The 90th Block: Believe nothing of what you hear, and only half of what you see

As the saying goes, so, let's put half of it to practice

Jan 23

A couple of weeks ago…

Bloomberg published an article that said that podcasting hasn’t produced a new hit in years. As someone who worked in the audio medium for years, it caught my eye, but ultimately the story did not make it to that week’s edition of this newsletter.

This week, however, I saw a different story by Axios, about American TV networks’ attempts to overhaul TV viewership measurement amid a surge in streaming—I thought, there’s a trend here, isn’t it? And I also thought that sorted out the line-up of this week’s issue. But! In came several more stories about the podcasting ecosystem, and on the same day this newsletter was going out to your inboxes, I decided to overhaul the curation direction.

I share this process because I think some of you might find it interesting, as it feels very much like producing a current affairs show, which I know some of you do.

So now, here’s a selection of those top stories on my radar, a few personal recommendations, and the chart of the week.

Podcasting hasn’t produced a new hit in years ($)

“The average podcast in the top 10 is more than seven years old,” writes Lucas Shaw for Bloomberg:

It’s hard for new shows to find an audience. Every new show has a smaller audience than its predecessors. This is not specific to Spotify. Executives at studios large and small echoed the sentiment. While the overall audience for podcasting expands, the audience for individual new shows is shrinking across the board.

What the Joe Rogan podcast controversy says about the online misinformation ecosystem

One of those more-than-a-decade-old shows is, of course, The Joe Rogan Experience. Yet, an open letter urging Spotify to crack down on COVID-19 misinformation has gained the signatures of more than a thousand doctors, scientists and health professionals spurred by growing concerns over anti-vaccine rhetoric on the audio app’s hit podcast, writes Shannon Bond for NPR:

“Wherever you have users generating content, you’re going to have all of the same content moderation issues and controversies that you have in any other space,” said Evelyn Douek, a research fellow at Columbia University’s Knight First Amendment Institute.
So why haven’t podcasts gotten the same kind of attention as social networks?

I mean, I’ve written about it several times in this newsletter, such as on The 41st Block.

The Starting Block

The 41st Block: Listen, listen, listen...

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How secure are journalists’ favourite transcription tools?

Of course, one of the possible solutions to audio moderation is transcription—so that the transcript instead gets screened using already-available tools used to flag misinformation in text and images.

Dr Martin Shelton and Yael Grauer write for Freedom of the Press Foundation about the five most-used transcription services, and how much they do to protect your data, recordings and transcriptions:

Even if you’re OK with people inside the company, or those who are contracting for the company, accessing your data, you may feel differently about third party requests for data. Unfortunately none of the five services we looked at offer a transparency report, so there’s no way to know how frequently they receive or disclose user data responsive to law enforcement requests.

What I read, watch and listen to…

I’m reading Fact check: How do I spot a deep fake? a great guide by Julia Bayer and Ruben Bouwmeester for DW. Then, sharpen your senses at an interactive site also by the same co-authors, where you can test your own verification skills.
I’m watching Dopesick, based on Beth Marcy’s 2018 nonfiction book about the oxycodone addiction crisis created by Purdue Pharma.
I’m listening to Shattering Gleam, a podcast about music and gender hosted by music critic and author Sasha Geffen. The first episode is about Prince.

Chart of the week

After almost a year living in Canada, I believe this chart should be in the Welcome to Canada handbook by the IRCC. Instead, I got a PDF of the yellow pages (and a whole section about the queen and her family).

The Starting Block is a weekly collection of notes on science and society with an emphasis on data, democracy, and disinformation. Read the archives. Find me on Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn. Send podcast recommendations, questions, corrections, and suggestions to tinacarmillia@substack.com.