Hi. This is Timothy Kim O'Brien, and this is Kyle Bondo. And you're listening to Pod Rec where we help you survive your podcast. Today, speed potting, find out next. Speed potting folks. What is it? What's it all about? It's our newest word that we're putting out into the podosphere. Speedpotting is where you do your episodes in a 3 minute chunk. Now in today's episode, Kyle and I are going to go ahead and attempt that.
We're going to break this up a little bit here for you. They'll be the first part where we do the pros and cons, and that'll be done in 3 minutes. And then I will go on my very eloquent rant which will be 3 minutes. And then Kyle, yes, Kyle will be restricted to only 3 minutes. You all have written in about that. And you know what? We're gonna make it happen this time. Kyle will be restricted to 3 minutes. and he won't interrupt me for 3 minutes. That's even better. So without further ado,
Kyle, are you ready? I'm ready. and here we go. So speed potting, I think, is completely ridiculous. It's the newest thing to, you know, get people all crazy about podcasting.
It's a flash in the pants. Okay? It is not a real thing. you cannot do a really good 3 minute episode. You just can't do a Kyle. It can't be done. Well, I'm I'm gonna totally disagree with you because I think 3 bit episodes are perfectly designed for all those ladies in the tubes and the g words in the tubes and even the s words in the tubes, the Apple s words.
This is for the flash briefing. The flash briefing is the perfect 3 minute segment. We heard VC Pod News doing it. We see a lot of different political podcasts doing it. News doing it. I think flash briefings is where 3 minutes at. I think that's the niche it sits in. Yeah. It it's it's a niche, Kyle, and that's all it is. It's a niche. you know, we shouldn't be, you know, promoting these 3 minute episodes for brand new podcasters, for folks that don't have the time to do a 3 minute podcast.
I I know what sounds ridiculous, but doing a 3 minute podcast come on now. I that that takes a lot of time, that takes a lot of energy, and that takes a lot of just That just isn't the next thing you're gonna say is we're gonna do 3 minute episodes every hour on the hour. Who's got time for that? Well, that's an excellent way to look at that because I think that curated content is 1 of the future elements of podcasting.
in that a 3 minute episode then fits into the curated content where you could take, like, a Gary V, and a Seth Godin, and a Jordan b Jordan Peterson. And stacking together along the theme, you could almost create your own podcast based on little pieces. I've seen the the dry bar comedy and even on SiriusXM radio,
Was it a a raw dog do this with with comedians, take different elements of the comedians together and string them together as a theme. and this is something you could definitely do with podcast, and I think that's a future element. So there you go. There's a pro. You think about that, Tim? You know, it may be a future element. But, again, I go back to it's a flash in the pan kinda thing. It it's like that new thing with Clubhouse.
Clubhouse is going away. We've predicted this. We're seeing this happen. All the craziness about Clubhouse it's going downhill. Now, yay. They're going to be on, you know, windows and Android phones and all that kind of good stuff. Fantastic. But guess what? All the privacy that you lose with that is just mind boggling. I'm not ever gonna get on to clubhouse. Okay? And with these 3 minute episodes, I'm sorry, but I'm not gonna do 3 minute episodes. Pod Rec will never have a 3 minute episode
after today. Well, I think compressed storytelling is where it's at, and I'm gonna talk about that next. So 3 minute episodes are, I think, just another essential element of podcasting. I see it as compressed storytelling. And here's the big deal with compressed storytelling. The world is distracted. There's attention deficit all over the place. No one's got time for 5 hour or 2 hour or 1 hour episodes. Now, I don't believe that everything is geared towards a 3 minute episode. Not everything
works in 3 minutes. just like Tim said. There's a lot of elements of what Tim said that actually resonate
with plenty of other podcasters that should never try a 3 minute episode. But that being said, Let me talk about what he he mentioned, the rest of the story. That's an excellent point from Paul Harvey because Paul Harvey's rest of the story a lot of times was only 2 to 3 minutes long. There was the element of being focused where you get to the point of a lot of things where you don't have time to put the fluff in. And this is the advantage compressed storytelling.
And I think 5 different categories fit within the 3 minute niche.
And that's wisdom and quotes and and elements of maybe even faith, bible things, things that you can digest in a short amount of time. I think that's excellent for a 3 minute 3 minute podcast. I think comedy. I think comedy is powerful in a 3 minute podcast because a lot of times you're set in a comedy club, when you're at the chuckle hut on opening Mike Knight, you're gonna have to get a set up there, and it's not gonna be very long. So getting it compressed into a 3 minute segment and testing it out on your audience on a podcast, that's an excellent idea. I think news briefings are excellent. A pod news does this onposu.net,
all the time when you get to digest all the industry news of podcasting into 1 3 minute flash briefing on my lady in the tube, that's excellent. I think meditation works well for 3 in a podcast. I think there's a a John Lee Dumas podcast where he did meditations and quotes that I think worked really well. It was daily, and it was 3 minutes long, 5 I mean, it might have been 5 minutes long. But it was a concise
amount of time. You did it, and you forget it. And then, of course, I think audio drama works well. In fact, I'm a big fan of something called 2 minute danger theater, which came out in 2009. This is where they did a serialized like the way they did in the old time movie theaters of Iron Man or Buck Rogers or a or Flash Gordon, where they put an entire audio drama episode into a 2 minute segment. That is incredibly
hard to do. Try it sometimes. It is not only you're hard to do, but you have to really be concise. and that is the elements of 3 minute episodes I think are the best is that it gets the distracted people and the short attention people. It gets their attention really quick. You can build it audience that way. It forces you to get to the point.
It really gives you the ability to do the rest of the story very short. And the huge advantage, of course, is build your audience and send them to another podcast. So So this is going against my personal philosophy of podcasting. I am doing this 3 minutes under protest. I'm just gonna let everyone know that right now. I'm doing it under protest. Okay? But I'm going to successfully and succinctly let you know what I think about this 3 minute podcast thing. You know, I
I I like all the new technology. I like we're podcasting is going. I think there is a spot for, you know, the 3 minute stuff. you know, with the the voices in the box and the people in the box. I don't have 1 of those. I'm not gonna ever get 1 of those. I don't need that for my podcast. what am I I am 1 of those old timey, and I'll admit it, old timey NPR, you know, moment in the story, you know, you you you park in your driveway. and you listen to the rest of the story.
You know, that's what I got into podcasting for. That's why I listened to guess, because I wanna have a story told to me. Now Kyle is gonna argue it, oh, I can tell a story in 3 minutes. Yeah. You can tell a story in 3 minutes. Absolutely. You can. but how much depth is it gonna have? And I'm not talking about doing hardcore history with, you know, 5 hours of stuff like that. Okay? there's a time and place for that as well. But what I'm talking about is,
you know, just the time that it takes to work through something. You know, when when you're telling the story to your friends,
you know, are are are you saying, hey. You know, I can tell the story in 3 minutes or I can tell it in, you know, 30 minutes or I can tell it in an hour 30 minutes. No. You're not doing that. You're letting the story happen now. naturally and and and and going good with that. Now I will say that the idea of a 3 minute episode kind of, you know, is There's some interesting aspects of it where you do have to edit everything and make everything in that 3 minutes.
be, you know, absolutely precise, absolutely perfect, and mean, you know, you have meaning behind everything. a 30 minute podcast, an hour long podcast, every minute matters. But in a 3 minute podcast, every second matters. And I just don't think that a lot of podcasters out there can do that kind of thing can, you know, sustain that kind of pressure. I think it's gonna burn a lot of people out.
And, you know, in in my pros and cons thing, I, you know, I talked about the whole clubhouse thing. You know, this is I I it's a flash in the pan. It's not going to survive for that long. There is a a time and space for it. I even listen to some new stuff in the mornings that, you know, are a little bit longer than 3 minutes. They're about 5 minutes to 7 minutes. But for me, 3 minutes, Doug you fresh, you're not on.
Thank you so much for listening to this very short podwrecked episode where we talked about 3 minute episodes, the pros and cons. And some of the ideas you can cook up when you're thinking 3 minutes and then maybe some things that you should be let alone and not do in 3 minutes. 3 minutes is not for everybody. Just like daily podcasts is not for everybody. Why? freaking this is a lot of work. And this is what this podcast was. To be surprised, Tim and I sweated this 1. This was hard to do. I think this was probably the most stressful episode we've ever done. And if you liked it, by all means, please reach out to us at podwreck@gmail.com.
We'd love to hear from you. And of course, Check out our website at podrick.com, find out all our episodes, find our Patreon button, join our salvage team, become a salvage dog, and help us make better content so that you can too survive your podcast. That is our goal. And we hope that this episode give you some insight into 3 minutes. Take care. I did hit record. Yes, she did. I see record my parents in red. Go.
It does like this Oh, I'm I'm you do like this tron thing, transformers thing. True thing. It's a weird sound. More than me. It's the Transformers, Autobots, waves. They're battle 2, destroyed, and evil horses. They just -- That's the cons. Transformers roll out. Alright. So I'm gonna give you all this audio. This is all. Kyle and I are gonna try to do that here for you. So what's gonna happen is a dog is gonna bark right about now. Thanks, Murph.
This podcast is part of the Gagapod network. Find more podcasts like this at gagapod.com.
