Beside the Rabbit Hole

In this "coda" or postscript to the first season, I take a bit more of a rambling and self-reflective approach and talk through my thoughts on the possible future of this podcast. Beside the Rabbit Hole got its start as a class project and has its origins partially as an opportunistic way to avoid having to write another full length paper in one of my grad classes. Turns out it was way more work than just writing, but hindsight is always 20/20.

But now that the semester is over and the class is in the past, I'm left wondering: what to do with this podcast structure and feed that I went through all the trouble of making? On the one hand, I could just abandon it and let it fade into the past. But on the other hand, I wonder if I can try to share some of what I'm working on with a slightly wider audience. I'd like to think that the things I'm working on in graduate school are meaningful and will contribute positively to the world. I don't know if that's the case, but what I do know is that none of that will be possible if my work stays isolated and hidden away from the world. So maybe something like this podcast is a way to try and push back against that grim possibility.

Maybe people will listen to it. Maybe some will find it interesting. Maybe nobody will. But I think it's still worth a shot.

Questions? Comments? Concerns? Get in touch with me - [email protected] or see my website www.benpettis.com. You can also tweet at me @ben_pettis_.

License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

In this final episode of Season One, I try to wrap up my discussion of the video podcasts and talk a bit about the future of podcasts more broadly. Despite my best efforts to keep us exploring the area besidethe rabbit hole and not go too deep into it, it seems like we inadvertently ended up there anyway. So in this last episode I try to walk us back up to the surface by talking back over my experience of producing a video podcast and finally by considering Spotify’s recently announced video feature.

What makes a podcast a podcast is not so much the file type, format, or how it gets shared but the relation between the producer and the audience. Yes, that’s a fairly vague and unsatisfying definition. So maybe we don’t have a good definition of what really makes a podcast a podcast, but maybe that’s okay. But even if we struggle to define it, there’s something special about this format – and the possibility for an intimate connection between producer and listener.

Podcasts are a medium that lets us share our experiences in the world, and to partake in the experiences of others. And hopefully I don’t have to convince you that there is significant value in that. So let’s keep listening to podcasts, and let’s keep making them. And no, they don’t necessarily have to be video!

Questions? Comments? Concerns? Get in touch with me - [email protected] or see my website www.benpettis.com. You can also tweet at me @ben_pettis_.

License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Morris, Jeremy Wade. "The Spotification of Podcasting." In Saving New Sounds: Podcast Preservation and Historiography, edited by Jeremy Wade Morris and Eric Hoyt, 208–23. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2021.

Schwarz, Jonas Andersson. 2013. Online File Sharing: Innovations in Media Consumption. New York: Routledge.

In this episode, I move away from talking about video podcasts in overly broad terms and try to get down and into the trenches. What was the process like of getting video podcasts onto a device to view them? And what was it like to actually watch a video podcast? And how did that affect the podcast intimacy?

To answer these questions, I first describe a method for doing media history that I’m calling the "technological re-enactment." Unlike something like emulation or retro tech preservation, the technological re-enactment is meant to be more accessible by more people – largely thanks to its attitude of "close enough." We don’t have to 100% replicate the technology of a given era, but we can try to get as close as possible by substituting in modern technology only when needed. By doing so, we can try and recreate the core aspects of what it was like to experience old forms of technology.

There are three main steps involved when doing a technological reenactment.

First, you need to identify the core characteristics of the experience that you are trying to re-create. These are features of the experience holistically, and don’t necessarily have to be specific pieces of hardware or software.

Second, you would determine what parts—if any—of the original experience you still have access to, and what parts you need to fill in with more modern technology.

Third, keep a running list of what substitutions you had to make, so you can consider how those more modern technologies affected the experience as a whole.

Ultimately, the experience of watching podcasts on the old iPod was terrible. Which wasn’t anything surprising: Given the limits of the technology – that is having to pre-load all the videos – along with the small size of the screen, it was just too much work for a less then stellar experience. This is because podcasts are characterized by forming an intimate connection between the podcast producer and the podcast listener. But when you have video, and can see that the podcaster is in a different place and time than you, the illusion of intimacy is lost.

And, as I’ve shown with my technological reenactment, adding suboptimal video technology on top of that is essentially just a death blow for the video podcast. Despite the promise of it being the "next generation of podcasting," it’s not really surprising that it didn’t take off.

In this episode, I was going to give a bit of a walkthrough of my process of doing the technological re-enactment of video podcasts. Unfortunately, I’m not very good at doing a walkthrough in a brief manner and ended up rambling for upwards of 20 minutes. Even after cutting it down, it was just too much and we ended up too far down the rabbit hole. There will be a supplemental video episode with a full walkthrough for those who are interested. But otherwise, this episode just gives and overview of the process.

I found the old episodes of video podcasts that I used during my technological re-enactment using the PodcastRE podcast database and archive. You can find out more information here https://podcastre.org.

You can download a copy of the Handbrake preset that I mentioned in the video on the episode page on my website.

Questions? Comments? Concerns? Get in touch with me - [email protected] or see my website www.benpettis.com. You can also tweet at me @ben_pettis_.

License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Owens, Trevor. The Theory and Craft of Digital Preservation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018.

This episode continues my exploration of why it is that the video podcast has generally failed to take off in popularity. Even as technology has improved, podcasts remain a distinctly audio phenomenon. Perhaps this is because of some fundamental characteristic of podcast that makes them better suited for audio. I call this characteristic the "podcast-iness" of podcasts.

A better way to think of this podcast-iness is in terms of intimacy. Podcasts are unique because they create a close connection between the podcast producer and the podcast audience. Because they are often in the audio format, this relationship often feels personal and deeply intimate. We listen to podcasts in ways that are deeply integrated in our day-to-day lives: in the shower, while commuting, and so on.

But if you were to add video in to the mix, it becomes a lot more difficult for the podcast to create that intimate relationship. By adding video, we get a clear signal that the podcaster is not there alongside us as we listen. Video actually makes a podcast feel less intimate, which is a large reason why video podcasts are not as popular as audio ones.

Questions? Comments? Concerns? Get in touch with me - [email protected] or see my website www.benpettis.com. You can also tweet at me @ben_pettis_.

License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

This episode also includes short clips from the following podcasts:

Additional Works Cited:

Be sure to check your podcast feed for a bonus "episode" – a PDF file with screenshots of the Apple website pages that were referenced in the episode. (PDF files may not display in all podcast apps – sorry! You can download this supplmental PDF on the website)

Questions? Comments? Concerns? Get in touch with me - [email protected] or see my website www.benpettis.com. You can also tweet at me @ben_pettis_.

License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

This episode also includes short clips from the following podcasts:

Questions? Comments? Concerns? Get in touch with me - [email protected] or see my website www.benpettis.com

Our theme music is:

This episode also includes short clips from the following podcasts: