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Stak
Stak is the award-winning independent podcast company that makes seriously entertaining audio. Founded in 2018, S...
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October 3, 2024:
October 1, 2024:
    The untold story of English football hooliganism, The English Disease, launches today from Stak. Presented by football writer Sam Diss, the show featuring interviews with former hooligans, fans up and down the country and experts who have researched the primal instinct to fight for your team. It is a story of what happens when society disenfranchises its people, dismantles social structures and pits them against each other.
September 26, 2024:
    In 1999, five-year-old Elián González was rescued near the Florida coast after his mother and others drowned in the Florida straits after fleeing Cuba. The question of whether Elián should stay with Florida relatives or return to his father in Cuba ignited a media firestorm, placing Elián at the center of a high-stakes political conflict between Cuba and the US. Chess Piece: The Elián González Story was launched yesterday.
September 9, 2024:
    We were excited to see The News Quiz, part of the BBC’s Friday Night Comedy podcast, publishing immediately after transmission at the end of last week. The show had been subject to a 30-day windowing trial for the past 18 months, with the newest episodes only available on BBC Sounds. The bad news: that was a mistake, we’re told. The good news: the show now only has a 7-day window.
August 19, 2024:
August 15, 2024:
    From Airwave: Big Picture Science’s Seth Shostak says: “Airwave's expert services free us to use our creative energies to make the best show we can. Without a doubt, our program is simply better thanks to the efforts of Airwave.”
July 25, 2024:
    Prognosis: Misconception is a new season from Bloomberg focusing on the fertility industry. A Bloomberg News story was published alongside the podcast, which takes a deep dive into how problems in the IVF industry have fueled conservative, anti-abortion forces who argue we need to restrict the industry.
July 22, 2024:
    Good Game with Sarah Spain has launched from iHeartPodcasts, as part of the company's new Women's Sports Audio Network. We're promised the biggest stories, stakes, stars and stats to help fans keep up with women’s teams, leagues and athletes.
July 8, 2024:
June 17, 2024:
    Podnews wasn’t supporting Gzip for our RSS feed (a mistake); it was accounting for 3.86GB of data per day. We turned it on last week; our bandwidth bill for our RSS feed has more than halved, and is now 1.22GB. We also now fetch feeds with gzip where we can.
May 7, 2024:
    With Airwave: Big Picture Science’s Seth Shostak says: “Airwave's expert services free us to use our creative energies to make the best show we can. Without a doubt, our program is simply better thanks to the efforts of Airwave."
May 1, 2024:
April 19, 2024:
April 9, 2024:
    Had it with election coverage already? The hit comedy podcast I’ve Had It has a special interview today with Vice President Kamala Harris, who tells us what she's had it with. We're even promised that we'll learn what she thinks of Beyonce, as well as everything that’s at stake in this upcoming election.
March 21, 2024:
    Impromptu is new from Washington Post Opinions. The show invites listeners to eavesdrop on the newspaper's columnists as they go beyond hot takes and have frank, thoughtful conversations on the news and cultural debates. In the first episode, Ruth Marcus, who has covered the Supreme Court for more than two decades at The Post, speaks with Alexandra Petri and Amanda Ripley about what’s at stake as the Supreme Court hears arguments on abortion pill access.
March 4, 2024:
February 19, 2024:
    In 2012, a mysterious challenge appeared on 4chan: the first step in one of the most complex and mind-boggling puzzles to rock the internet age – later known as Cicada 3301. From riddles to impenetrable codes and QR codes in the outside world, one thing became clear: Cicada 3301 was no ordinary puzzle. Theories emerged that was the work of recruiters for a US intelligence service. The World’s Hardest Puzzle looks at who was behind it - and why it ended in silence. It's new from Stak today.
February 8, 2024:
February 7, 2024:
    When director, actor, critic and historian Peter Bogdanovich passed away in 2022, he was working on One Handshake Away - a podcast interviewing some of the biggest film directors working today. His ex-wife Louise Stratten stepped in to serve as narrator and co-host, with three-time Academy Award-winning director Guillermo del Toro filling in as host for the final three episodes. It's new today from Audacy and Stak.
January 30, 2024:
January 15, 2024:
    Those amazing competitive bike riders might be secretly hiding electric motors in their bikes. New today from Stak, Ghost in the Machine is an investigative podcast looking at the truth behind the rumour - and featuring a world-exclusive interview with Femke Van den Driessche, the only person to ever be banned by for having a motor in her bike.
December 7, 2023:
November 27, 2023:
October 19, 2023:
    Meghan Markle isn't the only member of the UK Royal Family doing podcasts. Floodlight is hosted by HRH Princess Eugenie and Julia de Boinville; and it returns for a new season today, Anti-Slavery Day. The first episode is out today, with former UK Prime Minister Theresa May. It's from Stak and The Anti-Slavery Collective.
August 10, 2023:
    Part of the Airwave podcast network: Big Picture Science looks at modern science research, through smart and funny storytelling. Seth Shostak and Molly Bentley host a show which recently has looked at tapeworms and parasites, tiny robots that can travel through our blood vessels, the last day of the dinosaurs, and why the US hasn't gone metric.
August 1, 2023:
    Part of the Airwave podcast network: The Art of Crime focuses on unlikely collisions between true crime and the arts. Season two looks at assassins - artists who have committed, attempted, or been implicated in an assassination, like Andy Warhol, Nero or Leon Trotsky. Each episode is painstakingly researched with a unique musical score; the latest focuses on John Wilkes Booth.
July 10, 2023:
    Audio drama BOOM returns for a new season today. Produced by Stak, it's set at the turn of the millennium in the offices of Enron, with dial-up modems, big hair, soaring stock prices (or not) - and an email from the future. We're promised a timeless, mystifying story of greed and the human condition.
July 3, 2023:
June 26, 2023:
    Former head of Spotify's Parcast, Max Cutler, spoke to Foundr magazine about what's next in podcasting. He appears to gently criticise Spotify; suggesting that it's a mistake to go after Hollywood talent, and discussing the slowness of decisions at the company. Shows that are "resourceful" rather than entertaining are what's next, he suggests.
June 22, 2023:
June 21, 2023:
June 13, 2023:
June 12, 2023:
    Some big deals change the world. The Closer is new today, with stories that are everything you want in a good drama: tales of failure, betrayal, high stakes and big risks. Every episode, financial journalist Aimee Keane reveals how a deal made in a boardroom somewhere has an impact on our everyday lives. It's new from Project Brazen and PRX.
March 2, 2023:
February 16, 2023:
February 10, 2023:
January 25, 2023:
    Audio-editor-like-a-word-doc Trebble has added a number of new features, allowing you to download transcripts and correct mistakes in them.
December 16, 2022:
    Luminary's Telephone Stories is now available on all platforms - a show examining the hall of mirrors that was Michael Jackson’s life, painstakingly, sometimes painfully, reconstructing the complex narrative of an iconic and troubled performer haunted by criminal allegations. It was produced by Ninth Planet Audio.
December 8, 2022:
November 28, 2022:
    You're watching the news on TV, when all of a sudden the picture wobbles and a strange alien voice, calling himself Vrillon, a representative of the Ashtar Galactic Command, starts giving orders to live in peace or leave the galaxy. That happened 45 years ago this week in the South of England. The Interruption looks at the mysterious voice, and what it could have been. It's new today from Stak.
October 3, 2022:
    In the UK, October's Pod Bible magazine was released inside some copies of The Sunday Times, and is available to read online. It features interviews with cover star Brett Goldstein from Films To Be Buried With and Jolyon Rubenstein from The New Conspiracist. There’s also Helen Bauer picking her top 5 shows, and regular columns from Acast, Audible, Stak and Apple Podcasts. We like page 27.
September 27, 2022:
September 13, 2022:
August 11, 2022:
August 1, 2022:
    Missing Pages is the first original podcast from The Podglomerate, which reopens cold cases from the book world. It's hosted by world-renowned literary critic and publishing insider Bethanne Patrick. Across its eight-episode debut season, Missing Pages uncovers the power struggles, mistaken identities, and unfathomably bad behaviour within the secretive world of book publishing. Each episode brings in authors, experts, publishing insiders, and a circus of NYC media elites to tell the real story; unfit for print.
June 27, 2022:
    It's 1999 and Enron finance manager Jim Yang has received an email from the future. Then, everything changed... BOOM is new today from Stak, and features actor and voice-actor Akie Kotabe, two-time Olivier Award winner Sharon D. Clarke MBE, and BAFTA nominee and star of the smash hit It's a Sin Omari Douglas. Put on your dungarees, reconnect your dial-up, and get ready to be thrust into the heart of America’s tech boom, where nothing is as it seems...
April 22, 2022:
March 9, 2022:
March 1, 2022:
    Back in the 1980s, TV and films promised us everything from jetpacks to flying cars and holidays in space - so Where’s My Jetpack? Space journalist and author Sarah Cruddas and broadcaster Luke Moore take a look at some of those crazy inventions to discover if they're actually just around the corner. It's new today from Stak.
February 2, 2022:
December 21, 2021:
    We reported yesterday that podcast hosting company bCast had pulled all "lifetime" accounts with just two weeks notice. The company has now changed its mind, calling the decision "misguided, irresponsible and a mistake"; it's also refunding customers if they bought a new plan.
December 7, 2021:
December 2, 2021:
November 19, 2021:
    Promoting your podcast on social media? Linking to just one player would be a mistake - how many people don't have those phones or apps? Use universal links instead, we think.
November 1, 2021:
    Mumbai's Kuku FM, a music and podcast platform, is currently raising between $15-20m in a funding round. Meanwhile Florida's Relevnt has raiseed $2.5m in seed funding for its "group messaging platform that takes a fresh stake in the podcasting experience".
October 14, 2021:
October 5, 2021:
September 17, 2021:
August 16, 2021:
    The Offensive, an award-winning, critically acclaimed mockumentary podcast that follows fictional Premier League club Ashwood City FC, returns for a fourth season today. From Stak, the show won a British Podcast Award in 2019.
August 5, 2021:
    When Ian Coss decided to get married, every living member of his family who had ever been married had also got divorced. Forever is a Long Time is a hybrid podcast and album, a look at love with people who have made mistakes. It launches today.
August 3, 2021:
June 23, 2021:
June 2, 2021:
    Bernie: Who Killed The Prince of Soho? looks at the untimely death of one of the most famous people in London Soho's club scene: and how his life was falling apart. It's from Stak, the producer formerly known as Stakhanov.
May 19, 2021:
May 18, 2021:
April 29, 2021:
    Sudhir Breaks The Internet is a new short show from the Freakonomics Radio Network - who is building the tools and platforms we work with every day? How can these tech companies with seemingly infinite resources face so many challenges — and make so many mistakes? All three episodes are now available.
March 25, 2021:

Sorry again for sending you a copy of our Sounds Profitable newsletter by mistake yesterday. Our email systems are now entirely separated for the two newsletters, so we'll be unable to do that again. Technology will beat human idiots every time.

January 20, 2021:
January 15, 2021:
November 13, 2020:
    Race at Work is new from the Harvard Business Review. "Hear leaders from business and government trace their personal journeys with race, equity, and inclusion. And learn from their mistakes and their triumphs."
November 11, 2020:
October 16, 2020:
September 14, 2020:
    JaackMaate's Happy Hour from Stakhanov has become a Spotify exclusive. "Spotify has offered me a life-changing amount of money. This is a game-changer for us." Jack announces in a YouTube video. "I have never had any communication with YouTube," he adds, saying that the negotiations took over six months. The comments from YouTube viewers are all positive.
August 19, 2020:
July 20, 2020:
    "The externalized nature of the [podcasting] revenue model causes inefficiency for all stakeholders," says strategy consultant Paul Hanke, writing in The Startup, highlighting how things are changing in the podcasting business, and predicting three main players for podcasting in the future.
June 23, 2020:
June 22, 2020:
June 5, 2020:
    Bill Simmons has apologised for comments made in The Bill Simmons Podcast, according to a report in the NY Daily News. "I’m 50 years old, I still barely know what I’m doing, I’m still gonna make mistakes," he said. An apparent commitment to diverse hiring was criticised by the Ringer's staff union on Monday.
June 2, 2020:
June 1, 2020:
May 13, 2020:
    Entertainment company MGM has bought a stake in Audio Up, a new podcast company. Terms weren't disclosed; Audio Up will make five news shows a year for MGM, and MGM will get first look for development opportunities.
May 8, 2020:
April 8, 2020:
    Google Podcasts's new iOS app unfortunately uses a near-identical user-agent to Apple Podcasts, and we noted the potential for misattribution at launch. Speaking on The Feed, Libsyn have admitted that stats from the new Google Podcasts iOS app are mistakenly lumped in with Apple Podcasts in Libsyn stats at the moment: they hope to fix this in the next few weeks. Full marks to Libsyn for being open and letting folks know; a community-maintained list of useragents is over here.
February 24, 2020:
    A free event in the UK this Wednesday Feb 26 at the University of Bedfordshire - Fantastic Noise: Making Radio Drama features Jeremy Howe, who's the Editor of The Archers, and Adam Jarell, the man behind Stakhanov's The Offensive. It's free - tickets here.
February 12, 2020:
February 10, 2020:
    Andy Bowers, the co-founder of Megaphone, has left the company. As a clue to what he's doing next, he writes: I had so much fun in the early days of podcasting—when the stakes were low and failure helped us learn, when things were not so formulaic and we were making up the rules as we went along—that I’m moving on to other nascent media.
February 6, 2020:
    WeCrashed, a Wondery podcast about the rise and fall of WeWork, has been accused by one podcaster of taking multiple clips from his own podcast without attribution. The clips of the interview, featuring WeWork co-founder Miguel McKelvey, were originally from an episode of the Rich Roll podcast in July. Contacted by Podnews, Wondery claim "an honest mistake: we had, under fair use, taken portions of three interviews from different podcasts, and we mistakenly gave credit to only two of them." The clips have now been removed, and Wondery have reached out to Roll to talk more.
January 27, 2020:
    Revisiting is back for a new season. "The only podcast you'll need for nostalgia", episode one looks at Ugg boots and Rachel from Friends, among other things, as Laura K and Laura G mine their old diaries for inspiration. (Stakhanov/Acast)
December 24, 2019:
    And an event in London, UK: the Pitfalls of Podcasting. An evening of mistakes, so you don't have to. It's on Jan 14, and tickets are free.
November 26, 2019:
September 30, 2019:
    David Heinemeier Hansson, co-founder of Basecamp and host of Rework, has reacted angrily to ART19's video, which we shared last week. "I abhor person-targeted advertisement(s)," he writes, "we will ditch ART19 for another provider for @reworkpodcast immediately," noting that he is "never making the mistake of using a provider URL again". He's chosen to move to Transistor.
September 6, 2019:
August 22, 2019:
    If you missed our Editor talking about Google Podcasts at Podcast Movement this year, here's the talk, painstakingly recreated on YouTube.
August 21, 2019:
    A Variety article announcing the deal, claiming that Conan O'Brien is driving the podcast revolution, has come into quite some snarky criticism online, with people claiming that Conan turned up ten years late. Mind - that's not the worst mistake. Variety put Conan on its cover with the words "Audio Boom!" when everyone knows Conan's podcasts are actually hosted by ART19. (<-- weak podcast joke)
July 8, 2019:
    Correction: no, Brittany Luse wasn't in Johannesburg last week. With Eric Eddings was WNYC producer Veralyn Williams, who's working on The Stakes with Kai Wright. We apologise for the mistaken identity, and have updated Friday's web edition.
July 2, 2019:
April 10, 2019:
    A BBC television presenter managed to play a podcast on air by mistake during a live TV show. Conveniently, the podcast was hers, but we're sure it was a proper mistake and not a way to market the podcast.
March 15, 2019:
    It's not every day that someone else appears in our local coffee shop with podcast stickers emblazoned over his laptop, but J.M. Donellan, author of audio fiction podcast Six Cold Feet, made that mistake today. We hear there may be more from him soon.
October 25, 2018:
October 23, 2018:
September 3, 2018:
August 24, 2018:
    Yesterday was GCSE results day in the UK, where teens hear how they've done in examinations. The Teenage Diary Podcast from Radio Stakhanov (the team behind The Football Ramble and Abroad in Japan) published a Results Day Special. "It was brilliant fun to make and packed full of memories of 3am revision starts, CGP textbooks, and being completely covered in highlighter for 2 months of the year."
July 27, 2018:
June 25, 2018:
June 1, 2018:
    High 5 Media, parent company of Dallas-based YEA Networks, announced that it has acquired a majority interest in Spoke Media, a podcast company based in Dallas that specializes in branded content.
May 9, 2018:
March 9, 2018:
December 20, 2017:
    Richard Miron from Earshot Strategies looks at 2017's year in podcasting. "The sheer numbers of programmes staking a claim in the new world of online audio, has created some chaos and confusion."
December 14, 2017:
August 2, 2017:
    SoundCloud is about to "sell stakes" to a bank and the Singaporean state's investment firm, says Bloomberg. Should stabilise the company.

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