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[Music] hey what is up people of the internet welcome back to a bonus episode of the
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waveform podcast we're your hosts I'm Marquez I'm Andrew and this week Andrew I got to do an interview last week on
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the main Channel and I hear you did an interview with someone who's kind of a celebrity at the studio yeah like a
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studio favorite um remember the podcast uh it's called pod quiz that we all did on I think I introduced everyone to it on this Studio Road Trip the Thousand m road trip the Thousand Mile Road Trip
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and everyone got real into it um it got us going pretty good it did so James Carter the host of that just reached his
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1,000th episode wow of pod quiz which is wild and I decided to reach out to him to see if he'd like to do an interview and in that process waiting to hear back I looked back on how many episodes he's
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done and how long that's been and was just dumbfounded by it he started this podcast in 20
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5 is this weekly every week weekly 2005 a th000 episodes cuz there's only 52 weeks in New Year it's a long time we've been we're on I think this is episode 2354 waveform and think about how long
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it feels like we've been doing this WOW half of my life this is a lot yeah so he's been doing it for almost 20 years um podcasting started in 2004 so he was
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right there so so when he agreed to do it I was very excited kind of like your first interview with Kobe my first interview the Kobe of uh trivia podcasts
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James Carter I was very excited for um he was super cool we talked all about all sorts of things uh so if you don't
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know about pod quiz it is a trivia podcast it is the trivia podcast in my eyes but because he's been doing it for
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so long we talked about the early stages of podcasting we talked about um how he stayed so consistent for 20 years
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because the podcast format is almost exactly the same since the first episode wow in 200 5 um nailed it yeah right
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from the start we planned on him never wanting to post anything on YouTube which I thought was a really interesting
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answer and most importantly I asked him in this new age of podcasting if he considers waveform a real podcast h no pressure or anything no pressure I was
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very worried about his answer for that so it's very interesting um and one last thing before we jump in this is my first
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totally solo interview um so please give me any feedback on what I could improve
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in I plan on doing some more in the future um but James was a fantastic guest really excited for you all to hear
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about it and hopefully you all start listening to pod quiz soon because it's one of my favorite podcasts and he's
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clearly one of the ogs he is the OG yeah I feel like exciting I'm excited for this one cool let's jump into
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[Music] it James welcome to the show um I'm a huge fan of pod quiz so I'm very very excited for you to join us uh thank you for joining us yes hi Andrew thanks um
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for those of you who aren't aware of pod quiz or maybe know the show but not the man behind it would you uh give us a
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quick introduction of you and pod quiz yeah sure so yeah I'm James I'm a software engineer from New York in the UK and I've been running a weekly trivia
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quiz podcast for nearly 20 years now that's incredible um so yeah I reached out because I've been listening for years um and like said almost 20 years you just hit your thousandth episode
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which feels so cool I remember like 100 episodes ago being like wow a thousand coming up that's pretty cool but it's going to be a while before that and then my wife and I were listening the other day and we're like oh that's like in a
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in like a month or two now it's it's getting there it did creep up on me um I mean like waveform itself is at
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2:30 and it feels like I've been doing this for for a very long time but a thousand just like how did it feel to finally hit that Milestone I mean it it definitely felt
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like a a big thing um it had been obviously it's it's on a schedule so I knew it was coming um but yeah it was like two or three weeks out it was suddenly oh yeah this is this is coming
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and it was it was just so great to have have all the listeners of contacting me with messages of congratulation lot of them have been listening for for nearly
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all of them or all of them um yeah lots of people who say you know they were listening to P quiz before their children were born and they're now listening to them together you know all that all that sort of stuff it was I was
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I was just asking around the studio trying to see if there's anyone who worked here that was younger than pod quiz and I think everyone's just a
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little bit older but um we were pretty close to a couple of them um have you felt like are there any
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other big milestones in this journey to a thousand that you specifically remember maybe like a 100 or episode
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500 episode 500 um I remember we we made a bit of a big deal there about um we got um lots of of listeners to to ask questions um and even some of the sound
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effects uh oh yeah if you if you uh listen to to the quiz you there's a there's a sort of bell sound effect between each round okay yeah and that
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was for that 500th episode that was recorded by by uh uh one of the children of listener Alex who just had a very cute six-year-old voice said
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dingding um and then yeah uh Al Alex's dad was in contact again for for the thousandth episode to say that he'd remembered that so that was really nice yeah I really liked in this thousandth
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one how you had like you had people doing the covers for things I know you've done stuff like that before you do a phenomenal job with bringing in
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list ERS to doing different things with like guest categories and rounds and stuff like that so it's fun and and I'm
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sure for you seeing that all come down to episode a th thousand is like the cool culmination of
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all of it yeah um do you think we could go back a little bit though because a thousand episodes means like you said 20
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years ago this started and pretty much around when podcasting itself had started not too far off um yeah within a year or so yeah yeah so it was 2005
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correct when you started that's right yes the first episode was I think the 25th of February I was going to ask if you remember the exact date so that's that's awesome um I'd love to know how
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you kind of thought of the idea of starting this obviously I'm assuming you like trivia beforehand but what made you
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think of putting it on the platform of podcasting and especially back then when podcasting a year was less than two
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years old yeah um well I to be honest I've never been a real trivia head you know been in a in a in a team um or
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consistent team over years you know and never taken it that seriously but I did enjoy it um and um it was listening to
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uh the daily source code Adam Curry's okay podcast and and like one of the the first big podcasts really um and he had
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um a very occasional trivia segment in that okay um and and I was just listening to that and thought well that's that's quite close to a pub quiz which is a thing I enjoy and would that
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be something I would want to listen to yeah so that's that's how it started really and
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so you call that a pub quiz we in the US we don't really call them pubs but now that makes sense so is that what sparked
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the name for pod quiz versus pub quiz that's right yes yeah absolutely so that's like one of those things that
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seems pretty obvious when you hear it but but until you hear it it's a mind openening experience that's that's cool
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have you mentioned that on the the pot itself or I'm not sure I ever have I don't explicitly remember doing that yeah probably something that's it's a like I think there's there's a slightly
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um different feel between maybe trivia in North America and a pub quiz in the UK in that but the impression I get is that it's taken very seriously and and
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you know everyone obeys the rules to the letter and and all of this whereas in the UK it's much more relaxed um people
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are there to have a chat and a drink mainly and and the the the quiz is a is a a little sudden and a chance to win
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some some extra drinks yeah I I've participated in very few of them like like you said I've done them they're fun
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but I don't seek myself out looking for them all the time but I do listen to pod quiz hundreds of episodes at this point
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so um I don't know I don't I've never found them too too intense but maybe I'm just doing the the more low key ones and
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not the weekly extremely uh competitive ones back when you started pod quiz and you said you were listening to some early podcast do you remember kind of or can you explain to us I'm sure a lot of
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our audience were not listening to stuff back then but what was the podcast landscape kind of like and what had you
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interested in it that made you think you want wanted to push the platform with your own stuff it was it was a very sort
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of amateur Affair um back in those days um there were no professional podcasts at all um and uh certainly no sort of Corporations producing podcasts
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um so I suppose the reason I got into it was I was I was a bit interested in the
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technology of it the delivery of of audio via VIA RSS um and that got got it got me into it in the first place um and then I just the early the Early podcasts
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were mostly just couples and groups of friends just sitting around having a chat um and um and I I just enjoyed the
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informal nature of it people would build up a small audience but it would be you they'd all be very involved it was very
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much Community it sounds not that much different and Marquez would have been able to speak better on this but like
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the earlier days of YouTube he said he started because there used to be like you used to all talk inside of the comments and the way that they created videos just seemed like this very
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tight-knit group of people watching videos and watching other videos and then commenting on all of them and
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there's there is kind of like a magic behind that small Nick community of stuff like that I can totally see and I
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I kind of wish I got to experience that uh back then because it sounds like a lot of fun and I'm sure in these days
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every company or person is trying to create that next Niche magical moment that feels like it absolutely but thing is Success kind of ruins it to a degree
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sure and I'd love to talk about that later and see what your thoughts on podcasting is in today in comparison to
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back there but um I I'd like to like pod Quist to me feels I'm going to hype this up a little bit here because I I truly love the show and I really like want you to know how
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much I appreciate it but I kind of describe it when I'm telling friends about it as like it's almost magic in
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this way that it can take a long car trip or no one likes driving for more than an hour and when I take a longer car trip like that turning on pod quiz feels like it can just melt away that
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time of what the boring sitting on a highway for hours on end um that I get so excited knowing that hey my wife and I are driving to X place that is four
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pod quizzes away and by the time I get there it was like I kind of wish we got stuck in traffic and we could do one more because maybe we didn't do very well on the last one um and what I was
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most surprised about and like you think a thousand episodes you find your flow and you've you've re like created that
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perfect uh show and like time and everything but I went back and listened to the first episode and it is almost
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exactly the same to the te in terms of timing of everything 20 questions it's four categories it's music first round other than you sort of explaining the rules more so in episode one because
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it's brand new you're it's almost exactly the same how did you how did you come up with something that worked so
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well so long ago and has have been so consistent over that long sorry that's a lot of questions in one but I think well I think there's quite a lot of dumb luck but um there always is
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there's all but I think it's part of it was that it does it does very closely follow the format of of the pub quiz or the pub qu trivia down to normally it's
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four rounds and that sort of thing normally there's a break in the middle true um so so that was a lot of it I
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think it has developed a little bit over the years I those those First episodes were quite a bit longer just because there were bigger gaps I was I was a bit
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slower but the basic format hasn't changed just because I've not felt it needed to really no I mean it's great is
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did you always know and maybe uh maybe it's different with Pub quizzes in the UK but has is it always music rounds and
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stuff out there or is that something you consciously decided like you thought was a really fun way to start an episode
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off that is again it's it's a fairly normal okay um structure that even even down to being the first round very often he's either a picture quiz which doesn't work so well as a AIO podcast or or
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music yeah okay interesting yeah the couple I've been to here in the US we don't have those and the the music uh
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category is my favorite of every episode um sometimes it can un make me be a little bitter towards the rest of the episode if I do really poorly off the start I'll be like I feel like we've
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started this one bad already maybe I should just skip to the next but I I'll always push through it um but I guess I
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love music and and you do a great job and I think it's a really fun way to start it each episode yeah I think I
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think um the the issue with with music is that it it it divides people by generation very often so um the feedback I'll get is oh no you
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did all music from the 2010s I I got nothing I'll never be able to do that and very occasionally I'll do classical
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music and obviously there's a lot of people that don't like that but I yes it's just
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trying to get a balance over the course of of many episodes I think for sure but I think at the same time some of the
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like some episodes I I don't remember the specific episode but I remember trips in which we were playing and one
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of them was it was me my wife and my mom we were road tripping up to see my sister and I remember it specifically
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because was the first time between the three of us that we'd gotten all 20 questions right and we were really proud
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of it and it like kind of made the rest of the trip but I think a reason of that is I it was probably like a connection
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or something where there were a lot of different eras of music and because of two generations working on it at the
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same time we figured it all out and when you get the first five right you're like okay we're rolling we can we can do the
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rest of it you got your sight set on that 20 hour exactly yeah do you get a lot of people reaching out to you being
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like I hit 20 this time or is that a big accomplishment yes yes I do um and equally I get I get people saying I've been doing pod quiz for 10 years and I've never managed to get 20 out of 20
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that's awesome I do encourage people to to to sort of feedback the scores um and
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so this um you'll see a small community of people on on the website who who post their scores each each week um which I
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find really useful just as a feedback mechanism so um yeah 20 out 20 is is is an achievement though it's it's not something that people get every week certainly that's awesome and I I noticed
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that looking back at previous episodes you have you have episodes that are probably from pre 2010 and there are
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people from 2020 plus still commenting on some of those putting down answers and stuff like that and I thought that I thought that was really really cool um I mean I love your website it's very like
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web 1.0 and just so easy to go back and see everything yes um by my uh front end
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web development skills are are 20th century vintage and that uh that definitely shows but functional but yes I I'm I'm amazed the number of people who will Who will get in contact
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and said say I discovered pod quiz a couple of months ago and now I've listened to them all you know just
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listening to a dozen a day which I I couldn't put up with my own voice for that long at all so I don't know how
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they do it that's that's a brings up an interesting question is when you first started this and you were editing
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andless like I've done it to when we started waveform um I kind of pitched it to Marquez and I had to be the one I was
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editing everything he's used to his voice I am not used to my voice and that is a a strange thing to hear for the
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first time and not just the first time maybe the first a hundred times um absolutely yeah so so doing that I think
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everyone hates their own voice don't they yeah because it's so different and you're just like oh is that how I talk
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and um did you get to do you think you got to a certain episode where you're like okay I've listened to myself enough
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now I'm used to it I I think so I don't think it took all that long really um but yeah I I'm also told um by my partner that I have a I have a pod quiz
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voice it's a fantastic different from my normal speaking voice interesting I don't know I don't
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know what that means but apparently it's it's it's softer spoken than I normally
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am and I suppose subconsciously I'm I'm just trying to make it as understand to a wider range of people as as possible you know um people do struggle a bit
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sometimes with my my accent and I try and turn it down as much as possible I mean that's going to happen with any
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accent from when you have people around the world listening to it um I mean I think your the voice is fantastic I
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think it is a big part of the show itself um uh I hope there's some people who come and listen to this episode
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because we are video and are like I finally got to see who the man behind pod quiz is um and the voice is I if
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this voice is the same as your pod quiz it sounds very similar now so I don't know if this is your speaking voice or you've got the podquiz voice on right
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now but I I I I don't think I think it's my normal speaking voice but uh you know
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I I I I find it difficult to judge but but yes she tells me that's the Pod quiz voice awesome um you mentioned and maybe this has to do with the way you pronounce things and your voice on there
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but you said earlier episodes were quite a bit longer and you do feel like it's changed a bit are there any specific
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things you remember I know we've said the format has stayed the same but maybe the way you you cut things together so
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it's quicker maybe the way you said pronouncing things maybe you have feedback from that are there any big changes you've seen that you feel like
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happened despite us you know seeing 20 years of 20 questions I mean I've definitely got more proficient I it over the years that that first episode I think I spent about 8
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hours recording and editing it recording it took took a ridiculously long time and now you know I'm down to to an hour and a half or two hours to record episod
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so yeah um so that's that that's a big thing I think certainly now I make a lot more effort to make it International than I did when I started because when I started you know I didn't have a particular audience in mind I was just
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playing it to friends I mean it took it took a long time to get up to 100 listeners you know and uh and so I wasn't I wasn't thinking about the intern International moment of it at
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all um so that's that's certainly changed over the years but um it hasn't changed a a huge amount though I mean it's it it kind of works
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as it is I think people like the consistency um that I think people like that they can listen to a 5-year-old
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episode or a 10-year-old episode and and not have to learn new rules or anything
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like that so for sure I mean yeah it's it's always just like small changes can make things slowly better over time but I I think consistency definitely is key and and like yeah going back you
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definitely have a show where the back catalog is almost sometimes just as important as the new ones because what
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people love finding podcasts and going through a back I mean I'm one like that I probably found around like episode 800
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and then just kept going backwards through the Spotify Library until it cut off I forget where where it's cut off on
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Spotify but now I've had to dig into the website to to listen to previous episodes um when you were starting out
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so you said you were originally sending it to friends um I know even in today's world podcast discoverability isn't really the greatest thing um back then
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so did you send it to friends and it's just friends of friends and Word of Mouth started getting out or did you make any more deliberate pushes towards
00:21:57
uh trying to grow an audience or was it always just more of a a hobby that you were doing and if it goes that's awesome
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it's always been a hobby yeah absolutely um so I've never I've never spent a huge amount of effort on on growing an
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audience um early on I did um spend a little bit of effort appearing on other people's podcasts I think that's that's a really good way um in both directions
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actually having having other podcasters appear on your podcast um is is a good way of of intermingling the audiences a
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bit um so I definitely did a lot of that in the early years um but more recently
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you know there's plenty of people listening yeah I love my listeners they're great it's a really great
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Community I don't feel the need for it to to grow I think it does gradually over time I've not had any big pushes to do it in recent years now that's awesome and also a really cool
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just that that doing something just because you love it is always the best way to keep pursuing through making some
00:23:05
form of content because if you are just pushing for just the audio or just the listeners or the engagement or the
00:23:10
growth that's when burnout happens and I think you're a testament to someone who hasn't hit burnout I I maybe that's me
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assuming but a thousand episodes is extremely impressive thank you um and I don't feel
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burnt out yet um although people have been saying you know I'm looking forward to the 2000th episode and I'm thinking I'll be 70 then that
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seems that's a wild thing to think about seems like it might be a stretch right now no it's just good fun I enjoy doing
00:23:45
it and that's why I do it that's I like how you're saying it might be a stretch not that is a stretch and that is a very
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very uh difficult thing to hit so that that's awesome I look forward to as as far as you're willing to go before
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hitting burnout whatever episode that may be I think something you do extremely well is just the variety of
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difficulty you have in all of your different questions it's when I'm listening and a category happens or a
00:24:10
round happens it feels like there's always one that I have a shot at getting at least a guess in even if I know
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nothing about the category and if I know a lot about the category there's always one where I'm really scratching my head
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how long or is there anything you specifically do to try and uh have VAR for the difficulties of
00:24:29
the questions I do think about it yes I always think for each round there should be at least one question that almost everyone will be able to answer um that's usually but not
00:24:41
always the first question in the room oh really okay um and similarly I I want to have at least one question around where I think you really need to know your stuff on the subject
00:24:52
in order to be able to answer it um but cuz too far either way no fun for anybody so for sure trying to have that balance across across each round is what
00:25:04
I try and do but um don't always get to grind we're going to take a quick break and when we come back we're going to see how James develops all of his different categories be right
00:25:17
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M o.com so when you're thinking of a category are they things you're fairly knowledgeable knowledgeable about or are you going out and looking for maybe something happened just within the last
00:26:44
month that you think is interesting and that's how you select a category um I find I find writing
00:26:52
questions for things I know about harder oh than writing for questions for things I don't because if you know something
00:26:58
about a subject it's I think it's it's much more difficult to assess how difficult the questions um because they
00:27:05
all seem relatively easy um but um so yes generally I don't I don't know a great deal I mean I couldn't possibly know a great deal
00:27:17
about everything I've asked all the 20,000 plus questions I've asked over the years but um um yeah no it's it's
00:27:26
usually it's just a case of um the the difficult thing I find is coming up with the topic not coming up with questions
00:27:33
um because I don't have a perfect record but I try to avoid repeating myself um which again is is becoming more and more challenging um but once I've got it once I've got a topic um then then finding
00:27:47
questions is just usually a case of hitting Wikipedia yeah kind of like the Wikipedia game you start at the topic and then you find links that are associated with it and go through there yeah that's awesome in
00:28:00
terms of sort of current affairs though I I try to avoid that um because again because people go back 10 years to listen to old episodes and um stuff
00:28:14
that's that's current affairs now will be really obscure triv in 10 years time um so again it's it's difficult to completely avoid that um but I I try to
00:28:28
possible well one really interesting way you've done it and I I wanted to throw a couple um like categories that you've
00:28:34
created that I think are really um creative uh at you is one you did some a segment called old news which is where you play a News segment I know I'm just saying this for you but our audience
00:28:46
might not know playing a News segment that has some some sort of piece of news and you have to guess approximately the
00:28:52
time it happened in but I think what's so interesting about that is rather being when did X event happen as just
00:28:58
the question you have this more context to maybe get guess something like that because if you don't know the the very simple question maybe you could figure it out so me being a a production person
00:29:11
sometimes I'm like oh well that microphone definitely is like pre-1990 or something like that so how do you
00:29:17
come up with more fun ways of categories rather than just a very black and white question I'm not sure I've got a good
00:29:24
answer to I can list off a couple of my other favorites and maybe that would help maybe you can if you remember how
00:29:29
you came up with those specific rounds um um for certainly for well for the old news um it was it originally I thought I would just ask question s more like a
00:29:42
history round of asking questions about specific events and then in in the course of of researching that I ended up
00:29:50
on on YouTube watching an old newsreel I think it was and I thought well hang on
00:29:55
that's that's quite interesting in itself um and and so I thought I I'll I'll pick that up and actually use the audio clip instead yeah and it helps
00:30:06
because if you don't know a specific event maybe In that clip they mention a president or a prime minister or they
00:30:11
mention something else that happens that you do know about so gives us as the listeners way more opportunities which
00:30:16
is so much more fun or you can recognize the speaker you can say oh that's Walter Kon kite going to be in a certain time
00:30:23
period or whatever yeah yeah that's what's so fun I also really enjoy um like who who am I is rather than just
00:30:29
who is this person that's X it's five different questions with varying levels of difficulty to get to somebody is that
00:30:36
something that's um popular in in Pub quizzes or is that something you developed no that's um that's something
00:30:43
I came up with I'm just making sure that's true because a lot of a lot of these rounds have been listener suggestions oh cool over the years um but I think that was that was one and
00:30:55
again it was sort of one of those things where I was you know I often ask questions about famous people um and if
00:31:04
it's just a single question about somebody you can't really sort of dig into the the details of that person and
00:31:10
it's difficult to vary the the difficulty a bit whereas that sort of structured round where you get more and
00:31:16
more clues that getting more and more obvious over the course of the round it allows people who who really know about
00:31:22
that person to get it really quickly and to and to feel like they they've cracked
00:31:27
the code just there's a there's a really good feeling if you actually do make the guest I think it's happened once which
00:31:33
was a total uh or at least since I've been playing one time on like the date and where they were born just total
00:31:40
guess and then like the next question you're like wait I think I'm still on the right track and then you get to the end you're like okay cool that was very
00:31:46
lucky but so much more fun um and then my other favorite category I always love this one is natural world where you play animal sounds and rather than guess the exact species it's how many legs do they
00:32:00
have which is brilliant and so much fun yes I've done similar rounds with uh with um vehicles of various sorts how many wheels they've got um which
00:32:14
um part of that is because it's actually very difficult if you play the sound of
00:32:20
an animal to say what species is it because they all sound there's a large number of different animals that sound alike and also it's it's it's just a fun
00:32:28
I think um yeah it's yeah it's fun and it even like you get to guess then right there's only probably so many wheels or so many legs or a lot of times they're multiples of two so you have somewhat of
00:32:40
a guess it's like multiple choice but not quite multiple choice that's one of the animals one is my favorite I like a
00:32:46
lot of the categories where you play sounds and guess things um maybe that's just me like to listening to stuff like
00:32:53
that uh do you have any particular like category favorites that you've come up with
00:32:58
topics I don't think I've got specific topics I do like my my favorite I think uh the quick fire rounds it's it's a category of things um so the the
00:33:10
questions um it might be like for example um director's first films or something
00:33:17
like that so it's just a a list of the questions are just a list of directors and you have to name their first films
00:33:22
and um and maybe that's not the best example but I I feel like get quite creative about that um and also it's quite easy quite easy
00:33:33
too that's um I know you said M so music rounds are my favorite um and I know you
00:33:40
said that because a pub quiz generally starts with that but have you you've come up with I'm assuming some of these
00:33:45
or maybe audience ones all these different ways you play the music round so whether it's uh what year they're out
00:33:51
maybe a connection some of the connections are so much fun and feels like you're in like a a detective case on them I think one was all different it
00:34:03
was like uh king queen Prince between all the names of everything and finding that one out was awesome um I personally
00:34:10
love terrible twins because hearing when two of them play at the same that I believe that's M same artist two songs at the same time that's right it's really easy to pinpoint one if you
00:34:22
recognize it but even though if you know the band to a te guessing the second one when you already are hearing one in your
00:34:29
brain is something that's so hard to uh like explain so that's why I love it so much but uh are there any favorite music rounds you have or how'd you come up with like some of these ideas for lots
00:34:41
of them it's just trying to find a way of making it different um because because there's a music round
00:34:48
every week for yeah I I feel it just get boring um so um yeah I do I do try and come up with new there's a there's new one coming actually really again it was a listener suggestion um in a couple of
00:35:04
weeks time I think we're going to have around where the vocals been removed and you have to guess just from the just
00:35:11
from the music so um but I think my favorite music round is a very very occasional one I do called L da okay um which uh is just me trying to reproduce
00:35:26
a song really badly no instruments so just sort of humming and and badly beatboxing and all that sort of stuff I
00:35:33
remember some did you all it's great fun to do did you also do one of I thought it was a recorder for Christmas music
00:35:40
I've done a tin whistle tin whistle okay and I've done a um I I've lost it I used
00:35:47
to have a stylophone okay which is very simple synthesizer thing that I used to used to use as well but um yeah they take a surprising amount of of effort to
00:35:58
do those on when you do them occasionally but uh yes are you gen are you a musical person or is this coming
00:36:04
from you're really just learning just this for these rounds um I I am a slightly musical
00:36:11
person I play guitar badly you played it in the thousandth episode right I did yes yes um but generally speaking when I do these sort of rounds where it's me performing a thing I I don't I don't try
00:36:24
too hard okay um because because I mean if it was perfect then it would be too easy but also it's I think I think it's just more fun MH if I do it badly um so
00:36:36
I put I put a a a strictly defined amount of effort into each one that's awesome um can we talk a little bit more about uh you you mentioned it a little bit but how you we're we're tech people
00:36:49
here we're produce production people here we love cameras and audio equipment and everything can we talk about how you produce pod quiz sure yeah when uh I
00:36:58
mean I have to ask right now it what is your setup like do do you know the name microphone and everything just for yeah uh okay about see that there Road
00:37:11
enter USB so fairly standard podcasting microphone um and yeah I just record in here no particular Studio or anything um and I've always just used audacity
00:37:28
nothing nothing more complex than that that's I mean that's a extremely efficient setup uh are what yeah sorry
00:37:37
our producer Adam guessed that before he's like I bet he uses audacity so he's very excited that he guessed that
00:37:42
correctly um do you remember what you started with um in 2005 I don't remember actually it was a sure microphone of some sort but I don't
00:37:53
I don't remember um but it's the same I started with audacity 1.2 or whatever back then and I've just kept up it over the years always slightly dreading the
00:38:08
next update so there's a different set of bugs to to learn yeah we know that all to Marquez is always dreading any
00:38:15
saf or Mac OS updates when we're just in our workflow really well um you said it
00:38:21
used to take about 8 hours and you're down to about an hour and a half is that um that's just the full recording how
00:38:27
long if you had to give an approximate amount of time from starting your questions to publishing the final
00:38:34
episode what would you give it I I think I put about eight hours a week in in total um so the research is
00:38:44
is the majority of the time really but I just spread that out through the week you know just spent half an hour here an
00:38:49
hour there so um the the sort of recording and editing is the one block of time that I do but probably about
00:38:56
eight hours a week cool so yeah so you have recording and editing pretty quickly into a very efficient timeline
00:39:02
at this point yeah that's right yeah like yeah I guess that usually in with with about five minutes to spare before it's du to go out oh really just right up to the the publish yeah amazing right
00:39:16
up to the wire yes that's that's kind of awesome and now i' I kind of like usually listen in like three to four
00:39:23
episodes so I'm not I'm not the person who's listening right as it comes out but I feel like I need to catch one now right as it comes out knowing that 10
00:39:31
minutes before you might have still been putting the finishing touches on it that's that's a fun little that's that's
00:39:38
that's fairly normal yes um and are you you're recording I'm assuming with that you're recording each episode each week you're not batch recording
00:39:48
episodes I'll batch record if I've got a reason to if going away for vacation or
00:39:54
whatever um but generally I don't um partially because I'm too lazy too um but but also because um I I I like getting the sort of immediate feedback
00:40:09
from listeners and people want messages read for birthdays and that sort of thing oh yeah and if I if I um back up
00:40:15
too many recordings then then I'm too late for people for that it feel yeah it feels out a whack sort of we um it's cool to hear that because we are here we
00:40:25
are very weak to week uh Studio I mean Marquez usually we know our schedule Sunday Sunday night and then we do everything for that week whether that's a couple videos across all our different
00:40:38
platforms and people think that's wild because there's a lot of a lot of different people on YouTube doing you
00:40:44
know two to three week one plus month uh it takes for a video but we just like to
00:40:50
know do what we're talking about right then get it into a video as fast as possible and and publish it while still
00:40:56
obviously keeping production quality up but I don't think there's a lot of people out there doing it this quickly
00:41:01
um and I think there's there's is something really cool about the immediate audience feedback from that and being able to make it applicable
00:41:08
next yeah that's awesome um do you mind and if if you don't feel comfortable answering any of these questions that's
00:41:15
totally fine but I in my mind pod quiz is like the trivia podcast that every time I search on Reddit about any other ones the top answer is always pod quiz
00:41:26
there's nobody ever making an argument against it and I've tried other ones and maybe because of poor uh discoverability
00:41:34
in terms of podcast I haven't found any other good ones but I found podquiz and I think it's the best do you have like
00:41:39
an approximate amount of listeners that you know of it's it's really difficult yeah um
00:41:48
because um I can I can tell you the number of downloads yeah which is which is about
00:41:55
about 40,000 something like that incredible um but that's that's only part of the story because it gets aggregated um you know Spotify and whatever else they'll
00:42:07
they'll serve it off their service it doesn't that doesn't uh count towards the numbers as it were
00:42:14
um one uh one delivery mechanism I I I was really chuffed about when I heard was um that um a listener emailed me to say that he really enjoyed the quizzes
00:42:26
that he got on audio cassette from a service who recorded podcast podcast onto audio cassette to send out for services for the blind oh wow so that
00:42:38
was that was really cool that's that's fascinating I and sorry I I'm stuck on audio cassette because I'm trying to think about even 2005 like we're well past CDs at that point absolutely yeah
00:42:53
yeah wow okay that's really I need to look into what some of these services do you happen to know what the service was called or I can't remember it was it was many many years ago but it did it did
00:43:04
make me chuckled at the time we'll try and figure that out and and post it when we edit this if if possible I don't know
00:43:10
if our research will be good enough for that but that's really awesome um and then and yeah pod podcasting metrics
00:43:17
seem to be really tough um in terms of figuring stuff out I mean even was it like a year ago that Apple stopped Auto
00:43:25
downloading if you didn't listen so like they change all the time than that wasn't it yeah I think so um do you have
00:43:32
and I guess you kind of answered this but an approximate total number of like downloads you know for pod quiz lifetime
00:43:39
or has metrics changed in so many different ways well metrics certainly have changed but also I've just not kept
00:43:46
not kept it kept Good Records to be honest um I I I do remember being very excited the
00:43:53
the first the first week in episode got 100 down yeah um which was I think more than a year after I started um so that that that was a a little bit
00:44:06
of M done that I remember but actually to be honest I only keep a few weeks worth of logs just to see not yeah yeah
00:44:14
um but you know because it's a hobby um the actual numbers don't really matter so much I'm not having to sort of report these to a sponsor or so so um it
00:44:27
doesn't affect me lucky that's I mean yeah that's that's amazing is and that's the reason I just have to ask why you've never looked for a a more typical YouTube ad or sorry not YouTube but like
00:44:39
podcast uh ad integration or anything you've never looked for any of that and probably don't plan on it just
00:44:46
because I have you know I've I've got a day job that's uh that pays me more than
00:44:52
enough to to live off um and I just think that if I took pod quiz in that direction it would become a job and not a hobby and and I don't think I'd enjoy it as much I think that's super
00:45:05
respectable and I think there are a lot of i' I've talked to people on YouTube as well who have done stuff like that
00:45:10
and I think that's what's kept their Channel like very pure and fun for them um which I think is super super awesome we're going to take one more quick ad break and when we get back we're going
00:45:21
to see James's final thoughts on the current landscape of podcasting [Music] I'd love to jump in just quickly kind of like our last thing here is you've experienced now podcasting over 20 years
00:45:43
and I think it's safe to say that it's changed very much and some of that change maybe doesn't really feel so much like the original podcasting anymore I think our Channel specifically is far
00:45:57
far different from what podcasting uh used to be I'd love to ask what your thoughts are on the landscape today um and I'm totally okay with you using
00:46:08
waveform as um if you think we are not a podcast or more of a TV show or a Show online um I will take no offense to it um but I'd love to hear your thoughts on
00:46:20
it it's absolutely a podcast okay I mean it's that makes me feel very good I I'm
00:46:27
not sure that that it it's it's just the asynchronous delivery is is what makes it a podcast
00:46:34
in my mind whether it's whether it's video or audio or whatever I don't think makes a difference at all um I think there there is a bit of a
00:46:45
difference potentially in how that's consumed and certainly a difference in terms of how that's produced I
00:46:52
think if I were to make pod quiz a video podcast which I wouldn't but that that recording time of an hour and a half would would at least double
00:47:02
and and probably more um but um yeah absolutely it still countes appreciate that when we were first pitching this I do remember specifically Marquez and I made the
00:47:15
conscious agreement to do audio first because we knew either way would we would be releasing an audio format and
00:47:22
being video people it's very easy to just reference something on screen so we felt like we needed to learn how
00:47:29
to be able to talk about things that people can't see and while I still don't we're the best at it we did spend two years trying that before we moved to video so I'm happy we did that it was a
00:47:41
it was fun and it's really cool to be able to just use audio sometimes whether it's just like you're not feeling the
00:47:47
best that day and you don't want to be on camera for tons of people to see yeah I do feel I have the ideal face for
00:47:54
radio here no I no you have an incredible voice for radio you would be fantastic on video have you ever thought
00:48:01
I know you said not a video for pod quiz but maybe like the audio with like a video animation playing over it like a waveform animation that that would be
00:48:13
possible certainly um and it certainly looks like um um Google would very much like me to do that in the way they're they're pushing uh they're ruring um the
00:48:26
podcast up and wanting people to to everything to YouTube music um I've I'm reluctant to do that um and the the reason I'm reluctant is because
00:48:40
it feels like giving up ownership a little bit okay um at the moment everything pod quiz is I host myself okay W no other services involved at all
00:48:51
um and I I quite like it that way um whereas you know as soon as it's as soon as it's on YouTube or any other service for that matter it it's it's you
00:49:04
know you retain the rights but it still feels like you've given up a bit of control sure I mean we're we're here
00:49:11
wondering if uh open AI is just scraping every episode we have because it's on YouTube and I know what you yeah I'm
00:49:19
sure that's true exactly so yeah that's that's really interesting I was I was going to say or I was going to ask you
00:49:25
what your thoughts were on podcasting um discoverability I've mentioned it a couple times and I don't think it's the
00:49:31
best ever but I'm assuming you haven't dug that deep into it with it being more hobby focused and and you've had your
00:49:37
loyal listeners for a while uh I feel like word of mouth is the best way that podcast still seem to get around unless
00:49:44
you do go the YouTube route because YouTube is obviously a search engine yeah well it's an algorithm isn't it
00:49:51
yeah so you again you're yes you you you to that algorithm but that algorithm can work very well for you potentially so absolutely um I
00:50:04
mean back in the day discoverability for for podcasts was through podcast directories really and I mean they still exist but it it
00:50:15
relies on people sort of actively seeking them out out and I don't and that worked in the early days when when
00:50:22
you know you were expected your audience to have a certain level of technical proficiency to do all that sort of stuff
00:50:29
I mean to download a podcast in the first place that iTunes didn't support it you know you had to install a special
00:50:36
piece of software yourself and manage copying it to your mp3 player or so um um back in those days just having a directory online work really well but yes I don't I don't feel it works so
00:50:48
much anymore and I I don't I don't know what the what the solutions are I'm not I'm not necessarily convinced that um
00:50:55
for everyone as service like YouTube is or at least I'd much prefer it if there was a a more sort of Open Source all right of of sharing these things to I
00:51:07
totally agree uh it it works and maybe it's the best but that does not mean that it is the ideal situation by any means um all right I think uh I'd love
00:51:18
to just last question pretty much is um a thousand episodes in you mentioned before that people were wishing you good
00:51:24
luck to your 2000th do you have um I mean future of pod quiz Are there any other Milestones you're specifically
00:51:31
looking forward to or any special ideas coming up that we should all be excited about or that you're excited about I
00:51:39
think it's it to a certain extent it's it's keeping on keeping on um I don't have any particular Milestones although the geek and me will look forward to
00:51:51
episode24 just because we're hitting 10 bits awesome um but yes i' I've I've got a couple of ideas for new rounds and that sort of stuff coming but there's no big big
00:52:04
revolution um it's the again it's the consistency and I think people take comfort in that so sure I'm not planning any big changes cool that's awesome um I
00:52:15
do have one more question and it's something that we ask all of our guests on waveform do you know how fast you can
00:52:21
type the alphabet uh I don't but I am a terrible typist so not be very fast would you
00:52:27
mind if we tested you on the show you can yes can I um I'm going to send you a link um I think I can send it just right here in Riverside you know like Top Gear
00:52:39
the reasonably priced car leaderboard they have yes so we do this all of our guests it's just this website that's just how fast you can type the alphabet we give everyone three tries and we have
00:52:50
kind of a leaderboard of everyone that's been on here okay so what do I so I just
00:52:55
go ahead and start do I yeah yeah so the way it works is once you press a it'll start um you don't have to press enter
00:53:01
and if you miss a letter it's just going to pause where that is so it should follow along in the ABCD right above
00:53:07
that um and then we just say three tries and we'll put your best score as the final okay what's the slowest uh it's
00:53:16
like almost 10 seconds I also being a good typist I don't know how much it helps here because nobody types the
00:53:22
alphabet A to Z like ever it's very hard that's true yeah yeah okay here we go then 6.7 something you're definitely in the middle I don't know if I have the leaderboard on me right now but oh
00:53:45
here 6. you're like dead center pretty much with that okay I'll give it another go then yeah
00:54:04
that was slower that happens a lot yeah and you want to give it h one more try one last go but yeah I'll give it one more guy
00:54:25
sure yeah that was also slower slower okay so 6.7 you're right um between I don't know if you know who Colin and Samir are or Simone yurz she's the like makes all the different robots on
00:54:36
YouTube I do yes right between those two cool James thank you so much for joining
00:54:41
us um personally this was an absolute Blast for me and I know Adam's a big fan also um we're very thankful for you joining the show um for any of our listeners where can they find you um any
00:54:52
other projects you're working on that you'd like to shout out um well thanks so much for having me I've really enjoyed it um yes you can find podquiz
00:55:00
ATP pod quiz.com um and all the normal places you find podcasts um as for other projects if you're interested in computers and movies I have a website
00:55:12
called starring the computer.com which is like IMDb but for computers in films it's awesome we took a look at it and it's it's really cool I really liked it I was just asking people around the
00:55:24
office like name a movie I'll name the computers that are in it um but I I appreciate that you show all the photos and exactly what they are um it's an
00:55:31
awesome website cool cool um congratulations on a thousand again and can't wait to see what else you do thanks very much all right that was it um I thought it was a great interview um
00:55:43
he was he's just like the purest podcaster I feel like I've ever seen it's a good word he does it does it For
00:55:49
the Love of the Game I think is% I'm so glad we're a real podcast yeah I'm very glad that he considers us a real podcast
00:55:55
that's a bad of Honor but yeah thanks for joining for another bonus episode um oh fun fact in next episode we asked him
00:56:03
to create the trivia questions for a regular episode okay I'm so happy he agreed to do it cuz I thought you know you make 20 trivia questions a week for 20 years you probably don't want to add
00:56:15
too more to it but he was kind enough to do it for us so next episode we will be getting trivia questions from the trivia
00:56:20
Master himself could be about anything I did ask Tech related okay but that still could be about pretty much anything
00:56:26
that's a wide range okay I'm excited for that too it also just occurred to me I don't know if he included the answers so
00:56:31
I might have to look this up oh I'll leave that to you I won't I obviously don't know the questions either but yeah well hopefully everyone subscribed and you'll see if we know what the answers are on Friday in a
00:56:43
couple days in a couple days see you then waveform is produced by Adam Alina and Ellis Ren we're partner with the VOX media podcast Network and our
00:56:49
interactional music was created by v s [Music] a [Music]