This solo episode of Your Mic is a friendly exorcism for every creator who’s turned “the algorithm” into a deity.

Freddy breaks down what recommendation systems on platforms actually do—sort and surface content based on behavior—and how people still primarily find new podcasts through search, social, YouTube, and old-school word of mouth. Then he draws a hard line between building episodes for humans versus contorting your show to please a black box.

In this episode:

• What algorithms really optimize for (and what they don’t).

• How over-optimizing for “the feed” kills the very weirdness and honesty that fuel word-of-mouth growth.

• A practical two-part approach: serve the person, then respect the machine.

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Shoot Freddy an email: [email protected].