Dan Snow takes his podcast to Antarctica

• Is this the most southerly podcast ever recorded? Dan Snow’s History Hit is taking his podcast to find Ernest Shakleton’s lost Endurance shipwreck in Antarctica. Snow says: “When I started the History Hit Podcast in 2015 I was sitting in a travelodge talking into a phone. I could not be more excited that now seven years later I will be broadcasting from the moving ice floes of Antarctica via the latest satellite communications to an audience of millions.”

  • Is it? Probably not; Bertrands Univers followed Erik Bertrand Larssen on a solo trip to the South Pole itself - men det blir bare en interessant podcast hvis du forstår denne setningen (because it’s mostly in Norwegian).

• Want to do a podcast with not much competition? Avoid a podcast in English, Indonesian or Swedish, says Rephonic, which has looked at the Apple Podcasts data to discover what they call “the low-hanging fruit”. Also, avoid shows about cricket (there are an awful lot), and consider chemistry or volleyball, the data says.

• Amazon Music and Wondery have signed How I Built This with Guy Raz. Wondery gets the exclusive ad sales and YouTube distribution rights for simulcasts; NPR keeps the radio distribution rights and the underwriting credits. Production of the show will double to two a week; and Amazon Music gets exclusive rights to air the podcast for a week.

• Apple Podcasts has published a guide on how to use chapters. Apple Podcasts supports chapters embedded in MP4, MP3, and AAC files. We’re told the company would like more podcasters to support chapters and chapter-specific artwork.

• Magellan AI has released the Podcast Advertising Quarterly Benchmark Report for Q4 2021, highlighting an increase in adload in podcasts.

• It’s World Radio Day on Sunday Feb 13; and, as is traditional, the Hindenburg Pro audio editor will be heavily discounted. Expect 40% off annual subscriptions and perpetual licences. 10% of all income from Hindenburg’s World Radio Day 2022 Sale proceeds will be donated to Cultural Survival.

• Powderkeg Media and Echoverse have announced a darkly comedic supernatural drama podcast starring Allison Pill.

• TED Audio Collective has added a new podcast, Your Undivided Attention, to its roster.

• Sonnant posted a demo of their product looking for naughty words in the Joe Rogan podcast - it takes twelve seconds.

Moves and hires

• James Cator, the Head of Studios for Spotify UK/IE, looks as if he is to leave the company, since his role is being advertised on the Spotify website. He’d been with Spotify for more than six years. Intriguing - we wondery where he’s going?

  
  This link is no longer available, as at Sep 11 2023

• James O. Boggs, who left Apple Podcasts in July, is hiring Ruby developers for his new company, the New River Bluff Company, which is making “next-generation audio tools”.

  
  Sep 11 2023: This broken link now points to the Internet Archive.

• Tiffany Ashitey has been promoted to US Director of the Acast Creator Network; and still at Acast, Tim Ruggeri has been promoted to US Director of Development and Studios.

  
  This link is no longer available, as at Sep 11 2023

Tips and tricks

• What do podcast apps actually search through?

• How to write a good podcast intro

  
  Sep 11 2023: This broken link now points to the Internet Archive.

Podcast News - with Quill

Produced by Quill: Contributors features provoking conversations about how to take your organization one step further by prioritizing more than just the bottom line. Hosts Marnie Niemi Hood and Russell Evans from the CAAT Pension Plan sit down with leaders who are contributing to the well-being of the country and global stage by innovating industries and leading change.

Proud Stutter features Mariam Elba as a guest this week: she’s a Pro Publica research reporter, with a stutter, and talks about how that works in a busy newsroom. In the US as many as 18m people have trouble with their speech, and stutterers (or stammerers) are surprisingly prevalent in the audio world: just ask Podnews’s Editor.

Bad Vibes is hosted by 23-year-old TikTok stars Alexis Barber and Talia Lichtstein, targeting a Gen Z audience, and launched this week. In the first episode, Talia and Alexis bond over their love of Valentine’s Day & equal hate for fake girls who post their cheating boyfriends on IG, question why men love to write love notes to Tom Brady and dive into the toxicity of being a TikTok influencer. - read more

The Big Silence is part of a new charitable organisation and content platform, The Big Silence Foundation, which is dedicated to normalising conversations around mental health issues by providing resources and support to anyone directly or indirectly impacted by mental illness. Hosted by Karena Dawn, it launched this week.

Over the course of these past four years, Marvel’s Voices has nearly 70 episodes, 8 anthologies, and over 20 essays released spotlighting creators and characters representing various communities. It returns today with season five; the first guest of the new season is legendary artist Brian Stelfreeze.