E71 Everyone Has a Podcast Now! | Advanced English Podcast About Media & Culture

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[00:00:00.000] - Oliver (Host)

César, I'm going to ask you to do, to start the episode by doing what you do best.

[00:00:03.640] - César (Guest)

Okay. Creating a new podcast?

[00:00:05.580] - Oliver (Host)

Yeah, more or less. Okay. Start us off with your - you've been doing this a lot longer than me. How do you start a podcast in the most professional way possible?

[00:00:16.460] - César (Guest)

Well, talking about this topic, I would say something like, I would never thought that I would end up having six podcasts for language learners. But here I am, here we are. And today we're going to talk about why there is this huge crave for podcast.

[00:00:35.440] - Oliver (Host)

Craving?

[00:00:36.380] - César (Guest)

Craving. Thank you. For podcasts. And yeah, we're going to analyse this world that - It's been, it has been shaped since the pandemic, I would say. It was something very niche before the pandemic, and then now everyone wants to have a podcast. Even Michelle Obama, and by the way, I'm ranking higher than Michelle Obama in the UK.

[00:00:59.360] - Oliver (Host)

I have to say, César, I have some negative feedback for you, but we'll find out what that is after the introduction of the podcast!

[00:01:05.980] - Oliver (Host)

Welcome back to English and Beyond, the advanced level of the podcast. We have a transcript if you find anything difficult to understand. We have vocabulary flashcards. We have vocabulary trainers as well, games to help you learn your vocabulary to consolidate the most difficult words and expressions. The podcast is designed to help you take your understanding of English from an upper intermediate level to a truly advanced one. Borderline, normal native content.

[00:01:31.220] - César (Guest)

I was thinking, talking about a podcast that 10 years ago, I used to listen to a podcast to improve my English, like this one. You could only get the transcript - but actually, the transcript was done by the audience. (Oh, wow.) So the creator was like, "Okay, if you want the transcript, (Do it yourself!) you can send it to me and I will publish it for everyone." Some episodes had the transcripts, some of them not.

[00:01:58.840] - Oliver (Host)

That would be nice. If anyone in the audience wants to design my vocab games or design the transcript, feel free. Send it to me and I'll circulate it to everybody else.

[00:02:09.830] - César (Guest)

No, but it was a nice contribution from the community. I did subtitles in Spanish for an English teacher as well for YouTube.

[00:02:20.560] - Oliver (Host)

Well, I think that actually this story shows how much podcasting has changed in the last 10 years. No?

[00:02:25.340] - César (Guest)

100%.

[00:02:25.930] - Oliver (Host)

The negative feedback that I had for you, the tongue-in-cheek negative feedback, is that-

[00:02:30.000] - Oliver (Host)

What is the expression you used?

[00:02:31.200] - Oliver (Host)

Tongue in cheek.

[00:02:32.050] - César (Guest)

Tongue and cheek?

[00:02:33.230] - Oliver (Host)

Tongue in cheek.

[00:02:34.210] - César (Guest)

Tongue in cheek.

[00:02:35.100] - Oliver (Host)

Tongue in cheek. Yeah. And it just means that it's a bit ironic. My tongue and cheek, not entirely serious negative feedback is that you didn't actually have a hook in your introduction to the podcast, and you shouldn't need a hook. Now, podcasts, I think, are - for a language learning podcast, it's not really the same, because people are here because they have a specific problem, in this case, because they might struggle with native-level English content, and they want something between an intermediate language learning podcast and proper native content, so that has an obvious purpose, an obvious problem to solve - but if you're just making a podcast to be entertaining, you have to be like incredibly entertaining. I mean, way more entertaining than us in order to get people to, one, click on you and two, stay there?

[00:03:33.140] - César (Guest)

Yeah.

[00:03:33.680] - Oliver (Host)

Do you see what I mean?

[00:03:34.480] - César (Guest)

The podcast I listen to, I agree with you. Every podcast has a different purpose. Some of them, most of them are just entertaining people. I don't think you need to be entertaining. But I listen to podcast or I look at podcast episodes where a specific person has been on.

[00:03:54.880] - Oliver (Host)

Like a celebrity you like.

[00:03:56.420] - César (Guest)

Like a celebrity, especially. It happens to me with writers. I love listening to Isabella Allende interviews on podcast, for example.

[00:04:04.760] - Oliver (Host)

Yeah, she's very funny. Yeah, she is.

[00:04:06.760] - César (Guest)

I guess she's very entertaining, but she's not an entertainer. She's a writer. So you've got some people who are really good at entertaining other people and you just want to listen to them just for fun and to learn something.

[00:04:21.710] - Oliver (Host)

Yeah, but they have to be very entertaining and to learn something as well. What I'm trying to say, though, is that it's like at the beginning of podcasting, it was enough just to be there. A little bit like with YouTube, if you were one of the first YouTubers, you look back now and what did they do? Very little. Not that you have to do a tremendous amount now to go viral.

[00:04:42.140] - César (Guest)

Well, in the end, you have to.

[00:04:43.600] - Oliver (Host)

Well, you do and you don't. On the one hand, you have to get lucky because there's that Italian guy, (Khaby) Lame or something like that, who's just basically sold the rights to his image for a billion dollars or something of that size. And all he does is pull silly faces reaction to other people's content. That's all he does, and he's worth a billion. So, how did he get there? Because there's lots of people doing that. I don't know. I guess he just has a particularly good face for it. But what I was going to say is that at the beginning of any new industry, at the beginning of any new medium, any new format, you don't actually have to be very good at it. You don't need to be professional.

[00:05:23.840] - César (Guest)

You need to be consistent, and then it's easier to succeed.

[00:05:29.180] - Oliver (Host)

I think so. Then when the market becomes extremely saturated in a way like podcasting, it becomes much harder to actually break through the noise. But it's actually funny that in itself, because podcasting is something where there are millions and millions of podcasts.

[00:05:46.000] - César (Guest)

But you know what?

[00:05:47.100] - Oliver (Host)

Hardly any of them continue.

[00:05:48.950] - César (Guest)

After three episodes.

[00:05:50.220] - Oliver (Host)

Yeah, I did see that.

[00:05:51.880] - César (Guest)

Most people give up.

[00:05:54.180] - Oliver (Host)

Apparently, the number of active podcasts, which is defined as one that has published an episode in the last month, is something like three or four hundred thousand in the world. Really? Yeah, I think so. Let me check. So we just looked it up, and there are apparently 4. 5 million total podcasts, but only 330 to 480,000 active podcasts.

[00:06:16.460] - César (Guest)

So there's a huge cemetery of podcast.

[00:06:19.360] - Oliver (Host)

Basically, only one in 10 survives. (Yeah.) Exactly.

[00:06:22.970] - César (Guest)

I also want to talk about how important podcasts are for many people. I think it's kind of what the radio used to be like - it gives you company. In my case, not anymore, because when you were working in the school, I was alone, the the whole day, basically. I used to listen to podcasts all the time and I felt accompanied. Can you say that? Being able to do other things while listening to a podcast, having that external conversation in your ears. It's very intimate. I really like the medium and how you can connect with other people, you can learn, you can get them entertained as well. So I think it's one of the best. It's interesting because it's probably the oldest way to communicate. It's like the radio before television happened. Now it's having this reboost, (renewal) making radio digital. I think, obviously, it's here to stay because it's been growing a lot since the pandemic. It used to be big in Anglo countries, but now it's also big in Europe and in also developed countries or underdeveloped. I don't know how you say "on the way to be developed". (Developing.) Developing countries.

[00:07:57.230] - Oliver (Host)

I don't know whether... I mean, this is something we, we talked about before how being British, in my opinion, means that you are often acutely aware of how you might be criticised by other people, that we are a society where we always have, we're always looking over our shoulder about how someone might criticise us and be nasty about us. It's a culture where I think that there is still quite a lot of self-censorship in terms of the things that are appropriate to say or not. Obviously, there are very famous exceptions to that. And in fact, celebrities often become famous basically just because they don't respect those rules of shame or censorship at all. And one of the things that I find quite weird about podcasting, about now, embarrassingly being a podcaster by profession. (Why embarrassing?) Well, that's the thing. I feel very aware of how the things that I say will be received. I feel very conscious of that because I'm like, well, who actually wants to listen to this? And the only thing with the Spanish podcast that we have, for example, now that it's become legitimately quite successful, I find that such a weird feeling because I've always said to myself, I was like, who wants to actually listen to this?

[00:09:16.860] - Oliver (Host)

And I've had two basic motivations to push me through. One, because I know that I'm providing a linguistic service. I know that I'm helping people learn a language, in both the Spanish and English ones. And also because in the Spanish one, people have told us that they enjoy listening to it a lot. But even so, I still have so much shame, basically, about the idea that what I'm saying is worth listening to. I love listening to other people. I don't listen to that many podcasts, but I love talking to people and hearing their stories and things, and I do like some podcasts. I really like one in French at the moment that I listen to called "Scandales". I think it's a great podcast if anyone speaks French. But I personally feel quite embarrassed. Is that something you've ever felt? (Not really.) From the beginning, you felt like, Well, why shouldn't I be doing this?

[00:10:09.320] - César (Guest)

I felt some imposter syndrome, but I used to, and I still do it every now and then, I do like a disclaimer. I say, "The main purpose of this podcast is linguistic, right?" And the idea of our podcast is basically to learn while learning something else or being entertained and receiving the feedback from people saying this actually works. Because I know it works because I learned so much French and Italian just by listening to podcasts, I know it works. I feel really proud and really happy that people have embraced our podcasts in plural very well. They tell us, Okay, I'm learning, but I'm also having a good time. We receive really nice comments saying like, Guys, you made my day. You made me laugh while listening to this episode.

[00:11:09.640] - Oliver (Host)

I received a really nice comment from someone, which is, again, it's relevant to the podcast discussion now of why people podcast, why people do podcasts. Basically, it was a really nice message from a young guy who said, I've had a really miserable time at university this semester, or this term, not American. And your Spanish podcast has really helped. (Oh, that's nice.) But there are lots of comments like that. I don't know why that one stuck in my mind. There are people that send me emails, and I love receiving their emails because they're really interesting, the things that they say. But quite a common theme is people will say, It's been really nice to listen to people talking, and also talking as often as we do about being in a bad mood and having to carry on learning the languages.

[00:11:54.900] - César (Guest)

And that's the good thing about the internet, right? It has democratised, you know, voices. You can choose, you can choose to learn with us or with a few thousand other teachers out there that have their podcast or YouTube channels. There are also risks because there are so many people - we don't spread misinformation, I don't think we do, generally -

[00:12:19.600] - Oliver (Host)

We don't spread information full stop. Our content is without real substance.

[00:12:23.540] - César (Guest)

No, that means sometimes, at least in the intermediate podcast, the Intermediate Spanish podcast. I talk about topics and I try to do some research, but I always say the main purpose is this. But if anything, if I talk about a controversial topic, I try to cover both sides of the story. I'm not a journalist, but obviously I've been learning how to do it better and better. And as I was saying, there is a negative side of everyone having a podcast, which is that many-

[00:12:54.710] - Oliver (Host)

You should say, because most people don't watch us -

[00:12:57.120] - Oliver (Host)

So that thing where you went, "everyone", we can say, we actually do sometimes, say "everyone" in inverted commas while you do the action with your hands.

[00:13:05.120] - César (Guest)

The problem with everyone in inverted commas having a podcast is that I think a lot of misinformation is (spread) being spread.

[00:13:16.020] - Oliver (Host)

You are now on what podcast number six or seven across all the different levels and different, like, you know.. there's a story podcast, there are various different levels of a Spanish podcast, etc. What do you think is the main negative to being a podcaster?

[00:13:35.400] - César (Guest)

Well, the main negative? I guess receiving every now and then nasty comments. It's not very nice. Today, you read out to me a comment that someone made four months ago that I hadn't seen. (On the Spanish content.) Yeah, I hadn't seen it, actually. You know, that made me angry for 20 minutes.

[00:14:03.360] - Oliver (Host)

Oh, wow. Yeah.

[00:14:05.160] - César (Guest)

Then we had our French lesson, so I (forgot) forgot. Until now. Yeah. I feel (it felt) very spiteful.

[00:14:12.400] - Oliver (Host)

Well, it wasn't really a nasty comment as much as just homophobic.

[00:14:15.260] - César (Guest)

Yeah.

[00:14:16.000] - Oliver (Host)

And you found it like... I suppose the thing is that is the negative, isn't it? Because as soon as you put anything out there, and I feel like this is, as I was saying, a very British thing. I feel like this is something very nationalist what I'm about to say. I don't know, but we got way more negative comments on the Spanish podcast from English speakers who are learning Spanish than we do on the English podcast from non-English speakers. I don't know whether it might be part of an Anglo culture, like I mentioned earlier, where I feel much more aware of how people might judge us than you. That said, actually, you do receive a lot of negative comments from speakers on your Spanish podcast when you talk about something that's historical or political as well. Maybe it's not actually Anglo, maybe it's just all people in the world feel entitled to be horrible. Yeah, exactly.

[00:15:10.140] - César (Guest)

Obviously, I think it's really good that people comment and there's like a conversation, not being nasty. There's no need to be nasty.

[00:15:20.400] - Oliver (Host)

Gratuitously nasty, you can say. (Insulting.) Yeah, unnecessarily nasty.

[00:15:25.200] - César (Guest)

Apart from that, something that stresses me out from having podcasts in plural is the fact that you have to publish every week and it's sometimes stressful.

[00:15:35.600] - Oliver (Host)

Yeah, because it takes a lot more time than people might think to do.

[00:15:38.900] - César (Guest)

But it's harder working in the abattoir like my uncles.

[00:15:42.000] - Oliver (Host)

Yeah, it's true. The abattoir, the slaughterhouse. Okay, so we have 30 seconds left, César.

[00:15:48.170] - César (Guest)

Okay. Thank you very much.

[00:15:49.380] - Oliver (Host)

Thank you very much, listener, Thesar, myself. If you enjoyed the podcast, please subscribe, please follow. That's the same thing. Please like, please support us.

[00:16:01.700] - César (Guest)

And use the resources. Now that you have listened to the episode, if you go and use the resources, I'm going to use the resources. (Okay, wonderful.) And learn more because I have learned some words and phrases in this episode.

[00:16:12.200] - Oliver (Host)

Yeah. Okay, well, thank you very much, César. Bye-bye.