How Long Should Your Podcast Episodes Be?

We just got done recording about, you know, kind of griping about a podcast study, and now we're about to and it's talking about, you know, sort of make every minute count, keep podcast listeners there. And now we're about to talk about long podcast. Yes, we are. So today's topic, we're talking about the length of your podcast. You know, how long is too long of an episode? Is there a sweet spot that we should aim for as podcasters? We hope to tackle some of those questions in this

video. This topic is brought to you by big brain, Blythe Brumleve So I get to step back a little bit. And you know, hear her set us up. So Blythe Brumleves, well, Ashley Carmen, who is probably, like a regular, not a guest on this show, but she has a regular feature on this show. She is The Bloomberg podcast editor and our podcast journalist, and so she covers podcasting for Bloomberg. So she releases a weekly newsletter that I really

enjoy reading. And so one of her latest topics was talking about the length of a podcast and quoting her. She says, Last month, Lex Friedman published a nearly nine hour conversation with Elon Musk and other neurolink executives last week, Steven Bartlett, host of diarrhea of a CEO, released an interview between him self and another serial long talker, Andrew Huberman, that spanned four hours, and they said that the musk chat has since generated over 3.3 million views on YouTube while the humor

Huberman chin wag. What is that? What does chin wag mean? I feel like we might have to throw in an adult disclaimer on this episode. We go down that rabbit hole. I don't know if that's a good thing to say about Huberman or not, but these are

Ashley's words, not mine. She said, while the Huberman chin wag has worked up over 1.2 million so a four hour podcast getting 1.2 million views on YouTube, and then a nine hour podcast generating 3.3 million views on YouTube, and they go on to say data is showing us that people are enjoying the longer episodes. And so that's frankly coming from the executive director at flight studio, and that is the Bartlett founded podcast company behind diarrhea,

the CEO. And so that's nine hours, four hours, what's typically the length of a podcast that you listen to? Ooh, okay, so I would say, on average, all right, Juan EPP is about an hour, hour and a half on some days, but not very rarely can you get qls, which is mainly a hot interview, I guess. Sorry, I'm not gonna go down the whole list, on average, I would say an hour and a half. That's about for me, maybe, maybe

sometimes there's two hours. But I have this one podcast I listen to that I love their structure, where it's called what had happened was, and they treat it like seasons, and they focus on one guest per season, and every season is roughly, I think, up to 10 episodes, about an hour, maybe an hour and a half each, but about an at least an hour, and they go through their entire lives, so every episode you're hearing about, and they mainly interview

musicians and producers, so it'll be about a body of work or a project, or, you know, this point in their life and and whatnot. And I love that approach to telling a long form story and doing a long form interview, where you know that this entire season is going to be about this one person, but every episode, even though it'll be about the same, guess it'll be about different topics in

their life. So that way you don't feel like you're trying to get all of it in one episode, or you have a not a nine hour interview that kind of blew me away, but at the same time, it's like, well, it's a conversation with Elon Musk and executives from neuralink, and I imagine there's probably a lot to be said about that topic. I just don't know if I would ever listen to a nine, a straight nine hour show of one person. I kind of like the idea of it

being broken down. What about Yeah, even like, half of that, like, three or four hours, I'm like, Oh, you better have a lot to say. A lot of good stuff to say. And then, even then, like, for Joe Rogan, which I have the opinion that the majority of, I mean, he's obviously the most popular podcaster, but I personally like to listen to his show because of some of the guests. Like, I don't really, I don't really care about, like, the fighters or the UCF people.

Come on the show. I just won't watch it, but I love the guests that he has on the show, because I feel like he asked questions of like the common man. And so what comes out of those long form discussions is usually some clips that he'll put out or that

his team will put out. And so if it's somebody I've never heard about before, but they maybe are, like, there was a one recently that's like a psychologist of like, behavioral studies and or they talk about, you know, the ancient, whatever it's, it's, whatever the title of that person is. I do find, if I find it somewhat interesting, I'll watch a smaller clip, and then if I like the smaller clip, if I enjoyed it, then I possibly will go and listen to the two or

three hour long discussion. I genuinely don't know of any situation where I have seen like a three hour show and been like, Yes, I'm gonna listen to that. I think it really just has to depend on the topic. It has to depend on the guest. There's a lot of variables in that regard, but I will say, in my own data, in my own show, when I release like Best of episodes around the December timeframe, I will typically take, like, three to four episodes. I will edit them together, and they are, you

know, several hours long. And those episodes get just as many plays as my normal sort of 45 minute episodes. And so I think what, what I theorize, is happening here is people are pressing play because they're going on a long road trip, they want something playing in the background. I don't know that you're listening to a nine hour discussion intently and listening and hanging on to every word unless it's an

audiobook. What about you? What is your listening experience like outside of the shows that you regularly listen to? What's making you press play on a show longer than two hours? Glad you said that. So I wanted to bring up a few points. For starters, I was trying to look for what is the longest episode I ever put out. At the moment, I had to do some scrolling because my arbitrary thought process or my sweet spot in terms of releasing episodes. To me, an hour 15

minutes is the sweet spot. Hour to an hour 15 is what I'll say an hour is as long as a show, a Netflix episode, or maybe, maybe not a movie. That's way too short. But you know, like an hour, to me, is approachable. That is a is respectable amount of time for indie podcaster or

an interview. You can get a lot out of an interview if it's conducted Well, if it's, you know, if the host knows what he's doing and has done his prep work, and there's a mission, hour 15th is, you know, it might be, the longer I go, sometimes I'll do an hour and a half, but I usually try to aim for an hour 15, because it's just a little more, you know, it's like, Hey, this is an hour 15, so I'm not completely taking all of your time, but I'm giving you a little more now, Mac and now I'm

trying to look at what's the longest episode I put out, and the one I without, you know, boring people with me just scrolling the longest one I put out in recent memory was Last September, which was for our

400/400 episode on the short box. It was two hours and 10 minutes. Now, mind you, I did that episode, I think, with the full cast of three other co hosts, and, you know, three other co hosts, and we were talking about like the history of the podcast, and recollecting like favorite memories. So I think I even get away. I think the more guests or hosts, I think you can get away with longer episodes, because, you know, everyone is going to want to talk and get us some

spotlight. So I, I that's what I want to share. Is that my sweet spot hour 15. Now, especially if it's a one on one interview, I don't think it needs to go any longer in this article, she does mention, uh, she mentions drink champs, which is also a long form music focus show in which the the two uh hosts, uh, Nori and DJ, F E, FN, they bring on people to literally sit around drink and, you know, tell stories they they

do, and interview. The questions, in my opinion, are not the best, but it's like a vibe, right? Like you're, you're watching them get drunk and, you know, tell old stories and laugh and be loud. It's sometimes unprofessional as hell, but, you know, there's a charm to it. And I will admit, I only watch certain episodes of that, like it's got to be a guest or someone that I really want to hear from, and I know that I'm

not listening intentively. I think even in the article, they mentioned that a What does it say here in general, considering that many of the longest shows publish a video version, it seems likely that many listeners and viewers are keeping these programs on, largely in the background, only intensely tuning in during peak moments of interest, which I cosign 100% the longer the video.

The and if I have the attention or or want to press play, more than likely, I'm keeping it on in the back, and I'm only jumping in when I hear something that piques my interest. And I think not to go off on a complete tangent, but in a related way, when I talk about the the pros of podcasting, I tend to bring up, like the the relationship between the listener and the the podcast itself, right? That kind of connection, that intimacy to it.

You know, having it so close in your ear and, you know, having these voices in your head, whatever. But I think eventually there's shows that I know I listen to, just because it's out of habit, and there is a familiarity to it. There's like a coziness, is a word, I guess. I think about, you know, having familiar voices where sometimes you don't care about what the topic is, but they kind of feel like friends,

right? Like the first issue club is another comic podcast, one of the few comic podcasts I listen to. There's three co hosts, and I actually prefer their episodes go a little longer than my normal sweet spot of an hour and a half, because a lot of times I listen to them out of comfort, you know, like, granted, they are entertaining, they're funny, but, you know, I there's a sense of like, I'm doing stuff around the house. I want something

familiar and comfortable. And I think that's kind of the benefit of these long shows. I'll be honest with you, like drink champs, as a podcaster and so on. It takes editing very serious. I, you know, try to challenge myself to fit in that hour and a half time frame. Sometimes I'm taking two hour shows, I'm trying to cut 45 minutes, which is a challenge, but I think having a lean show gets to the point that has takeaways. That's entertaining is the way to go. If I want to

drop the full two hours. That's what Patreon is. Some people don't mind, you know, having the full thing with the fat. I'm more of the mind of like, keep it lean for my shows. In particular, there are some long form ones where I know for a fact, like, you know, on drink champs, this three hour show, from a producer and editor standpoint, I'm like, you could have cut that, cut that, and this would have been a bomb

interview. But there is something to just having something on, not having to think about what's the next thing I'm going to play or what's going to be in my queue. I have this, I don't know, I think I'm kind of greedy podcast where I don't want to burn through all my episodes in one sitting. So having, sometimes the benefit of those long shows is having, you know, drawing out, like the entertainment factor. Yeah, I think that that was my, my more bigger takeaway is that there's decision

fatigue. You know, you hear about folks who open up Netflix and they're cert their spend all of their time searching for something to watch and to digest, and they come up with nothing. And because you have so many choices. And so I think the phrase is like death by 1000 decisions. So anytime that you can remove a decision from someone I think actually helps.

And if you are, if the say around the holiday season, for example, the way my thought process is, the way I think about it, is that you're going to be probably traveling a lot, so you need something that's a few hours long. Maybe you're hanging out with family and you just need a break. Maybe you're, I don't know, wrapping presents or getting ready or doing chores around the house. You know that is an opportunity to be someone's distraction, be someone's compliment to what's

going on in their life. Very famously, Steve Jobs. Mark Zuckerberg, they wear the same outfit every single day. They wear a black shirt and jeans, and they do that because they don't want to have an extra decision. They want the decisions that they're making for that day to to be the most impactful. They don't want to waste that decision process thinking on stuff that doesn't

matter. And so I think with these longer episodes, what we're seeing is just people that are experiencing decision fatigue and they just want something to listen to, of you know, people that they or topics that they find interesting, and they can just hit play and not really have to worry all that much about intently listening.

Like there are some shows that I know that I can't listen to at the same time that I'm working, or that vice versa, or I can't work while this show is on, because I need to pay attention to one or the other. So I think

where you know, the trend with some of these is that almost that that second screen for people, but it's like second listenership, or maybe like, second focus they think there's a lot of studies around like, you know, watching TV, watching shows, and knowing that people will have that second screen with them, which is typically their phone. So how can you create content that complements that new shift in the attention economy? And maybe.

This also signals that you know with listening to these longer episodes, sure, you might not be listening intently to every single minute of that show, but you're still press and play. I mean, 3.3 million people listen to a nine hour show, and YouTube arguably has the best viewer sort of stats, collection, reporting out of all social media channels where a view counts as you listened with the audio on for at least 30 seconds. Now, what a nine hour

discussion. That's kind of that, that's a that's that could be skewed a little differently, but you know, just to put it in perspective, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, they all count views on your content as three seconds or less, and the audio does not have to be on. So YouTube is significantly better in that regard, where someone hits play on an episode, and if you can get through the first you know, sort of 30 seconds, and then get into the meat of the show, then you've probably got them hooked

for a little while. And if you can make that decision fatigue a little bit easier on your audience, then maybe you could be that resource. I have found that my best of episodes mentioned earlier that they perform just as well as my

regular episodes. So the next step for me, especially this year, as we'll probably start planning those out here soon, is that, how can I, for people who have never listened to my show, how can I put together some best of episodes that they can binge my content easily and then become a regular listener to the rest of the shows we had done a previous show about different podcasting stats, and that sounds profitable podcasting report, and it's only 3.5 shows that people are listening to a

week, and that's active podcast listeners. And so if you can make a piece of long form content that is engaging to your audience, you can help them remove that decision fatigue play on your episode instead of trying out, you know, a bunch of different episodes. And kind of you know, you're worried about, is this episode going to be wasting my time or not? Tend to think that some of the longer episodes, once they hit play, I think you kind of got them.

I will say, I guess, to throw in a tip, as we're closing this episode out, if you are an exist, if you're an existing podcaster that has a few episodes that you can reference, I know at this point, almost every podcast platform, such as Spotify, I'm thinking Apple podcast. I believe YouTube as well. If you have your show on there, has they show the metrics of listener retention, so you can kind of get an idea of how long the listeners stayed

on your episode. I know Apple podcast does that sometimes it's a little demoralizing, because you're like, I really put my heart and soul into this, and people in this in 10 minutes, but I think it does and that that was a big motivator for me to cut down my shows. I used to do two hour shows, easy, sometimes even three, but I started paying attention to that stat of like, well, people only listening to 45 minutes, 50 minutes. Why am I putting that

extra work in that? You know, that extra time could be dedicated to something else in my podcast process. So I think this is a great opportunity to, like, let the data drive your decision as far as like, how long you can make a show. Now, granted, if you enjoy long form conversations, if that's your thing, then stick with it. But I challenge you to look at the listener retention and see if there's something that you could pick up. Does it sway you in a way to do longer shows or

shorter shows. Because I think on the opposite, if you find that, you know, people are consuming 80% of your two hour episode, keep on doing it. You know, maybe there's something else you could do within that episode to boost retention. But I think, too, it's very determinate on the topic, on the

guest. If you have a bomb ass guest, and they can talk for longer than an hour, and you feel like you haven't got your questions and go longer, we you know, we've discussed and tried to strategize, what is the perfect link for our show? And

frankly, we don't know. And my, my mantra has always been the episodes need to need to go as long as they need to and but there are some moments, especially for myself, that I, you know, I kind of go off on a tangent or but sometimes the tangents are good, sometimes they're terrible, but don't, I guess, restrict your creativity just to stay within a certain

time block. Let the content speak for itself, but also this is kind of going to be double speak, but it embrace the challenge of making every minute count. And I think that that was one of the things that they pointed out, that the quote is, it's not important to ship every good minute. And this is coming from, from that Gilbert guy who is the he's behind the diary of a CEO. So podcast company says it's not important to ship every good minute. It's important to ship

only great minutes. If you're actually in tech, Intel, intellectual, intellectually. That's an odd word to mess up on. If you're in actually, intellectually honest with yourself, that's how to release

a really good product. And so he says even with longer run times their audience listens to the vast majority of each episode. And considering their deep dive on Lockheed Martin, which was an episode that was three hours and 38 minutes on Apple podcast, the average listener consumes 70% of the show. Another episode on Nike clocks upwards of four hours, had an average consumption rate of 68% every time we made something longer, people only seem to love

it more. But he also is determined, if the content is good, make it longer. But I think there's a lot of factors at play here, as per the usual. I think, I think I absolutely co sign letting the content drive it. If it's a good conversation, keep it going, because you can always edit. I think that is, that is one thing I wanted to bring up here, that that three, whatever, three to four hour episode they released about Lockheed Martin. I think they said it was an, actually a nine

hour recording session. So they did a lot of cutting, yeah, yep, yeah, three hour recording session. So, you know, there's you could leverage. I think it's a fine line, right? Like, let the content speak to itself. Let your creativity flow. I think you rely on editing to cut down a long show, you know. Like, obviously, find those great moments to emphasize that. But I think I want to also emphasize

preparation. You know, there's something you can do in the beginning and post, I think the better prepped you are, whether that be studying for a guest, preparing questions, having an outline, at the very least, doing your research, whatever, goes a long way in getting better moments or great moments, and saving yourself time and editing. You know me, I'm always I come from a consistency standpoint, having done it for, you know, 1213, years, you just

as long. I'm always looking for ways to just stay consistent and be efficient. But like I said, like you said, and I think, as this article states, if you got it, got a great guess. Let the content drive it right. Let the content drive it on the flip side, I know you were probably trying to close it out. But do you ever listen to any of like, the two minute long podcasts?

Like, oh, here's a daily news type podcast, because it because it makes me mad, because I'm like, these guys are doing two minute shows and are way more successful. I see it and I get mad too, but I'm like, two minutes like, you're you're genuinely wasting my time reading this. That's how I feel. So if I see like anything five minutes or lower, I'm skipping it 1,000% of the time. That is so I think incorrect of a format for podcast medium in general.

If you want short content like that, take that shit to Tiktok. Yeah. That is where that short attention span lives. When someone is coming into a podcast app, they are looking to be educated, entertained for, I would say, at least, at least 30

minutes for your episodes. And so that's that was just sort of the flip side that I wanted to get out there is, yeah, just know your know the platform of the audience and the audience's intentions of when they're coming to that platform and what they're trying to see. Well, podcasting five minutes or less, get that shit out of here, but maybe experiment with three hour episodes if it works for

you. All right, here's what we where we're gonna take our own advice, because I feel like we hit our sweet spot for this episode, and we're gonna turn the tables on the listeners. What do you think about podcast links? Is there a sweet spot? Do you have a sweet spot that you aim for? Do you do you put restrictions, or do you go all out and you're putting out three, four hour episodes? We would love to hear from you

guys. All right, leave us a comment in the comment section on the YouTube or send us a message. If you're listening to the podcast version, there's a link in the episode show notes. Check those out. Thank you so much for tuning in. Hopefully you learned something new, and this has been a great episode. Life. You Anything to say that's it fat in the short here we go. All right, be well, take care, and thanks for tuning in. We'll catch you around later. Peace. And.