6 New Ways To Earn Money With Buzzsprout Subscriptions

Summary

Buzzcast Podcast — “6 New Ways To Earn Money With Buzzsprout Subscriptions”

Date: May 23, 2025
Hosts: Alvin, Jordan, Kevin
Theme: A deep dive into the major updates to Buzzsprout Subscriptions, exploring new monetization options for podcasters, strategies for engaging listeners, and the broader impacts of platform changes in the podcasting industry.

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Episode Overview

This episode centers on Buzzsprout’s major update to their Subscriptions feature, expanding how podcasters can monetize their content. The hosts break down the new subscription options, discuss practical strategies for audience engagement, and reflect on what the evolving podcast landscape means for creators—particularly in the context of open podcasting versus platform-driven changes.

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Key Discussions & Insights

1. Unique Podcast Marketing in Las Vegas and Digital Billboard Anxiety

• [00:00-01:35] Alvin recounts seeing a podcast advertised on a digital Uber billboard in Las Vegas, highlighting how podcast marketing is moving into creative territory.
• Kevin: Digital billboards that rotate ads create anxiety—it's hard to catch all the info before it disappears.

“As soon as it...if it catches my attention...I immediately get anxiety because it's going to switch before I can capture the information.” — Kevin (01:00)

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2. Major Update: Buzzsprout Subscriptions 2.0

• [01:35-04:00] The latest update splits Listener Support and Subscriptions into two distinct features. Listener Support acts as a tip jar, while Subscriptions focuses on premium/patron content.
• Kevin: The Buzzsprout approach is iterative: release, gather feedback, refine for future updates.

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3. Listener Support: Turnkey Donations

• [03:02-03:56]
  • Now a standalone feature, offering an easy, one-button setup for donations directly in Buzzsprout.
  • Integrates seamlessly; listeners can support without third-party platforms.

“This is just a really easy way just to click one button in buzzsprout and people can give you donations. We'll collect the money for you in your buzzsprout account, and then you can cash out whenever you want.” — Kevin (03:26)

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4. Subscriptions: Expanded Monetization Types

• [04:06-12:00]
  • Five supported subscription types, modeled after Apple Podcasts:
    1. Premium Episodes/Bonus Content: Paywalled episodes.
    2. Early Access: Subscribers get episodes before the public.
    3. Back Catalog: Past episodes available only to subscribers.
    4. Subscriber-Only Podcasts: Entire shows behind a paywall.
    5. Ad-Free Episodes: Premium version of episodes without ads.
  • Early Access is highlighted as a low-effort, high-impact approach for small to medium shows.

“Early access is like a really great alignment of all of the interests…you're not doing more work. You're doing the same work, same episodes. You're putting them out there and then the premium get them, but then everybody else [gets them] three days later, five days later, a week later.” — Alvin (07:27)

Notable Note:

• Early access is praised as “the most exciting” for its simplicity and value.

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5. Deep Dive: Which Models Fit Which Podcasters?

• [12:08-16:14]
  • Back Catalog: Effective for large, evergreen shows (“This American Life”), less so for new/small creators.
  • Subscriber-Only Podcasts: Great for miniseries, audio dramas, or podcasts with hook episodes; needs compelling “free sample” content plus solid marketing.

“You have to get even more people interested in the content to ever make any of those sales. … There has to be a marketing channel around it, right?” — Alvin (16:30)

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6. Ad-Free & Extended Cuts—Creative Freedom

• [18:21-19:56]
  • The ad-free option allows creators to upload alternate audio: longer episodes, “director’s cuts,” or exclusive segues.
  • Custom benefit messages let podcasters tailor the subscriber offer beyond just ad removal.

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7. Apple Podcasts Subscription Integration

• [19:56-26:41]
  • New integration allows podcasters to simultaneously push subscriber content from Buzzsprout to Apple Podcasts, massively simplifying workflow.
  • Apple’s user experience is celebrated for its frictionless “subscribe” path, higher conversion, and familiar subscription management.

“The way they've implemented that in the Apple Podcast app is the absolute best way to do it.” — Kevin (21:11)

How To Set It Up (For Creators):

• Sign up for Apple Podcasters Program ($20/yr), create promo artwork, and link Buzzsprout using an authentication key from Apple Podcast Connect.

• Pro Tip: Try Buzzsprout subscriptions standalone first, then tackle Apple integration once you see traction.

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8. Podcast Gear Conspiracy: The ATR2100X Discontinuation

• [26:41-35:54]
  • Hosts mourn and dissect the quiet discontinuation of the Audio Technica ATR2100X mic—a long-time favorite in the podcast world.
  • Discussion ranges from chip shortages to “the microphone was too good (and cheap)” to the possibility of a new model.

“This did happen before…So it is possible…that the 2100X, whatever X2 is going to drop in the next month or two.” — Kevin (33:34)

• Memorable moment: The hosts realize they accidentally hoarded one of the largest stashes of the now-discontinued mics, joking about their “collector’s item” cache.

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9. Industry News: Spotify “Plays” Controversy

• [35:58-52:30]
  • Spotify introduces public “play” counts for episodes. Podcasters push back: concerns that public numbers discourage new voices, put pressure on creators, and misrepresent show size (since most non-Spotify listeners go uncounted).
  • The hosts vehemently critique Spotify’s “compromise” to only show play milestones starting at 50,000—believing it serves no one and feels patronizing.
  • Broader reflection about the importance of keeping podcasting distinct from mainstream social platforms in both spirit and technology.

“Podcasting is different. And I don't feel like there's enough people who are just like, by default we should say no, because what we have is good.” — Kevin (40:00)

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10. Sound Off (Listener Mail & Community)

• [55:02-end]
  • Q&A on AI transcription, feed drops, scheduling tools (Calendly), and preparing guests.
    • Listeners share tips like reassuring nervous guests with heavy editing, or clarifying equipment needs early.
    • Feedback on AI’s transcription progress and the importance of transparency with feed drops.
    • Inspirational messages about facing doubts as podcasters, celebrating support from friends and family.
  • Fun banter: Strong listener response requesting a Priscilla & Jordan TV/movie podcast—Korean dramas get love!

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11. Personal Stories & Recommendations

• [71:28–end]
  • Alvin shares about hiking the Grand Canyon and appreciation for U.S. National Parks.
  • Kevin talks about serving in Costa Rica, community spirit.
  • Both recommend embracing local parks, travel for new perspectives.

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Notable Quotes

• “If you don't ask, you probably won't get much engagement on it.” — Kevin (04:06)
• “For non Professional podcasters, I like the idea of trying to find ways to make monetization simple because it really is just ancillary income for most people.” — Kevin (08:55)
• “Early access is like a really great alignment of all of the interests… and you're not doing more work.” — Alvin (07:27)
• “I don't love this idea [back catalog] for anyone who's not massive because you're limiting your own growth.” — Alvin (13:23)
• “If you really care and you want to protect it, then don't act like you do and then continue to publish your stuff on Spotify because it doesn't make sense.” — Kevin (51:14)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [01:35] — Introduction to Buzzsprout Subscriptions update
• [03:00] — Listener Support feature explained
• [05:53] — Breakdown of five subscription types
• [07:27] — Deep dive into Early Access
• [12:08] — Back catalog strategies
• [18:21] — Ad-free episode details
• [19:56] — Apple Podcasts integration
• [26:41] — ATR2100X microphone “conspiracy” and product cycle
• [35:58] — Spotify plays, community pushback, protecting podcasting’s uniqueness
• [55:02] — Sound Off: AI, guest prep, podcast doubts, listener wins
• [71:28] — Host stories, Grand Canyon, Costa Rica, travel reflections

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Listener Takeaways

• There are now multiple, more nuanced ways to monetize your podcast within Buzzsprout, each with strategic pros and cons.
• Early Access is the standout method for most non-pro, growth-focused podcasters.
• Apple Podcasts integration makes managing both open and in-app subscriptions dramatically easier.
• Community sentiment still values podcasting’s independence and privacy—be wary of “mainstream” platform features that erode that specialness.
• Real engagement comes from both transparent choices and celebrating/supporting your listeners directly.

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Closing Sentiment

Buzzcast’s team celebrates making monetization simpler and more flexible—so any podcaster can take incremental steps, without compromising what makes their show unique, special, or enjoyable. Above all, they urge creators and industry insiders to protect the open, personal, and community-driven nature of podcasting.

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Next Sound Off Question:
What’s your experience with podcast subscriptions—as a creator or subscriber? What perks work for you? What keeps you paying (or not paying)?
Share via the text link in the show notes!

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Summary compiled in the conversational, candid tone of Buzzcast, focusing on actionable ideas and the ever-evolving landscape of podcasting.

Transcript

[Alvin]

So we talked about unique podcast marketing ideas last week, and I was in Vegas for 12 hours a few days ago, and as we're there, I see an Uber drive by, and for some reason, the Uber's in Vegas. There's advertising everywhere. So they put advertising on video boards in the back of the Uber so that you look in the rear of the car and then you can see some advertisement.

[Jordan]

Oh, yeah.

[Alvin]

And one we were driving behind was. Was advertising a podcast.

[Kevin]

Which podcast?

[Alvin]

I don't know. It switched too soon for me to notice the podcast. I saw Apple podcasts, Spotify logos there and YouTube logo, and I was like, oh. And it said, like, listen to the podcast. And then by then it already switched. I was like, oh, that's a unique idea. It's kind of the bumper sticker one. But you swap them in and out. And probably not all that expensive to run those ads because there's literally tens of thousands of Ubers driving around with these mobile advertisers in the back.

[Kevin]

Any sort of digital advertising like that, like a digital billboard or something that switches, gives me anxiety.

[Alvin]

Yeah.

[Kevin]

Like, as soon as it. If it catches my attention and it's something that I'm like, oh, like I actually need a mobile detailing service or something like that, I immediately get anxiety because it's going to switch before I can capture the information.

[Alvin]

And it's gonna switch. And you're driving down the highway and you see it and it switches and you're like, oh, I do need an accident attorney because of that accident I recently had. And then it's got the number on there and it goes away. So what are you going to do? Park on the highway and wait for it to cycle back a minute later? Here we go.

[Jordan]

Welcome back to Buzzcast Podcast about all things podcasting from the people at Buzzsprout. Today we have to talk about this great, big, awesome update that we have done to buzzsprout subscriptions.

[Kevin]

Yes. We introduced two years ago, roughly the concept of buzzsprout subscriptions. And now this is. Even when we pitched it as a work cycle, I don't. I don't think I came up with a fancy name for it. We just called it Buzzsprout subscriptions update or something like that.

[Alvin]

Unleashed 2.0.

[Kevin]

Right.

[Alvin]

The ultimate version. Buzzsprout subscriptions. Ultimate, right.

[Kevin]

And I will tell you, even in this big update, it was a big update. We still didn't get everything in that. I have in my wish list for subscriptions. I still have a few more ideas. I don't think you'll be shocked by any of them, but I hope, like, what we're trying to do with everything that we do in buzzsprout is we put out our best version of the initial idea to see how much of it resonates with podcasters, how many of them start using it, collect some feedback, get some new ideas, polish, refine, do.

[Alvin]

So.

[Kevin]

So this is like our second version. There might be a third, there might be a fourth. We're just gonna have to see how this stuff plays out. So, first version, we tried some really great stuff, got some really good feedback, got a decent number of customers that we're engaging it and using it, and now we've done version two, which is the next round of improvements. All right, so the first thing that is different is that listener support and subscriptions are now two separate features in the ui.

[Jordan]

Nice.

[Kevin]

So before they were kind of bundled together and you could choose to do premium content or just offer, like, a listener support subscription. And we've got big visions for both of these things now. And so they've been split out, and listener support is kind of the same as it was before. It's just broken out into its own page with its own settings. And we did a bunch of work on the subscription side. And so when I say we have even more ideas, you can kind of infer where this might be going. Like, the next big round of revisions might be more on the listener support side, but listener support is just a way for you to turn on the ability for you to collect donations right through buzzsprout without having to use a third party like Patreon or Buy me Coffee or PayPal or Cash App or any of those. And if you want to use those, you totally can. This is just a really easy way just to click one button in buzzsprout and people can give you donations. We'll collect the money for you in your buzzsprout account, and then you can cash out whenever you want.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Kevin]

Or apply it towards your buzzsprout invoices or whatever.

[Jordan]

And what's great about subscriptions is it's not extra work for you. This is literally just like a toggle it on, keep doing what you're doing, and then invite listeners to support your work.

[Kevin]

Right. And that's a very key point in all of this. If you don't ask, you probably won't get much engagement on it.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Kevin]

And we have a, like, a case study on this, because Pod News Weekly Review, even though they don't know they're a case study, I have been observing them over the past couple of years and for the first year that they had this feature turned on, they had very few people who were supporting them. And then they started calling out their supporters and thanking them at the end of every episode and then they started calling them their power supporters. And then they started inviting their power supporters to come and give like year end podcast predictions for a special episode at the end of the year. They started making it a thing on their podcast and now they have 18 supporters that are giving more than $3 a month or something like that. So it's not life changing money, but they're making good money through people who are just supporting their podcast. And all they're doing is thanking them and calling them out and telling people how they can also support the show if they're getting some value from it. So if you're going to do it, I would suggest you talk about it and maybe come up with a good way to engage those people and have some benefit for them. Okay. And then the other big part of the update was since listener support is its own section, now subscriptions is its own section as well. And we have massively added the types of subscriptions that you can offer. So we think about subscription content just typically being what we've had for the past couple of years, which is bonus content or special episodes that you have to pay to get access to. But there's actually lots of different types of subscriptions that you can offer. And Apple sort of categorized these and made them a thing in Apple podcast subscriptions two years ago. And so we've adopted all of those subscription types. We've built them into Buzzsprout now and we've added an Apple integration.

[Alvin]

Yeah, I remember when they launched these, they came out with five and I was like, oh, that kind of covers all five. And thinking there's probably more. I don't really know if there's more. They kind of hit like, these are the five types of premium content you can offer. Premium episodes, like Kevin said, kind of like the bonus content ones that are behind a paywall. Early access, which is you get the same podcast episodes everybody else gets, but you get them early. Back catalog. You get the same episodes that people could have gotten, but you're the only one now that you pay who gets access to the old episodes. That's kind of like Dan Carlin's hardcore history model subscriber only podcast. Just like I put everything behind the paywall and then ad free episodes, which I think are pretty Popular now, especially for the largest shows where they'll have the ad version out for everybody. But if you want to pay more, you can get that ad free version as a way of, you know, like some kind of perk. And those are the five that keep coming up. And so we supported all the. All five of them. And as we talked about it, I think Kevin sold me on this. The one that I'm most excited about now is early access. Interesting, because the way we launched it two years ago was pretty much we were focusing on premium episodes and bonus content. And what I saw as one of the things we learned was people would say, hey, I'm going to do bonus content. And then their supporters are like, cool and like, bonus 5% start paying. But now they've committed to bonus content for these 5% of their supporters. So if you have a small show, you might have a hundred people and you say, I'm going to do a bonus episode every week and five of them pay for it. And now that's not sustainable. You're $15 a month you're getting from the five supporters and now you're going to give them a bonus episode every week. The math doesn't work. Early access is like a really great alignment of all of the interests. You still get to put all your episodes out for free for everybody. Eventually your paid subscribers actually get a real benefit. The fact that they get this content early and you are not doing more work. Yeah, you're doing the same work, same episodes. You're putting them out there and then the premium get them, but then everybody else three days later, five days later, a week later. And it just feels so good, especially for smaller podcasters who want to take a step into premium content without committing themselves to doing like twice as much work every week.

[Jordan]

Yeah, and there's some additional benefits to the subscribers, especially if you are a, I want to say mid size to larger podcast and you're offering like merch or you're doing like live shows. It is very easy to utilize the early access episodes to kind of give the subscribers, you know, like a first pass at like new merch drops before it sells out or the first dibs on tickets to like live shows or things like that. So there's a lot more that you could do with early access as well, which is kind of cool.

[Kevin]

Yeah, yeah, that's a great point. Yeah. I really do like the idea for any sort of amateur. I don't like the word amateur golfing term. We can use amateur sounds so pretentious. For non Professional podcasters. I like the idea of trying to find ways to make monetization simple because it really is just ancillary income for most people. It's not, not like I said, not life changing income, but it's something to help support your hobby. And so in order for, for stuff like that to work, it can't add a lot to your workflow. This hobby is hopefully very enjoyable and gives more than it takes from you. But every time we up how much it's taking, like because now I'm doing bonus episodes or something like Alvin said, then it has to give more. And on the subscription side that, that might not be possible depending on the size of your audience, but early access is one of these things that fits the bill perfectly because it really is just a setting now that you can set right in your Buzzsprout account and your episodes can drop three days early. And maybe that's more convenient for people. Maybe some people are. That's enough benefit for them to be able to support your show.

[Alvin]

I'd be interested of the two of you, do you pay for podcasting content? I know both you do. What type of perk is being offered from these?

[Jordan]

I usually subscribe to podcasts that offer bonus episodes and it's usually a podcast. I have just binged their entire back catalog and I'm insatiable. I need more. And so I'm, I'm a sucker for bonus episodes. But that's because I listen to way too much podcasting, like way too much. So it's probably unhealthy.

[Kevin]

I'm subscribed to two shows, both of them are only available and like the entire show is premium. They do preview episodes sometimes, at least on one of them. It's sharp tech and dithering. I don't know if dithering does preview episodes or not.

[Alvin]

Not that I know of.

[Kevin]

I don't think they do. I think you can just like every once in a while they throw out a free episode with like a bumper in the beginning. Like this is a free episode. But sharp tech, that's like a bigger show. They regularly promote it and I think try to actively really grow that show. They do previews so the whole show is know an hour, sometimes an hour and a half. And they do like 12 to 20 minute free preview drops. Like they'll grab one segment from a show and they'll drop em out like every week. That again feels like a lot of work to me. Cause they have to edit that free preview.

[Jordan]

Yeah. Another thing that podcasters can offer that doesn't actually require more effort is the back catalog access and the subscriber only podcast. So what I love about the back catalog access is, is you can opt to move your episodes into your back catalog 7, 14, or 30 days after publish. And what's so great about this is now if you want to archive older episodes, but you don't want to have to, like, remember to go back into your dashboard and check the subscriber only box, you know, setting a reminder on your phone or whatever to do that after 30 days, it'll automatically do that for you. And that's another one of those things that it doesn't take extra work on your end. You can actually just say, like, hey, make these older episodes subscriber only so that people who find my podcast with the new episodes and get hooked, they can go back and listen. But it's no extra work for you.

[Kevin]

Yeah, it is an interesting benefit. There's part of this that I don't like. The idea of having all this great content that might go back for years and years and years and it's locked away. That part of it does not sit well with me. But I know at the same time there have been some really successful podcasts that have been able to do this. Mark Marin. Yep.

[Alvin]

This American Life.

[Kevin]

This American Life does it. I didn't know that.

[Alvin]

Yeah.

[Jordan]

S Town.

[Kevin]

It works really well for a lot of big podcasts. So I would suggest maybe that's not a great strategy for somebody who's just starting out in podcasting, but if you've been doing it for a few years and you have a decent sized show and you've built a following and the snowball is like growing on its own. You've got some organic growth to your podcast, word is being spread, then it could absolutely work.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Alvin]

My feeling is back catalog access works for evergreen shows that are really big. Because if you get into this American life in 2025 and you're like, whoa, this is a great podcast, and then you go listen to the three episodes in the feed or whatever it is, then you go, I really want to listen to the old ones. And then you go and you pay for all the back catalog, which is like thousands of episodes. I know that when they first stopped publishing the back catalog, I went and bought their. They had a Little app for $3 in like 2014, which you got access to all of the episodes. And I thought that was a great deal. $3 now is not going to get you at all now. But I don't love this idea for anyone who's not massive because you're limiting your own growth. All these great episodes you poured so much effort into aren't being shared anymore. They're not getting caught in the moment. People aren't finding them. And maybe you did a deep dive into some topic and later on that topic comes very important and what are you gonna do? Like, I guess you could republish those episodes as new ones and say, oh, we're going back into the catalog and pulling this out. But you've limited your own growth where early access, the only downside will ever be for seven days this episode's not live. And if it's breaking news, you could always just move that one out of early access early. So I just love like you don't have to limit yourself with early access. You don't have to do any extra work and you're getting a real benefit. I looked at all the shows that I pay for. Two of them are premium only. Two I pay for ad free versions and then another I just support because I wanted to support them. None of them are early access or back catalog. I think I just, if it's like a really good show, I want to just, you know, vote with my money a little bit and we're talking a few dollars a month and give my favorite podcast a little bit of money and say yeah, I. What you're doing is really valuable.

[Jordan]

Perhaps if backhow log access like doesn't work for your podcast, something that could work is the subscriber only podcast. And I think that it has to be done in a certain way. I don't think you can just paywall you your entire podcast and pull one of those. Like if you build it, they will come sort of things like I think that you have to have one or two episodes or even like the trailer open for people to listen to. But I was just trying to imagine in my mind what kind of podcasts that are independent podcasts would do really well with subscriber only. And what keeps coming to my mind for some reason are like the life coach kind of podcast or business coach podcasts, audio dramas or narrative like audio fiction podcasts could do that where they have one or two episodes like hook the listener into the story. I was thinking of podcasts that I've listened to where if they had one or two episodes I would immediately go subscribe to like binge the whole thing that were audio drama style ones, miniseries. If you just have a miniseries like one off podcast, that would work really well. Or there's also been people who have recorded an audiobook and they're trying to sell the audiobook as a podcast. Well, one way you could do that is to do one or two chapters non paywalled and then paywall the other chapters. I think that would work really well for an independent podcaster. Probably better than just back catalog access.

[Kevin]

Yeah, I agree. Especially if you have something compelling. When that first episode or two, you can really get people engaged and hooked in the story.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Kevin]

And they definitely want to hear the end.

[Alvin]

I think the premium podcast, you still have to have a strong marketing channel around that premium content, because I think people imagine I'll lock it up and then people will really want access to it and then they'll pay. But you have to get even more people interested in the content to ever make any of those sales. And I think of the shows that I pay for or the ones, you know, Kevin just mentioned, and they're putting out tons of free content. So Dithering and sharptech are both Ben Thompson's and even his newsletter. He's giving out a really well researched article every week for everybody and hundreds of thousands of people read it. And then some people go on to subscribe to the podcast. So these aren't going to be, you know, I just made my own paid podcast and threw it out in the world. And imagine it's going to get found on its own and make its way out there. There has to be a marketing channel around it, right?

[Kevin]

Yeah. And the examples that we're citing are people who have been doing this for a very long time. So these people have built an audience to a place where these different types of subscription models become sustainable. They become really good options. If you don't have that yet, it's totally fine. Like turn on listener support, maybe you grow a little bit, and then you turn on the idea of early access again, like baby steps. And what I like with all these different subscription models is you have steps that you can go through and you can switch between them very easily as your podcast matures, as you mature, as your podcast grows from a hobby into a little bit of a side hustle into a business. It's a long journey. The chances of somebody starting a podcast this year and getting to the point where they will have hundreds of episodes that they could monetize in a back catalog or a show that could launch and be totally premium from the get go, very slim. But with all these options, you have this growth strategy that you can execute and mature and change over time.

[Jordan]

And then one more thing. I want to talk about with our subscription models is the ad free episodes. It's not just that subscriber get ad free episodes. And the way that it works, like the way that you technically give the ad free episode to subscribers, is that you upload a separate audio file.

[Alvin]

Right.

[Jordan]

Which means that you could have a special version for paying subscribers.

[Alvin]

Yeah. So it could be a version without ads, but you're implying it could also be a longer version or director's cut or something.

[Jordan]

Yeah. Like maybe you could have a little fun with it. You know, maybe Barnabas could have like a secret code so put into his episode that only the paying subscribers will get. You know what I mean?

[Kevin]

Right.

[Alvin]

Or you could get the extended version of buzzcast where we argue about whether or not I have processing on my audio.

[Jordan]

Yes.

[Alvin]

Right.

[Kevin]

We have to talk about the Apple Podcast integration in a second.

[Jordan]

Yes.

[Kevin]

That will be a discussion in and of itself. So I don't want to jump too far ahead, but all of these podcast subscription types that you set up, you can set a benefit message like you're telling the potential subscriber what they're going to get, and they're the default options change based on the type of subscription that you choose. But with all of them, you can also write your own custom message. So if you chose ad free, for example, but what that really means to you is I'm going to upload an extended cut, you could then choose as a benefit message, you know, subscribe to the podcast to get extended cuts or whatever. And with the Apple Podcasts subscription integration that we're going to talk about next, you'll see that you can also do a custom message on that side as well. So, yeah, you could definitely make that work.

[Alvin]

Yeah. So in addition to having all these improvements for buzzsprout subscriptions, we now have built this integration with Apple Podcast subscriptions. So you can manage one subscription in buzzsprout that is offered on your buzzsprout website to any app you want to use that has custom RSS feeds, but also offer a Apple Podcast subscription that you can manage in buzzsprout. That is pretty much the easiest thing to any easiest way to subscribe to premium content that's out there.

[Jordan]

Yeah. And as someone who has both a buzzsprout subscription and also the Apple Podcast subscriptions, it used to be that you had to upload a bonus episode in buzzsprout and then you'd also have to log into your Apple Podcasts, upload bonus episode, process it, do all of that. So you're basically doubling up on the work, but now, oh, my gosh, it's. I'm. I'm so excited about this. I can't express it. I just upload my episode in Buzzsprout, mark that subscriber episode, and then publish it, and then it shows up in my Apple Podcast subscriptions for my Apple Podcast subscribers as well. So it's just one step and I'm done. And so this is very exciting. Saving me, like, half an hour.

[Kevin]

Oh, it is. It is very nice when you get it all set up and it's. It's working exactly as Jordan described. It's beautiful. Like Apple has. I think you have to give them credit for the way that they have implemented, I don't know, subscriber only ad free early access. The way they've implemented that in the Apple Podcast app is the absolute best way to do it.

[Jordan]

It's great.

[Kevin]

They've removed all the friction. You stumble upon a podcast that has some sort of subscription offering, and it is super simple to subscribe. Apple pay, Boom. All the new content that you just unlocked shows up in your app. You can listen all you want, and when you want to unsubscribe, you can manage it just like any other subscription that you manage on your phone, whether it be app purchases or, you know, if you.

[Jordan]

Arcade.

[Kevin]

Yeah, Apple Arcade. Or if you've subscribed to the New York Times or whatever. Any podcast that you subscribe to, they're all listed in that same, you know, icloud subscriptions setting in there, and you can turn them on or off super easy.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Kevin]

And that's wonderful and beautiful because we have been doing subscriptions. I don't want to knock our own product, but we've done subscriptions for a couple of years now. And when you do a subscription through rss, you have to give somebody their own personal feed that they then have to load into the app of their choice. And there's a lot of goodness in that, that people can still listen in whatever app that they want and it's open and all that good stuff, not taking away from any of that. But for a lot of people, like, if you think about somebody who's not super technical or something, the idea of them getting a personalized RSS feed and then finding an app to put that in, and they're like, I don't even have another podcasting app. All I have is Apple Podcasts. Why? Why are you making me jump through all these hoops? That's why we did the Apple Podcast integration, because there's going to be a section of your audience. Regardless of how big your audience is, there's going to be a section of them that are probably not very technical. And they just use Apple Podcasts on their iPhone and they just want one button to subscribe. And this solves that problem really well.

[Alvin]

And that button experience is so easy. You just click it and says, do you want to pay the $3 a month or whatever the price is? You click it and then it says subscribe. Just like every other app that I have on my phone, I click yes. And the conversion rate there is always going to be so much better than kicking somebody out. Get your own RSS feed, pay for it, grab the link, come back, go into your app, add a custom URL. Okay, now your credit card failed. You don't really know where you signed up for this thing months ago. It just is a little bit more cumbersome. And if you lose 10% of the people who are going to subscribe, that's 10% of the people that you don't get because they got confused during the flow, and they go, I'm out. So this is just a really nice experience that is in the Apple Podcast subscriptions, we see more and more people using it, and so people like Jordan now can manage it all inside of buzzbrow. Mm. Yeah.

[Jordan]

And it's nice. Apple Podcasts subscriptions has its own set of analytics, so you can see those conversion rates for people that click to subscribe or try your free trial. So if you do want to set up your Apple Podcast subscriptions, it's a little bit more complicated than just, you know, toggling on buzzbrow subscriptions, but it is doable. Um, you just sign up for the Apple Podcasters program, which is like $20 a year, and you create subscription artwork for promo, icon, things like that. And they have templates for that. They actually create a new section dedicated to the Apple Podcasts artwork, show page, all this different stuff. So they've curated all that where you can download templates and stuff like that. And I'll link to that in the show notes. And then what do they do after they set up their Apple Podcast subscriptions in order to link it up to buzzsprout subscriptions?

[Kevin]

Sure, you'll see it. Once you go through this flow, there's a section in the Apple Podcast Connect app that is called Keys, K, E Y S. And you would click into that section, you would download a key. It's going to ask you to name it. You can just name it Buzzsprout or whatever, my podcast, give it, whatever name you want, doesn't matter. You're going to download this little encrypted file, and then you're going to switch over to your buzzsprout account. You're gonna upload that encrypted file to us. And that's just. It's like an authentication key. It gives us the key to be able to push stuff into your Apple podcast subscriptions account. So that way you can upload one time to buzzsprout, and then we can push it to Apple on your behalf.

[Jordan]

If you run into any problems with that, you can always just reach out to our awesome support team.

[Kevin]

Yeah. And, you know, I would say this. I might suggest that you experiment with subscriptions and kind of get it locked in a little bit and see if you get a subscriber or two before you take all the steps of doing the whole Apple podcast subscriptions integration piece. Yeah, I just. I just don't want to push people into setting that all up to find out that, you know, in a month or two. Well, subscription content isn't really working for my podcast anyway. But setting it up in buzzsprout is super easy, so definitely turn on listener support, talk about it, promote it, maybe experiment with some subscription stuff, see if you get a few people that are interested. But once you do, once you find out this is something that could actually work for my podcast, and maybe I get a little bit of pizza money or something on the side from doing this, then that Apple podcast subscription integration is really nice, and it makes it really easy to. For your audience. So I'm excited about the feature. Like I said, it's. It's not something that somebody probably in your first year of podcasting, you don't want to kind of jump right into, right out of the gate. But we've got so many customers who've been podcasting for 2, 3, 4, 5, 10, 15 years who are totally ready for this stuff. And so it was the right time for buzzsprout to add it, and I'm excited that we have it.

[Jordan]

Okay, Alvin, you have a conspiracy theory for me today. I cannot wait for this. What do we have going on?

[Kevin]

It's been a while since we' had a good conspiracy theory.

[Jordan]

It's been a minute.

[Alvin]

Well, you and Kevin both love a good conspiracy theory.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Alvin]

I started doing research and I came up with my own opinion. And so that's maybe a little bit of marketing to get you guys excited.

[Jordan]

I was hooked.

[Alvin]

So yesterday I saw somebody posting online I'm so upset. The ATR2100X is now being discontinued.

[Jordan]

No.

[Alvin]

No way. This is the mic. We've been recommending these for 11 years, at least.

[Kevin]

Yeah, it was our number one for a little while. I feel like it's squarely been our number one and a half or two for the past couple of years.

[Alvin]

1A, 1B with the Samsung Q2U. Right. More on those two mics coming up in just a second. Part of this conspiracy theory research. But we've been recommending this mic for like 11 years. As this is such a good mic, you should probably get it. And yeah, Audio Technica quietly marked it is discontinued on their product page. You go there, it's got a discontinued thing on there. And it's just disappointing. This is a great USB XLR mic. Sounds great, easy setup. And now it's gone. So Audio Technica didn't put out like a press release or anything, but I was like, I want to figure out why this has been discontinued. And there's like Reddit threads on it and there's people on social media. And I think Audio Technica said some stuff, maybe privately, but what people are saying is two reasons. One, it's too similar to two other mics they have and they're like, oh, it's just like. It's just like these two other mics, that 2005 USB and the 2040 USB. So you could just be using one of those mics. Okay, so got some thoughts there. It's not really like these mics, but it's similar.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Alvin]

And then they said there's issues with sourcing chips since COVID And I was like, that's strange. This mic came out during COVID during 2020, the update. I was like, that's interesting. And I look at Amazon on all the one star reviews. I was like, okay, if there's a problem with the, like, the chips, it's going to show up here. And it definitely does. There's tons of people who said the USB board failed on me. So the USB plug stopped working. XLR kept going, fine, USB didn't. And it looks like happened when they added the. They went to USB C. So it's like, okay, there might be some credibility there, but Kevin and I, like a week ago were talking about this mic and we were like, why isn't he even more popular than it is? And Kevin had this theory. Sometimes things are too good. So, Kevin, I want to tee you up here. How is this mic just too good? And I feel like when it Got discontinued. Oh, it, it got killed because it was too good.

[Jordan]

Oh, no.

[Kevin]

We were doing some analogies, I, I think around golf clubs. Right.

[Alvin]

You had golf clubs and mine was old Land Cruisers.

[Kevin]

Yeah. The thing that happened in the golf world and does happen regularly is that these manufacturers, they're not subscription products, so they're not getting continual revenue. The way that they get more money is by coming out with a new version of a product or a totally new product. But typically what you're doing is you're coming out with the 2023 version, the 2024 version, the 2025 version, and you have to make them better. Sometimes that's really hard to do. Like if you don't have a breakthrough in the year, how am I going to market this thing and convince everyone that it's better and it's worth spending money on the upgrade? I think that Audio Technica knocked it out of the park with this microphone 10 years ago, 11 years ago, whenever it came out. And you know, what can they do besides make it cheaper? You know, now it's an 11 year old microphone. How do we sell more? How do we get people excited about it except make it cheaper? And I think that they could be in a position where they're stuck. You can't just take this microphone and charge more for it. They probably don't want to sell it for a lot less.

[Alvin]

I mean, this is a mic that got down to like $35 on Amazon regularly.

[Kevin]

Yeah.

[Alvin]

And we're not recommending it because we're like, oh, we don't think you have $45. We're recommending it because if you go out of range, the next mics I personally get excited about are $400 mics. The 100 to $200 market has no appeal to me because they're not really all that better. Might even be worse sometimes.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Alvin]

Than the 2100X and they're 10 times as much money. Almost like it's definitely not worth it.

[Kevin]

Thinking about this a little bit further, this did happen before.

[Alvin]

Yes.

[Kevin]

I think four years ago they came out with the X. Right.

[Alvin]

So the ATR 2100 was always like $65 and it would get discounted. And so you'd see it in the 50 range. And then as soon as Covid happened and everyone was home and everybody who wanted to start a podcast or a blog or something, they want to start something with a mic, they went, I need a mic. And Audio Technical sold a ton of these mics and they go, oh, we want to Reset the price point. And so they came out with the 2100X, which was $100 microphone. They discontinued the old one and they're exactly the same, minus they swapped out the USB port to make it USB C. And I think they added like a bad stand and they changed the color and that was it. And it was just the same mic, only slightly different. But they did it to reset the price point. Yeah, I was like, this mic has just gotten cheaper and cheaper and cheaper and I think it's too cheap. And I went and looked and I was like, okay, what has Audio Technica launched since this mic got too cheap? Yeah, since 2020 they've come out with like five mics for podcasters. And the 2040, which is $100 mic, it's the same as the 2100 with a worse form factor. It's like the old 2100 and then the 2020, which they have like five different versions of and that always is at 150 to like $180 price point. And I think this is just like they want to sell multiple mics for specific use cases so they don't get resold as much. They simplify their supply chain. Because if that board that tried to do XLR and USB was the problem, they get that out of there. They used to have a lifetime warranty. So if that board had a problem, like that was really hurting them with support, I think they just cut it because it was like for 35 bucks. They were probably undercutting all of their other mics and they said, shoot, we're only making $10amic anyway. Cut it out and we'll probably make it up with people buying the 2040 or the 2020 or.

[Kevin]

Because I think before they came out with the 2100X, they discontinued the 2100 before the 2100X came out.

[Alvin]

Oh, really?

[Kevin]

So there was a couple of months when it just looked like the 2100 was not going to be available anymore. And you're going to have to, you know, find another high quality budget microphone for intro podcasters, which has been fine because they have good competition in the Samsung Q2U. Right. So it wasn't the end of the world, but it was kind of like, oh, we used to have two good options, now we just have one. And then a few months later, they dropped the 2100x as a replacement. So it is possible we're all just speculating about this stuff. We have no inside information, but it is possible that the 2100X, whatever X2 is going to drop in the next month or two.

[Jordan]

Yeah, man. I really thought we were going to be going in the direction of like, you've heard those conspiracy theories of people invent new tech and then it gets bought up by like private companies just to like kill it.

[Alvin]

Obsolescence.

[Jordan]

Yeah. Like, I thought it was going to be like some sort of like innovation suppression story, but it kind of is though, I guess. Yeah.

[Alvin]

This is a $35 mike that. Okay. Had some bad reviews, but we've had zero break for us ever. Yeah, we've used tons of these mics. We've given away, I don't know, 50 plus of these mics. We've never heard of a single complaint.

[Jordan]

Yeah, people love them.

[Alvin]

We've dropped them. We bang them around when we take them to conferences. Like, they're rock solid mics. They're the ones we send to everybody on the support team when they sign up and they want to have a good mic. We use them all the time. And at $35 and they don't break and they sound great and they give you premium sound. I think it is a bit of like the LED lights in the early 80s. They were a little too good. They didn't break.

[Kevin]

Yeah. And the $35 price point, by the way, is like the Black Friday deal.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Kevin]

Usually Amazon does a Black Friday deal and for Some reason the 2100X is usually in there and it's usually 35 to 39 dollars. And we usually buy like a hundred of them.

[Alvin]

Yeah.

[Kevin]

And just throughout the year we find places of people, you know, we give them away to whoever needs them.

[Alvin]

Which actually now means, Kevin, we have about a hundred discontinued, like, throwback mics. These are collector's items. This is not like these aren't just mics to give away anymore. These are like, whoa, you got some of the ATR2100X. We might have one of the largest stashes of these in the world.

[Jordan]

Yeah, we got to hoard them like Beanie Babies.

[Alvin]

Exactly.

[Jordan]

Okay, so here is a story that was brought to my attention from priv discussions on Reddit. A member of our Buzzsprout Reddit community, Spotify, announced that they were going to be displaying plays. And basically what happened is they said that they were creating a new metric called plays. They didn't go into what plays meant as opposed to, like, streams or listens. So your guess is as good as mine. But the numbers would appear on the podcast episodes in the Spotify app. Spotify said that this was meant to improve podcast discovery for users and provide creators with a more immediate snapshot of engagement. Kind of a cool thing. But what happened was sort of the opposite of what I believe they expected for the podcasting community. A lot of podcasters were just kind of immediately like, no, I don't want my listens to be seen publicly. I don't want people to see that. I spent 20 hours editing an episode that only got, like, seven downloads, which is real.

[Alvin]

Yeah. I looked at this thing on threads that you shared, and there's so many responses.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Alvin]

They're amped up, you know, because it's the Internet and that's the way that you engage is. You know, they're. No, absolutely no. Nobody asked for this. It's, like, a little bit much. But one that landed with me so much was this comment. As an avid audio listener, I'd rather not see those numbers. I'm fatigued by algorithms and data telling me what I should like or engage in.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Alvin]

And I thought that was a good point. This algorithm is still going to recommend stuff to you, whether or not, you know, the plays or not. But it does feel like I want to be able to just engage with something and not have to think about, is it popular? Does it have the social validation before I decide to listen? And it's nice as a creator to be able to put something out in the world and not have to evaluate it based on play numbers. Especially play numbers that if you are a little bit shy about creating something, not having to make it public.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Alvin]

And I saw this other concern, which kind of makes sense to me. Podcasts are not only on Spotify. Spotify doesn't advertise that. But they're actually on all sorts of apps. And these would only ever be the seven listeners you had on Spotify. The 200 you had on other platforms wouldn't show up. And so I think podcast creators are concerned. Man, my show might look really small if Spotify hasn't promoted it at all. But all of my work's going in on the Apple side, and now it makes me kind of look like a liar to my advertisers when they can see this number is very different from the number I'm telling them.

[Jordan]

Yeah. And I think that the sentiment was really similar for a lot of podcast creators, where they were just like, man, can I just show up and create something and not have people assessing how much engagement I'm getting or how many likes or views I'm getting on this thing that I'm just Putting my passion into.

[Kevin]

Right. I think it's one of the dangers in the podcasting space that's been happening over the past couple years as larger companies get interested in what podcasting has to offer them. Right. So Spotify might have been the first really big player after Apple to take an interest in podcasting. Google and YouTube have expressed an interest. But like, the motivations of these companies are they're not motivated by what makes podcasting special. They're motivated by what can make them more money. Yeah. And I like the fact that people are responding to this play count thing. Like, it's not just, hey, YouTube does it. We should do it in podcasting too. It's like, yeah, it doesn't exist in podcasting and that's a good thing. Like, that seems to be the sentiment of people who really love podcasting, either on the listener side or on the consumer side. Yeah. And oftentimes I hear. Well, let me say, too often I've been hearing professionals in the podcasting space, the people who are making tech for podcasting. So whether you're on the hosting side or the app side or you might work for one of these larger companies getting on the bandwagon of no, Podcasting has to be more like video. It has to be more like social. It has to be more like short form. It has to be more like this, more like that. Like, that doesn't feel like the way to preserve what's special about podcasting. That just feels like the way to move, you know, one more thing into this social algorithm garbage that has sort of consumed the whole online space. It kind of consumed online blogging and consumed online video, and it consumed. Now it's the 30 different services we have to subscribe to just to watch a TV show and all this other stuff. Podcasting is different. And I don't feel like there's enough people who are just like, by default we should say no, because what we have is good. And there's gonna be a lot of people who keep trying to change it, but we should move slowly and carefully because otherwise you're going to blink. And podcasting is just going to be, you know, TikTok. It's just going to be YouTube. It's just going to be like everything else, controlled by a few massive companies. Garbage, brain rot, not helping people, not super fun anymore. It reminds me, I've just saw this week one of the largest YouTube channels. Have either of you ever watched the Outdoor Boys?

[Alvin]

Yes, I saw this.

[Kevin]

Yes. So the Outdoor Boys is mostly the main guy from the Outdoor boys who started this YouTube channel. He's an outdoor enthusiast. He goes on these huge expeditions outside and brings very little with him and survives for 2, 3, 4, 5 days in very remote, very harsh conditions. And he's learned how to do it well. He started filming himself, started uploading him to YouTube, and in a short amount of time, a couple, maybe two to five years or whatever, he went from a million or so subscribers, like a successful channel, to in the past two years, it's really blown up. And he has like 14 and a half million subscribers now on his YouTube channel.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Kevin]

He said in the last week or so, shutting down the channel, I'm walking away. And it's been hard for people to wrap their head around. But his explanation was just like, I'm a normal guy and I like to enjoy the outdoors, but the filming and the editing and even beyond that, like, going out in public now I can't go out to get ice cream with my family without, you know, being somewhat of a celebrity.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Kevin]

He's like, it's not what I signed up for. It's not why I do it. And it's just become too much. And so he's shutting it down. And it seems laughable to a layperson like me, like, you stumbled upon this massive success and you're just going to walk away from it. But I don't know, because I've never had his experience, maybe I would do the same thing.

[Alvin]

I am so impressed when people do something like this. I think of Harper Lee, who wrote To Kill a Mockingbird, and she wrote one book during her life that was published, and for years, everybody was like, you've got to write more books. And she's like, I wrote the book that I needed to write. And, you know, just from, like, her life experience went into this book and it went out and it was well received and it did really well. And she never wrote another book to be published. There was a second book written. She said, not very good, not getting published. And it was only after she passed that it got published. And I love somebody who's willing to say, I know fame and notoriety are hard to achieve, but now that I've achieved it, I know that I don't want it and I'm going to let it go. And I know there's millions of people who are also trying to get this thing, and they're all blown away by the fact that I would give it up. I think of there was a offensive lineman one year in the NFL who said, I love doing math. He Was like a math Ph.D. and he goes, I'm afraid I'm going to get a concussion that will damage my ability to do high level math. So I'm walking away from the NFL millions of dollars a year. And I think it's so impressive to find out I've got something and I'm letting it go because it's not the thing that I want. Well, I guess, Kevin, now you have to connect to this story back to podcasting, because now I'm trying to land the plane and I have no idea where it goes. But I do love the story. It made me very happ.

[Kevin]

Definitely bring it back. I mean, the reason I brought it up was just that everything kind of becomes this other stuff. Anyway, that's what podcasting can happen, especially when you start showing numbers is something that is passionate and fun for you. And I want to get on the microphone with a friend and we want to talk about sports, or we want to talk about the real estate business, or we want to talk about gardening or whatever. And then all of a sudden it starts blowing up and your numbers are public and all this kind of stuff, or the pressure to do that, or the. The inverse of, we're working so hard and nobody's looking and that's embarrassing. So maybe I'm going to quit. Whatever. That's how I'm trying to connect. It is like, sometimes you're massively successful, and that's just as bad as if you're not successful at all. And I like the fact that people are speaking out against it from all those different perspectives. And they're not saying podcasting is different and we need to protect it. But I kind of see like underneath what they're saying, that's the sentiment that I think people who are in the podcasting space professionally and are building tech for it, that's what we need to do, is help people understand and remember what is special about podcasting and why is it worth protecting.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Kevin]

And so Spotify rolls out a new feature and Apple rolls out a new feature and Google rolls out a new feature and YouTube wants us to put our podcasts in there and all this other kind of stuff. Like, I just think by default we should slow down. We should probably say no, we should think it through. We should figure out, does this add to or take away what is special and unique about podcasting?

[Jordan]

If you read through all these comments on Spotify's, like social media posts about this, if you zoom out, you can really see that that is the sentiment is like, I just wanted this one precious thing, and we don't want this. And it's both, as you said, it's both the people who are only getting a few downloads per episode, and they don't want people to see that because they don't want to stunt their growth. And then you have the people that have bigger numbers and they have a different set of problems with it, and they're just like, no, don't do this. So it's like, across the board, pretty much. Nobody really wants this. And so Spotify came back and said, like, okay, you know, we've. We've heard. We've heard you loud and clear, and we've taken this into consideration, which I actually think is great, because historically, Spotify has been like, this is a great thing. And they roll it out. And then after they roll it out, they say, hey, look at this thing we've done. I mean, you remember, like, when they posted the. The comments thing, and I had, like, the poop emojis on my episodes, and I was like, no, I'm sorry.

[Alvin]

I got to disagree with this so hard. This is not a good compromise. This is a. This is a version of compromise. That's the worst type.

[Jordan]

I did not say it was a good compromise. I said they came back with a compromise.

[Kevin]

Okay.

[Alvin]

It's so patronizing to me. The, like, we've engaged with the community, and we appreciate your thoughtful feedback. And here's what we came up with. Play counts will be presented to Spotify users at incremental milestone markers once an episode reaches 50,000 plays. Yeah, if it's under 50,000, we don't show the plays. And after that it's 50, 100, blah, blah, blah. What? Who cares? Like, now I know. Not popular show because it doesn't have plays. And who cares that, like, the number is slightly obfuscated because it's 50,000 plays? Like, that doesn't solve the problem for anybody.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Alvin]

All it did was you kind of changed the idea in a way that didn't really matter. And then you gave us a patronizing like, thanks for the community feedback comment. Either roll it out and force it and be like, nope, we're just gonna be like, YouTube. And, you know, tough is tough. Which I think is, like, what Spotify really wants. Or be like, oh, we appreciate the feedback. And the way we're taking it is the feedback we got, which was, we don't want it.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Alvin]

So make a decision. And it feels like this is those watered down, you know, fake compromise. And I don't care for this either. Way. And I probably prefer give us the real numbers the way YouTube does.

[Jordan]

I actually think that there were some suggestions from the podcasting community that made a lot of sense. In this instance, they were saying, give us an option to toggle this off. You know, if you want to show off these milestone markers, that's really cool. But let us decide if we want to show that number off. I thought that was actually a really good idea because, yeah, there's probably a few episodes I'd be more than happy to have that 50k stamp of approval on. Like, that could be really fun. But then there's other things where I'm just like, I don't know if I really want that.

[Kevin]

Sure.

[Alvin]

I think that actually would be a good idea. I think that they're not doing it because what they want to do is show. Play numbers for big shows.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Alvin]

And so they kind of came up with a false compromise. What I'm trying to get at is sometimes the compromise is worse than both of the opposing viewpoints, and that's what it feels like. Now, Spotify didn't get really good the thing they wanted, and the people giving feedback didn't get what they wanted. We got some weird hybrid.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Alvin]

And whatever. I. I don't use Spotify. This show's not on Spotify. No one's gonna see that. It doesn't have many listeners anyway.

[Kevin]

That's true.

[Jordan]

No one's gonna see this.

[Kevin]

Well, and maybe here's an opportunity for me to circle back to my point I was making before about people who are in the industry who I think have a shared responsibility to try to protect what's great about podcasting.

[Alvin]

Mm.

[Kevin]

A little bit of a soapbox here. I'm not gonna call anybody out specifically, but Alvin just made the point, like, this show is not on Spotify because they continue to make decisions and do things that we don't necessarily feel like are in the best interest of open podcasting long term. Again, I've said this a million times. I can't fault them for it. Like, they are a for profit public company. I'm obviously not an investor, so I can say whatever I want. And they're making the decisions that are best for them and their shareholders. Not necessarily in this idea of protecting open podcasting. Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is if you do make a living in this industry and you do see what you're doing and you don't necessarily think it's the best thing, that why are you putting your shows on their platform? We don't do it. And people might say, oh, well, you know, it's easy for. For you guys to do it. You're Buzzsprout, and it doesn't matter if you don't have a few listeners. It's not easy. We get feedback all the time from people who say, I want to listen to your show, but it's not on Spotify. Or, I heard you have the podcast. I can't find it in Spotify. We would reach more people. Yeah, we would sell more hosting accounts. We would have more people who show up at conferences and meet us and say, yeah, I've heard your show. Cause I listen on spot. It's not easy. It stinks. But it's a small price to pay to protect something that we love. And so I call out and challenge everybody in the podcasting space. Whether you're building an app that serves a really cool, unique, niche audience, or you're in the hosting space or you're doing, like, podcast guest matching services or whatever your deal is in this space, I'm hoping that you're doing it and you got into it because you love podcasting and you think it's one of the. The last sort of free and fun and interesting spaces on the Internet that's not completely controlled by one of these mega tech giants and, like, let's protect it. And if you really care and you want to protect it, then don't act like you do and then continue to publish your stuff on Spotify because it doesn't make sense.

[Alvin]

Yeah, that's the. Oh, thank you. We love engaging with the podcasting community. It's so valuable. And then do whatever you want it anyway. Like, there's nothing wrong with being honest and saying, I don't give a rip about open podcasting. What I really care about is cool video podcasts, and that's what I want to support. And I feel like, you know, Riverside, that would probably be something they would say, we really love cool video podcasts, and so we're all in on it. They don't give us this, like, fake, we're really proud of the open podcasting ecosystem talk. So I never feel anything strange. It's when you get the, oh, I'm all in on the open podcasting ecosystem stuff. And then the next thing is like, but, oh, I'm all about pushing people to YouTube. I'm all about Spotify. Like, well, then you're not really for it. You're just kind of happy that there's a talking point that kind of makes sense. But that's all it is, if you have no. There's nothing behind it. There's no skin in the game. And this is. We're talking very small skin in the game. We're talking. Buzzsprout doesn't reach, I don't know, 400 extra people an episode. And we're just okay with it because it's not that big of a compromise. And yet it's, like, one of the only shows that are even willing to take, like, a little hit like that. It's not a good sign.

[Kevin]

All right, rant's over. Gosh, every time you bring up Spotify, we get all fired up.

[Jordan]

It was really funny because priv discussions said, looking forward to buzzcast view and analysis on this. So there you go. That's our view.

[Alvin]

View and analysis.

[Kevin]

Whatever.

[Alvin]

Good. Whatever. This is dumb. I just can't, like, get away from this. If people were not online in the 90s, and I was very young online, but the beginning of the Internet was not social media where you uploaded, and the goal was to get in front of millions of people. The default was, I'm publishing for myself and I send this URL to, like, five people. And then when, like, AltaVista and the very early search engines came out, maybe you would get random people would link to it or a blog role. You'd show up, and maybe you'd find a few readers on your blog. But it wasn't the default. The default was you were writing mostly for yourself and a few people. And then we got to some new world where the number metric, the views on the tweet, the likes, the hearts, the retweets, the favorites, whatever the super likes, all of those things became the point. And maybe take it back to Kevin's outdoor boys. Like, the plays weren't the point. The being in the outdoors and sharing that with friends was the point. And so he had the courage to say, okay, I won the View game, But that wasn't the game I wanted. I wanted the fun outdoor game. So I am stepping back from the YouTube channel because all it gets me is the thing I didn't want anyway.

[Kevin]

You notice he didn't say, I'm not going outdoors anymore.

[Alvin]

Right? He said, I want to protect the thing I want, which is to have a family and go get ice cream without being accosted by people who are fans. Right? And not that the fans were doing anything wrong, but, like, he just wanted to be able to go and be anonymous. I get it.

[Kevin]

Right. And go spend a couple nights outdoors without the pressure of I have to Film, and I have to narrate, and I have to share my inner thoughts. And I. He was like, he was starting to rob the joy of the thing he really loved the most, which was just like, he's going to go dig a snow cave and survive. And, like, just to be able to do that without the pressure of, oh, I forgot to record cooking that rice. Dang it. That was robbing the fun of it.

[Jordan]

It's funny that trying to survive in the elements that are actively trying to kill you is less stressful than having a YouTube channel.

[Alvin]

Channel.

[Jordan]

All right, let's get into Soundoff. First up, we have a message from Warren from Jaded hr. I would love for Kevin to do a deep dive into the chat GPT prompts he uses that he spoke about. So this is referencing an episode we did, I don't know, a while ago, where you trained it to go through our transcripts.

[Kevin]

Yeah, yeah, I remember. So I can't do a deep dive. I can tell you how I taught it to do it. It was right after they announced that they were building memory into ChatGPT. It came to pro accounts first. I have a pro account, and I was testing that out. I was really interested if I could teach it overall so that anybody could then, you know, pull a transcript without having to get, like, the URL just to the transcript. Turns out that didn't work, but it did remember it for me. And so now I can open up my ChatGPT instance and I can say, hey, can you pull the transcript from the latest buzzcast episode? And it knows how to do that. But that wasn't one clean, beautifully engineered prompt. It was a conversation back and forth I was having with ChatGPT of saying, hey, here's the RSS feed for my podcast. Do you see? Yes, I see that. I can read it, I can parse it. Do you see the line where it references the transcript? Yes. And then I tried to get it to, like, to read the SBT version. It couldn't read that, but it read the text version fine. Like, we went back and forth for a while, and then I said, do you see the pattern of, like, URLs of how to find, like, what the next one would be? Yes, I see the pattern. It's like this, just explaining it anyway. So back and forth a couple times, and it had it figured out, and I said, it's great. So now that is how you reference a transcript file for a buzzcast episode. If I ever ask you about it again, can you remember that? And it said, it will. And then I went back a couple days later and I said, can you pull the latest transcript? Yes, I knew how to pull the latest transcript and then I could query it and I could ask questions about it. So I think that memory feature, Albin, you might know this. I think it's available for any. I'm on, like the Pro one, which is like really expensive one, but I think the $20 a month one, whatever

[Alvin]

that one is, I think that has memory now.

[Kevin]

That has memory now, too. So it should be as long as you have a paid version of Chat GPT, I think you can have a conversation with it, show it how to figure out, like, where transcripts are, and then you'll be good to go from there.

[Jordan]

Good to go. I don't think I would be able to do it based on that.

[Kevin]

No, it's conversational, so it'll ask you. If you say, I can't find it, you say, well, you know where. You can say, where are you getting stuck? It's right here in the RSS file.

[Jordan]

Yeah, but you have to read the RSS file.

[Kevin]

You can actually ask it. Here's my RSS file. Can you help me understand where it is? Does anything look like it references the transcript in here? And it'll say, this looks like it might reference a transcript.

[Jordan]

Okay. That's going to be my method of doing it. Like, help me read this.

[Kevin]

Yeah. Another Kevin wrote in from when life gives you lemons and said about the present AI assistant production of transcripts. Our experience has been pretty bad because both the guests and myself are unable to speak clearly and the transcripts require quite a bit of editing. I'm anxious to try out the new app that you were speaking of. Let me say this, the AI transcription stuff, any sort of automated transcripts, they've been getting so much better over the past couple of years. And so I do think we are at the point now where if you speak clearly and none of us do on a regular basis, but if you, if you're. If you're pretty good at speaking clearly, they're getting in the high 90s percent of accuracy and they will probably be getting even better and better and better from there. So if you do have some trouble speaking clearly consistently and your guests do as well, it might not be the perfect solution yet. But I think you can remain optimistic because they're getting better and they're getting closer to just like probably when you have a conversation with a human, even if some of the words aren't enunciated as clearly. As you would like, people can still make them out. AI stuff is catching up to that. And so I hope you're going to see massive improvements and I hope this becomes a good solution for you rapidly. And I've been thoroughly impressed just over the past couple years. The accuracy rates just, just continue to get better and better.

[Alvin]

So I'm super optimistic because I'm regularly running our transcripts through different models just to see like, okay, how does this come out? And a few times now I've had some that were so good that it caught like a joke or something that Jordan or you said that I didn't hear. And so I've read one and went, they didn't say that. And then I played the audio again and went, oh, they did say that, but it was kind of garbled a little bit and I didn't hear it right. And so it's happened twice now where I didn't hear it until I read it. And then I went and re listened and I went, oh, that is there. So we need to get you to try the beta of our transcripts and see if that happens for you, because I am very surprised. And it just seems like it gets better and better and faster and faster every week. And I think we're going to be just a much better spot in a few months and in a few years. And I think everybody is going to be really, really benefit from this. All right. We had a long discussion about feed drops last week where we were kind of doing some research into it, and AJ from the Regen Narration podcast reached out, said, I've had this experience a few times and I'm getting these feed drops, but they're not between regular episodes either. They're just dropped in as standalone additions to the feed. He had it this experience with the In Trust podcast, and so it was pretty frustrating. The feed drops had no personal recommendation attached. So you see, it says it feels like a letdown when I think there's a new episode from a podcast I actually signed up for. And often there's no clear indication in the title that it's something else entirely. It's gotten to the point where I started unfollowing these podcasts. It just feels like a kind of dubious way to treat followers. I'm all in for host sharing recommendations, but not for being sold. I totally agree, AJ like, if it just comes in, it just feels like a bait and switch. The show I like dropped an episode. I'm so excited. I keyed it up and it's something totally different. Like, that's not a good experience short term. You might make some money by doing these feed drops that way, but you are burning down the trust that you've built with your audience. Ironic. That was on the In Trust podcast. You're burning it down for 50 bucks. CPM. Not worth it.

[Jordan]

All right. Dave Jackson actually wrote in also about feed drops, saying, Jordan, how long did it take you to get paid on your feed drop? It depends. So if I did a feed drop myself, what I would do is when I published the feed drop in my feed, I would write up like an invoice, and you could either do like, net 15 or net 30. So I'd usually get paid within two weeks to a month from giving that invoice to the company. And then the other feed drops that I did were through a marketing agency. And so I got paid with whatever, you know, whatever timeline they had, which I think was something like 60 days. So it wasn't too bad. But it's a lot better if you do it yourself and you can just shoot them the invoice.

[Kevin]

Naomi in Iowa wrote in and said I was loving the show about preparing podcast guests so much. Great insight into the composition process. I'm assigning this episode to my students for next fall when I teach a unit on podcasting in a professional writing class. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

[Jordan]

That's so cool.

[Kevin]

And I'm going to say thank you because I wasn't even on that episode. So that was Priscilla filling in for me and just bringing wonderful content in my absence, which is a low bar, let's be honest. But she did a great job nonetheless. Totally killed it, that episode. Yes, it was great. So if you didn't catch that one, go back. It's just one or two episodes back. Um, Priscilla talking about how to prepare podcast guests.

[Jordan]

Yeah, it was a great one.

[Alvin]

Somebody reached out from Illinois and wrote for unknown reasons. The doubts and bad thoughts hit me hard this weekend. I started listening to your recent episode and it was exactly how I was feeling. Thank you for the episode. It was helpful in a moment when doubting why I was podcasting. Well, thank you for writing in. Those are the pieces of fan mail that I find most inspirational. Make me very happy that we're doing this show. So, yeah. Hope you're feeling uplifted and you're excited to keep podcasting. Keep up the great work.

[Kevin]

Yeah.

[Jordan]

Terri, from the Intuitive Eating and Body Positivity podcast, I just want to say I love the episode. On preparing for guest episodes, I could really relate especially to the part about being hesitant to share your podcast in spaces where friends might see it, that what will they think of me? Fear was very real for me too. But in the end, it turned out to be an unfounded worry. Every time I've shared an episode or celebrated a podcast milestone, people have only been supportive and cheered me on. Honestly, I've found that if anyone does have an issue with it, they usually don't say anything. Not to my face and not online. So my approach is, if I don't know about it, it can't hurt me.

[Alvin]

Priscilla shared with me the other day. Her aunt found out that she had the Happy to Help podcast.

[Jordan]

Oh, yeah.

[Alvin]

And wrote her and was like, oh, I'm so proud of you. The podcast sounds amazing. And she goes, oh, okay, cool. And then her cousin reached out and was like, my mom sent this to the whole family. Everyone's listening to it. You sound amazing. It's so good. None of them do customer success or customer support in any capacity, but they were all listening and supporting her. Just made me so happy to hear that story.

[Jordan]

Also, how lucky that you finally got family members to listen to your podcast. I've been trying to get my family listen to mine forever. They won't do it.

[Alvin]

All right, we got a bunch of messages, Jordan, about our post show of that episode. So, Jordan, you and Priscilla were giving me recommendations on movies and TV shows. And I said, hey, write in if you want to listen to this podcast.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Alvin]

And we got a bunch. Kansas City, Missouri. Yes. I'd listen to the movie review podcast. Jacksonville, Florida. I'd listen to a podcast with Jordan and Priscilla talking about movies/tv. Sarah from Wish I'd known. Then podcast reached out. I love the post entertainment wrecks. I've burned too many times by shows that got canceled. Just lost their zing after several seasons and I felt like I was just being strung along. I'm with you, Sarah. I switched to watching Asian shows like Korean dramas and Japanese dramas because they tell a complete story in 10 to 16 episodes. They have a beginning, middle, and most importantly, an end.

[Jordan]

Okay, Sarah. Yes. Korean dramas are so good. And I love the romantic ones too. They are so funny to watch because there's always like a, like slow motion scene and there's like suddenly like cherry blossom petals falling through and like this music. And it happens, like happened several times in every episode. It is amazing. It is so good. So I love it too.

[Alvin]

And then David Clark, the late bloomer actor, also reached out to us. I'm all in for Priscilla and Jordan Movie tv, podcast as a listener, but also as an Aussie guest actor as well, if you'll have me.

[Jordan]

Man, I don't know if I've said this before on this podcast, but I will die on the hill that Australians have perfected reality television. It is by far the best. So, David, yes, you would be on, but you gotta be on reality tv.

[Alvin]

The only one I think I've watched that was Australian was Love on the Spectrum.

[Jordan]

Oh, so good.

[Alvin]

Have you seen that? Yes. It is so, so sweet. It is, like, one of the most wholesome.

[Jordan]

I would die for Michael.

[Alvin]

Great shows.

[Jordan]

Yes.

[Alvin]

Highly recommended. I don't watch a lot of tv, but it makes me so happy every time I think of or watch that show. Oh, yeah.

[Jordan]

Okay, so that's gonna be our recommendation for this episode, Love on the Spectrum. It is just perfection.

[Kevin]

All right, two quick observations. One, you guys, as listeners to this podcast, just be so thankful that this is not a live show, because that just took us about 20 minutes and, like, six takes just to read fan mail to get through all those things. So anybody who still believes live podcasting is the next big thing, in podcasting,

[Alvin]

you've got to subscribe to get the Director's Cut, where I read multiple of those three times. Plus because I can't read some of the things people write. Like, I try to read it verbatim, but it doesn't make sense to my brain. So then the enunciation's wrong, so I basically memorize the points and say it in my own voice.

[Kevin]

Second observation real quick. It sounds like the Priscilla and Jordan TV movie Happy Hour needs to happen.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Kevin]

And if it happens, it feels like that could be a great opportunity for us to test feed. Drop in the buzzcast feed, because it sounds like a lot of buzzcast listeners really want the show to happen, want to know about it when it drops. And so I think you two need to create that podcast. And then we'll drop an episode in this feed. We'll get you an audience right off the bat and you'll be off and running.

[Alvin]

We're going to drop it on a Friday instead of doing an actual episode.

[Jordan]

Oh, my gosh.

[Alvin]

Could you imagine? Everyone's going to be like, what is this?

[Kevin]

With no intro, no context, no nothing. The worst possible way, it's going to be a subscriber only show.

[Jordan]

Oh, my gosh. And our last Sound off question was, do you have any guest prep tips? First up, we have Brian from Brian's Run pod saying, I have a couple tips for interviewing guests. One, ask Open ended questions, who, what, why? It will help the flow of the conversation. And second, I use a great app for scheduling interviews. It is called Calendly. I love Calendly. This stops the back and forth about when someone is available and it has a web interface and they have a mobile app. Also they have a free plan. It's been a lifesaver. Yes. I get so excited when I see a Calendly link in and like guesting invitation email, I will immediately click it and schedule. It's amazing.

[Kevin]

Sarah wrote in again from Wish I'd known. Then she also uses Calendly and she puts right in the form that they're going to need headphones and a microphone and a quiet place to record, which lets them know up front what equipment they're going to need. She also said that they chat for a few minutes before she hits record and that seems to go a long way in helping them feel at ease.

[Jordan]

Yeah, I love it. Alvin, do you want me to read this next one or do you got it?

[Alvin]

Oh, I've got it.

[Jordan]

Okay.

[Alvin]

Hopefully we'll see.

[Jordan]

Okay.

[Alvin]

Matt Purdy from what it's like to be podcast.

[Kevin]

Nailed it.

[Alvin]

Nailed it. Reached out. In each episode, we talk with one person about what it's like to do their job. Brain surgeons, aircraft carrier commanders, bartenders. We talk about to Brayton surgeons.

[Jordan]

That was my rewrite. I'm sorry. I was trying to rewrite it.

[Alvin]

Jordan.

[Jordan]

I was nailing it.

[Kevin]

Alvin's like, I'm just going to read it. I'm going to read it straight. And then Jordan blew it for him.

[Jordan]

This time I blew it.

[Alvin]

I'm sorry. It's also, I wish everybody could see it's written the same thing. It's not there twice. But also surgeons is misspelled this document.

[Kevin]

I still surgeons.

[Jordan]

I was in a hurry.

[Alvin]

All right. On this podcast, Matt talks to brain surgeons, aircraft carrier commanders, bartenders about what it's like to do their job. Since many of our guests have never done a podcast interview before, I let them know that although we'll record a 90 minute interview, it'll be edited down to 30 minutes. I do this for two reasons. One, to ease their nerves. That will edit out all the flubs, mistakes, tangents. It really lowers the stakes and helps them relax. Love that point. And to set expectations. Many don't realize how much editing goes into podcast production, so this helps them understand what gets released won't be the full uncut version. It's all about transparency, making sure they understand the process and aren't caught off guard by anything along the way. Matt, two really, really good points. I love that you're kind of setting them up early on with healthy expectations that help calm down the setup. That's why, again, I don't love doing everything live because it's on the spot. You got one shot, and. And if it goes wrong, you feel terrible the whole time. And if it's edited, you know, I could say something three times, and then we just pick the best one and it all works out perfectly.

[Jordan]

So what's our sound of question for our next episode be?

[Kevin]

Can I take the next sound off question?

[Jordan]

Please do.

[Kevin]

All right. I'm excited to hear about subscription stuff in podcasting.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Kevin]

Whether you run a subscription for your podcast currently, you've tried one in the past, or as maybe a fan of podcasts, maybe you subscribe to a podcast. What type of show is it? Are you happy to pay for it? Is it like it's something you think about canceling every month? Whatever. Just tell me what is going on in your world and how it relates to podcasts and subscribing and whatever. I want to hear stories from all different sides.

[Jordan]

Awesome. So to send in your responses, tap the text the show link in the show notes, and we'll read them off in the next episode. Until next time, thank you all for listening and keep podcasting.

[Kevin]

Alvin, you mentioned in the very beginning of this episode that you were in Vegas.

[Alvin]

Yes.

[Kevin]

Okay. I know why you were in Vegas. You just hiked the Grand Canyon, right?

[Alvin]

I did. I felt bad to even say I was in Vegas because I personally, Vegas is on top. Worst cities I've ever been to.

[Kevin]

No offense to all of our Vegas listeners.

[Alvin]

Oh, if anyone's from Vegas, I do apologize. But, man, I've been there twice. Both flying in to go somewhere else, and it does not align with me. It does not land right.

[Jordan]

I love Vegas. That surprises me.

[Kevin]

That's fine. I mean, Vegas is one of those places where it's not going to hit for everybody, but for those that hits for they love it. So I'm sure our Vegas listeners understand.

[Jordan]

Cool people, fun people love it.

[Alvin]

I mean, some people love it. It's their favorite place to go, and it lands perfect. Maybe I just have gone to the wrong places. And I've never, you know, I don't really get into the gambling and the drink drinking and stuff. So maybe that's it. But yeah, we. We went into Vegas so we could go hike the Grand Canyon. I have two brothers and the younger one just turned 30 and so he Said for his birthday, he was like, I really want to hang out with the two of you. We all have families. But I said, I want to do something with the two of you. Can we go do something hard?

[Jordan]

Oh, gosh.

[Alvin]

And so we planned. We. Apparently you can hike the Grand Canyon, which is like, you hike a mile down into the Grand Canyon and a mile up out. And total, it's like 20 something miles across. Whoa. And then there's two paths. And so we went. You know, it'd be really good. Let's hike through it once, sleep, and then let's hike back the other way. And so over the course of two days, we did something like 53 miles and 15,000ft of elevation loss and gain.

[Jordan]

Oh, my gosh. I was thinking you did that over the course of, like, three or four days. You did it in two days.

[Alvin]

It was two days. I mean, these are intense days. Like, wake up at 3:45 to drive and get ready to get on the trail by six, hike until dark, sleep, wake up again. I mean, the last two hours were hiking out. You know, we're at 51 miles and we're hiking out totally in the dark. So headlamps along the cliff faces going, you know, just stay in the zone.

[Kevin]

Right? Yeah, you can't. You have to stay locked in. Right. Like, some of that's treacherous. I'm imagining you could slip off and that would be bad.

[Alvin]

I mean, there's miles where. Yeah, a fall is. That's your last fall.

[Kevin]

Right.

[Alvin]

So lots of periods where you need to stay focused. Main thing, I took away from it a lot of gratitude, a lot of really enjoyed spending time with my brothers. But the other was like, how cool is it that we have the national parks?

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Alvin]

Like, there's these places that are just totally different, and they're so special and they're so undeveloped, and they're kept that way on purpose. And you're hiking these trails, which feel natural, but, like, trails are a lot of work to maintain. And this blew my mind. The national parks app is like a top 10 app I've ever used. I don't understand how a government agency has an app this good, but it was so good. And the experience of the Grand Canyon and national parks for the last few years, where we've gone to more, have just been, like, so awesome. And so we're hiking down through this valley, and you get down to the bottom, and it's all these lush trees, and you see the park rangers out there checking in on you because they airlift out a person like, every three days so that they don't die down in the Grand Canyon. And as you're doing, I was just like. Felt like, man, this is a really cool thing that we have. You know, you've got all these cool national parks, and if you live near one, I would highly recommend trying to get out there and enjoy it to the extent that you're interested in doing, whether that be a couple miles or you want to go do something really big. It was just a blast.

[Jordan]

It's funny because I'm surrounded by national parks, and I've never been to one, which is really sad.

[Alvin]

Jordan, this is. This is your moment.

[Jordan]

This is your chance.

[Alvin]

This is. I didn't know you'd never been to one, but I am such a big fan of the national parks now.

[Kevin]

Yeah. Unfortunately, the only national park, I think it's the only national park in Florida is Everglades National Park.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Kevin]

Isn't that right? And that's not ideal for the majority of the year in Florida.

[Jordan]

You don't want to go, like, hiking through the swamps.

[Kevin]

I mean, it is beautiful, and you can boat through it. You can kayak through it. A lot of people do airboat rides and stuff like that, and they have camping platforms and stuff. Like, there's snakes and alligators and a few places.

[Alvin]

Crocodiles, mosquitoes. The mosquitoes are the thing that I

[Jordan]

don't want to deal with about the crocodiles.

[Kevin]

But really, there's only, like, four months of which you can actually go into it and stay there for any amount of time.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Kevin]

If you're not Traveling, you know, 30 miles an hour on an airboat.

[Alvin]

Yeah.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Kevin]

So the national park in Florida, not. Not the greatest, but not the greatest.

[Alvin]

Everglades is not a top park for me, but, like, Great Smoky Mountains up in North Georgia, Tennessee, I think maybe mostly North Carolina. That area, beautiful national park. And then there's just so. So many out west. Lots in Utah, lots in that area, lots of near Jordan, and they're just. I just. Like, now whenever I travel and I'm traveling for work, I'll look around and be like, hey, is there a national park nearby?

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Alvin]

So when I went to Podcast Movement Evolutions, I knew I had to fly back on Friday. So I did my flight later on Friday and took four hours of PTO and went to Indiana Dunes and hiked to the dunes out there because there was a national park nearby. I get so much joy from these places that are just so wild and different from each other.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Alvin]

And it's just a blast and it costs, like, $35 for a whole year or something. It's basically free. And, you know, your tax dollars are paying for it, so you might as well go enjoy it. Yeah.

[Jordan]

And speaking of wild and different, Kevin, you just got back from a trip as well?

[Kevin]

Oh, yes, yes, yes. I went to Costa Rica. Was not a national park.

[Jordan]

Was just as beautiful, though.

[Kevin]

Well, I'm sure Costa Rica is very beautiful. I stayed in San Jose, which is very urban. It's a city. And I was staying with the Missions organization. So we were doing awesome stuff, and I loved it. Got to go with my daughter, but we did homeless feedings, we worked with children. We did some construction projects. We did some painting projects.

[Alvin]

Wow.

[Kevin]

And so I wasn't really there as a tourist as much as I was to serve and give back to the community and. And help the city of San Jose. But I absolutely fell in love with that place. It is. I don't know, the spirit and energy in that place. And I know there's a lot of, like, we were serving in some really poor areas, and a lot of it was heavy to see people in those conditions, but the spirit of the community is just still, like, lively and bright and optimistic, even though conditions are less than ideal for a lot of people who live there.

[Jordan]

Don't they have a saying like pura vida or something like that? That's a Costa Rican thing, right?

[Kevin]

It is, yeah.

[Jordan]

So you got that Pura Vida vibe.

[Kevin]

Yeah. So I didn't get to go through all the beautiful, lush landscape, jungle stuff. I didn't get out to the beach or any of that. But even though it was a very different kind of Costa Rican experience, I very much enjoyed the trip, had a great time with my daughter, and I think there really is. A lot of people say there's a lot of special stuff going on in Costa Rica. And from what I saw, I get it. I would like to go back and experience all the more beautiful touristy parts at some point.

[Alvin]

Oh, yeah.

[Kevin]

But even not doing that for my first trip, I wasn't optimistic that we were gonna. I was gonna feel that way on the return. I thought I would just kind of feel tired, and I didn't. It's a fun place. I understand why a lot of people have a heart for that area.