Pods Like Us

Get Through the Suck: The First 50 Episodes

Martin sits down with Phil Better (Phil Lemire), host of The Podcast Mogul’s Playbook, for a wide-ranging chat about what makes podcasting work. They argue for audio-first over the video push and talk about why post-production is where most shows fall over. Phil explains how to market a show without burning out, why he wears a “Phil Better” mask, and where AI helps and where it doesn’t. There are tangents on Kevin Smith, Kiki Palmer and Joe Rogan’s Spotify deal. Stick around to the end, where listeners get an official name.

Key takeaways

• Don’t let the technology intimidate you. A phone and a recording app will do.
• Video is a marketing tool, but audio is still how most people consume podcasts.
• Edit your first episodes yourself so you learn how you want the show to sound before handing it to an editor.
• Pick one tic (ums, lip smacks) to fix at a time.
• Expect it to take around 100 episodes to feel comfortable.
• Most shows fade out in post-production and promotion, not in recording.
• The free routes to growth are being a guest on other podcasts and joining communities where your audience already is. Answer questions there, and don’t drop links.
• Post everywhere at first, find the platform that gets the most interaction, and put your energy there. Phil’s milestone is 10K followers.
• Launch with several episodes so new listeners can binge.
• Give your audience a name. A community helps you more than a pile of listeners does.
• Make friends with other podcasters. As Phil says, a rising tide lifts all ships.
• Use AI for transcription, keywords and speeding up tasks, but not to create the show itself.

Mentioned in this episode

• The Podcast Mogul’s Playbook (Phil’s show)
• Pop Culture Addicts (Phil’s friend Tim’s podcast, with guest Doug Jones)
• The Weekly Planet
• Crashing Out
• Too Many Tabs
• The Kiki Palmer podcast
• Shits and Gigs
• Michael Rosenbaum’s podcast
• Money Grows on Trees
• Invest In Yourself: The Digital Entrepreneur
• The Podcast Morning Show (Clubhouse, 8:00 AM)
• Kevin Smith’s films: Clerks, Dogma and Red State

Connect

• Phil: search for The Podcast Mogul’s Playbook in your podcast app. New episodes are coming soon.
• Martin: themarvzone.org has all the socials and the Patreon link.
• Leave a review or comment, and tell Martin whether you like “Poddies.”

Find Your Own Style: Ignoring Podcasting's Common Wisdom with Matt Bliss -

In this episode, Marv talks with podcast producer, mentor and self-described philosopher Matt Bliss about how podcasting has changed since the pandemic pivot, and why he thinks the best advice is often the advice you tailor to yourself. Matt argues that "common wisdom" from the internet is mostly noise, that editing should serve the person and the subject rather than a standard of perfection, and that a podcast doesn't need to be defined by its technology. They also dig into the "video-first" debate, accessibility (including sign language in podcasting), and why Matt thinks AI is still a dumb intern that needs a human supervisor. Along the way, Matt shares the podcasts he loves and what he's building next.

Find Matt

• Website: mbpod.com
• Email: [email protected]
• LinkedIn: search "Matthew Bliss"
• Podcast: rethinkingpodcasting.com

Find Pods Like Us

• All links at themarvzone.org

The Heads, the Lawsuit, and the Long Road Back. How an Instagram Account Spooked a Band Reunion.

This time on Pods Like Us, Marv sits down with Rod Gordon, the man behind the podcast This Must Be Talking Heads, to talk all things Talking Heads — and the story behind the show itself.

Rod shares how an "unofficial" Instagram account he started in 2019 accidentally spooked the band into setting up their own page, the fallout from the divisive The Heads/No Talking, Just Head saga, and how the band's decades-long freeze finally began to thaw around the Stop Making Sense 40th anniversary reissue.

They dig into the "Big Band" era and Remain in Light, why Jerry Harrison might be the most underrated member of the group, the shift from the punk scene into new wave, and what it's actually like landing interviews with band members like Chris Frantz and Jerry Harrison. Rod also talks through the challenges of recording and editing a long-running podcast, designing the show's artwork, and the advice he'd give to anyone thinking about starting their own.

Whether you're a lifelong Talking Heads fan or just curious where to start, this one's a fun, deep dive into the band, the fandom, and the podcast built around it.

Find Rod and This Must Be Talking Heads at thismustbetalkingheads.com and on Instagram @thismustbetalkingheads.

Engaged Views and Disengaged Truths -

Pods Like Us Chronicles — Episode Show Notes

Host: Martin "Marv" Quibell

Episode Summary

Marv opens with a look at the World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing (kicking off Saturday 22 August 2026), including a robot smashing Usain Bolt's 100m record and a musing on what happens when you put an LLM inside a humanoid robot. Then it's on to the week's podcast industry news: audiobook/podcast crossover, YouTube's changing definition of a "view," Spotify's new ad and skip-ahead features, AI's growing role in podcast discovery (and its occasional gaslighting), a tribute to John C. Dvorak, and more.

In This Episode

Industry Reads

• Frank Racioppi's Forbes piece on the audiobook/podcast listener overlap, and Noiser's audio drama adaptations of Dickens, Conan Doyle, and Austen
• Cody McLaughlin's Substack interview with Brad Pipkin (IAB Tech Lab) on whether podcasting is becoming "the evolution of television"
• Frank Racioppi's spotlight articles on This Podcast Will Kill You and Auntie Please
• John McDermott's Random Thoughts newsletter — praise for School of Podcasting's episode, Apple Podcast embedding woes, YouTube's payout threshold change, and the headaches of vertical video repurposing
• Sam Illingworth's viral Substack post (40,534 views, 575 comments, 364 restacks) and his follow-up on LLMs "gaslighting" users — plus the finding that a Substack upload of Moby Dick was flagged 44% AI-written
• Stephanie Fuccio's two Substack pieces on using Stephen King's On Writing as inspiration for better show notes and titling

Platform & Business News

• Spotify's new "unskippable" ads on its own shows, with skippability elsewhere governed by contract clauses (via Podnews Daily)
• Inception Point AI has rebranded as Liquify AI (parent of Liquid Studios), covered by the New York Times
• YouTube redefines "view" as an "engaged view," roughly aligned with the IAB/AMP consumption-length standard — and doubles the download threshold for ad payouts from 4,000 to 8,000
• Megaphone's advertising issues, and Flightpath's new "Automation Playbook" tool, via Podnews Daily
• Sounds Profitable's That Stupid Radio episode — Tom Webster's story of a nine-button Italian radio rendered useless when its app stopped working

Podcasting Craft & Community

• Podmastery: Neal Veglio on checking your show name isn't taken — and the underrated problem of how your title sounds when spoken aloud (Marv's own "misheard lyrics" comparison to Sister Sledge's We Are Family)
• School of Podcasting: Dave Jackson on YouTube/Spotify changes and a potted history of Spotify in podcasting
• In and Around Podcasting: Rob and Elsie trace the history of skipping — from 1930s reel-to-reel to Spotify's new "Skip Ahead" button — plus Overcast updates, a tribute to John C. Dvorak, and Ana Xavier's sit-down with Barack Obama
• Into the Podverse: Tony on AI-driven podcast discovery (asking ClaudeAI, ChatGPT, Gemini, Siri, and Alexa for show recommendations), video podcasting, hosting migration risks, and how to vet download-growth offers from unsolicited emails
• Dan Murphy (SiriusXM co-founder) on his new book, They Pay For Water

Comicbook Nation Corner

• A nod to Connor Casey's "Christ on a crouton cracker" line from December 2023, and a bit of nostalgia for the old news-desk format

Liquid Content, Skip Buttons, and a Memory Walk -

Episode Summary

This week Marv shares a personal reflection on a memory walk marking one year since his mum's passing, then runs through a jam-packed week in podcasting news — TrueFans, Spotify's skip button backlash, YouTube's tougher monetisation rules, a new AI voice platform, African podcast monetisation struggles, Disney's deal with The Overlap, and more. Plus: Marv reveals he used Claude AI to help tighten this week's script.

Timestamps

• [00:00:00] Intro — Marv's memory walk for his mum, and getting a shoutout from Sam Sethi on Podnews Weekly Review
• [00:01:00] Monday — TrueFans in Forbes, RSS.com's HLS video distribution, BBC's Acoustic Kitty episode, Stephanie Fuccio's discoverability experiment, the Spotify "skip forward" debate
• [00:03:00] Tuesday — YouTube's doubled monetisation requirements, Apple's fuzzy play-count data, BionicVO's AI voice cloning, the citation problem, Dave Campbell's "start where you are" message
• [00:05:00] Wednesday — John McDermott's radio stress dream and shrinking listening feed, a self-replicating LLM on AI Girls Club, Too Long Didn't Listen's season finale, a new Buzzsprout WordPress plugin, African podcast revenue ($3.1bn industry)
• [00:09:00] Thursday — Disney signs The Overlap for Disney+, a survey on "what is a podcast," Substack's Stripe/Africa payment problem
• [00:10:00] Friday — RSS.com's HLS video plans on Podnews Weekly Review, an Obama "podcast" from Audible, Sam Sethi's feedback on newsletter length
• [00:13:00] Sign-off — Format experiment notes, where to find the show
• [00:14:00] Trailer — Fallacious Trump

(Timestamps are approximate, taken from the transcript's minute markers — worth a quick check against the actual audio before publishing.)

Mentioned This Week

• Frank Racioppi (Forbes) / Sam Sethi — TrueFans
• James Cridland — Podnews Daily / Podnews Weekly Review
• RSS.com — HLS video distribution
• John Scott Dryden — Central Intelligence (BBC)
• Stephanie Fuccio — discoverability experiments, Substack
• Neal Veglio — Podmastery
• Dan Price — BionicVO
• Dave Campbell — Substack
• John McDermott — newsletter, "Cridlandism"/"McDermottism"
• Grace — AI Girls Club
• Dubble Audio & Josh Craggs — Too Long Didn't Listen
• Gavin Gaddis & Jim Ballas — Sounds Profitable / Podbiz
• Tony Doe & Israel Usolor — Into The Podverse
• Rob Greenlee — New Media Show
• Ben & Alberto — RSS.com

Credits

Distributed and sponsored by RSS.com. Find "Pods Like Us" wherever you get your podcasts, and all links at themarvzone.org

Risk, Rears, and Reverb

Marv reunites with two old friends from the Nottinghamshire music scene — Dolby Atmos mixing engineer Kurt Martinez and music educator/dementia-charity worker Rob Huskinson — for a wide-ranging chat about immersive audio, career risk-taking, and what it actually means to teach music in 2026.

Kurt walks through how he backed into podcast/audio-drama mixing via Audible's early Atmos launch, why documentaries and scripted drama get treated completely differently in the mix (stage-setting vs. free-roaming immersion), and the gunshot-and-bullet-trajectory example that shows just how precisely spatial audio storytelling can get. He also talks through mixing Kylie Minogue's latest album in Atmos — commuting with it on AirPods Max, checking it on a Sonos speaker while doing housework, and revisiting it recently on 7.1.4 headphones to see how it's held up.

Rob brings the conversation into music education, talking about designing a curriculum that starts from what's relevant to students now rather than working backwards from music history, and his work with Open Door, a Nottinghamshire dementia day service, where he helps organise carer support events (money management, physiotherapy, nutrition) alongside the day-to-day group sessions. There's also a candid stretch on ADHD, time management, and the different but complementary ways Kurt and Rob each work in a studio.

The three of them close on the value of informal networking ("smooshy events"), the risks each of them took to build a freelance/portfolio career, and what's next for each — including Season 2 of I Am Not Nicholas, out now.

In this episode:

• How Kurt got into Dolby Atmos, from a Guinness cinema ad to mixing I Am Not Nicholas for BBC/Audible
• The difference between mixing music, scripted audio drama, and documentary in Atmos
• Mixing Kylie Minogue's latest album in immersive audio
• Building a curriculum around student relevance vs. music history
• Open Door — a Nottinghamshire dementia day service, and Rob's work with carers
• ADHD, time management, and studio workflow
• Career risk-taking, freelancing, and the value of informal networking
• What's next: I Am Not Nicholas S2, new Alfie Duke and Meek singles, The Script's new album

Guests:

• Kurt Martinez — Dolby Atmos mixing engineer (Audible, BBC, I Am Not Nicholas, Kylie Minogue) — find him on LinkedIn and Instagram
• Rob Huskinson — music lecturer and grants/events lead for Open Door dementia day service — find him on LinkedIn

The Skip Heard Around the Podcasting World -

Spotify's "Skip Forward" fallout The big story of the week: Spotify's new ad-skipping option for premium users, first flagged by James Cridland (PodNews) and picked up by Elsie Escobar and Rob Walch on In and Around Podcasting. Marv unpacks why it's such a headache for ad-supported podcasters, traces it back to Spotify's 2018 "Active Media" experiment in Australia, and previews Neil Veglio's upcoming Podmastery episode (Monday 10th August) on how creators might respond — including making shows "less skippable."

Sodajerker Songwriting Lab — quick announcement A special one-day workshop from Bri and Si of Sodajerker on Songwriting, Friday 4th September at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, with songwriters Sacha Skarbek and Ben Parker. Small groups, hands-on writing, open to songwriters of any level. Details and booking: sodajerker.com/lab

Meta's $942 million New Mexico ruling A New Mexico judge has ordered Meta to pay $567 million on top of an earlier $375 million penalty, bringing the total to $942 million over harm to children and teens on Facebook and Instagram. The ruling also mandates stronger age verification, safety education, and deletion of under-13 user data. Marv connects this to the wider question of platform design and engagement, and what it might mean for podcasters who rely on social media for discoverability.

Musical tangent: Yazoo, Alison Moyet, and Prefab Sprout Prompted by a Stephanie Fuccio Substack post about the band Yazoo (Yaz in the US) and singer Alison Moyet ("Alf"), Marv goes down a musical trivia rabbit hole — including a nod to Paddy McAloon of Prefab Sprout, whose reported perfectionism has allegedly kept several albums unreleased.

Around the podcasting Substacks

• Frank Racioppi on the new International Advisory Board for Eurowaves, and a review of fiction podcast American Afterlife
• Neil Veglio (Podmastery) on letting go of the "consistency is key" myth
• Stephanie Fuccio on perfectionism vs. creating, and on how a podcast's real direction often only becomes clear in hindsight
• Rob Walch explaining the AMP Accords and the IAB's role — guidelines, not commandments
• John McDermott's newsletter and listening round-up
• Tony Doe's Into the Podverse — new podcast launches, PodGround funding news, and Elsie Escobar's 20 years in podcasting
• A shared surprise that no black woman appears on Forbes' highest-earning podcasters list
• Paul D Brazil's Substack piece on actors who've had songs named after them

Housekeeping An apology for a missed Wednesday episode due to a tricky multi-part edit, plus thanks to sponsor RSS.com.

After the sign-off A trailer for Keep the Flame Alive, the Olympics and Paralympics podcast.

Marv opens with a trailer for the podcast, But You Can't Stay Here, about a move from the US back to Lima, Peru in 2024 and the pull between two homes as their three-year anniversary approaches. He follows with two bonus clips: a 2025 conversation with Arielle Nisenblatt about her podcast-listening habits, and a fresh chat with old bandmates Rob and Kurt about mixing immersive/Atmos audio for podcasts. The rest of the episode is Marv's usual week-in-review of the podcasting world — new gear patches, industry layoffs, newsletter drama, and a stack of recommended listens.

Shows & People Mentioned

• But You Can't Stay Here

• WTF with Marc Maron, On with Kara Swisher, Daily Zeitgeist, The Brian Lehrer Show, Secretly Incredibly Fascinating, Today Explained, The Puzzler

• Earbuds Podcast Collective newsletter — Arielle Nisenblatt

• I Am Not Nicholas (Audible/BBC)

• Podnews Daily — James Cridland

• The Download — Sounds Profitable, Gavin Gaddis

• Ken Michael's Radio Hour

• Toppermost of the Poppermost (Marv, Ed, Kit)

• Open Door (dementia support charity)

• Podbites newsletter

• Royal Swindle — Blanchard House, Becky Milligan

• Stephanie Fuccio / GeoPats podcast

• Comicbook Nation

• Into the Podverse — Tony Doe

• Belief in the Future

• AI Girls Club

• Jacob Reed and Me

• The Good Quest

Links

• themarvzone.org

• newsletter.earbuds.audio

On the Tip of My Tongue: Jonathan Hirons on Aphasia, Advocacy, and Podcasting

This episode, Marv sits down with Jonathan Hirons, host of the podcast On the Tip of My Tongue, to talk about aphasia — a communication disorder that affects language but not intelligence or memory — and how it shaped his life and work.

Jonathan shares the story of the sudden stroke that left him with aphasia, the speech and language therapy that followed, and the vital role his wife played early on using flashcards to help rebuild his vocabulary. He and Marv discuss why aphasia remains so poorly understood despite affecting more people than Parkinson's disease, and why groups and community support make such a difference for people relearning to communicate.

The conversation also traces how Jonathan's aphasia documentary evolved into a podcast, why he brought on co-host Rob Edwards to handle scripted segments, and how the show balances lived experience with expert insight. They wrap up comparing notes on production workflows, episode artwork, and the "teaser hook" technique both shows use to draw listeners in.

In This Episode

● What aphasia is, and why it's known as a "hidden disability"

● Jonathan's personal story: sudden onset, hospitalization, and diagnosis

● The road through speech therapy and relearning to read, write, and speak

● Why community groups are key to rebuilding confidence

● How a documentary film became a podcast

● Behind-the-scenes: recording with Zoom, editing in Reaper, publishing via Buzzsprout

● The importance of podcast artwork and episode "teasers"

● Where to find On the Tip of My Tongue and how to support the show

Links & Contact

On the Tip of My Tongue: tipofmytonguefilm.com

Email Jonathan: [email protected]

Find Jonathan on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn

Pods Like Us

Contact: [email protected]

All links and socials: themarvzone.org

Mercedes vs. Ford: The Great Podcast Artwork Debate -

Marv (Martin Quibell) rounds up a busy week in podcasting, featuring a special roundtable on episode artwork with NJ Belenky (PodBiz) and Neil Veglio (PodKnows, Podmastery), plus the usual roundup of podcasting news, links, and listens.

Panel: Should You Change Your Episode Artwork? (The "Mercedes vs. Ford" Question) Marv is joined by NJ Belenky and Neil Veglio for the first in an occasional series answering listener questions. Kevin Brown (host of Seaside Pod Review, The Tom Petty Project, and Ultimate Catalog Clash) asks whether shows should use one consistent piece of artwork ("Mercedes approach") or unique artwork per episode ("Ford approach").

Trailer A trailer for Creatures of the Wind, created as part of the July Podcast Prompt Challenge, plays out the episode.

Links & Mentions

• Pod Biz — NJ Belenky
• Pod Knows / Pod Mastery — Neil Veglio
• Kevin Brown's shows: Seaside Pod Review, The Tom Petty Project, Ultimate Catalog Clash
• When They Was Fab (with Ed Chen)
• Podbites newsletter
• Stephanie Fuccio / Melanie Goodman — LinkedIn/Substack flywheel article
• Sounds Profitable — The Download
• Podnews Daily — Kids Pod
• Frank Racioppi — Streamlined Solopreneur
• Caleruega Media — John McDermott's newsletter
• Rick Beato's YouTube channel
• James Cridland — Radio Land newsletter
• Leftlion Podcast, Notts Rock Cast
• Stephanie Fuccio — "Five Podcast Discoverability Elements That Help Old Episodes Get Found"
• Andrea Coscai — Euro Waves newsletter
• MIC Media — Vic Elizabeth Turnbull
• Tony Doe — Into the Podverse
• Ethan Alexanian (artwork design)
• Trailer: Creatures of the Wind

Get in touch: Questions for future roundtable episodes → [email protected] Find the show: themarvzone.org Sponsor: RSS.com