How Algorithms Are Making Podcasts Boring

We want podcasts to stay weird! We're talking about how algorithms, growth advice, and an obsession with polish are making brands, social media, and podcasts feel increasingly alike. Plus, we share how podcasters can preserve the quirks, tangents, imperfections, and human touches that make a show memorable!

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Alban 0:00

I've been having this experience. I'd like to know if either of you have been having it lately, where if I log into LinkedIn or go on Twitter or read a blog, there's times where I'm reading something and I'll be like, I like the content, but something about it gives off this like AI writing feel so strongly that I can't like finish it.

Jordan 0:22

Yeah.

Alban 0:23

And it's not even that it's like poorly written, because I think the writing is maybe technically fine, but there's something about the voice that maybe it's because it's so similar to everything else. There's just no rough edges that it ends up feeling just like kind of slimy or gross. Like I've really am like I've such a strong aversion to it now. Even if the content itself is something I would be interested in reading, I bail as soon as I get that kind of like AI smell.

Kevin 0:52

Has this happened to either of you? Yeah, I'm kind of on the fence about it because I think there's value in some of the stuff anyway. I mean, it's just a reality of the world that we're gonna live in for the next, you know, probably the rest of our lives. Like a lot of the stuff that's gonna be created either as productivity tools or entertainment content or anything else, anywhere, everything is going to have some sort of AI touches on it. And so I think we're just gonna have to get used to it. I I get that there's a lot of garbage. And so as soon as you get a whiff of it, you're like, oh, is this whole thing garbage? And that like turns you off.

Alban 1:28

It's not that it's not a moralistic stance that's like you shouldn't be using AI. I'm mad that they used AI here. It's the I'm going on LinkedIn, somebody's like, let me share this personal thing with you. It's a video where somebody's sitting in their car talking to the camera, going, Let me tell you this like intimate thing that just happened. And it feels really just impromptu. You know, I sat down in the car and I filmed it. But then you hear the words and you're like, okay, this is an AI script. This is like ChatGPT 4.0 level like script. And you just had it put something out, and then you read it and you kind of pretended it was this authentic thing, and all it really was was just like I needed content to toss out to the world. Okay, and it just kind of like makes me feel kind of gross. So in my mind, this is the same as like all these brands in the last few years have rebranded. Balenciaga and Burberry and uh Ramoa, but all these brands have rebranded these interesting fonts or these interesting logos that they created a long time ago, and they kind of all become very minimalist Sansara fonts, very blocky, all caps, and they just look the same. And there's nothing wrong with any of their rebrands. Every one of them by itself, you look at it and you go, I see a lot here that I like. But then when you see them all together, you go, Oh, back when people used to draw these logos, they drew stuff that was interesting. Now that everything is made for the web, it all kind of looks the same.

Jordan 3:04

Are these the real logos?

Alban 3:06

Yes, these are the real logos, these are real rebrands.

Jordan 3:09

Oh.

Alban 3:09

And it's um, it's called blanding. The idea is it's not necessarily ugly, it's just all the same.

Jordan 3:15

Yeah.

Alban 3:16

Okay, so we now I'm like, I now feel like this trend is everywhere. This trend of things when they're exposed maybe to the pressures of the internet or the pressures of the social media algorithm, uh, where you're just trying to crank out content or you're trying to make stuff that is broadly uh uh appeals to people, it gets good but similar to each other, and now it becomes boring. And I go, Oh, when is this gonna happen to podcasting?

Jordan 3:47

Yeah.

Alban 3:47

When I was a kid, uh we lived in Austin, Texas, and Austin the the city phrase is keep Austin weird. And I was like, we need to keep podcasting weird because when we used to go to these conferences, the whole thing about podcasts were like people were just doing weird stuff. And you'd talk to someone and they'd be technically they knew all the tools, and yet they were like, Oh, I'm telling a news report about like a horror town.

Jordan 4:15

Yeah.

Alban 4:16

And you're like, that's weird. I like it. And then there's so many examples. I'm sure we come up with them, but I'm like, that's what podcasting was. And as I started thinking about it, I'm like, oh, maybe this is like podcasting is starting to fall into this trend. So I wrote a list of what is podcast blanding. Okay. Two of you start telling me, what do you think is on this list?

Jordan 4:43

I mean, I obviously feel like celebrity interviews, like sitting on the couch interviews, are gonna be on this list.

Alban 4:49

I mean, and sometimes it's like literally the same celebrity. Someone goes and does one, and you're like, oh my gosh, this guy who is like the king of peptides, and now he's done like 15 peptide interviews, and you're like, okay, I don't need to hear a 15th interview from the same the sleep guy. There's one sleep guy, and he goes on, he does every podcast about sleep.

Kevin 5:10

Uh, I I don't know. A wild guess, like younger-ish girls or women like with blankets holding a microphone close to their face.

Alban 5:21

There's different categories. There's a NPR style, which is I love, I love this American life. But then you're like, you know, Invisibilia is pretty similar to that. And you're like, okay, uh, serial is similar. And a lot of the shows that kind of come out of that vein end up sounding similar. It's all good, but it's very similar.

Jordan 5:43

Yeah.

Alban 5:43

And then you've got kind of like the brocasts, which all are kind of similar to Theo Vaughn and Joe Rogan. And it's like, hey, check out this unscripted interview, dude. And they're like, they just feel the same.

Jordan 5:55

Yeah.

Alban 5:56

And there's also the, I don't know, there's a whole category of like young attractive women talking about murders.

Jordan 6:03

Yeah.

Alban 6:04

It's like there's and there's yeah, there's probably 10 of these. You know, there's the the business podcast, there's the daily news show style. You know, SM7Bs are always in the camera.

Jordan 6:15

Excuse me. I love mine.

Alban 6:18

Sh the they all they get promoted with the same LinkedIn, like, here are my three takeaways from this powerful interview.

Jordan 6:25

Yeah.

Kevin 6:26

How about like uh slightly blurred bookshelf backgrounds? I mean, dude, you got me.

Jordan 6:34

It's uh sick burn.

Alban 6:37

The idea is not that any of these things are bad. It's that I think when podcasts are exposed to the algorithm, everyone looks around and goes, huh, it's not really working. Maybe what I should do is, and then you watch the other shows and you go, Oh, everybody has that same mic. Maybe that's the mic I need. You don't actually need the SM7B. It's a perfectly fine in a world of perfectly fine mics. There's nothing amazing about it either way, but you kind of just go for it because everyone else did. Yeah. And the stylistic choices and the topics and the guests, they all kind of do the same. Everyone's like, Well, I'm not gonna get, have you ever heard the phrase you don't get fired for hiring IBM?

Jordan 7:20

No.

Alban 7:21

Yes. The idea was like you just when people are deciding who to hire, they would just hire IBM because you're not gonna get in big trouble for doing it, even if IBM doesn't do a great job. And like you're not gonna get fired for doing the same dramatic cold open as everybody else. You're not gonna get uh let go because you lit your studio the same way everybody else does. But I think like we are entering an age of video podcasting where we're all exposed to the algorithm and the temptation to become exactly the same as every other podcast is going to be way, way too high. And like if we're going to keep any weirdness in podcasts, like it's gonna have to be kind of a cons like a concerted effort to not, you know, polish off the rough edges of every uh interview, just like the logos all got, you know, polished down. You know, we're not we can't let podcasting just go the exact same path as all this other media, which just kind of gotten watered down to this very bland, palatable style.

Jordan 8:25

You know, I had this friend who uh he does like a lot of like sound design and stuff like that for like HBO and like some um like films and stuff like that. And he offered to do some work for me. And I said, like, oh, will you do a new uh theme song for Dreamful? Because that song, like my husband was just like plucking the along on the guitar on our porch, and I recorded him plucking the guitar on the porch, and that became the theme song for the podcast. And he was like, Oh, yeah, sure. And he told me, Yeah, I can't touch that. He's like, I heard the fingers go across the strings and I was like, This is so beautiful. Like, I can hear that someone is touching this, like someone has made this music. And he's like, honestly, like, I would not touch this. And so I didn't change my theme song, even though I had a really good offer to do a new one.

Alban 9:19

I I love that you kept the theme song. And I was trying to think through how do we keep this podcast weird? What are the things that are not at this point optimized to be as broadly palatable as possible? Like, how do we make sure we don't just make our podcast the exact same as any other podcast that would be in this space?

Jordan 9:40

I mean, I think first and foremost, are kind of like rabbit trailing tangents that like are somewhat related to the topic, but not really, but it's a little bit endearing to some people and annoying to others. I think that that is something that sets us apart from a lot of other podcasters in our niche.

Alban 9:57

Yeah, one of the I wrote down um keeping the human element, which is kind of like what you're saying, where you can hear Josh's fingers on the on the strings as he did that, uh, did the tune for you. Um, you know, keeping your laughs in the podcast. Yeah, uh, the tangents. You know, I I was thinking back to New Media show when I used to listen when Todd Cochran did the show. And I was like, you know what I really loved is that if he didn't know something, he just was not embarrassed at all to go look stuff up in real time and then processing it out loud.

Jordan 10:30

Yeah.

Alban 10:31

And it is not good podcasting to do that. And yet, years later, now it's one of the things that I remember most distinctly and the things I think of with the most fondness. Everybody would say, like, if that gets on YouTube, if you're putting that show on YouTube with a big audience, he'd get a ton of comments that would say, dude, this is terrible podcasting. Edit this out. And there was like something in him that was able to keep it in there. And I think like that human element needs to stay, or else you're just gonna be exactly the same as like ChatGPT and everybody else who's doing it.

Kevin 11:06

I I think this a lot of this reminds me of um some of the things that we we run into oftentimes when you start talking to experts in the industry or podcasting coaches or people who are gonna help you optimize or help you grow your show. A lot of the advice you're gonna get from them is advice that has been picked up by watching other shows that are successful, and then you're gonna mimic those same tactics. And it, like you said, it might be effective. It's not that any of that stuff is wrong, but it is going to make you similar to a lot of other shows that are also very popular. And so, I don't know, Alvin. Like I I like the idea of keeping it weird, but is that the most effective way to grow a show? Or is that just the most fun way to do a show, which ultimately helps you keep podcasting?

Alban 11:53

I think if you want to launch a podcast and for it to grow as fast as possible, you probably want to look at the already well-defined paths and just nail one of them and go, okay, I'm gonna get the same people who go on Rogan and Theo Vaughn. And once they've done like four or five of those shows, they come onto mine as well. And you could try to set up a studio in the same way, you could just do the same show. And yet you will never be anything better than number 10 on the list of that type of show. But would it not be better at the end of your podcasting journey to say, you know what? I did like the guy who made Sleep with Me or My Dad Did a Porno, or My Dad wrote a porno. Like those shows are so weird. Kevin's giving me a face about my dad wrote a porno.

Kevin 12:41

Do you know what that show is, Kevin? I'm just giving you a face because you said it wrong. You said my dad did instead of. And I was like, that you're watching the wrong podcast television.

Alban 12:54

Yeah. Oh man. It was a guy who found his dad's like erotic novel that he'd written, like an amateur erotic novel was like, What the heck, dad? I'm gonna do a podcast about this, and then it turned into like a pretty good comedic podcast.

Jordan 13:08

Yeah, it's huge.

Alban 13:09

That's no one's tried to replicate that lane. No, it's gone.

Kevin 13:14

Like all right. I get it. Here, here's the thing. I think this is an amazing challenge. And I know we don't usually do call-outs for like uh a ton of fan mail or stuff in a quick cast, but I say we break the rule. Like, I I think that I want to hear how other podcasters who are listening to this show, what are you doing to keep your podcast weird?

Jordan 13:35

I love it.

Alban 13:36

And what do you what do you love about other podcasts that are weird? Like your favorite shows, do they have an element in there that's weird? I want to know what it is, and how do we keep like that human element in podcasting? Yeah.

Jordan 13:48

Fun. We'll have to talk about that in a future episode, too. All right. Well, send those in. Go ahead and tap the send us fan mail link in the show notes. And until next time, thanks for listening and keep podcasting.