episode

where I'm just like listening to myself do that

and Because like the stories weren't half bad

it was the terrible acting on my behalf because

like a lot of the stuff just sounded like poor

attempts at doing voices. And so I did that and

then I moved on to All Things Transformers. And

again, it sounded like garbage because I started

out and I was reading directly from a script

instead of referencing it like I do now. And

it was like I was trying to copy other shows

I'd heard and it just didn't mesh with my methodology.

And I had a host that was a guest host on there

and for about six episodes and then I ditched

him and Mike joined. And then learning to edit

some of the things like periodically will have

different issues come up. Specifically, there

was an episode of the TFG one podcast where we

did the Beverly Hills cop commentary with Dodd,

myself and him. And for whatever reason, my track

was super slow motion, like My voice was talking

You know and so None of us could figure out what

was wrong with it and I kept re -importing it

and I would listen to the file the file was fine

but I'd import it it would be slowed down again

and we had no idea what was causing it and so

that episode was kind of lost the time until

you know later on and Just recently on the top

100 that just came out Mike said that two of

the people's voices did that On the episode and

I was like really they most certainly didn't

when When it was recorded I did the audio leveling

for everybody and it was yeah Yeah, he said that

What was he said that? Yeah, there was one particular

person he says, you know the recording this week

was extremely strange Remember when your old

Beverly Hills cop slowdown clip happened and

you don't know how it happened Well, he said

when he was editing that like yours and Kevin's

voices did that in this record and I was like

I said, you know, the other thing that you could

have done I said is just speed it back up Well,

I wasn't thinking about that either when I provided

him When I got the file, there were one, two,

three, four of us. So it's four individual tracks.

It was a two and a half hour recording, which

can be pretty large to do even simple editing

on any computer. You don't realize how much stress

I can put on the CPU. But I went in, did some

basic leveling, did some stereo mapping on it,

then saved it as a stereo file. There's no reason

that. two voices should be isolated and doing

that when they're both on the same stream. You

know, after the fact, right? Like it's not like

my individual track got messed up because I played

it back after I recorded it was perfectly fine.

Yeah, I typically test mine just to make sure

that everything worked out fine or to see how

much editing I need to do. And I don't foresee

like a lot of the issue. I think some of it could

be like processor speed in memory and like it

just not... Who knows what computer he's using?

Yeah, well... And it's all the wifi that he's

using. He's got a 10 year old computer at this

point. It was new. It was new. We were rebuilt

in like 2010, 2011. So, and I'm like, it's a

dinosaur. Yeah, it's probably... I have my dinosaur.

It's probably a case of, it's not actually that

the voices are messed up. It's not even streaming

the data to his audio chip fast enough. Which

is entirely possible. My machine, I wanted to

make sure that I future -proofed it so that it

was built to be an editing machine. So when I

have these huge two gigabyte WAV files that come

out from Discord, and it's then just as fast

as it does my mp3 versions when i was doing skype

yeah and i've got the same thing i'm using a

dual core but it's based on the on the ryzen

2 generation 8 gigs of ram solid state hard drive

nothing to write home about like it's you know

a sub 500 computer but it for audio purposes

it literally is the same speed as my new ryzen

6 core computer i'm like which has like an mvme

drive and i'm like why I'm like well because

there is there's a point where you know audio

um audio editing hasn't been like audio itself

and the transformation of audio hasn't been a

focal point of like processor improvements over

the years it's always been video video or compression

like you know data compression and that so there

really isn't anything out there like like the

old days where you had sound cards that had built

-in special hardware to do all that sort of stuff

it's all just dependent on the cpu so like But

I'll bet you that my dual core Ryzen here it

will outperform his like nine year old computer

Yeah, my what's funny is my old My old tower

has no Dedicated video card in it. It's got the

video that comes with the processor and it runs

fine Like I mean, it's still got most of its

guts anything that was useful. I brought over

to the new machine But it's pretty much a shell

but it has everything it needs in it. I mean,

for the most part. And my new system has an NVMe

PCI Express hard drive in it. It's got a couple

of solid states, a couple of SATA 3s and then

32 gigs of RAM and a six core processor. So I

mean, it's pretty solid, but. Oh, yeah. Just

one thing to watch out on that NVMe drive. I

don't know if you purchased anything with it,

but it's worth paying about 10 bucks on Amazon

and getting a heat sink with one of those. rubbery

sort of heat transfer pads and Holding it on

with like it could use to come to like an elastic

because MDME drives heat up like crazy like they

can go to like 100 degrees real fast and And

I was finding that I was getting really good

performance on mine initially on my main computer

I'd be like after 20 minutes and slow down to

a crawl and then I'd look at temperatures and

I was like, oh They don't even provide that's

one thing. They don't give you unless you get

like a super high -end one they don't give you

a heatsink with them. And it is something to

consider because when I put the heatsink online,

that $10 purchase dropped the temperatures to

less than half within two minutes. Because you're

basically plugging in something and it's pumping

it full of juice. It's so incredibly fast. You

can move data around so fast on those drives

now. The transfer speed is faster than the entire

hard drive space as we had back in high school

And that's just like moving files around Yeah,

and and honestly it's it's it's still I I mean

it has partially a heat sink that came on the

motherboard with it Like specifically for that

slide. Okay, so you have one of those ones where

it has that sort of like a little plate goes

over top of it Yeah, it's it's a I mean this

it's a $200 motherboard from Gigabyte made for

gaming, so it's got a lot of the built -in defenses

for heat dissipation. It's got a lot of breathing

room too, which is really nice. I went with a

medium, mid -level $150 motherboard, and that

was a year and a half ago, so mine's actually

a previous generation one that was feature -proofed.

If I had shelled out an extra $50, it would have

come with something like that, but... Yeah, that's

one thing people don't realize if they're buying

those super fast NVMe drives, is that they produce

a lot more heat than any hard drive ever has

in the past. There's a lot of movement too. Yeah,

it's just because they transfer one to two gigabytes

per second. It's like, just fathom that. You

remember downloading, if you wanted to download

a floppy disk's worth, like one megabyte back

in the day, you would take you to fill up that

drive it would take you five ten minutes just

to fill up one megabyte and now it's like oh

that one gig three you know three hour uncompressed

audio file all transfer that and it's done like

now so you know there's that comes with the cost

so it i have a feeling that with these longer

episodes, especially when there's multiple people

on it, it might be that Blanchard's computer's

age is catching up with it, because I went back

and listened to it and I didn't hear any issues.

So that's another thing to consider, like the

podcasting is, if you have more people on, the

file size when you're working with it gets exponentially

bigger. Because one person talking for an hour

on one track is one thing. when you get four

or five people you now have five times the file

size to contend with and you know it's it's it's

an interesting you know world getting into and

to bring it back to what we were talking about

at the very beginning it's like i feel like if

you really wanted to start you know a large social

network type of of podcasting network it really

should have been done in like 03 to 06 right

in the infancy of it Because that's when you

would have established your name even if you

were like a nobody then but you were around and

then as soon as Podcasting hit the public consciousness

on TV when they were talking about it when then

people start looking to be like, oh who's established?

Oh, these people have like 200 episodes already.

They must be big even if you weren't and yeah,

I think the issue is a lot of people like Twig

and GCRN got in Before the masses did in the

07 to 2010 period And then from 2011 to 2016,

there was just this massively huge boom with

everybody going, everybody has a podcast, grandma

has a podcast. And then now we're hitting the

point where it's like oversaturated. You can't

really, like if you start a podcast, even if

you have this like very fantastic idea for anybody

listening, don't expect like to get any listeners

necessarily at the very beginning. Do it because

you love it. and you may never hit that million

downloads. Most people don't. It's not like it

was in the gold rush period. But it's a lot easier.

There's a double -edged sword. It's a lot easier

to start now because you don't have to know how

to code your own HTML website. You don't have

to know RSS either. You don't have to know RSS,

which is still a pain in the butt if you don't

know how to set one up. There's not as many easy

to use. websites you would have figured somebody

would have had a here's a website template that

has it already set up for you there really wasn't

that like it was all it was still all hand done

and you remember back in the day when you had

to worry about your own storage you might only

have not just like i'm only paying for you know

a gig of storage which was expensive at the time

you would also have to pay for your bandwidth

so if you became popular your show could only

grow so big unless you wanted to put more money

into it Now with the advantage of cloud storage

and advances in just podcasting technology, you

can pretty much have an unlimited storage space.

You don't have to worry about your space. You

don't have to worry about how much bandwidth

you use. You don't have to worry about the speed.

You just have to worry about setting it up. So

it's made it so much easier to get into, but

that also means that there's so many more people

doing it. Oh, yeah. But also the most podcasters

that, I mean, there's a lot more drop -off too.

Yeah, there's a lot where they start and do like

five episodes and they're done. And I've done

a couple of new shows where that's happened,

like all fizzle out and then like... But I mean

like there's people that do it, like there's

a lot of people that do it and that never do

anything else ever again. And then the problem

is their podcasts are still up and they there

is a point where I think if you haven't put out

an episode in like a year, year and a half, don't

delete the files but it should be delisted. It

should be. It should be run dormant unless you

have a plan of action. iTunes should be like,

you should get a notification. Are you coming

back anytime in the next year? No? Okay, we're

going to close your account. We're going to keep

your files here. Somebody could possibly, you

can host them, you can search from yourself,

but we're not going to have it listed. If you

want to argue, oh, hey, I'm going to get listeners.

Well, if you haven't posted anything in three

years, you're not going to. No. at least not

under that feed, it's not gonna be worth it.

And I think if they got rid of that clutter,

two thirds of the podcasts out there would be

gone out of the most websites. Oh yeah, easily.

And then you'd actually be able to find shows

that are current. Yeah, and if your show, let's

say you stopped making a podcast and it was insanely

popular and it still gets 10 ,000 downloads a

month or something. Well, it's like, okay, great.

At that point, if you're still getting that kind

of downloads, then you should try to capitalize

on that because if you're not going to, it shouldn't

be listed anywhere. There should be a thing on

YouTube where it's like if you do not release

an episode, if you do not release an episode

at minimum every two months, you shouldn't have

it listed. No, I agree. Yeah, I mean, and I think

that's part of the problem is the market is so

oversaturated. On every front and that that's

why it's harder to actually find anybody anymore

other than these famous people Yeah, and it's

like I almost feel like hey I should be friends

with a famous person because then if you if you

guessed on one of their podcasts Then you get

listeners that seems to be the only way to get

it anymore Used to be you get listeners by having

celebrities and people show up on your podcast

It does now you get maybe like you'll get an

uptick of twice your downloads But looking at

the metrics, it used to be like if you got, let's

say, like a Mark Hamill to do a 10 minute interview,

that's 20, 30, 50, 100 times what your listeners

work. And then out of that 100 times, maybe 20

% stay and keep listening. It doesn't exist anymore

because all these celebrities go on every other

celebrities web podcast. Or they start their

own. Or they start their own. And you still get

interviews with people. And if you look, like

Twig used to get 20 interviews 20 to 30 a year

so do we we're getting maybe two to three and

it's it's part of it is like you can get more

people you can add you can request it but it's

scheduling getting the time a lot of times you'll

ask and they're like oh like what's happening

sometimes now is they're requesting fees to do

interviews fees yes I've seen that now and it's

like what or you go to a convention and you'll

have press access And they'll be like, oh, you

can do an interview. It's fine. Oh, but you're

going to be recording an interview? OK, well,

then you have to arrange that with their agent.

You have to pay a fee. It's like, no, no, no.

No, you want exposure. This is how the interview

process works. You get an interview. You do an

interview, and we both benefit. But I've seen

that happening now with certain ones I know.

Fan Expo was like that in Canada. They are also

notoriously hard to get even -price credentials

for. But there was talk at certain people. for

interviews, like they're vetting your background

and it's like, oh, if you're not in the top 10

list on iTunes or Spotify, you're not getting

an interview. And it's like, but those top 10

people are regular media that are already doing

like television interviews with you. This is

the whole point of Fan Expo to be catering to

the fans. Yeah, and that's where a lot of them

seem to be losing their ground is that they're

just not in touch with what they're actually

funding from. But and that's something podcasting

was supposed to be the people talking, you know,

in an unfiltered forum that was away from the

corporate grind and corporate rules. And it's

now becoming exactly the same. Doesn't mean we

don't like it. We're not going to keep doing

it forever and ever and ever until we can't possibly

do it anymore. It just means if people wonder

why you don't see as many interviews, it's because

the opportunities aren't popping up as much as

they used to. And when they do pop up, of course,

you latch on to them, do them. The other thing

I've discovered, and I did this earlier this

year, like actually at the beginning of this

year, doing interviews with people that aren't

necessarily famous, but they're people that put

out specialized content. And when I say that,

I mean, we had like I interviewed a plethora

of people. On altered geek like that were other

podcasters other geeks twitch streamers podcasters

producers writers, you know public speakers Producers

of other programs and And I was kind of doing

it just you know one I was a part of a podcast

Group it's an it's an email thing and basically

you submit and say, you know, they'll randomly

pick you and then you, you say, yeah, this is

my show. This is blah, blah, blah. And then you

give them the show art and then people submit

into Google doc to sign up to be on your show.

And then I, because I had so many that were asking

to be on the show, um, and I had no way of scheduling

them. I created a scheduler, uh, or I put a scheduler

plugin in WordPress on altergeek .com and Gave

them like I opened up certain timeframes that

I was available and I let them choose and when

they wanted to do it and then once that block

was filled it was filled and then I could schedule

them according to that time and I think I had

like 13 people that I I did and then like every

Wednesday I had an interview show and then every

Friday did one of these and It worked out pretty

well during that time. It wasn't like as monumental

as like, you know your uh kevin conroy's or you

know the a lot of these these voice actors or

anything but it was still it was it was different

because nobody's doing that well and that's the

thing i know with the uh like the terrible warriors

that that other podcasts that we record with

uh they have found you know their avenue with

interviewing creators of uh like Tabletop games

like they'll actually contact people like not

just the publishers the people that are writing

the games They actually will do like interview

the creators and then they'll do their playthrough

of like three or four hours of the game sometimes

with the creator of the game and that's interesting

because it's not they're not like You know people

that are looking to interview people for like

tabletop gaming. They're trying to get people

that have like larger followings that they're

trying to get your will Wheaton's on and that's

like Yeah, but he's not the creator of the game.

It's just he runs games and he's famous for that.

Yeah, you're never gonna get those type of people

again. And that's the sad and unfortunate thing

is like, yeah, you might get lucky. Yeah, or

you can rely on people you already interviewed

or people that you know in the industry, you

know, to get you around things, which is cool.

But, you know, you got to find your avenue. You

got to find the thing that differentiates you

out there now. I know Birdman is going to be

doing an interview in the next few weeks. I've

drawn a blank on the person's name, unfortunately,

but there's a horror documentary on, I forget

which AD's horror franchise, I think it's Friday

the 13th. There's the, like Mike requested, can

I get a press screener to watch the documentary,

because he's super into AD's horror. And then

they were like, oh yeah, we like your podcast,

would you like to interview the director? And

it's like. Okay, so those opportunities do still

come up and those are gonna be the interesting

ones where it's like again It's somebody who

maybe isn't the most famous person yet. They

got a movie coming out They really want to talk

about it. So it's actually more exciting to do

that. Whereas the the big Gets, you know in quotes

used to be getting all of your favorite celebrities

back ten years ago and now You know, like we

just popped up. I think it's today Today's Wednesday

I believe when I put up the classic episode,

I think it was an interview with Robert Picardo.

And it's like, those ones are cool. Would we

get Robert Picardo then? Maybe, because we've

had a relationship where we had him on before.

But if we were cold calling him now, we're not

getting him. Yeah, and that's the other thing

too, is I definitely like, we've had a couple

of repeats simply because we've talked to them

in the past. And that's... That in some of them

we've got to reach back out to again because

they've got some new content coming that we're

very interested in but it's It's definitely changed

a lot The whole atmosphere over the last, you

know, I would I would argue the last like five

six years just because I've seen numbers like

taper off I've seen traffic taper off because

like if you're not one of these big conglomerates

Or you know, you're not one of these these big

places that people are going to hear these famous

people, you know For instance like if you're

not podcast one Westwood Or you're not on one

of the top five networks where we're talking

there's millionaires running it You're you're

probably not getting you're not being able to

sign like they're signing casting agents So like

they're going to talent agencies and being like,

can we get 10 people from your thing? And they'll

be like, oh, here's who we've got that are going

to be, you know, available in the next week.

And they'll get like they're running them like

they run late night talk shows. Oh, yeah, definitely.

And I one of the problems I had. What was it?

When did I get that? I get an email. It was a

while back. There was a somebody from I want

to say it was like podcast one, maybe. or something,

I don't know, but they had a new show that was

coming and they were really trying to push it,

like really trying to push it. And they contact

me and they're like, hey, would you mind doing,

you know, an ad for this particular show? And

they were like gonna pay and everything else.

And I was like... Yeah, it would depend like

one who was this guy like to like cuz I've never

heard of him and he was like some kind of a tech

guy or whatever and I was like, I'm interested

like, you know, cuz obviously money's involved

but At the same time I have no idea who this

guy is So like it for me to talk about him like

I kind of have to have a little bit of understanding

You have to balance the whole it's also a little

offensive that knowing that they're gonna pay

you you know, whatever they're going to pay you

to promote somebody who on their first episode

will probably have more listens than you have

all year because of the money they're putting

behind this person. Oh yeah, definitely. And

that was the other thing is like he was in the

top probably the top 20 in iTunes for something.

Because now the difference from now from 10 years

ago is you can buy your way in there. Oh yeah,

well you can go on Fiverr and you can pay and

they can boost you into the top numbers. Like

I don't know if you know that yeah, there's there's

that or you know, the old -fashioned, you know,

reddit campaigns Really? So maybe like oh because

really all it takes is one person to be able

to push somebody through The problem is you got

people circling the falchers being like pick

me pick me pick me pick me. Oh Yeah, totally

and I yeah, and it kind of bothered me that they

they even approached me like that like I like

okay guys like I don't mind promoting somebody

but like I'm also not gonna be inauthentic and

like just Yeah, the money sounded good. Like

how much they were offering but I was the thing

is we're we're also You know, there's Twig is

different in that, you know, we'll we we have

an open door policy on all All the things we

can say, you know, censorship wise, we'll goof

around, we'll be very crass blue, but what we're

not doing is we're not selling dick pills. We're

not selling, you know what I mean? Like every

freaking podcast now is selling blue chew or

me undies or like, it's to the point where it's

ridiculous. It's like, it's like, really you

got to like, that's what you think of podcasting.

It's so bottom feeding that you have to sell.

prescription Viagra over the like, you know,

gray area Viagra, penis pills over the internet.

And the other thing could be too, is people just

don't see any other way of monetizing their show

and so they just kind of eat it up, you know,

and do it. No, the people that are hawking this

are the people that have a million listeners.

Yeah. Like the people on very large networks,

like they're selling crap and doing live reads

of crap that is like, like these are... You're

making enough money as it is off of your brand.

Because most of the people that are getting those

kind of listeners are also doing live shows in

person or they're selling tickets or they're

touring or it's a side business. There's almost

nobody that I've ever heard or seen that does

all these ad reads for these products that this

is their only source of income. So it bugged

me. Nobody's approached us be like would you

like to sell dick pills? I'm not saying we wouldn't

sell them. I'm saying that I'm saying for the

price if they were like You know you release

uh, you know two episodes a week We'll give you

a thousand dollars a week to talk about these

dick pills Damn straight. I'm gonna talk about

them dick pills. But if if you're just like we'll

pay we'll pay you 10 bucks an episode Screw off.

No way. It's not happening because you never

know how much they're gonna try to offer you

but like That seems to be the big one is they're

advertising pseudo stuff that I know personally

isn't legal in Canada. The Bluetooth stuff, you

cannot get it in Canada because it is listed

as an untested illegal substance. It's been caught

at the border a few times because I noticed that

some Canadian podcasts were originally starting

to sell that stuff or offer it or have the codes

for it. like American listeners I guess because

up here you couldn't get it anyway but they've

completely stopped because there's a lawsuit

involved but yet in the states they're hawking

that crap left and right there's like uh or you

have people that get the audible uh one where

it's like you know the you know mentioned get

your free of uh you know ebook on audible blah

blah blah yeah the the whole audible thing I

I did that for a while during mwire when it was

like still pretty fresh like before Everybody

else was like kind of really doing it and I never

had anybody sign up through it It was just I

mean I attacked it under the intro. It was it

was something I thought I would try You know

just to see and I want to say was like during

like 2012 or something It was when everybody

same was Amazon Associates they shut down Amazon

Associates in Canada because they weren't getting

enough people Like they were even clicking through

the links and doing it I have an account through

that, but yeah, nobody clicks on it. The thing

with Audible, they contacted me a couple of weeks

ago. Would you like to be a part of the program?

Okay, let's see what it says. Two days later,

the same person comes to me, oh, you're in Canada.

Well, we don't actually have the service in Canada.

Is that okay? Because if you mentioned it, you'll

have to say it's for American users only. Okay,

what does it entail? So you want me to promote

something that you're... Like I actually yeah,

I actually asked I said I said so you're this

is open You know wide to pretty much anybody.

Yes Okay Who hasn't signed up for one at this

point? Like who hasn't actually signed up and

taken advantage of that one free book See I figured

out what they've done They've essentially turned

podcasters that are doing this for fun to try

and make money. They've turned them into the

free advertising pool Well, and then again, it's

so saturated because it's so free and any podcast

can get it. We're at a point now where I don't

think there's a single listener out there that

hasn't tried Audible that still would like to

try Audible. I tried it. Bank, when we got it

for a movie, we can review. I tried it. I got

it for free and I downloaded a Star Trek book.

And then that was it. But I mean, like, it's

been around so long now. It's like they're not

converting new people. So I don't know why it

exists. They have it there because they don't

have to pay you anything. And because every time

you say audible, it might bring somebody back

who's already had it. So I don't think that they're

converting new people. And that's a discussion

for another day. So they don't have to pay you.

Exactly. They're tricking people into giving

them free advertising. Yeah. And this is the

other thing too. It's like, I don't know if you've

been getting inundated with people wanting to

post guest posts on your website. Oh, I can read

you one. Today all They're all from India or

China Well see this is the thing I either get

them and they either come from some like marketing

company or something or they come from a Gmail

account if they're from a Gmail account I automatically

Spam them and like I put them in my spam folder

and I wipe them out if they're the other ones

I'll humor it and I'll respond and then I wait

to see how long it takes them to respond back

But I I send them this this response because

typically I had one offer me a hundred dollars

to post a custom crafted article to GeekCastRadio

.com. And they're like, for $100, you know, we'll

do this and we'll write up this article. And

then they start telling me, you know, in the

next email, what it's about. And, you know, they're

like, you know, I, you know, I bet you get these

quite often, blah, blah, blah. You know, and

and I said. Well, here's the one I got today.

And this was to the feedback email from Bavish

Nardani. It's probably a fake name because they

usually are. So I don't mind reading it. Hi,

excuse the impersonal email. I am a London -based

copywriter. Why are you contacting us in Canada?

And write regularly for several clients that

relate to the content of your blog. The topics

I write, including interior design, lifestyle,

home products, family, and so on. I'm ready to

offer any articles at no charge to you that you

can host in your blog. First of all, the website,

yes, it's set up as a WordPress site like a blog

site, but that's not really the intention. It's

a release site to show when we have articles

released. The only blog post we really post are

when we do gift guides, or if we're doing content

on on press conferences and stuff. They will,

of course, only be shared if I think your audience

will be interested in them. First of all, and

there's a little more on search engine optimization,

you get a lot of those emails too. To give a

taster, here are some blogs they're right for.

Memorybox .co .uk, espflooring .com. Yes, flooring

and this week in geek. rhodiumfloors .com. It's

a ghostwriter, ghostwriter, ghostwriter. First

of all, I'm not giving you access to the website

to write stuff on there because as soon as I

give you access, you're going to try to grab

some crap from it. Let me know if there's something

you're interested in. We can move the conversation

forward. Keep up the excellent work. You have

no idea who we are. Outreach specialist. I mean,

it's from a real company. It's A Nova. I looked

them up. They're in London. But they're just

literally going like. they're searching for any

podcast and they're just sending out a form email.

That's just one of them. We get crazy ones or

you get the ones that are like, common ones are

search engine optimization, ones where they want

to guess writing your thing. It's one thing if

you contact us through Facebook and you want

to start up, you're like, hey, I've wanted to

write some blogs that I wanted to do. We've done

that a few times where. Birdman gave access to,

you know, some people, either fans or people

that wanted to get their start and they wanted

to write a couple guest blogs, you know, to get

their feet wet, sort of on what it's like to

publish something or to post things. And then,

you know, he'll do a few of them, but it's like,

it's on a person to person basis and not some

random person from halfway around the world that

only writes, ghostwrites articles on flooring.

Like, it would be one thing if this person was

like, hey, I also, you know, I write tech news.

Like, okay, maybe we wanted to have more of a

news section that was regularly updated with

stuff from, I don't know, some stuff that's aggregated

from Ars Technica or product news from like CES

events and that. It's like, okay, maybe, but

you know what? It would be somebody that we know

that wanted to do it. It wouldn't be a random

person in India or London or China. At least

this one was worded properly. The ones we get

from China are crazy. It's always, we make handbags

or we make sprockets and parts for cars. Would

you guys be interested in reviewing? Reviewing

what? Reviewing a car part from China? Or we

make handbags. One of these days, I'm going to

say yes, and we're going to have twig handbags

and purses. It's one of these days. Well, one

of the funny things, I get a lot of articles,

either people wanting to be guest writers, and

they're like, I have this great idea for a post,

and I'm like, most of the time I'm like, okay,

free content, I don't really care, but I still

proof everything and I make them send it to me

in an email, or I make them use the contact form

I developed on the website where they can post

the entire article there and it goes through

into the backend database that I can then copy

paste. and it's ready to go, but I don't give

anybody access. Yeah, you don't give access.

The best one that Birdman turned it down and

I was so mad at him because I really wanted the

content and I knew if anything was going to get

us listeners or weirdness would have been this

was when he randomly at E3, not this past year,

the year before was offered a gaming prostate

massager, basically a sex toy. that you're supposed

to stick in your butt while you while it was

going to be Bluetooth connected to your phone

and while you play games with certain things

happen noises happen it vibrates in your butt

and He turned he turned him down He just hit

find out no and then he messaged a bunch of other

people a bunch of other people that went to e3

that he knows the Journalism industry got the

same things and everybody turned it down. I'm

like, no, you don't turn that down. That is the

best content ever. He goes, we're not going to

use it. I said, we don't have to use it. We just

have to talk about it and explain, look at what

we got. He goes, oh, because that's the only

time where it was so outlandish that you know

it wasn't like a bot. It was somebody actually

trying to sell these things. we would have taken

it like I told myself we wouldn't take it we

wouldn't have like been like it would have been

a little disingenuous because we weren't going

to try to sell it for them but we would have

ripped it a new one and made fun of it so hard

like of all the things to get offered in one

of these like it's a prostate massager it's like

really yeah if it ever pops up again I'm telling

you do not decline that we get that we talk about

that Yeah, that would honestly that'd be hilarious,

but Yeah, I Yeah, I that's such a weird item

not gonna lie that's just weird It was so out

there that I was like, you know, there's certain

things that you turn down But your guys fan base

would would resonate with that just because it's

it's so out there Like mine would go with that

Well, I mean and it's the the image and that

you're trying to cultivate is very different,

too It doesn't mean you don't fit like you fit

in with anybody But at the same time, you know

You're the image you're putting out there is

not the image of wild video game sex toy Like

it's it's not that is a very it's very much a

twig, you know, you know weird keep it strange

unique the the fan base that Birdman has been

sort of cultivating over the years has been the

like anything is cool, bronies, like anything

that is unique, geeky to you, he takes it no

matter, you know, how outlandish it might seem

to other people. He takes it and goes with it.

And I was surprised he drew the line with this

and I'm like, dude, take him up on the offer.

Cause like it's the kind of content, not that

we're like Howard Stern, but you know, it's that

sort of attitude of - You guys are almost like

borderline there with like some of it. Yeah,

it's like, not shock, jock, it happens a bit,

but it's like, we're not, we don't restrict ourselves

to anything. And like we are the definition of

like explicit content, but it doesn't mean we're

explicit for the sake of being explicit, but

like, you know, we'll cover pretty much anything.

Like the one company sends us pornos, guess what?

We're reviewing some pornos and like we'll do

it where we cut out all the sex. I'm trying to

get back. We've got a few that we've got to do.

And the hard part is getting the edit points

to cut it out. So we review it as if it's like

a regular Hollywood movie. So these movies end

up being like 25 minutes long instead of like

two hours of porno. And it's literally, it's

like, well, the acting wasn't so great in this

part. And the people that give them to us, they're

actually okay with that because it's a different

type of content than what they're used to. It's

basically - You guys are putting it in a different

light. It's porn without porn. It's like, well,

what was they acting like? Well, the story was

hard to follow. That sort of thing. And it ends

up being funny because not a lot of podcasts

would necessarily go that way. And we'll do that.

And that's where our identity is. I almost feel

like we're the R -rated to NC17 version of GCRN.

GCRN is like the... PG -13 borderline R -rated,

if that makes any sense. Mm -hmm. And then, like,

UltraGeek is, like, PG? That makes sense? Yeah,

pretty much PG. Maybe PG -13. Depends on the

day. Depends on how angry or tired you are, or

if you have one of us on. Yeah, that's pretty

much it. Like, I can pretty much guarantee it's

gonna be probably, like... I don't know like

pretty much PG -13 most most often like he's

even some of the very slanted like I Don't know.

It's not quite not quite there. Anyway, but it's

It's kind of floats around depending on who's

on or or how irritated I am at some particular

company Yeah, usually but yeah I do get I do

get quite a bit of different contact though from

just different organizations or different blogs

that are like, hey, would you post this for me?

And I'm like, what's the context? What am I supposed

to get out of this? Somebody sent me, they're

working on an article for their site and I've

posted something from them in the past. It must

have been superpowers or something or vehicles

or weapons from sci -fi content. So they, they

said, um, you know, what was it that they sent

to me this time? Uh, it was a hundred years of

time travel and film, and it's a very short infographic.

And I'm looking at it and I'm like, there's not

enough here. Cause if you're talking a hundred

years - Are you trying to promote it on your

site sort of thing? Well, yeah, I mean they wanted

my honest commentary like written in a blog I

mean because one it's got their link on the image,

which I don't honestly care Because there's usually

residual cross -linking in some capacity but

You know they they talk about like on this infographic

about how you know in the in the movies where

anything is possible well TV does it too, but

you know Okay, I'll put that aside because this

is specifically for in film Well, then they talk

about, you know, time, uh, top methods of travel.

It says time machine, portal, science experiment,

you know, and then it's got, you know, backwards,

forward. Sounds very like, like it's a 12 year

old put it together. Some of the graphics almost

kind of give me that thought. Like somebody's

like, they're going for the bare minimum to click

the U in, but then not giving you any real examples.

Yeah, well and then this is biggest year of time

travel 10 time travel movies released in 2013.

Okay Well, it doesn't list any of them then it

says 110 time travel movies produced since 1921

and then this is top or 2 .8 billion Avengers

endgame and then it says our favorite time travel

films and then it has And I've never heard of

this film so it doesn't resonate with me and

it's it says Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's

Court 1921 yeah time travel as part of the plot

then they go Planet of the Apes the original

one then they say Superman well here's a problem

Planet of the Apes the original one is not a

time travel movie yet the second one yeah it's

not a time travel movie till the very end of

the second one like yeah Planet of the Apes is

not time falling asleep and being frozen it's

not time travel it's just normal it's just regular

sci -fi yeah It's just aging. Yeah, and and so

they yeah, they list that and then it's then

they get Terminator and then they get Bill and

Ted's excellent adventure Groundhog Day Back

to the future So they're literally they're listening

every big mainstream movie, but not necessarily.

Well, this is the thing culturally And you gotta

wait for this because then they go and then they

explain why each one is, you know you know whether

it's a time loop or you know why this and why

that or they use this you know um and then they

put harry potter in the prisoner of azkaban they

put one of the best rewind plots in history and

i'm like i'm like no i would i would argue groundhog

day is better but um yeah or even um uh edgar

tomorrow is a better repeat one yeah and so like

i send them back this message I said, because,

you know, I'm not wanting to shy away from like,

you screwed up so partially. So I go, looks pretty

cool. But I noticed a lot is missing from this

infographic. None of the Star Trek content, which

is famous for time travel, is listed. Not counting

the series, the films numbered four, seven, eight

and eleven all featured time travel in the very

in varying capacities. And you know, popularity

for is like even people that don't watch Trek

know the voice home. They're like, oh, the time

travel. It's the least track film out of all

of them. Yeah, like it's a pop culture phenomenon.

It's like, oh, that's the one where they travel

back to the 80s. Yes. Yeah. When it was shot.

And then I says also Looper, Hot Tub Time Machine,

et cetera. All those are missing. Deja Vu with

Denzel. Fantastic movie. People forget about

it. Yep. I forgot about that one, but that one

is a good one, too. But you know, I says I do

like some of the ones listed, but you can you

almost can't have a time travel list without

Star Trek in it somewhere. And then they're like,

you know, thanks for the feedback, although we

couldn't include all time travel movies in the

in the graphic alone. You know, we're going to

be expanding a bunch more in our blog post going

live next week, you know, and whatnot. OK, so

we're not including the most important ones.

Yeah, it's almost like we're going to list them

in a blog post because they're runner up. They

don't count like and it's like, OK, well. It's

like if you want to really count it though, Star

Trek did like, there were like five or six episodes

of the original series in the 60s? Did they at

least have the original or the remake of the

time machine listed? No. So the most important,

sorry, the very first time travel book ever written,

they didn't include the movies based on that?

Nope. Literally, the story that... Every single

time travel movie is based on about altering

Timelines is not included So as you can see I

was I was nitpicking and I knew there were other

ones I was forgetting I was just nitpicking because

you know, I watched track on a pretty regular

basis and It was severely lacking anyway, and

so I was having a hard time coping with that

To say the least and so Yeah, so suffice it to

say I may not get all the advertisements for

the podcast I get them for the website because

the website is old and Well, I should say the

domain name is old the website is not but There's

a lot of backlink edge. And so like I'll have

people that that'll send me a blog post and say

hey Could you link me? You know link this article

to this post or something in XYZ location and

Most of the time I delete the emails. I used

to like be nice about it like And say no, you

know, I just I don't want to go back and even

though they'll give me the URL and And I don't

want to post in there. It's mostly because like

one you're just trying to piggyback on my content

and then two It would be different if like they

were gonna pay something because I'm honestly

not going to do it for free. I don't even know

these people, so that's a seriously strong one.

If somebody offered you, they were like, hey,

I don't have cash, but I can give you a $50 Amazon

card. You'd be like, okay, for an old link on

a page that I'm not necessarily using anymore.

Yeah, I would do it for that, but there has to

be some kind of a like. Give and take like you

want something from me. You have to offer something,

you know, because yes And I've had a few people

that have like honestly just they'll PayPal stuff

and be like here you go. I'm like, okay You don't

get anything for free. This is not the case of

your friend Like you're not it's we're not like

hey Steve Can you put a new link like let's say

we were gonna launch a new site? I think yeah,

we're gonna have to update the website sometime

I'll help you with that. It's time to upgrade

the WordPress and all that, but even doing that

- You might want to move web host while you're

at it. That's something we'll talk about at another

time. But yeah, we're at a point now where because

we're not hosting the episodes ourselves on the

site, it's redundant having it the way it's set

up. We'll still have the backlog and have everything

there. We'll still probably end up using WordPress

or something, but we might - It's time for a

refresh because this is Twig 4 .0 and it's probably

been 4 .0 for what, nine years now? It's about

5 .0. Is it 5 .0? Yeah, I made the last two versions

of the site. Okay, but still, it's been about

five, six years, right, in this current format,

if not more. Yeah, something like that. So it's

probably time to make it a little more cohesive

and tighten it up a little bit. But let's say

we relaunched a new version of the site, the

new logos and everything, and we were like...

Hey Steve, could you put a link to us on yours?

Yeah, we're really good friends and we have cross

-promotion, we do podcasts together. It's a different

story of me asking you, or you asking us, than

some rando. Oh, exactly. Or if you get feedback

on the regular basis, you had one of the fans

say, hey, I'm watching my own podcast on anime

or something. Would you mind putting a link in

there? Sure, because you know who the person

is. If it was a fan, I would definitely do that.

They've listened to me. It's only fair. I would

do it. But yeah, it's kind of amazing. And I

guess they're playing a numbers game. They're

sending a wide net. They're just like, here,

they did a search for, let's say you talked about,

or let's say there's a product that came up that

you talked about for whatever reason. And that's

the key term they search for in Google. They

found every podcast that had a review or talked

about this topic. They're sending a form email

to everybody. And they're just hoping that one

person will post that link. Oh, definitely. And

I, yeah, I just don't I don't play by that game.

It's I don't have that kind of time on me. Yeah,

and I know like there there was even stuff like

I know Birdman was offered to work for I forget

what website it was, but they wanted him to write.

articles on things and the pay they were going

to give, a lot of these websites, these blog

sites, what they offer is not even like a word

per minute. I remember he ended up asking, so

what's my rate per word? And they were like,

what? And this is like a fairly, we're talking

website that was getting probably a million traffic

per month. And it's like, They didn't understand

the standard rates that you get paid to write

for, like that you learn in school for journalism.

And he's like, yeah, so what am I getting paid

per word? And they're like, well, what we were

giving, it's like a per article fitting. And

it's like, well, how long has the article got

to be? And then they're like, well, it's got

to be a minimum of this and this and this. And

he's like, so he didn't pay the math. He's like,

so you're saying I'm going to be working for

less than a dollar to a dollar per hour? Because

of what they were sort of expecting the length

and they're making sure that it's concisely and

there are people that think like all get 50 bucks

to write this article it's like But if it takes

you five six hours to write the article, it's

not worth it Yeah, see and I can comment on that

because when I was working for one tech website

writing and while I was laid off They They would

pay you $30 for a 400 word article Or up to 500

words and then the other one they would pay $50

up to a like between 700 and like a thousand

and At the time like I had no income. I didn't

really care but I was blowing like three three

to four hours on the longer ones because They

would give you articles that you had no idea

any of the like the tech information Like I had

to write articles about iOS devices. I've never

owned one and I don't like them It's insane.

They'll give you the basics, like here's what

we want you to write about or here's the topic

and then it's like go on and put it in your own

words so that it sounds like it came from you

and it's like. Well, in this particular site

though, they would basically take articles from

two to three other sites. Mostly it was the same

site. They would say, hey, we want you to write

this article. This is the basis and this is the

link. And you have to do the, the SEO linkage

for, you know, Google purposes of cross -linking

in the website on the post. And we want a minimum

of five of those. Then you get to write the,

uh, thing for the newsletter. And then you get

to write the title and then, you know, the whole

article. And if there was any pictures or anything

else and. Or video or something. And I wrote

probably 40 articles for them. And then they

had some kind of a staff changeover and I never

heard from them again after that. I mean, I got

paid for all of it, but it was still like I never

heard from them again. And I was like turning

out articles faster than anybody else after I

got the hang of it. But and they were all quality

articles. It's just that, you know, just whatever

reason, they just stopped contacting me back

and I'd email them like, hey, I'm ready for more

articles and they'd have to assign them. I haven't

heard from I can still log in, but I don't I

don't see anything now. But it's again, it's

like. they don't want Fox to write their content

because then it comes out looking like garbage.

Like how many times have you gone to look for

a review on a product and either a YouTube channel

is just the product spinning in a picture with

like Microsoft Sam reading off the specs or you

go to a website and you're looking for the review

and it's the same review on 30 or 40 websites

and it's just listing the product and telling

you why it should be good. Not that it is good,

not that there's an actual opinion, but why it

should be good based on the specs. Yeah, and

those type of things should just be blacklisted

from Google, honestly, because it's just a waste

of internet -like traffic. And I understand that

they pay for it, but still it sucks. We're getting

to the point now where the internet is looking

like the 1990s depiction of the future internet

without ad blockers on. But the problem is you

can turn an ad blocker on, it doesn't... But

DAB blockers don't block entire websites, where

it's like, oh, this website shouldn't exist.

Yeah. There's a browser I actually use called

Brave. I don't know if you've heard of it. Briefly,

I think. So what essentially it does is it uses

the Chrome engine. And it's a browser. And it

runs just like Chrome. It runs on Chromium. It's

it functions and looks almost exactly like it.

So what it does is it allows you to You can turn

shields up and shields down for sites. So like

let's say I go to Twitter or a tweet deck and

I got shields up and what it says is 99 plus

items blocked and then it shows you whether there's

cross site device recognition blocks cross site

cookies Connections upgraded to HTTPS whether

it has to or not Then it says cross site trackers

blocked and then it shows you all of the trackers

and there's like over It's probably like 300

of them here where Twitter just tracks you on

this and so if you've got shields up they can't

track you and They get zero data from it. So

I use it whenever I'm on like any of the social

media, you know whether it's Twitter Facebook

any of those things and It's actually really

nice. I use it on Facebook. It doesn't block

as much because Facebook doesn't have as many

trackers as tweet deck does But again, if you

go to facebook .com, this is a hilarious thing

there's Google ads and Facebook campaign ads

and it blocks and that's all they are or like

pixel dot Facebook where they track your whatever

the images are or whatever with it so it blocked

14 things just from uh, like our messenger window,

for instance, or, or Hotmail, it blocks, you

know, the cross site trackers from various sources.

And so I use this and it actually it's there's

when you launch a new tab, it says, for instance,

since I started using this, uh, it says 120 ,000,

uh, ads and trackers blocked 2 ,600 websites

upgraded to HTTPS 1 .7 hours estimated time saved.

because what it essentially does is it speeds

up your internet process by blocking those right

from the get -go so your pages actually load

and it's a beautiful tool. So it's basically

like there were tools similar to that back in

the dial -up days that were like built into your

actual like net zero dialing software they were

like the internet boosters all it did was turn

on that. So yeah I remember that I remember that

and it would turn off images too. Yeah, turn

off images, turn off ads, and it would cache.

If your computer had enough storage, it would

cache the most 10, 15 most common sites you went

to, at least their landing pages, back when everything

was still using inline frames. You know what

I mean? The outskirts, the table page would have

inline frames and everything. Your menus would

load instantaneously because that stuff very

rarely changed on the website. It would only

be whatever was on the main content of the, this

is before blogging really existed, but the main

page would be different. So you could go to a

website and it'd be funny, you'd have the border

of the website loaded instantaneously and then

you'd have to wait your 10 seconds for your page

to load in the middle instead of a full minute

for everything. So something, since we were talking

about shows and iTunes and everything else, So

I'm going through, I don't know if you've gone

through the new category since they switched.

I tried to set up our categories, but I found

that it was almost, there was even less to categorize

it. There's more options, but they're tuned in

such a way that Twig doesn't fit into a lot of

them. Yeah, and that's part of the problem is

alteredGeek doesn't really fit into a lot of

them either. So it has to be like lifestyle tech

would probably be the only thing that I don't

even know if it's a category for that Not really

Like I know like TV reviews because we have a

lot of those on geek cast radio When you go to

that page like we used to have Two or three of

them in the top 20 well because a lot of the

other shows that are like famous people or youtubers

or some of these other Jack rabbits that are

in the top they Like, Tooncast is in number 40

and All Things Transformers is at number 54 or

55 under the TV reviews section. And this is

under like the TV and film, for instance. And

then if you go to, I want to say, we have a few

other shows. I'm just trying to find them. But

it's just like these new categories like while

they're great having film reviews or or, you

know TV reviews or after shows or Things like

that. You don't Unless you're one of those big

popular hosts. You're not gonna see your show

in there You'd like after buzz TV, for instance,

they put out a ton of crap well, they fill up

the after shows because they do a lot of after

shows and I feel like you the way to solve this

honestly is You should only allow like if you're

gonna be in the top 10 of a category or something

It shouldn't show up in another one the owners

like the create the yeah You should only be in

one unless there is a overlap. Let's say because

you can pick your three or whatever There's a

possibility to be the top and all three if you're

really really downloaded now at the same time,

I also don't feel like If you have after shows,

let's say you have an after show for this. There's

like a million after shows you have. You shouldn't

be able to fill up everything with your one brand.

It should be brand specific. I wouldn't mind

if like, because This Week in Geek has a few

shows we've run. Well, maybe This Week in Geek

should be listed as, it shouldn't be top shows,

it should be top producers or top brands. Because

then, GCRN, would have a higher chance of being

up there because it would aggregate all of your

listens and all of your downloads from all of

your shows. And it'd be like, here are, like,

it shouldn't be listing individual shows. It

should be listing who the creators are. Because

then the podcast ones would be screwed. Because

it would be like, sure, they have the top 10

downloaded show programs, but they would only

be listed as one. Yeah. And I think that would

help having the different networks. You know

listed once because like podcast one or studio

71. I did find the podcast that that was trying

to Have me market their show and it's that marquis

brownlee From kbhd or whatever. He does he does

a podcast called waveform and he does like tech

podcast and gadget stuff He had a youtube show

reviewing stuff and he was telling me this and

i'm like who? And i've talked to a few people

there because they're over saturated, too Yeah,

I mean, there's so many of them like I honestly

I don't care if I'm gonna listen to somebody

talking about tech I'm gonna go to Leo report

like tech team. Yeah, that's yeah, and that's

the thing like it if you had said that name I'd

be like, oh, I know that is and the fact that

he's not like number one in that in tech category

period is Now they do have a category called

they do have a category called longest running

shows under technology which he's number one,

but they also listed this this waveform under

leisure, which I don't know how this is leisure.

Like, like. The only reason it's number one in

leisure is because they mismarketed it on purpose.

So I almost wonder if you game the system by

changing your your stats to purposely get in

a different category that I put myself under

under like knitting would be. Well, like, well,

like, for instance, the poll bag. it's comics

okay they used to have a comics section on itunes

or something they're you know very similar they

have all they have now under leisure is because

it was like hobbies and and fiction or something

like that before and so that's where it was at

well now it lives under the leisure animation

in manga category which makes it sound like animation

they're making it sound like anime only like

Yeah, well it says animation and manga and so

what's funny is you have You know Saturday morning

cartoon boom or something's number one then they

got a Pokemon podcast and then they've got a

Digimon one in there and Dragon Ball Z and then

Lo and behold number eight is the pullback in

that top 20 list and it's been there and it's

been climbing to the top because it's it doesn't

fit under any other category and so therefore

it's there and Uh, so it's very humorous to me

to see how some of these things are laid out.

Um, it, because like they go from all different

ranges in here, like hobbies, that's another

area. And you've got everything from, you know,

knitting to, um, you know, ham radio to world

of war cast, you know, or trivia warfare, or,

you know, things like that. So, I mean, it's

all these weird other things. And then you've

got. I don't know a lot of the categories just

seem to be just out of whack completely It just

doesn't make any sense to me Yeah, like I'm going

to look it up now like here's like I I For the

longest time was using an iPhone and I was using

like I didn't use iTunes itself I did everything

within the phone itself So I never even really

looked at tricks like I have my list of people

that I've listened to that I've been listening

to for years and occasionally I'll drop one or

come back to it in a year or two sort of thing.

But like I've got my staples and it's like, there

is a point where, you know, I have maybe subscribed

to 20 podcasts total in a month, maybe. And I

still like, I'll download most of them, even

if I don't listen to all of them, because I want

that to be counted for some people, but like

other people will skip them entirely. There are

certain episodes I'll skip, but if you had listened

to more than 10 to 15 shows in a month, You really

don't have time to listen to everything No, like

especially with more and more podcasts going

like daily like we're trying to get Probably

one to three episodes a week out just so that

it you know You can choose what you want to listen

to or not But like there are many many shows

now that are like Joe Rogan where it's like,

oh, that's nine hours a week Just for his show.

Yeah, and it's like I used to work for Glenn

Beck and he does nine hours and actually does

three hours Every day like Monday through Friday

And then he releases the same thing on a podcast.

And I mean, with him, you'll have, and people

like him, you'll have a listener base that maybe

only listens to his show. That's it. They listen

to nothing else. So you'll have, when you get

a certain size, you can have an audience like

that that literally only listens to you. Which

I don't know if it's really worth that. It used

to be back in the satellite radio days But like

the problem is a lot of these hosts are treating

it like satellite radio what it's not So it's

top shows top shows now. This is is this only

gonna show me Canada It you yours will okay mine.

So I'm gonna show number one show in Canada is

Zane and Heath unfiltered Then party lines uncover

which is a CBC Canadian to the for the number

two and three are Canadian CBC broadcast ones.

I guarantee you nobody's listening to those that's

being paid for I mean, that's that's public public

television. That's being paid for Then Joe Rogan's

number four call her daddy Barstool sports is

number number five The Daily which is the New

York Times summary as number six. Okay, that

makes sense It's summary of the news Ted Talks

Daily clearing I haven't heard of any of these.

Okay, number 16, the social. You know what the

social is? It's the Canadian version, it's the

Canadian view. It's basically the Canadian view

that they couldn't get, it's a bunch of women

tackling over stupid crap on CTV that my grandma

watches every morning. And they have apparently

a show because here's a question. What 80 year

old women are listening to this on podcast form?

Nobody. Or to make it number 16 on the list of

all... It's probably the same people that watch

The View. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Number 19 on the

list. It's Canadian true crime. It's true crime

documentaries talking about it. That's cool.

I understand why that's there. That's something

that people like to listen to on their computer

before bed. Like it's the whole like... Apple

Keynotes is number 22. There's a lot of CBC stuff

here that's in the top list and it doesn't make

sense to me because I know that there is a big

push for it. I'm wondering, I don't know, like

there's not a lot, like CBC produces really good

dramas and really good documentaries. They're

like, what if you mixed like, that's a good example.

It's like, what if you mixed HBO with a national

broadcaster at the same time? That's sort of

what they do. or like the BBC in the UK. There's

other stuff here that, I don't know, like literally

out of the top 50, I've heard of maybe five.

One of them is Dr. Death, that was popular from,

what is it, Wordaleer, where it's a documentary

about the guy, the doctor that killed a whole

bunch of patients and got away with it. Oh, okay.

Dr. Phil. What else we have here so so you want

to know you want to know okay number number 46

is Bill Burr Makes sense. Okay comedy podcast.

He does it, you know Every week. He's really

popular. I saw him live here funny And then again

a whole bunch of nobodies and then it looks like

I can break it down based on category Which I'll

do while you tell me what you're gonna say So

I was gonna say that So under the and this is

why I think it'd be funny to try just to just

to see how this works Because the whole Apple

system is a joke How they lay out iTunes because

or Apple podcasts Because I'm under and this

is a gripe I had a few weeks ago because it shouldn't

be here But it's it's a flaw in their system

so under Podcasts religion and spirituality longest

-running shows under that category Guess what's

number eight? You'll never guess it Well, let

me see. I'll tell you what number eight is in

Canada rhythms under my spirituality. Yes rhythms

rhythms for life with looks like Reverend somebody

and then if I go forward There's a Christian

storytelling one. Meditation minis. Another one's

like yoga. Bible Project is number three. Number

one is Oprah's Super Soul Conversations. Weird.

Oprah's not even on this one. Yeah, so the number

eight show, Smodcast. Okay, let me look to see

if it's in mine anywhere. And guess what is number

26? Fat Man Beyond. Oh, okay. Neither one of

them fit under spirituality and religion. But

yet they're here and they're in the top 25. It's

not... None of that is listed under mine. Also,

we don't have nearly as many categories. Maybe

they didn't roll it out for everybody. So everything

does look proper. It looks like there's like

Muslim ones. There's Jewish ones There's spiritual

it actually looks pretty Jesus calling stories

of faith. There's a lot on here But let me scroll

up and see I'll tell you the categories we have

because I clicked on store And then I clicked

on top and then I put that category so I'll see

what there is So we got news comedy sports history

true crime Society and culture, arts, business,

education, fiction, government. God, that would

be boring. But that's probably also all like

the political commentators. Health and fitness,

kids and family, leisure, music, religion and

spirituality, science, technology, TV and film.

And that's it. I think those are the old categories.

Yeah, we got the new ones here. So I know that

they've rolled it out up here because I know

that I had to select new ones from the iTunes

Podcast Connect. Yeah, I don't know. I'm just

so sick of the whole iTunes thing of how it breaks

down information. It seems like they didn't change

much in the last 10 years. It was really popular

for about six years, and then they just did nothing

with it. Well, it's basically when they stopped

caring about the iPod. You mean when Steve Jobs

died? Yeah. That's when they stopped it. I'm

just logging into the feed. And I just wanted

to see what are categories it listed under, because

I couldn't remember. Yeah, because like the top,

what's funny is all the stuff they like Studio

71 is garbage. Trying to see where it tells me

what categories I'm under. Well, if you're on

Spreaker, all you have to do is go into the show.

the individual showing them on the SSD customization.

It's so convoluted, even just getting things

posted there. At least with Streaker or these

platforms, they'll actually push things out to

iTunes as an extra thing. iTunes used to be the

be -all, end -all, and now it's just an extra.

I know. What's funny is we get more traffic from

Spotify than we do iTunes now. We don't. Let

me see where we get ours from. But first, actually,

let's see the feed. And see, this is the sad

thing, is they have a thing called featured providers

on the homepage of the store. So like Washington

Post, NPR, Comedy Central, Vox Media, iHeartRadio,

The Ringer, Podcast One, New York Times, Wondry,

The Economist, Night Vale, Forever Dog, Slate.

Okay. Bloomberg, Entertainment Weekly, Twitch,

ABC News, ESPN, CNN, Wall Street Journal, Audio

Boom, Campfire, The New Yorker, and Starburn's

audio. So like, basically anything under those

flags should not be anywhere in the whole lineup.

Okay, I remember now I was torn here because

the three categories we have for iTunes now,

we're listed under entertainment news, video

games, and film reviews. Because we do all those.

But we also do a lot of tech news, but tech news

and entertainment news are considered two different

categories. So you just do the master one news.

You'll just you'll never get anywhere with that.

I know. So that's what we've got there, but like

I'm going to see what the breakdown is, because

I know I was surprised like like that of how

many platforms it pushes out to like I now that

I've got the the pixel, I'm using the the Google.

podcast app, it is not nearly as good as running.

One thing I will give Apple is their podcast

app. Stop talking to me. I pressed the button

and now it's talking to me. You're like, go away,

stop. Go away, assistant. But anyway, it's not

nearly as good. The iTunes podcast app is fantastic

on the iPod and on the iPhone. It is by far the

absolute best. way to listen on mobile, period.

There's nothing that comes close to it. It's

the one thing that they've kept strong even if

everything else about them is falling apart.

It's the one thing that Google and Android just

haven't been able to do, is make a good podcast

app. Because I've got the Spreaker app on my

phone as well, and it's way better than the built

-in podcast app. That's because Google's is not

a dedicated app. That's the thing. You have to

download it separately, even though it's made

by them. It uses a few APIs and interfaces. Yet,

for instance, if you close the app by swiping

up to close all your apps, it will not stop the

audio. You have to do it manually. Oh, yeah.

OK. So let me see. The breakdown of what we've

got. Where's that button here? Sources, right?

Or are we looking at sources? Yeah, sources.

So our media break up is 39 % is Apple Core Media

iPhones. Then generic Android app is 14%. Chrome

is 10%. So that would be people just listening

on the website. Yep. iTunes. The program itself

is 10%. iPods, sorry, is 5%. Somebody's using

the Opera browser, and that's 5%. It's Mike.

I understand. Probably. iPads is 5%. Somebody

listens, or 3 % of people do Apple watches. I

don't know what overcast is. podcast addict Google

podcast is 0 .3 % then we don't have any listeners

on Spotify like at all which is surprising because

I know it pushes out to oh wait a minute somebody

else has that's right somebody else has this

week in geek on there and they haven't had a

podcast in three years, and I contacted Spotify

to say, hey, this is a non -existent thing, we're

an existing brand that's been using this name

for 12 years, and then I was waiting for them

to determine whether or not we should be allowed

to be using this name without anything else in

there, because the classic feed that I created

works on there because it has the word classica,

whereas... just playing this week and geek will

not work on there. That's the thing that pisses

me off. If you have not had a podcast in three

years, you should be removed. Yeah, it's just

crazy to me. At least now we can break down and

see what everybody's actually listening to us

on. But it is funny that you guys have more people

on Spotify and then we still have a lot of iPhone

users. Yeah, and they were saying that it was

weird that we had that problem. Let's see here.

I noticed on your regular This Week in Geek feed

that everything is double. That happened. Something

weird happened, and it was actually to do with

Vlog Talk. It was put in some sort of weird feed

loop where it doubled the feed up. And I had

to go in and be like, stop. And it happened like,

it shouldn't be doing it anymore. But it happened

like one day where I was like, Birdman goes,

hey, is it wrong with the feed? And I'm like,

why? He's like, I think I'm seeing double. Yeah,

as of the August 31st, that's when it stopped

happening. OK. And the other issue is there like

I've noticed that there's I Think I have to go

into the website and change the feed on there

because it's pulling the feed from a couple sources

because I think the actual Feed from the website

If you click subscribe to the RSS feed on the

website, I don't think it's pulling from the

same source Hmm and there's there's a couple

issues where it's When you got to feed this old,

I think it's pulling from a few different places.

Because when I searched This Week in Geek through

Google Podcasts, it found two different feeds

of This Week in Geek, one with the current artwork,

one with different artwork, and it's the same

content. I can tell you why part of that is,

and that's because the website is set up to be

more or less the distribution hub. Yeah, yeah,

that's that was that was the original setup so

Yeah, it's time for first and it's got the current

logo. That's the funny thing and the one that's

on the RSS feed does not The website does has

the current one, okay Like the current design

and everything so it's it's actually kind of

funny because I don't think it's actually pulling

from that anymore so okay, so For the classic

feed, we kind of get this working with Spotify

because the classic feed, which has minuscule

downloads, because it's all reposts of the interviews

and stuff, that is 67 % Spotify. And then everything

else tapers off to nothing. So if we can get

the main feed working on Spotify, You're probably

looking like it would double or triple our listeners

Maybe I'm just gonna have to put the main show

I'm gonna have to double up the show If I get

if they're unwilling at Spotify to say hey these

guys were first of all that podcast that stopped

three years ago it's just a copycat of ours and

like the president of us working is like we were

operating six years before them and three years

after they ended. There's one called This Week

in Geek by the Southgate Media Group in America.

It stopped producing content a year ago. Birdman

said he used to get emails every now and then.

He would get an email from somebody saying, Hey,

you're using our name. Stop using us. And he

was like, uh, correction. We've been running

like 10 years longer than you. Like some people

try to pull the thing of like, uh, uh, you know,

you're, you're pulling it. And then we've actually

had people tweet at us. Like it was great being

a guest on this week in geek and that's like,

um, that's nice, but, uh, who are you? We haven't

had somebody who's like, We do this. I was a

tabletop gamer. It was like, oh, I had a great

interview. I was on This We Can Eat because they

don't have the Twitter handle because we've had

the Twitter handle since 2008. Somebody will

think it's us. I have a form letter I use now

where I go. Basically, I'll tweet back at them

and be like, oh, sorry. I think you got us confused

with a copycat of ours. but you know we do the

same sort of interviews we've been out this long

and with 1 ,300 episodes and you know if you'd

like come check us out and you know and you know

smiley face and I got it'll be like a passive

aggressive thing at the people that not at the

person who like was interviewed but the people

that are pretending to be twig mm -hmm and if

their argument is if they're like oh you know

it's not the case we've never heard you know

we've never heard you bull bull yes because you

use the name and you're marketing yourselves

as the same thing. And the time that you would

have signed up, you would have been looking for

that Twitter handle. You would have been looking

for that web domain. And you would have been

like, oh, crap, somebody else is there. And you're

just like, well, we'll just hope we'll get bigger

and get to the point where we can claim that

we were there first. And you get a lot of people

that do that with other podcasts, too. It's like

they don't realize how copyright works, that

you don't even have to file it. you just have

to provide proof that you were there first. The

proof's in the pudding. It's like, oh, would

you like to see domain receipts for going back?

First of all, would you like to see content?

Would you like to see episode one? Would you

like to see our interviews that we did seven

years before you existed? Would you like to see

the receipt from our web domain that we've been

paying for for 13 years? We had somebody do that

with remote control, the telecast, Couple other

shows. Well, yeah, but let them take it because

I've been waiting for episodes for like years

now So let somebody else do it Yeah But yeah,

you get people try to say claim your domain or

claim your your your content or something Mm

-hmm And to be honest like the world wide web

is a big big place but the name of your program

and the type of content that you do and we do

is unique enough that you would have to know

we exist before you start something. Yeah. It's

not like we're an upstart with no media presence.

Like, you know, people in the industry, people

in radio, people in television, people in video

games, they know who we are even though we're

not like... We're not like an IGN level or anything.

We're not even, you know, we're not close to

anything there, but we're known within the industry

enough, more so than those podcasts are that

are starting up. So what I know it pisses Mike

off and pisses me off is like the goal for you

to pretend that you didn't know and then try

to claim that, try to get something out of us.

Or we've had people contact the feedback email,

like the speaking .net saying, oh, we've got

the .com available for sale, 10 grand. F off.

ThisWeekendGeek .net has been that domain forever.

If we acquired the .com, we wouldn't even use

it as the main thing. We would use it as a redirect

because .net is the brand at this point. There

would be no point. That would be like if you

acquired 12 different domain names or domain

and you would just use them as redirects to your

main site anyway. So it's like, we're not giving

it 10 grand for the name that we already have.

That the .com means nothing when the .net domain

that we've been using is what gets us traffic.

Yeah, I don't know. It's getting a little crazy

out there with a lot of the copycats and everything

else going on. I almost thought as a joke. I

was going to start a GCRN rival website. I just

pretend to be somebody completely different,

anonymize it, and just see how far I could get

before I saw you and our Blanchard. More likely

Blanchard throw a conniption fit over it. Are

you kidding? Blanchard wouldn't even notice.

I would notice before he would. He wouldn't even

notice until I called, it's like with the host,

Dave TFG2. Cranford or something make it a full

parody and he probably wouldn't even be able

to tell well like I Had somebody oh, that's what

it was somebody try to steal all things transformers

All right, I'm like I've been around since 2008

buddy, sorry Well they tried what tried to claim

your content or tried to like website name Oh,

they like just like tried to sign up for or tried

to claim that you took it from them or something

Well, they they just took the social handles

and everything else and all this other, you know,

like just purposely trying to Well, you haven't

had the case where like they've downloaded your

episodes and then tried to pass them off as their

own I've had that happen before with a couple

of shows specifically mwire and I'm like more

power to you except for the fact that if You

know, you know, don't get hit with copyright

before I will but not to mention that in your

show you all the links would be towards you like

in the audio they have to cut that I hope that

it would make no sense Because it would all be

redirected to you in the first place But yeah,

and I've heard of people having them happen like

it's different thing where like if We share a

show and you know, we like we have a few of them

where we syndicate it a few days later It's like

because you're in a partnership on a show that's

different than what I was talking about is like

when somebody goes and is like We're just going

to data mine your entire content archive and

try to find a way to monetize it somewhere else.

People do that with YouTube all the time. They'll

take somebody's podcast, like Rogan was a big

one where they'll take their content and just

flip the image to reverse so it doesn't hit the

algorithm, or pitch the audio up and down and

then try to get like 100 ,000 views for posting

a podcast. The bots are getting smarter, or the

algorithms are getting smarter at finding these

sorts of things. And I don't think it happens

quite as much with podcasts, but I think if you

were somebody that had a massive following, you'd

have a lot more of that happening where somebody's

trying to find a way to take your feet. But now

that Spreaker and all these content platforms

push your content to multiple things like iHeartRadio

and everything, I think it's a lot less likely

for these sorts of things to happen. except in

the case where somebody was on Spotify before

we were with the same name, and it's the exact

same name. That's why it wouldn't accept it when

we tried to push it through. Because if I pull

them up, that's what's infuriating. What's more

infuriating is it's like if they had a better

sounding podcast, people, when your podcast sounds

like crap, it's like, oh, you're dragging our

name down. Oh, yeah, totally. I totally can relate

to that. But I think that about wraps up this

conversation, though. Yeah, I was going to say,

it's not even the topic we were going to be talking

about. No, but it kind of ran its own course.

So I guess we got this out of our system, and

then should we give it a teaser what the topic

was going to be? Yeah, totally, totally. So next

week, we'll... Well, I'll let you interrupt since

it was your idea originally. Sure. So I'm going

to, you know, set the stage here. We had a private

discussion. We're like, what are we going to

talk about? You know, we've got a few ideas floating

around. And I said, OK. I had recently watched

a few weird ads pop up like old commercials on

YouTube. And I was like, you know what? Advertising

for children and kids and adolescents now, which

I don't see a whole ton of because they don't

really keep regular TV, but. from what I do see

is dramatically different from everything pre

-2000. And it was going to be an interesting

topic of how advertising for toys, for food,

for everything has changed how they market to

kids over the years. And then that could sort

of parlay into other topics later on. Especially

the 90s seemed to be the peak. 80s had a lot

of ads for kids, but I think the 90s is where

they really made the push for children's advertising,

and then the dramatic changes happened shortly

after. That was my idea for the topic that we

were going to talk about before it was all about

podcasting landscapes. Totally. Until next time,

we've been - Alex. And I've been Steve and so

you can get a hold of us on the social medias

at At this week in geek I'm Pretty much anywhere

at this point. I should probably make a little

recording that we pop in here with everything

Because you can contact us so many different

ways Alex at this week in geek .net feedback

at this week in geek .net Twitter you can get

a hold of me deafface swag or just this week

in geek And you can get a hold of me on geekcastradio

.com or at AlterGeek or at SCP21. So until next

time, get AlterGeeky with the AlterGeek.