Podcasting 2.0 June 12th 2026 Episode 263 - "Chat is Dead"

  The week Pod News spent half an episode talking about us — the Data Collective, and Adam's robot getting blocked.
  Board meeting: the user-agent war (spoof vs. sign), the Podcast Data Collective, and the measurement reckoning.
  We are the only boardroom that you play for more than 30 seconds
  I'm Adam Curry in the Heart of the Texas Hill Country
  And in Alabama, the man who's so far under water he needs snorkel — <i>Say hello to my Friend on the other End — Dave Jones!</i>
  Download the mp3
  Podcast Feed
  PodcastIndex.org
  Preservepodcasting.com
  Check out the podcasting 2.0 apps and services newpodcastapps.com
  <i>Support us with your Time Talent and Treasure</i>
Positioning
  The Podcast Index is here to preserve, protect and extend the open, independent podcasting ecosystem.
  We do this by enabling developers to have access to an open, categorized index that will always be available for free, for any use.
  Try a new podcast app today and see how much better the experience can be.
  What is <b>Value4Value</b>? - Read all about it at Value4Value.info
  V4V Stats
<b>ShowNotes</b>
  -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  DG Editor - Building an idiot proof recording system for Bridge Church
  -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  00 - THE USER-AGENT WAR — SPOOF vs. SIGN
    Pod News named YOU the "prime offender": your listening robot got blocked by Buzzsprout, retried spoofing the Overcast user-agent, and got through. Marco Arment apoplectic; Tom Rossi (Buzzsprout) pushing "dependable user agents."
    But Dave already shipped the real fix: the Index feed poller now SIGNS its requests (HTTP Message Signatures / Cloudflare web-bot-auth) — you don't trust the user-agent STRING, you sign the request.
    <b>Backstory:</b> it started as 415 errors from Cloudflare-fronted feeds; @js half-joked "try changing your user-agent to apple podcasts (*ducks*)" — Dave signed instead.
    <b>Dave (Mastodon, Jun 9):</b> "The Podcast Index feed polling agent now signs its requests according to Cloudflare's web bot auth scheme. Let's see if they live up to their promise not to block us now."
    Discussion / tension: @js thinks signed media fetches would be "a strategic mistake" — not fully on board. Worth drawing him out vs. Dave.
    Public signing material (.well-known)
    Cloudflare verified-bots
  -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  01 - THE PODCAST DATA COLLECTIVE (PCDC) — and Pod News reacts
    Your pitch from last week: aggregate follows + plays + completion-by-time from the ~10% independent-app ecosystem, publish per-podcast at podcastindex.org, become the source of truth — then "rug pull" and charge hosting cos + data brokers, divide revenue as a collective.
    <b>Sam Sethi is broadly WITH you</b> — "there is something there" — but pushes back on consent: "it's the listener's / creator's data, I need permission," and wants a creator revenue-share, not just app payouts. <b>GAP to answer on air.</b>
    <b>James is the skeptic</b> on extrapolating 10% to a true total — beats it with Podscribe being 900% wrong. Your counter: yours is REAL first-party data + OP3 cross-check, NOT a Podscribe-style modeled guess.
    <b>The other GAP (Sam):</b> "use Activity Streams, don't reinvent the wheel with CSV." Have the "how" ready.
    Empirical backbone — Spurlock's OP3 clustering: 36 million downloads, 2,000+ shows, 142 listening apps. The data + method already exist.
    <b>Your line:</b> "the definition of a podcast becomes syndicated delivery of media files with precise consumption data for all stakeholders."
    Spurlock OP3 clustering (cohort)
    Pod News Weekly Review (Jun 12) — the segment
  -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  02 - MEASUREMENT RECKONING — AMP's 30-SECOND "PLAY"
    AMP defined a "play" as 30 seconds (vs the IAB's 60). Spotify adopted it (Spotify for Creators now shows 30s plays). Apple still counts anything over 0 seconds.
    You + Dave call 30s "bullshit" — push total listen time + % completed as the real metrics. You're aligned with Sam/Dave here — say so.
    <b>"Standards don't get voted in — someone imposes them"</b> (Steve Razvar). The sting: the PC2.0 transcript standard only became THE standard once APPLE imposed it. You're the living proof you can impose by doing.
    The download-vs-play absurdity: Pod News's own May numbers — 2,093 "Apple" downloads vs 3,200 Apple "plays" (Apple counts every press of play). Podscribe lists them at 244 monthly listeners vs the real ~6,100.
    @js data + quip: Livewire rankings (hosts / analytics / CDNs by share of 1.9M May episodes; 61% now on IPv6) — and "CPM made me smile: cost per thousand WHAT? it's unitless."
    @js Livewire data
  -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  03 - PODCAST STANDARDS PROJECT vs 2.0 — and Index hygiene
    @js: "Inside the Podcast Standards Project" — "we're actively trying to bring more creators and people from the broader podcast world into those conversations."
    <b>Dave's framing (gold):</b> "2.0 == fun teenagers. PSP == boring adults." / "2.0 is the mad-scientist laboratory; PSP are the responsible adults that choose which 2.0 initiatives the hosting industry adopts."
    Index hygiene: Dave killing AI-slop + SEO-spam feeds (Vietnamese poker SEO, etc.), producing a "killed feeds report"; @js floating an includeSpam search param. Dave: "I feel very underwater atm."
    Inside the Podcast Standards Project
  -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  04 - APPLE WWDC — VIDEO PODCASTS EVERYWHERE
    Video podcasts coming to Apple TV + the Mac (September), with read-along transcripts + search/seek for video and picture-in-picture. Apple Podcasts logo changed again. Siri AI will NOT come to the EU.
    @js live from WWDC: "celebrate Apple's new strategic partner Google" · the new tvOS Podcasts app is "bare minimum, but an improvement on no video at all" · "I postponed lunch for this?? zzz."
    tvOS 27 / new Podcasts app (9to5Mac)
  -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  05 - AI BUBBLE — FINANCIAL ENGINEERING + LOCAL/EDGE COMPUTE
    <b>Half 1 — the money games (Dave's clips):</b> the financial-engineering tells under the AI capex boom — circular "round-tripping" financing between the labs and their backers; GAAP treatment that auto-inflates the numbers; auto-investing flows propping the valuations.
    Backdrop: Anthropic confidentially filed its S-1 (OpenAI rivalry); Zitron's "rot-com bubble" — hyperscalers with no hypergrowth, "OpenAI/Anthropic should not be allowed to go public."
    [clips queued: ai bubble - 1 round-tripping / - 2 GAAP auto-inflate / - 3 auto-investing]
    <b>Half 2 — LOCAL / EDGE AI (Jensen Huang, Nvidia GTC Taipei keynote):</b> Nvidia's own CEO putting hyperscaler-grade inference on your desk. "An AI supercomputer in your house"; the DGX Station — 768GB, 20 petaflops, "sits by your desk," runs a trillion-parameter model; "NO METER ANXIETY" = local inference with no per-token cloud billing.
    <b>The frame:</b> inside the bubble (Anthropic + Stargate racing to BUILD the datacenters) vs. outside it (Jensen selling the box that turns those datacenters into stranded assets). GPU-as-a-service / local-inference thesis — and the gonzo Jensen color: "raise your lobster in here," water heaters + dryers all connected.
    <b>Clip notes (my Jensen cuts — GTC Taipei keynote, what's in each):</b>
    🎧 ai bubble - 4 — Jensen: 3 revolutionary Windows machines (0:45)
      Jensen pivots laptop → whole line: "Microsoft and NVIDIA is reinventing all of PC. Three revolutionary Windows machines — desktop, laptop and workstations — all 100% Windows compatible, 100% CUDA, 100% NVIDIA AI Tensor Core."
      Epoch claim: "the first completely re-engineered, reinvented line of PCs in 40 years." Holds up the MSI desktop.
    🎧 ai bubble - 5 — Jensen: DGX Station, "no meter anxiety" + lobster (1:21)
      "This agent could run 24/7. METER FREE… you could raise your lobster in here. NO METER ANXIETY." Connected to your whole house — dryer, water cooler, water heater, security. Model ladder: Nemotron 3 → 4 → 5 → 6.
      Spec dump: "a DGX Station for Windows — 768 GIGABYTES of memory, run a TRILLION-parameter model, 20 PETAFLOPS, 8 TB/s — and this sits BY YOUR DESK."
    🎧 ai bubble - 6 — Jensen: "AI supercomputer in your house" + phone analogy (1:11)
      Phone analogy: "20 years ago we had an idea called a phone. The one thing you don't do with it now is make phone calls." → the PC is about to change the same way.
      THE THESIS LINE: "Someday there's actually an AI supercomputer in your house, running all your agents and assistants… just like you have a home theater, stereos, game consoles in your house."
    <b>Tie to the show thesis:</b> the AI bubble and the podcast-measurement mess are the same disease — inflated numbers nobody wants corrected. Real metrics (and local compute) threaten both. (Pairs with topics 01-02.)
  -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  06 - INDUSTRY — AD-SKIPPING, AI LIABILITY, GROWTH
    YouGov: 52% say they skip podcast ads — BUT podcast ads are the LEAST annoying and podcast listeners ACT on them more. Audio-preferrers skew wealthier, millennial, education/self-improvement. US leans video; Denmark 71% audio.
    Locked On at 10 years: 275 daily shows sold as just 5 ad products, 82% daily retention — "podcasting was never a new medium, just a different delivery mechanism."
    German court: Google is LIABLE for its AI Overview summaries (libel). Ties to Inception Point AI "flooding the zone." Goalhanger = UK's #1 fastest-growing company. Podcast Movement tickets now flat $199.
    YouGov US Podcast Ads Report 2026
  -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  07 - QUIPS / TRANSITIONS
    @js: "CPM made me smile — cost per thousand, per thousand WHAT? ambiguity baked into the core metric, it's unitless. Really should be CPMI."
    @js: "Video is without a doubt an inherently humiliating medium."
    @js to @adam: "podcast listeners listen to podcasters, who'da thunk! wish more podcasters expressed an opinion."
    @dave: "2.0 == fun teenagers. PSP == boring adults."
    You, on the Collective: "We will be hated for this. But it will be the truth."
  -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------