Podcast News Roundup | Stephen Fry Launches New Podcast & More!
Welcome back to HeadStuff’s Podcast News Roundup, your go-to place for podcast news and recommendations. This week’s roundup features HeadStuff’s Podcast Of The Week and also looks at the launch of Stephen Fry’s new podcast, an update on podcast advertising and more!
As always if you host a podcast and want it featured as our podcast of the week, email us at [email protected] and we’ll be sure to check it out!
Podcast of the Week
Meet your Maker is back, bringing you closer to the people behind the scenes of the poetry, art, films and animations you love to get immersed in. The first episode of the new season released earlier this week, talking about the actor who played Doc, the only human character from Jim Henson’s Fraggle Rock. A previous episode recorded in May 2020 already spoke to the puppeteers behind Fraggle Rock, so this is the perfect time to dive into the back log of Meet your Maker episodes, if you haven’t already been tuning in!
The series is hosted by Liam Geraghty, who is also known for producing the hit podcast, Petrified alongside Peter Dunne. The show is very well produced, using well-timed sound cues to weave together the story of the featured guests.
Meet your Maker explores the lives and processes of a wide assortment of creatives and offers insight into those things that we love the most. Episodes include a deep dive into the phenomena of Animal Crossing as the one video game which helped people get through the pandemic, and the founders of Cartoon Saloon, the animation studio behind the Oscar nominated films The Secret of Kells, Song of the Sea, The Breadwinner and Wolfwalkers. Meet your Maker is definitely a podcast to tune into if you want to learn more about the wonderful minds behind some of the best media out there!
Stephen Fry has a new podcast coming to Audible
Actor, writer and broadcaster Stephen Fry, well known for his dry wit and endless intelligence, is the latest celebrity to try his hand at podcasting. Yesterday, Audible announced the launch of his new Audible Original podcast, Stephen Fry’s Inside Your Mind.
The series will see Fry host 12 episodes which delve into the deep intricacies of the human mind by analysing research carried out by scientists, anthropologists and psychologists. He will attempt to piece together the human brain, exploring memory to sexuality, creativity to vocabulary.
Fry has given his voice to several audiobooks in the past, most notably the Harry Potter book series, so this most recent leap into podcasting seems like a reasonable next step.
On the podcast, Fry said: “The longer I live the more I am fascinated by the organ we all carry between our ears. The mystery and marvel of the human brain is a subject that will never tire me. Every year we come a little closer to understanding how little we understand, and along the way these hesitant advances reveal more and more sensational new insights into the most complex object we know of anywhere in the world or wider cosmos. I have enjoyed putting these podcasts together so much and I hope that we manage to tell the story of brain science and current thinking on thinking in a way which entertains, amuses, informs and astonishes in equal measure.”
You can download Stephen Fry’s Inside Your Mind exclusively on Audible now.
Controversy around Joe Rogan’s podcast continues
The Joe Rogan Experience podcast, Spotify’s most popular show on the platform, has been surrounded in controversy for spreading misinformation related to COVID-19, in particular the vaccine. Earlier this week, 270 US doctors, scientists, healthcare professionals and professors wrote an open letter to Spotify in an attempt to reduce the harmful spreading of misinformation on the platform.
The letter makes particular reference to a highly controversial episode featuring Dr. Robert Malone, who spoke on the show on December 30th. “The episode has been criticised for promoting baseless conspiracy theories and the JRE has a concerning history of broadcasting misinformation, particularly regarding the COVID-19 pandemic,” the letter outlines.
The day after appearing on The Joe Rogan Experience, Dr. Malone’s Twitter account was banned for challenging claims made surrounding Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine. Since then, Joe Rogan showed his support for Dr. Malone online. The open letter to Spotify addressed Dr. Malone’s comments surrounding the pandemic, calling it “not only objectionable and offensive, but also medically and culturally dangerous.” The letter holds Spotify responsible for allowing such dangerous commentary to exist on the platform and demanded that the popular podcasting platform moderate misinformation on uploaded content by establishing a clear and public policy as soon as possible.
You can read the open letter to Spotify in full here.
Firstory suggests massive update to podcast advertising
Just last week, we looked at Spotify’s new “call-to-action cards” allowing advertisers to feature visual ads on podcast episode. Now, podcast hosting platform Firstory has announced a planned update to podcast advertising in an attempt to make older podcast episodes more monetisable, no matter how long ago they were published.
Firstory plans on doing this through dynamic audio insertion (DAI). DAI automatically updates old podcast episodes (over one month old) with the most recent advertisements. This means that relevant ads can be placed into published episodes without the need to re-upload or edit the content manually. This could prove highly beneficial for podcasters and advertisers alike, as proven by a recent study carried out by Firstory which calculated that 48.8% of monthly downloads come from episodes over one month old.
On their website, Firstory claims that “because of DAI, creators can now pitch their entire podcast as a whole, “selling” past episodes along with future episodes.”
Find more podcast related content on the HeadStuff Podcast Section – News, Reviews, Interviews and How-To Guides for all you podcasters out there.
