The Pod Files
The ‘casts -
(Notes spoken to Siri, and edited later if I remember
(Changed tactic now where starred dialogue denotes quoting from the show’s own notes
Into The Podverse - 10 June 2026: episode 49: *The $100k Problem: Why Spotify Values "White Noise" Over Africa - Host Tony Doe exposes the startling "hierarchy of attention" in platform economics. Why does a single upload of rain sounds earn $18,000 a month while an entire continent of 1.4 billion people is offered a lone $100,000 grant? In this episode of Into The Podverse, we explore the infrastructure gaps, from affordable data to local advertising, that African creators must overcome to thrive. / We also feature a deep dive with Fola Folayan, the visionary behind the Radio Masterclass and Minding Your Business Africa, who has been building the pipeline for Nigerian digital audio since 2016. Discover why the future of African podcasting isn't waiting for Permission from Big Tech.
Artifacts: Stories from the Emotional History of the Internet - 5 June 2026: season 1 episode 3: *The Strange Emotional Power of Burned CDs - Enjoying the show? Support it here. / Before streaming playlists, there were burned CDs. / Carefully curated collections of songs, handwritten track lists, homemade cover art, and hours spent deciding exactly what came next. / In Episode 3 of Artifacts, Danny Brown explores why burned CDs became so much more than a way to listen to music. They were expressions of identity, creativity, friendship, and sometimes even love. / From Napster downloads and LimeWire mishaps to the emotional labour of creating the perfect mix, this episode looks at how music discovery used to feel slower, more personal, and more meaningful. / Why do people still remember burned CDs so fondly decades later? / And what happens when convenience replaces effort? / Because sometimes the objects fade. / But the feeling doesn't.
5 Good News Stories - 14 May 2026: *100 year old organ donor - Johnny Mac shares five good news stories: the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance's 24/7 Wildlife Explorers Channel now streams live animal cams, zoo encounters, and educational programming to children in 400+ hospitals across 48 states and 12 countries, helping patients who can't visit in person. A 100-year-old Nebraska WWII veteran and rancher, Roger Steele, became the oldest U.S. organ donor after his liver was deemed healthy for transplant, highlighting that age isn't a limit. In Hawaii, Tyler and friends rescued 15 horses from chest-high overnight floodwaters without injuries. Michigan animal control responded to a report of a diaper-wearing spider monkey named Brazil trying to enter a home; it was returned next door and is legal as a pet in the state. Philadelphia International Airport set a Guinness record with 1,291 cheesesteaks lined up end-to-end.
New Podcasts - 7 May 2026: *Your Nightly Scripture - 260-Day Bible Reading Plan for Peaceful Sleep is a calming, Scripture-centered devotional podcast designed to help you end each day with God's Word. Brought to you by BibleStudyTools.com, this 5-day-a-week Bible reading plan features carefully selected passages from across the Bible, paired with slow, reflective devotionals and gentle evening prayers. / Perfect for bedtime listening, each episode is read at a peaceful pace with natural pauses to create a quiet, meditative experience that helps you rest, reflect, and draw closer to God. From Psalms and Proverbs to the Gospels and beyond, this year-long journey includes special Easter and Christmas readings, guiding you through the story of Scripture with hope, peace, and spiritual renewal.
Artifacts: Stories from the Emotional History of the Internet - 12 June • S1 E4: Why We Miss AIM Away Messages - Enjoying the show? Support it here. / Before status updates, before social media profiles, and before we carried the internet in our pockets, there were away messages. / A few lines of text attached to a screen name. / And somehow, they mattered. / In Episode 4 of Artifacts, Danny Brown explores how AIM away messages became one of the earliest forms of online self-expression. From song lyrics and inside jokes to cryptic messages aimed at one specific person, away messages gave people a small but meaningful way to tell the world who they were. / But this isn't really a story about instant messaging. / It's a story about identity, connection, and a version of the internet that felt smaller, slower, and more personal. / Why do people still remember away messages decades later? / And what do they reveal about the way we communicated before algorithms, influencers, and personal brands became part of everyday life? / Because sometimes the objects fade. / But the feeling doesn't.
Daily Tips That May or May Not Help You - season 3 episode 109: 30 April 2026: *A Tip For Pulling Back from One-Sided Work Relationships - It is hard to set boundaries in professional relationships when saying yes turns into other people taking advantage. Arielle shares a mindset shift: treat professional commitments like subscriptions, and decide which ones get renewed. It lands for people-pleasers who want to unsubscribe from draining collaborations without a big confrontation.
Daily Dad Jokes - 1 June 2026: Dinosaur Day
Why Brain. FM helps me Edit Podcasts Faster - The cafe was closed last week! What was that about?! / Anyway, Ill share my thoughts from last week today. I wanted to take some time to justify and explain the affiliate that I tack onto the top and bottom of each episode:
Brain. FM - It's a music player with unique effects involving
"entrainment" that utilises theta, beta, alpha waves to improve focus on a task while you listen or relax while you meditate. / For podcasting, I use it to distract myself from contantly seeking perfect audio from my edits (I needlessly endless task) AND to keep myself focused to perform my edits faster. / Check out the notes below for more about Brain.FM, and thanks for coming on this journey with me and subscribing to Coffee with a Podcaster! I in this episode Matt talks about the background music he gets from brain.fm]
Digital Folklore - 13 Feb 2023: Hidden Meanings (Haunted Videogames, ARGs, & Folk Groups) - You never know what you might discover if you just #KeepYourEyesOpen. Perry and Mason venture into their local pawn shop where they meet the mysterious proprietor, Todd, as well as a handful of very interesting people who happen to all be connected... / In this episode: An opening story about a gamer who discovers their deceased father's ghost car and gets to race him again / A retelling of Ben Drowned, one of the most iconic creepypastas about a haunted copy of the classic N64 videogame Zelda: Majora's Mask / An exploration of what constitutes a 'folk group' and how folklore can emerge from pop culture fandoms and other established media. / A discussion with the developer of an ARG Alternate Reality Game) where various cryptic clues are spread across the entire internet. / An interview with one of the key members of the community who solved that ARG, discussing how that community came together. / Mason purchases a bicycle... [I thought whilst listening that the two voices in this that sound like two of the guys from PodCube. After my chat with Matt Bliss, I found out that they were indeed!]
Daily Comedy News with Johnny Mac - 6 June 2026: *Kimmel Tops Post-Colbert Ratings Snapshot; Nikki Glaser, Marc Maron and More on Comedy - Johnny Mac reports a first post-Colbert late-night ratings snapshot from Nielsen live-plus-same-day data for Monday June 1, 2026: Jimmy Kimmel leads with 2.185M viewers and 295K adults 18-49 (up 53% total viewers and 178% in 18-49 vs June 2, 2025), followed by Jimmy Fallon at 1.3M; Comics Unleashed draws 628K, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart 612K at 11:00, Late Night with Seth Meyers 790K at 12:37, Byron Allen's new 12:30 show 419K, and Nightline wins that slot with 819k. / From The Hollywood Reporter roundtable, Nikki Glaser discusses wanting to be liked while saying "awful things," and Marc Maron defines his audience and being both progressive and "dirty," while Leanne Morgan avoids politics. Harlan Williams talks about stand-up immediacy and staying away from politics, Tim Hawkins and Jeff Foxworthy discuss clean comedy and club work, Brian Stack reflects on influences, Conan characters, and adapting to political satire, and Toronto comedian Olena Fox shares influences and rituals.
Song Exploder - Episode 315: 10 June 2026: *Paul McCartney: Ripples in a Pond - Paul McCartney is a singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and producer whose career spans more than six decades. As a member of The Beatles and later Wings and then with his own solo albums, he's simply one of the most influential artists of all time. He has more accolades than I have time to list in this intro. But if you're listening to this, you already know all that. In May 2026, he released his twentieth solo album, The Boys of Dungeon Lane. He co-produced it with Andrew Watt, who won the 2021 Grammy for Producer of the Year, and whose credits include working with Lady Gaga, The Rolling Stones, Justin Bieber, and Elton John. For this episode, I spoke to Paul McCartney about how he wrote and recorded his song "Ripples in a Pond."
Podnews Daily - 12 June 2026: *Spotify redefines a "play" - The podcast company moves to a thirty-second threshold - Spotify has adopted the Alliance for Podcast Measurement definition of a "play" in their metrics, announced yesterday as part of a wider set of new data and charts within the Creators dashboard. Spotify first introduced a "play" in May 2025, but didn't explain how they were calculated; as of today, a "play" is now defined as 30 seconds of content played once per user per session (audio or video). Spotify claim their data "helped inform" AMP's definition; the technical details of that have yet to be published. / Stampede Social has unveiled a set of new tools for podcasters who use Instagram. You can set the tool to instantly send your latest episode - complete with episode artwork - to anyone who DMs a keyword to you: making it much easier to convert an Insta reader to a podcast listener. The tool can also be used for advertiser feedback, and works with your existing RSS feed. / Back in May last year, Spotify came under fire for listing spam podcasts that operated as links to websites for illegal drugs. After a CNN story, Spotify said they'd removed them; but that kicked off an investigation from US Senator Maggie Hassan, which was released yesterday. The full investigation suggests that Spotify removed 3,500 accounts in 2025 (and over 57,000 different episodes), but didn't report a single account to law enforcement. Spotify doesn't track any use of links in episode descriptions, either, we learn - and some shows had been on the platform for four years. / Are short podcasts a growing trend? In Spain, José A. Gelado has crunched the numbers, to learn that - no - the most popular podcasts in Spain are around an hour long.
"For a podcast to succeed, it does not need to be short", José says. The data also reveals that the three main platforms have little overlap - only 36 shows appear across Apple, iVoox and Spotify rankings - and almost 20% of shows on Spotify are there exclusively, with no open RSS feed.
Sodajerker On Songwriting - Episode 318: 31 May 2026: *Sean Ono Lennon - Sean Ono Lennon joins Sodajerker to discuss The Great Parrot Ox and the Golden Egg of Empathy, the new sci-fi concept album from the Claypool Lennon Delirium. Sean talks about collaborating with Les Claypool, creating characters and mythology for the record I, and exploring the dangers of artificial intelligence. We also examine the duo's use of wordplay, Sean's eclectic musical influences, and the lessons he absorbed from his parents.
Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day - 6 June 2026: valedictory
StarDate - 3 June 2026: Glaring Visage
New Podcasts - 8 May 2026: *The Making of One Nation - For almost three decades, One Nation and Pauline Hanson have been ridiculed, dismissed and shut out. Now, as the party surges in the polls and is a serious contender for a second lower house seat in Australia's federal parliament, no one is laughing. In The Making of One Nation host Ashlynne McGhee joins politics expertes from academic in Australia and overseas to break down how a party built on fear and grievance thrived, died and rose again to upend Australian politics.
Space News and Weather Today - 7 June 2026: *The Sun has been active lately, with several sunspot grou... — June 07, 2026 - Launch coming up tomorrow: a Falcon 9 from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. / SpaceX is sending up Starlink internet satellites. / Portions of the podcast are made with the assistance of Al which helps us gather informaton from the NASA and other sources.
BirdNote Daily - 25 November 2023: *Common Redpoll - The tiny Common Redpoll, one of the smallest members of the finch family, weighs only as much as four pennies, yet it survives the cold and darkness of winter in the far North. Most birds depart in autumn to warmer climes. But redpolls feed on birch and alder seeds that are available throughout the winter, no matter how deep the snow. This little bird typically eats 40% of its body weight in seeds every day to keep itself alive. Redpolls are survivors.
Daily Tips That May or May Not Help You - season 3 episode 109: 30 April 2026: A Tip For Pulling Back from One-Sided Work Relationships - It is hard to set boundaries in professional relationships when saying yes turns into other people taking advantage. Arielle shares a mindset shift: treat professional commitments like subscriptions, and decide which ones get renewed. It lands for people-pleasers who want to unsubscribe from draining collaborations without a big confrontation.
Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day - 7 June 2026: MacGyver
StarDate - 6 June 2026: The Serpent
New Podcasts - 11 May 2026: *Work-Shaped Life - How do you build a satisfying career when you, and everything around you, never stop changing? Work-Shaped Life is a new podcast launching today from Dave Weich, the founder of Sheepscot Creative, talking with people going through that in real time: pivots, drifts, reinventions, and the self-awareness that comes from doing the work of figuring it out.
Space News and Weather Today - Auroras, Rock... - 8 June 2026: *Quick solar update: the Sun is quite active, with numerou... — June 08, 2026 - Quick solar update: the Sun is quite active, with numerous sunspot groups visible. That means a moderate chance of northern lights tonight for those in north... / Portions of the podcast are made with the assistance of Al which helps us gather informaton from the NASA and other sources.
BirdNote Daily - 26 November 2023: *A Pigeon-eyed View of the World - Pigeons, and other birds with eyes on the sides of their heads, have a different view of the world from that of creatures with forward-facing eyes. The images from a pigeon's eyes overlap slightly, so the bird can see in front of itself, even though it has worse depth perception. But these laterally placed eyes have a big advantage for prey species: they provide a much wider view of the world. A pigeon has a remarkable 340° view without moving its head, including a wide area behind its head!
Life Without - 20 February 2026: *Life Without Rats - Surely a world without the rodents we look to exterminate anyway would be fine? In this episode of Life Without, our host Alan Davies thinks about how our cities might look if all the rats were removed. / From the sewers in mega cities to the barren countryside, rats are highly adaptable, but what happens when we remove them from their hiding spots? Are we pest-free and will hygiene ratings in restaurants go up? Or will losing them have an impact on all our major scientific break throughs, as rats are regularly used to test drugs that we may consume. / This episode features Steven Belmain a Professor of Ecology and the Centre Leader for Sustainable Agriculture at the Natural Resources Institute; and Joe Shute, a nature writer, journalist, and the author of Stowaway: The Disreputable Exploits of the Rat. / An ITN production for BBC Radio 4
Daily Tips That May or May Not Help You - season 3 episode 110: 1 May 2026: *A Tip For Not Losing A Fingertip To A Mandolin - Mandolin slicer safety gets real the second bare fingers get near that blade. Paul from ThatAgedWell says cut-resistant gloves are non-negotiable, because a mandolin will take what it can get. Paul from ThatAgedWell also points out gloves are easy to find, and they keep kitchen prep from turning into an urgent-care errand.
Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day - 8 June 2026: accoutrement
StarDate - 7 June 2026: Death-Ray Galaxy
New Podcasts - 11 May 2026: *Stories from a Stranger - "Every stranger has a story." This is what Hunter Prosper realized when he began posting man-on-the-street interviews with real-life strangers to his social media accounts. Stories From A Stranger features portraits of strangers connected by themes of love, loss, regret, inspiration, illness, family and more - remind us that we are all human and more connected than we realize.
Space News and Weather Today - 9 June 2026: *The Sun has been active lately, with several sunspot grou... — June 09, 2026 - The Moon is a thin crescent rising before dawn, leaving most of the night beautifully dark for stargazing. / Portions of the podcast are made with the assistance of Al which helps us gather informaton from the NASA and other sources.
Daily Tips That May or May Not Help You - season 3 episode 111: 4 May 2026: *A Tip For Receiving Help When You Need It - When life gets intense (new baby, surgery recovery, or just getting sick), "What can I do to help?" can be weirdly hard to answer in the moment. Prep a short list ahead of time (food drop-off, groceries, cleaning) so the ask feels clear instead of overwhelming. It keeps help useful, not chaotic, and makes it easier to say yes.
Spielberg Reloaded: Steven Spielberg in 12 movies - 14 June 2026: *War of the Worlds (2005): The Fear - Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds transformed H.G. Wells' alien invasion story into a post-9/11 nightmare about fear, survival, and collapsing American security. / Tom Cruise stars as an ordinary father trying to protect his children while civilization falls apart around them. In this episode of Spielberg Reloaded, we examine how Spielberg used alien invasion imagery to reflect the anxieties of the early 2000s, including terrorism, mass panic, and the fragility of modern life. We discuss Dakota Fanning's performance, the terrifying tripod attacks, Janusz Kaminski's cinematography, and why War of the Worlds may be Spielberg's darkest science fiction film.
7 Minutes For Yourself - 27 August 2024: *Build Your Emotional Armor for Tough Times - Are you struggling to cope during challenging moments? / This insightful episode reveals how to construct your emotional armor against life's adversities! / Ready to transform your approach? Click play now and start building a resilient mindset today!
The Puzzler with AJ Jacobs - 23 July 2025: "Gif or Jif" w/ Mike Pesca
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