Welcome to podcasting tech, a podcast that equips busy entrepreneurs engaged in podcasting with proven and cost effective solutions for achieving a professional sound and appearance. I'm Matthew Passy, your host and a 15 year veteran in the podcasting space. We'll help you cut through the noise and offer guidance on software and hardware that can elevate the quality of your show. Tune in weekly for insightful interviews with tech creators, behind the scenes studio tours, and strategies for
podcasting success. Head to podcastingtech.com to subscribe to this show on YouTube or your favorite podcast platform and join us on this exciting journey to unlock the full potential of your podcast. Well, this is definitely exciting. Something that I've probably should have done a lot earlier in the show and I've wanted to do for a while is interview live in person, and I am so excited to be doing it this episode for
the first time. Not only because I enjoy doing podcasts in person, but I get to do it here at Sweet Recording, a studio that I have the pleasure of being part of the origination of. And now, happy to support here in South Jersey. But more importantly, let's talk to our guest. We are chatting with Frank Rasiop. Did Did I say that right, or did I totally butcher it? It's Rasiopi, but that's okay. Frank Rasiopi. We are going to get it right. He's the
owner and manager of Ear Worthy Publications. You can find that at podcastreports.blogspot.com. He's also an author of several books. The most notable one you'll probably gonna recognize as a podcaster is Earworthy, and he's the man behind the Earworthy Independent Podcast Awards. Frank, thank you so much for joining us. Matthew, thanks for being being here. Also wanna thank Joe for setting up in sweet recording. This is fantastic. So thank you, Joe. Thank you,
Matthew. Glad to be here. Beautiful setting. Hopefully, the audience recognizes the good audio and the nice looking video even though this is what they have to look at. So Earworthy is been for a while now, it's been kind of noted as this fantastic source of independent podcast awards. Right? We have the ones from Iheart and these bigger corporations, which usually they're promoting their own stuff. So why did you jump in and decide to start your own podcast awards, and what was that
process like? So, first of all, great question. As you know, as big companies have jumped into podcasting the last 5 years, notably, Spotify, Amazon through Wondery, Iheart. You have these large companies essentially either pushing out independent podcasters or just stealing the spotlight. So, for example, most of the awards and in the article about the podcast awards, there are a lot of awards for podcasting. They range from the the signals to the ambies.
There's a lot of them. The problem is is that most of them are for network supported podcasts. And if you go back, I believe, Julia Louis Dreyfus deservedly so won for best podcast. And not that she doesn't deserve it, but there are a lot of independent podcasts that don't get that recognition. And what that, how that came to me was through a podcast I reviewed. It's a British woman. Her name is EMM. That's, sometimes with independent
podcasts. Weirdly, they don't want their last name out there. I'm not quite sure why, but you're shaking your head so you've probably seen that. I understand. Having worked in radio and worked with people who used, you know, weird nicknames, I I get the privacy that they want. So I I interview her, one day over Zoom, and we start talking. And I said, so what are you up to? Her verbal diorama is about it's a movies podcast. So she'll take a movie. She
doesn't review the the movie itself. She gives you the history of the the movie, How it got started, who wrote it, what happened during production, post production, so forth. So I said, what are you doing after this? She said, oh, well, I'm the head of the British Independent Podcasting Awards. And my reaction to that was, that's interesting. Do we have an American version of that? And she said, no. I don't know why you yanks don't. I can't do a English
accent, so I won't try. And that got me thinking, gee, I wonder why we don't. So coupled with that is a change in the focus of Earworthy. So the Earworthy, the publication, which basically does podcast reviews, recommendations, and there are a lot of other people who do the same thing and a lot of really good people who do that. Greatpods is a good one. Bingeworthy is a good one. There's a lot of them out there. And one thing that you know, Matthew, is that the podcasting industry
is collaborative and co collegial. It's not like other industries where it's cutthroat. So we give credit to other people basically doing the same thing. So most of the reviews I do end up coming from a marketing company from a a large company. Like, somebody like Beck Media does some Spotify or Iheart Once. They'll send me something. Like I got one the other day. Tom Flick is a new audio fiction podcast from Iheart and Tenderfoot TV. And it's got Owen Wilson and Cissy Spacek in
it. Terrific. That's that's great. Obviously, they've spent money not just on the the sound production, but also on the actors themselves. They've spent a lot of money on that. So there's not any way that someone who's an indie podcaster can can match that. So, I just thought about how the field is becoming more and more uneven, and it's hard for people to compete in the indie podcast. And you know yourself, especially since having, the other day you had, Pat Chung on talking
about Fanlist. And that really is about ways for independent podcasters to monetize their podcast. And, actually, it was a great episode because I learned a lot about all these different methods that I had never even thought of as far as monetizing. And he really did have some, fabulous ideas. So but even if everybody, an indie podcaster, adopted all those ideas, they're still they're they're still behind monetarily the large
network podcasts. Well, they're behind in attention. I always used to joke that, you know, Shaquille O'Neal could put out a podcast of him farting for 40 minutes and he would probably get a 100,000 downloads just because of name recognition alone. Sure. And we are in a world where oftentimes people think podcasters are competing with podcasters, but we're not. We are competing with anything else that consumes
our time. And so in this world where YouTube, Netflix, television, radio, music, family, work, right, all these things are competing for our time, It's hard for anybody to stand out, let alone anybody who doesn't have a preexisting platform. So that's not to say that there aren't independent podcasters doing amazing things. There are. Right? It's hard to get through the noise when you have a Julia Louis Dreyfus. Right? She puts out a podcast and, yes, it is excellent. Like,
what she's doing is excellent. The concept is that the it's a great show, but she has a huge advantage because she is a Emmy award winning Julia Louis Dreyfus. And so, yeah, I see where anybody starting a podcast feels like they're at a disadvantage. Exactly. Well said. And a good exam another good example is the Kelsey Brothers. Mhmm. Their podcast, I think, is I think it was Joe Rogan, Crime Junkie, and the Kelsey
Brothers. I forget the name of their podcast. Oh, I know if Joe is listening, he's gonna he's gonna pop in and tell us what it is. And my wife is gonna be very upset that I don't know this off the top of my head because she's a huge, at new heights with the Kelsey Brothers. But, yeah, they they right? I pod news would constantly show, you know, who are the top podcasters. And for a while there, especially around the Super Bowl and Taylor Swift, right, they were right up there in the mix
all the time. Sure. And it's the it's really the Shaquille O'Neal metaphor, which is not it's not that it's not good, they're actually quite entertaining, but it's because they're the Kelsey brothers. And so that's all you end up needing in order to do that. The one thing I will say about that whole concept is that a few years ago, these big networks thought, you know what we're gonna do? We're gonna take a social media influencer, and we're gonna put them on a podcast. And that went on for
about 3 years. It slowed down a lot now because one of the things they discovered is that someone that makes a 30 second TikTok video or an Instagram reel sometimes can't sustain 40 minutes of a podcast. They don't have that much in the tank in order to get a dialogue You I get something from any one of the marketing media companies, at least once a week. This person is starting a
podcast. Here's a good example is so we have, in the last couple weeks, this has rocketed up to the top, is the NCIS rewatch podcast, whose name escapes me right now. I did write about it. And I listened to it, and it's actually quite good. But those and there's another one, which is Melrose Place in 90210, which just came out. Those kinds of rewatch podcasts, end up with a built in audience because everybody it doesn't matter, actually, who's the host. So usually, they get people that used to
be on the show. But even if they don't, you're like, oh, wait a minute. I used to love this show. I need to listen to this podcast. Right. You're already a fan of the brand. And so it's it's really easy for those people to come along. A great example, actually so I listen to Conan O'Brien a lot. Which I love. And funny enough, I never watched Conan. I just I had some time, and I remember saying some you know, somebody said, oh, he's really funny. Check it out. I
went back and listened the whole thing. Well, recently, he got Ted Danson and Woody Harrelson to launch a podcast on his network called Everybody Knows Your Name Oh. Which is a reference to Cheers where the 2 starred together And that same effect. Right? Like, oh, I know these guys. I should listen to it. And I know the guests that they're having, I should listen to it. Lovingly, I don't love it. It's not it's Interesting. It it it's a very calm, dry, slow energy, which just
doesn't do it for me. That's not to say that there is not a lot of people who are going to love it, but I I fell victim to that same thing. I said, oh, I recognize the names. You know, these are stars and people who I know. I would enjoy the show and turned out I really didn't. Interesting. Haven't unsubscribed yet, so you're still getting my downloads, which is nice. So so let's go back to what you do. So Earworthy, how do you figure out who is going to be in the
mix? Right? Who is nominating or who gets nominated, and who ultimately decides who the winners are gonna be? Great question. So, here so I'm a South Jersey person like you, Matthew. But I have in my travels, I have met some podcast people that are have a there's a gentleman I know named Jim Driscoll. He lives in Minneapolis. So we communicate. He's a podcast consultant there. And another gentleman, George Witt, who's out in San Francisco,
and a woman I've known for years. I used to work with her, LaShay Jones. She does a podcast, and she's in Plano, Texas. Plano's right next to that. You're you're shaking your head. You know? I had a frat brother who lived in the Plano. Yeah. So, I talked to them. We get together. We spent on Zoom hours trying to work this out. First of all, because, it's hard to
corral independent podcast. What you I mean, you know there's every time somebody reports on a number of podcasts, they're they talk about the 1,000,000. But there's there's still even if you look at the number of podcasts that are over 50 over 50 episodes, there's still 70 or 80,000 of those. Right? Well, I saw something, recently. There's only 330,000, what they're calling, active podcasts. Someone who's spent an episode in the last, maybe it's like 50 days or something like that.
So, yeah. It's it's a broad market, but it really isn't as big as it's often advertised as. And so this is a technology thing. So when I first started doing reviews, and I started that early on in the process. I used to have a publication called Podcast Reviews back in 2010. Oh, early. Early. And so that failed largely because there just wasn't enough people paying attention. But back then when I did reviews, if I listened to a independent
podcast as compared to the few network ones. So back early then, TV Guide actually got a podcast. PC, PC Magazine had a podcast. Leo Laporte's been around forever. He had one. You could tell the difference right away between a professional podcast and an independent podcast simply because the technology their technology generally wasn't very good. They didn't have the mics. They didn't have the system. A lot of times people were trying to learn Audacity at the same time as they were doing
their podcast. And so you could tell the difference right away. And I went back and looked at some of my old articles. And I used to have a section where I would talk about sound quality. Now it's rare that I'll do that largely because most of the independents the the sound quality, it matches the some of the best professional podcasts that are out there. I mean, you can't tell the difference between, say, a Jordan Harbinger podcast. He's an big
time interview guy. And a smaller podcast like, Ayesha Khan does every single sci fi film ever Oh. From England. You couldn't tell the difference in the sound quality. I'll show the technology has come a long way. I remember when I first started doing this on my own outside of a media company, the first mic I bought was a blue snowball mic. It's
like $80. It was terrible. And now for $60, I can get a Samsung Q2U or an ATR 211100 and, right, it's it's hard to discern the difference, especially now with the AI tools that are out there to improve the audio. But yeah. Back in the day, I used to say people sounded like they were podcasting from their mom's basements. Exactly. Yeah. Because you could they they sounded, like, really far away. Sometimes, 2 people or 3 people tried to use one mic, and you could tell
they'd get the pops. All those things were going on. But that's for a pod independent podcast that gets a good amount of, listens, that's rare for that to happen now. You can't really tell the difference between them. I mean, there's there's a podcast called, 6, Degrees of, Cats. It it's one of the award winners. It's by this woman who's called, she calls herself Captain Kitty, but her name is Amanda B. She uses do you remember Rick Taylor, the
old comedian back from the nineties? He would have throw the Yeah. And squeeze horns and everything. She throws every sound trick and design and device that you have at it. There's always something happening there, which for an independent guest, she's got a lot going on. You would think, well, I'll just keep it as simple as possible. But she's that good that she makes it good. It's a deep, rich, sort of resonant tone to the whole
podcast. You know, it's funny you say that too because now I hear some professional podcast and when they don't sound good, I think to myself, why the hell can't you sound as good as all these other people? I I, notably, I listen to Jon Stewart's new podcast every once in a while. And sometimes I wonder if he even has a mic. Oh. And I'm like, this is a guy who worked in television. He's got, you know, he his quality should not be an issue. And sometimes I find that it is, which is
strange. That's actually funny you should say that because he just started that weekly podcast, and I listened to it because I'm a fan. My reaction was actually the same way. I'm like, wait. Is he not doing this in in the studio, or is he just doing this at home? Or what's going on here? Well, he he was doing one when he had the Apple show too. Yeah. Uh-huh. And that was similar. He must be doing it from home. And, again, somebody just buy him a q 9 u or a a, you know, There are
mics for less than $300 you could buy that just plug it in work. It shouldn't be that simple. But, anyway, so so you you know, there's no difference now. Right? Quality is no longer an issue. Right. Right. It's not it's it's a leveling factor now. Exactly. So, I think one of you were talking about, podcasting in relation to all the other activities that people can participate in. And it's podcasting's not just competing with themselves, but with Netflix and, video games.
And so one of the strengths of independent podcasting that I think, the wonders of the world and Spotify still haven't picked up on is that podcasting, right from the beginning, was a niche is a niche within a niche. So, for example, one of the things I love to do is search for unique podcasts. So there's a guy who he hasn't done one a little bit. He does a podcast about tattoos, which isn't that unusual. And he has a audio he has a video part, of course, to show the
tattoos. But the thing but the difference is he does it about tattoos that people have messed up. And so it's it's actually pretty hilarious. And so he he goes around, apparently, takes pictures of people's tattoos. And he'll say, well, somebody will have a misspelling or whatever. But the the whole idea I mean, it's kinda quirky, but the whole idea is that you can have a podcast in which the topic is so arcane that no other format
would even touch it. They're like, okay. If I write a book on this, how many people will read it? 50 people? But with a podcast, I think I was telling you earlier, there's a woman that I used to work with. She started a sewing podcast called Sew What, which is a great name. She ended up with, she passed during COVID, of COVID, but she ended up with 5,000 listeners before she passed on a sewing podcast. It was amazing. And if she didn't do it weekly, she would get people saying, well,
where's the where's the podcast? It just and so you would think, well, who wants to hear about sewing? Well, apparently, at least 5,000 people did. She didn't do any marketing, or she didn't do any social media, no SEO, 0. And she still got 5,000 people. So for a lot of these people that are in these awards, these are a lot of them, if you look at them, they're you they're unique topics or they're topics that everybody does that are they've done
extremely well. And so a good example of that I actually brought my list here so I could look at it so I don't mess anybody up. So here's one, here which is pretty unique. It's called Because the Boss Belongs to Us. This is a pretty recent one. It's, 2 women from, England, and their whole concept is so they are part of the LGBTQ community. Their whole concept is they wanna make Bruce Springsteen a gay icon. Yeah. And that was that
was my reaction too. The state of New Jersey is gonna have some words with you about that. And so, they, they start out by saying, when you think about gay musical icons, who do you think of? Shelton John. Cher. Mariah Carey. But we're gonna work hard in order we're going to make Bruce Springsteen a gay icon. And it's a limited series, and I finished 4 episodes so far. But it's terrific in which they do it. They they took take some of his songs. They they look at some of the
lyrics related to their life and their lifestyle. It's a very unique and different and quirky podcast. How do you find a podcast? Like, are you just searching for podcasts or are people submitting them? Sometimes both. Sometimes somebody because of, so luckily, and thanks to the people who read, I usually get in different formats about 5 to 10000 people a week. So I will so people will read and obviously podcasters will read. Somebody will send me a message. Here's a good example of one of the
audio fiction podcasts. It's a podcast called Hobo Code. So hobo is is an older word from the depression. Right. People that rode the rails, the hobos. And it it was designed by a couple people. It's a Shane Portman, a Paul Packler and Ruth Gamble. That's Shane's wife. They're Hollywood people. They're not podcasting people. They're video people. They're filmed. They have won a couple awards in Hollywood. They decided to do on their own an audio podcast. And so they I think Shane and Paul wrote
it, and it's called The Hobo Code. And it's about these 2 hobos and this young girl, who her parents have left her with this, cruel uncle. And her life is so bereft of anything positive that her toy is a soup can. And, if you go out and look at their great job on the graphic design. If you look at it, The hobo code's written inside the soup can. But it's just absolutely a terrific audio fiction podcast. There's no actors you would know. Oh,
I think that that actually there is, trying to think there is. They were able to get somebody at scale, and I'll have to look it up and who it is, but, they got one actor that we would know, there. And, oh, it's Bill, Bill Pullman. Oh, yeah. I know. That's Not a not a small name. I know. I couldn't I couldn't think of his name. I was kept thinking Bill Paxton because that's not possible, sadly. But it was Bill that got Bill Pullman, to have a small role in there. But, anyway, it's a
terrific podcast. It, it came out about 6 months ago. They sent me a message saying, hey. Can you listen to our podcast? And listen to it and absolutely loved it. Send it to the other folks that I know and a few other podcasters. And I, you know, I know a few people who do podcast marketing, send it to them. And so now that he sent me a message the other day. So we started out on episode 1 with 25 25 downloads and about 40% completion rate. And now he's up to 7,000 and a 70 2,
74% completion rate. So that's darn good. That's pretty good. Yeah. So you're not putting these up there and letting people vote? It's you and, like, a committee that's kinda making this choice? Yes. We were gonna do it the other way. That's actually I'm glad you brought that up. But we just thought that that would mean a lot of because of these podcasts are indies, so a lot of people have never heard of them before. So it would be like, okay, you have to go out and listen to it. And we thought
that was such a long process. We need we wanted to jump start this. I mean, some of these podcasts do get it's not like they're they're not getting downloads. There's a podcast called Salad with a Side of Fries. Yeah. And one of the things I love about that is it's a health and wellness podcast by this woman, Jen Trebek. And she's kind of interesting because she since you worked for the Wall Street Journal, she worked in New York City for a couple of investment firms. That was her background.
She decided that this isn't fulfilling enough. I'm gonna do something different. And she got into fitness training. And from that, she started a podcast and and a whole fitness regimen called salad with a side of fries. And the whole idea that's, which I love is, which is kind of baked into the to the name, is that salad, which has this healthy halo effect, and fries, which does not, her concept is you don't have to you can still have fun, eat, cheat a
little bit, and still be healthy. And that that's so she she'll go on and look at how diets sometimes are counterproductive, and they don't work. And you don't have to go and do something where if your mouth touches a carb, oh my gosh, I have to cleanse myself. So it's it's a great podcast. I I think it's interesting that you decided not to go the voting route also because what you have often are podcasters who will use their audience to and not cheat, but, you know, they'll they'll put
their thumb on the scales. Right? If you have a really great podcast but only has a few 1,000 downloads and you have a decent podcast but has a few 20,000 downloads or 40,000 downloads, right, that person's gonna probably win because they're gonna get their audience, they're gonna mobilize, they're gonna get the votes, and it's gonna take over. So I like the fact that you're, you know, you're listening, you're making a judgment, you and a a few others are deciding.
You know, it's it it almost feels like the difference between certain award shows during the movie season. Right? Like the Oscars versus the Emmys versus the, you know, the other ones. Right? Where the sag where the actors actually vote versus where the, you know, the foreign press votes versus this and this. So that that's that's interesting. So as a reminder, we are chatting with Frank Raciope. Got it right back.
Excellent. Owner and manager of Earworthy Publication, podcast reports dotblogspot.com, author of a few books, including Earworthy, and you can check out we'll have a link, by the way, to the article that announced the 2024 Earworthy winners. So you can, you know, see some of these shows, listen to some of the ones that we're talking about. Now that you've done this, do you have plans for what you're gonna do next year? Are you going
to change things up? Are you gonna do some sort of, like, you know, live reveal like we might get for, you know, some of these other awards or anything like that, or still gonna keep it, tight ship like ever right now? Oh, great question again. And the answer is that we are gonna do some things different, largely because we did get a lot of attention because of the award. So to be honest, we would like to include
people like you. And Matthew's a little if you didn't see that, Matthew's a little suspect on that, but a lot of other people into the process. Going back to the the voting thing, and you are right about that. But if you look at a lot of the major awards, they're they always, generally speaking, are by committee. The the committee are bigger names than me, like James Crinlin or Ariel Nissenblad or Brian Barletta, Bigger names, but it's still the same
concept. This committee gets together and decides who's gonna win the award. So that may not change. It's just that the committee itself would would grow and bring some people in, including some of These winners. These winners and some of independent podcasts. Well, I I think Ariel's on the list of somebody who won this past year with her show, Ariel and Ned's Daily Tips. Yeah. And Ariel, I believe, is the one who drew my attention to. I believe she posted about it and mentioned and
talked about it. And, you know, she she is a huge advocate and champion of independent podcasters. And so when she said this was a worthy cause, I said, yep. Yep. I'm gonna have to look into this and, check-in with Frank and and see what's going on. So I am glad I caught that message from her. I'm glad we got the chance to chat. While we have you, we have a couple of questions we like to ask for all of our podcasters. Is there a place in the podcasting world where you would
like to see improvement? It could be software, equipment, right, anything. It's just is there just something about podcasting and you've you've paid attention to it for a lot longer than most? Is there something today that you wanna see done better? Oh, great question. I I am a faithful listener of your podcast, and I love when you ask that question. People have terrific answers. But it's a it's a
good ending question. There's a couple things. One is, I think, just for existing podcasters, both network or independent, they really need to look at editing their podcast. I I think we talked about this when you said a podcast is as long as it needs to be. Yep. Right? Which is which is excellent. But there's people that somehow because of people like Dan Carlin and Joe Rogan, they're thinking, I'm you know what? My podcast can go, 2, 2 and a half hours.
Especially interview podcasts where I've listened to podcasts where the interview is excellent, except I listen to points where, well, you're kinda saying the same thing again. You probably coulda edited this. And instead of 90 minutes, it could have been 40 minutes and just as effective. So I see that trend where they're going longer. And that that doesn't just have an effect on that particular podcast. But so think about how most podcasts, even with YouTube, are consumed.
Generally speaking, most people are consuming podcasts and they're doing something else. So it's not as if I'm gonna sit down and watch Netflix. Okay. I'm just doing that other than probably looking at your phone. Right. We all do. But podcasting is, hey. You know what? I'm need to go out and garden. You know, I'll throw in my, AirPods and I'll listen to the podcast. Well, for me, like, I did that the other day because the
heat broke in South Jersey and other parts of country. I was able to finally get out, do my roses and things. So I was out there for about an hour and a half. Well, that got me I listened to the your episode with the gentleman about trailer, Graham Mhmm. Which I thought was fascinating. I listened to 2 other podcasts. I listened to Double Take, which is a Always Always like, alright. What's coming on Netflix or Paramount Plus? They'll these two
ladies will tell you. But so I got to listen to all those in 90 minutes. Yours was about 20. Hers was about 20. So I listened to 4 4 or 5 podcasts in, 90 minutes. Now somebody decides, oh, I'm gonna run 1 an hour and 45 minutes. I guess I could just shut it off at one point, but, I'd like to get them to completion. So it it kinda crowds out your ability to to, do other things and listen to multiple podcasts. Yeah. I find myself having sometimes the opposite problem, which is I we got a dog
recently. So a lot of my podcast consumption, I was walking the dog. And so I find myself listening to a show, finish walking the dog, and be like, oh, I still wanna hear what happens next. I need to find something else to listen to. But, yeah, I I I agree with you that there are many, many podcasts who are going long for the sake of going long, and you really have to respect your audience's time. You are typically giving this away for free, but we have to invest our
time. And time is honestly a bigger valuable asset than anything else because it's fleeting. So don't go long for the sake of going long. Don't be short for the sake of being short. Deliver value, avoid being repetitive and boring. You'll put out a good podcast. That's
my thoughts. No. Absolutely. I agree. And the and and the other part of that is for the the time is that now that video podcasts are a lot more popular and they're on, I think YouTube now has become has it become the number one sort of landing spot for podcasts? Or am I wrong? I There are no. There are articles and there are claims that that may be true, and it's it's really hard to measure. But Right. Yes. YouTube is a major player in the podcasting world now. Right. So whether it's you can do
audio podcasts on YouTube. But whether it's audio or video, when you put them up there, people can again, especially if it's a video, they can only consume one thing at one time. So if you have thousands and thousands of podcasts, you need to look at, hey. At what point here do, even for a person who does independent podcasts, most of these people here, and this is pretty common in the independent podcasting world, seem to have more than one
podcast. You're shaking your head. For some reason, I'll talk to somebody. Hey, I really like your podcast. Oh, well, you know, I have like 4 more. Which one? I have 4 more. And then, you know, like, well, okay. I'm I'm gonna come back to my next question usually. So the the question I was asking, this is hard because you do the awards. But is there a podcast in your library that when that one drops, you will stop whatever it is you're listening to and go right to that
one? Great question. I listened to the gentleman the other day. That was a that was a good question. The answer to that is I'm I'm cheating because I'm looking at my list here. There's a this is a different. There's a guy who won the award. His name is Zale Mednick. He's a ophthalmologist from Toronto, Canada. K. So I know that's you're like, wait, an ophthalmologist. Going? Yeah. You worked for UPS, not a you were not a doctor. So he is such a great
interviewer. As soon as his podcast drops, I'll right away, they'll listen to it. Because he has the ability to conduct an interview in which he draws out the person so they can give you their insight. And he also is able to address conventional wisdom. And a lot of the times, these guests end up being people who say whatever most people believe isn't true. That's why it's called preconceived notions. But he's he's terrific.
I am I I never really do this, but I'm actually in my Overcast app trying to find this podcast right now because that seems like a very strong, recommendation. So, Zale, if you are listening to this at some point, you just got a new subscriber. There you go. Cool. Alright. And then lastly, and I know you don't really produce a
lot of podcasting content. Right? You just write about it primarily. But is there some sort of tech that you wanna see in the podcasting world or some sort of device that would improve podcasting either from the production or the listening side of things? Again, a good question. And you're right. I'm not a technology person. However, I did a review of a podcast from the Boston Consulting Group. And in the podcast, they did something I thought was kind of interesting. They created an AI
cohost. And yeah. I know. And so it was a female, and I've forgotten her name. But, anyway, so there was a a BCG, Boston Consulting Group. Had their host. He was very good. And he would converse with her, and they would talk about AI in the, workplace. And then we they would talk. And I'm like, wow. This is, this is pretty amazing that they would do that. So by saying that, I'm not advocating I'm not an advocate of there's like a Joe Rogan AI podcast and other
people. So, That'd put a lot of people out of business and not be anywhere near as good as, people. But I I think there are AI tools and listening to your podcast and mister Driscoll, who's in Minnesota, there are AI tools that can make your podcast so much more seamless, flawless, better technically. And not just from the technical perspective, but also from the perspective of just the content as well. So, yeah, I am an advocate for AI when used appropriately and not to
replace people. Not listening, I don't wanna hear an an AI host. It's funny you said that because, yeah, there's a lot more. I've seen, just recently, maybe even this morning in Pod News. I think James had an article about a software that will read a white paper and turn it into, like, a 5 minute podcast, which is useful, but, right, somebody should be doing that instead of the AI.
I remember seeing a great quote. It's like, I'd much rather have my AI doing my laundry and taking out the trash and not having it replace my artists. Like, that would make the world a better place, and we seem to be Yeah. On the opposite side of the spectrum. And, of course, one area that's related to podcasting that is impacted by that is the audiobook narration industry because they're they're scared about that. I I did I listened to, an audiobook,
by an AI. It was it was a short book. So it's only a 49 page book and by the author. And the idea was you're supposed to kind of weigh them to see which one you thought was better. The AI was quite good, but there's something there's something, sterile and sort of vacant about the AI voice that the the author put something into it. And I still would gravitate towards the
author than the, the AI voice. So I imagine that's not too dissimilar to you're you're here with a journal that has the Beatles on it. I imagine you're the same kind of person who would say, you know, the CD sounds great, but there's just something about the record. My gosh. Right? It just has a different warmth. And that's probably a very similar thought with, you know, these new AI technologies versus the, versus the actual person who is, you know, performing that
podcast. You must have been looking at my home because I have a great, vinyl collection. Absolutely. You you and my uncle would get along very well. He's a huge Beatles person. We'll we'll talk about the that is not a value to the audience. So we'll take that off there, and we'll we'll wrap it up. Got it. But, I this has been fascinating. I'm so glad. 1, I was I was pleasantly surprised to see that you're in South Jersey, and so I'm glad
we got the chance to meet Thank you. And to talk about this. And I I look forward to as you prepare for 2025, hopefully, we can do this again and get more people involved and get more submissions and get more excitement around it. But, we've been chatting with Frank Graziope. He's the owner and manager of Earworthy Publication podcast reports.blogspot.com, author of several books, including
Earworthy, and we'll call you the founder. Sounds like you have a few other folks with you, but founder of the Earworthy Independent Podcast Awards, which, we'll have a link to that article. You can check out all the winners. A great list. A few names that you might recognize from this show, including our friend, Danny Brown, who at this time, his episode hasn't dropped, but it will soon. And so, I'm so glad to see that he, he made that list as well. And, before we go, a special thanks to
Joe Gondjemi at Sweet Recording with Thank you, Joe. Pleasure of hosting us. But, Frank, a real pleasure. Thanks for coming in today. Matthew, thank you. I appreciate it. It was a it was a good time. Thank you. Thanks for joining us today on Podcasting Tech. There are links to all the hardware and software that help power our guest content platform, connect with us on social media, and even leave a rating and review while you're there. Thanks, and we'll see you next time on Podcasting Tech.