podcast stuff

I am not a regular consumer of podcast stuff from anywhere so there is a lot i just don't understand.

So I understand that out of the 100 podcasts I've made, 88 are currently showing up at itunes.

Is that the norm? to have fewer show up? I thought people wanted all of them. Like they will find my stuff and then say "gimmie all" and then over the next few months plow through them.

Does this mean that podcast #10 is going to now pretty much gather dust? - nobody is gonna listen to it?

Please help me understand what the norm is in this space.

Also, somebody said that when they search on itunes for "permaculture podcast" my stuff does not show up. But if they search for "permaculture" it does. Can people tell me more about this?

Sorry Paul, I can't help you much at all as your's is the first and so far only pod cast I've listened to! Speaking of such . . . Where can I access the older pod casts? Can I find them at Permies.com?
Thanks!

I've wondered about those missing 12 as well. I only learned of this podcast six months ago and am slowly working my through, both from the newest back and the oldest forward, but I would love to listen to those missing 12 someday, as well. I'd thought you had just taken them off somewhere along the line but I now see this isn't the case.

Here are the 12 that are currently not showing up in itunes

podcast 001 Heat yourself and not the whole house
podcast 002 what is permaculture? what is a permaculture design course
podcast 003 chickens
podcast 004 diatomaceous earth
podcast 005 urban permaculture
podcast 006 cast iron cookware
podcast 007 masanobu fukuoka / larry korn
podcast 008 beyond organic (crappy/whiny)
podcast 009 making the big bucks with permaculture part 1
podcast 010 making the big bucks with permaculture part 2
podcast 011 making the big bucks with permaculture part 3
podcast 012 helen atthow, soil, conifers, fukuoka

And it seems if I add one more, then that means that another will fall off.

Does this mean that folks that are new to the podcasts and want all of them are going to have trouble getting all of them? Is this a common problem?

Eighty-eight doesn't seem to be a magic number. Another podcast I listen to, Uncontrolled Airspace, just posted #266 a few days ago but, when I just now asked itunes to display all available podcasts for them, it listed all their podcasts all the way back to #1.

There seems to be some other filter in place, perhaps...through some arrangement with Apple?

Hi Paul, I've listened to a few podcasts, then got rather overwhelmed. So I've foldered the email links you've kindly sent out to listen to "on a rainy day". Thanks for a huge amount of work though, Don

Perhaps one podcaster (the creator of that 266-episode podcast mentioned above) might be willing to help another fellow podcaster (...you) understand these machinations. Jack Hodgson can be reached at feedback@aroundthefield.net

A lot of people were of the mindset "too much! too fast!" and about twice as many were more like "more! more! more!"

Thanks to Suzy Bean and Kane Jamison, making podcasts got to be really easy. So I just kept cranking them out.

Timothy Ettridge wrote:Perhaps one podcaster (the creator of that 266-episode podcast mentioned above) might be willing to help another fellow podcaster (...you) understand these machinations. Jack Hodgson can be reached at feedback@aroundthefield.net

The trick is, I don't know what to ask. At first I was thinking "oh, this is normal" and now I'm thinking "this is not normal". If a few people point to a few podcasts on itunes and say the full listing for others is at itunes, then Kane will probably jump in and say "I'll fix it!"

I'd be with the "more! more!" group. The point is that, with podcasts, I can now learn things I want to learn while making use of normally wasted mental time (driving, waiting in line, etc). I don't follow the 'too much too fast' line of thought. No one's asking anyone to drink from a firehouse. It may take me a year to get up to date on your podcasts (unless I take on a job as a truck driver), but, hey, then there's all the rest of my life to make use of the knowledge I've gained (or was at least introduced to and later researched on my own).

Hmmm. This may be - probably is - way off the wall, but what I see is that the titles of all of the podcasts appearing in the itunes store start with "podcast #", while the missing ones, listed in my library, don't. That doesn't explain why I was able to see and download the now-missing ones a couple months ago, but maybe something changed with itunes, and it is no longer able to see recover the missing ones from its database?

I agree it is unlikely that 88 is a magic number.

I found your podcasts from the start searching iTunes for interesting podcasts and have them all, but I can also only se 88 now?

I think it might be a problem for iTunes users who dont know how to download podcasts to their iPhones in other ways.

Best regards Johan from Sweden

I just go to the blog to check out your latest podcasts and listen to them online. I don't have enough disk space on my (cheap) netbook to download all the episodes. And frankly, some aren't as interesting as others anyway...

I recently listened to the one you did with Skeeter, loved it. What a great guy. The Geoff Lawton ones were also pretty special, some of the things he said resonated quite deeply.

I download them through iCatcher directly to my phone. It shows 99 podcasts. I'm not sure how the backend of it works. I have listened to all at least once and several two or more times. Thank you for makng them.

I just download them from Paul's website.

I tend to listen to them online while I work and then download my favourite ones so I can listen to them again whilst I'm doing other stuff.

Keep up the podcasts Paul I really enjoy them

aman

Paul, the reason only 10 of your podcasts are showing is because of the way you feed the podcasts to iTunes. When you told iTunes what feed to use (feed burner I assume?) all iTunes does is look at that feed and post what is there. So if your feed only shows 10 items it will only show the 10 episodes on your podcast. If your feed shows all of your podcasts iTunes will show all of your podcasts.

Let me know what feed you are using and I can tell you how to make it show all of the podcasts... I just don't know if you are using feed burner or wordpress feed or what. All you need to do is customize whatever is providing that feed to show all instead of the latest 10.

The reason people do not want to show more than 10 or 5 on a feed is because it slows the feed down which causes search engines to ignore it more often.

Hope this helps. You can also follow the Apple forums on this issue here:

Apple Support Community

Put me in the more more more group!

I usually go to richsoil.com/permaculture after I get an email that day... I love listening at the end of the day while I cook and clean. It's like being surrounded by friends.

I can't tell you what's normal, I just discovered your podcast on iTunes a couple weeks ago. I was listening to them on the website before, but I love being able to put them on my iPod and listen to them when I am not online.

I'm definitely in the "more more more!" camp.

My guess is that Josiah is right. My guess before that was that it wasn't a certain number of podcasts, it was a certain number of megabytes, so people with shorter podcasts could do more episodes.

Josiah nailed it, Paul. Check your feedburner at http://feeds.feedburner.com/PaulWheatonPermaculture. It only starts at 13.

Here is what little I know.

I think we started off with the feed being 20 and only podcasts. And then we changed it to 100 and included everything. itunes looks at the feed and ignores stuff that doesn't have an mp3 file. So they are getting 100 things, but skipping the stuff that doesn't have mp3 files.

I think the thing to do might be to set the number to 200 and have the feed be podcasts only. So we will then be set for the next 100 podcasts. Maybe by then we will have learned some things and have better solutions.

Does this sound like a smart thing or a dumb thing?

And, I have to confess, I am just making wild guesses here because I know almost nothing about this stuff. Kane has been taking care of everything.

@Paul- That sounds like a good idea, seeing as people might really want some of those first few introductory podcasts for a definition/description of permaculture. (quick side note- I'm typing this on my iPhone & it actually had "permaculture" in it's dictionary!)

I get all the pods via iTunes, and just sync them to my mobile device.

paul wheaton wrote:Here is what little I know.

I think we started off with the feed being 20 and only podcasts. And then we changed it to 100 and included everything. itunes looks at the feed and ignores stuff that doesn't have an mp3 file. So they are getting 100 things, but skipping the stuff that doesn't have mp3 files.

I think the thing to do might be to set the number to 200 and have the feed be podcasts only. So we will then be set for the next 100 podcasts. Maybe by then we will have learned some things and have better solutions.

Does this sound like a smart thing or a dumb thing?

And, I have to confess, I am just making wild guesses here because I know almost nothing about this stuff. Kane has been taking care of everything.

I have bumped up the feed to 250 posts. We can keep doing that until it "breaks" and then back it off to a point that we know is safe. Shouldn't actually break or hurt anything, eventually the feed will just get so big that browsers or itunes might give a timeout error. Until then, we should be set.

Spiffy!

then I guess I can get back to work on making podcasts and the old stuff won't get flushed.

Thanks Kane!

I like the podcasts and videos, however, with my connection most of the time they do not download well enough to watch..it has taken me as much as 2 hours to watch a 10 minute video, can't take that much time online at the costs of online use

I've waited a couple of days to see if something would reset somewhere, but I still only see back to episode 13 when I ask itunes to show me all available podcasts.

Maybe I have to upload a new podcast to get it to all reset.

Sounds like a win-win situation.

Frankly, I've been sorta not-in-the-mood to make podcasts. Or videos. The makeitmissoula people made a big link to my stuff from their home page, so that inspired me to write more for them. And then I had a lot of people saying that they want me to guest blog, so I kinda got this "two birds" feeling. So I wrote that latest article for them.

I need to finish the podcast per-chapter book reviews that I started. And I have a long list of people I want to interview. But I'm just not feeling the ROI. And I do feel like other things seem to change the world in a bigger way.

The podcast path has been streamlined enough now that it is easy to do. In fact, I talked to Jocelyn yesteday about recording another, and she is really busy.

I feel powerfully compelled to "save the world". And right now I feel like the ROI in that space is to push the richsoil articles and some of the youtube videos: how do I get new eyeballs to see this stuff? There are 100 podcasts and it seems that there are very few new-ears-per-month. I'm reaching very few people that way.

I suppose if somebody stepped in and said they were going to get millions of new eyeballs to see my stuff, then I could go back to creating new podcasts and videos and stuff.

Spring is coming. I spend six hours a day thinking "How do I get the hugelkultur article into the brains of 50 million people?" And as long as I am obsessing on this, I'm doing almost nothing else (well, besides daily chores). I am seriously considering doing the book promotions thing every week. Although I need to get some software changes into the current software and fix the wiki.

I know this isn't a very clear answer. There will be more podcasts. It might be a little while more.

At the outset, this might seem a long-winded and even way off topic response to what you’ve written above but, if you’ll bear with me, I think you’ll see my point.

I’ve been involved in supporting hang gliding competitions for many years and, a few years back during a spring competition in Florida, my new girlfriend joined me at dinner with some of the pilots in a nearby restaurant. As we waited to order, I leaned towards her and, in a low voice, described who was who around the table. “That’s Manfred, from Austria. He’s been World Champion three times. That’s Oleg, from the Ukraine. He pretty much wins whatever he enters unless Manfred’s there. That’s Christian, from Italy. He’s the current world champion, his second time. That’s Alex, also from Italy. He was World Champion before Christian. And that’s…”
“And I should be impressed because…?” my girlfriend asked with a snotty tone. She had a point. But I thought I did, too.
“How often do you ever get to meet the world best at anything?” I said.
She had no reply.

I often think about that dinner when I listen to various podcasts, be they in aviation, history, logic, or any of the amazing number themes available. This is one of the best parts about them. How often do any of us get to sit in on the conversations of some of the world’s foremost experts of any chosen field? Suddenly, because of podcasts, we get to do it most every day.

This is what you’re doing, Paul. You are sharing the breadth of your contacts and the ensuing conversations you have with them with anyone who wants to listen. The depth of your e-mail list shows you how many people that is. I think it’s great that you don’t waste any time or effort on imposing any production values on them. Just turn on the mic when the moment’s right (you apparently already know when that is) and just let us listen in. That’s all we want and, though you may save the world in other ways, what you’re doing now by sharing those conversations is tuning many of us into to many new things of which we were unaware.

That, perhaps, will change the world the most.

The average podcast gets downloaded about 1500 times. That seems to have been a constant from the beginning.

So I now have about 100 podcasts to the same 1500 people.

I feel like if I make another podcasts, I will tell something new-ish to those same 1500 people. Maybe over the next two years, that number will bump up by a couple hundred.

Looking at the wheaton eco scale, getting a person to move from level zero to level one does 100 times more good than getting a person to move from level four to level five. And there are 10,000 more people at level zero.

Granted, I far prefer to "talk shop", but this world needs saving, and it seems like I'm the guy that needs to do it. So I need to get this figured out. So I started this thread. I think once I get in a better space about the hugelkultur article, then I'll be all tasted up for podcasts, videos and new articles.

Here's the Timothy Scale of Effectiveness

1: Paul
2: 1500 Podcast listeners
3: 5512 Close, personal friends of of podcast listeners
4: 20264 friends of friends of...
5: 74,489 friends of friends of...
6: 273,822 friends of friends of...
7: 1,006,569 friends of friends of...
8: 3,700,147 friends of friends of...
9: 12,601741 friends of friends of...
10: 50,000,000!!!

You have a good point, Timothy. Not everyone will listen to Paul's podcast, but the listeners will sure as heck share the ideas and concepts discussed within!

Well, that's a good point.

And I've already made 100 podcasts - so there is a bit of "been there, done that".

I'm glad to go back to the podcasts. But the whole "save the world through the hugelkultur article" feels about a hundred times more compelling.

It's also important to follow your passion. If you've lost your passion for podcasts and have it for hugelkultur, focus on that.

There's no video documentary on hugelkulture. Sure there are bits and pieces, but nothing that puts it all together from theory, to construction, to comparative results, etc. That would be really cool.

To do all the things I want to work on this week would take a hundred people ten years.

So I have to prioritize.

Once the hugelkultur article appears to be on it's way to saving the world, I can get back to making podcasts here and there.

I got emails from people that #101 didn't make it to itunes.

Kane jumped on the issue and did a whole bunch of things to mend it. But part of his report is that he found several things that said 100 is the max.

I gotta say, I am powerfully disinclined to make more podcasts if the old ones get bumped.

This could be the most important tidbit in this thread:

Timothy Ettridge wrote:Eighty-eight doesn't seem to be a magic number. Another podcast I listen to, Uncontrolled Airspace, just posted #266 a few days ago but, when I just now asked itunes to display all available podcasts for them, it listed all their podcasts all the way back to #1.

There seems to be some other filter in place, perhaps...through some arrangement with Apple?

Another idea is for me to fire up another permaculture podcast site. So I have 100 at richsoil. Then maybe I'll do 100 at wordpress. And then 100 somewhere else.

I am not a podcast consumer, so there is a lot here I'm not sure of.

I'm actually going to have breakfast this Saturday with the producer of that podcast I've mentioned (now up to 268 episodes, all currently available on iTunes). After we finish talking about airplanes, I'll bring this mystery up and see if he has any insights.

Timothy Ettridge wrote:I'm actually going to have breakfast this Saturday with the producer of that podcast I've mentioned (now up to 268 episodes, all currently available on iTunes). After we finish talking about airplanes, I'll bring this mystery up and see if he has any insights.

Hot dog!

The Internet Archive Presents: Paul Wheaton's Permaculture Podcast Archive
http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=creator:%22Paul+Wheaton%22

Appears to list all the Podcasts, including 101.

Convienant 3 page list, although, not completely in chronological order, due to what I suspect is a file naming issue.

I found it best for me, to download all Paul's podcasts to my computer and duplicate through a USB connection to my Android cell phone, in the download directory. Using MP3 or music player application on Computer and Cell phone, I always have Paul and company with me.

If this was already posted, I apologize.

Regards to all,
Monte Hines

I suspect that most people find and download everything via automatic stuff in itunes. BUT! Thanks Monte for the quick link to get to all of them manually.