Waveform: The MKBHD Podcast - 20 Years, 1000 Episodes: The Man Behind PodQuiz

Episode Date: June 25, 2024

We have another bonus episode! In this one, Andrew sits down and talks with James Carter from PodQuiz who began his popular trivia podcast back in 2005. He just published his 1000th episode so Andrew took the opportunity to pick his brain on how he comes up with his questions and the current state of podcasting.  Links:  PodQuiz Weekly: https://www.podquiz.com/ James Carter: https://www.jfc.org.uk/ Shop the merch: https://shop.mkbhd.com Socials: Waveform: https://twitter.com/WVFRM Waveform: https://www.threads.net/@waveformpodcast Marques: https://www.threads.net/@mkbhd Andrew: https://www.threads.net/@andrew_manganelli David Imel: https://www.threads.net/@davidimel Adam: https://www.threads.net/@parmesanpapi17 Ellis: https://twitter.com/EllisRovin TikTok:  https://www.tiktok.com/@waveformpodcast Join the Discord: https://discord.gg/mkbhd Music by 20syl: https://bit.ly/2S53xlC Waveform is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

At New Balance, we believe if you run, you're a runner. However you choose to do it. Because when you're not worried about doing things the right way, you're free to discover your way. And that's what running's all about. Run your way at NewBalance.com slash running. Two freshly cracked eggs any way you like them. Three strips of naturally smoked bacon and a side of toast.

Only $6 at A&W's in Ontario. Experience A&W's classic breakfast on now. Dine-in only until 11 a.m. Hey, what is up, people of the internet? Welcome back to a bonus episode of the Waveform Podcast. We're your hosts. I'm Marques. I'm Andrew. And this week, Andrew, I got to do an interview last week on the main channel,

and I hear you did an interview with someone who's kind of a celebrity at the studio yeah like a studio favorite um yeah remember the podcast uh it's called pod quiz that we all did on I think I introduced everyone to it on the studio road trip thousand mile road trip the thousand mile road trip and everyone got real into it it got us going pretty good it did so. So James Carter, the host of that, just reached his 1,000th episode of PodQuiz, which is wild. And I decided to reach out to him to see if he'd like to do an interview. And in that process, waiting to hear back, I looked back on how many episodes he's done and how long that's been and was just dumbfounded by it. He started this podcast in 2005. Is this weekly, every week? Weekly.

2005, a thousand episodes because there's only 52 weeks in a year. That's a long time. We've been, we're on, I think this is episode 235 for Waveform and think about how long it feels like we've been doing this. Wow.

Half of my life. This is a lot. Yeah, so he's been doing it for almost 20 years um podcasting started in 2004 so he was right there so so when he agreed to do it i was very excited kind of like your first interview with kobe my first interview the kobe of uh trivia podcasts nice james carter i was very excited for it um he was super cool we talked all about all sorts of things uh so if you don't know about pod quiz it is a trivia podcast it is the trivia podcast in my eyes but because he's been doing it for so long we talked about the early stages of

podcasting we talked about um how he stayed so consistent for 20 years because the podcast format is almost exactly the same since the first episode in 2005. Nailed it right from the start. We planned on him never wanting to post anything on YouTube, which I thought was a really interesting answer. And most importantly, I asked him in this new age of podcasting if he considers Waveform a real podcast. No pressure or anything? No pressure. I was very worried about his answer for that. So

it's very interesting. And one last thing before we jump in, this is my first totally solo interview. So please give me any feedback on what I could improve in. I plan on doing some more in the future. But James is a fantastic guest. Really excited for you all to hear about it. And hopefully you all start listening to the pod quiz soon because it's one of my favorite podcasts. And he's clearly one of the OGs. He is the OG. Yeah, I feel like. Exciting. I'm excited for this one. Cool. Let's jump into it. James, welcome to the show. I'm a huge fan of PodQuiz, so I'm very, very excited for you to join us. Thank you for joining us. Hi, Andrew. Thanks. For those of you who aren't aware of PodQuiz or maybe know the show but not the man behind

it, would you give us a quick introduction of you and PodQuiz? Yeah, sure. So, yeah, I'm James. I'm a software engineer from York in the UK, and I've been running a weekly trivia quiz podcast for nearly 20 years now that's incredible um so yeah i reached out because i've been listening for years and like you said almost 20 years you just hit your thousandth episode which feels so cool i remember like a hundred episodes ago being like wow a thousand coming up that's pretty cool but it's gonna be a while before that and then my wife and i were listening the other day and we're like oh that's like in a in like a month or two now it's it's getting there it did creep up on me

really um i mean like yeah waveform itself is at 230 and it feels like i've been doing this for for a very long time but a thousand just like how did it feel to finally hit that milestone i mean it it definitely felt like a a big thing um it had been obviously it's it's on a schedule so i knew it was coming um but yeah it was like two or three weeks out it was suddenly oh yeah this is this is coming and it was it was just so great to have have all the listeners contacting me with messages of congratulation a lot of them have been listening for for nearly all of them or all of them um yeah lots of people who say you know they were listening to pod quiz before their children were born and they're now listening

to them together you know all that all that sort of stuff it was i was just nice i was just asking around the studio trying to see if there's anyone who worked here that was younger than pod quiz and i think everyone's just a little bit older but um we were pretty close to a couple of them um have you felt like are there any other big milestones in this journey to a thousand that you specifically remember maybe like a hundred or episode 500 episode 500 um i remember we we made a bit of a big deal there yeah we got um lots of of listeners to to ask questions um and even some of the sound effects uh oh yeah if you. If you listen to the quiz, there's a sort of bell sound effect between each round. Okay, yeah.

And for that 500th episode, that was recorded by one of the children of the listener, Alex, who just in a very cute six-year-old voice said, ding, ding. alex who just in a very cute six-year-old voice said ding ding um and then yeah uh alex's dad was in contact again for for the thousandth episode to say that he'd remembered that so yeah yeah i really liked in this thousandth one how you had like you had people doing the covers for things i know you've done stuff like that before you do a phenomenal job with bringing in listeners to doing different things with like guests categories and rounds and stuff like that so it's fun and i'm sure for you seeing that all come down to episode a thousand is like the cool culmination of all of it yeah um do you think we could go back a little bit though because

a thousand episodes means like you said 20 years ago this started and pretty much around when podcasting itself had started not too far off um yeah within a year or so yeah yeah so it was 2005 correct when you started that's right yes the first episode was i think the 25th of february i going to ask if you remember the exact date. So that's awesome. I'd love to know how you kind of thought of the idea of starting this. Obviously, I'm assuming you like trivia beforehand, but what made you think of putting it on the platform of podcasting?

And especially back then when podcasting's a year, less than two years old. Yeah. Well, to be honest, I never been a a real trivia head you know okay i've been in a in a team um a consistent team over years you know and i've never taken it that seriously but i did enjoy it um and um it was listening to the Daily Source Code, Adam Curry's podcast, and one of the first big podcasts, really. And he had a very occasional trivia segment in that.

Okay. And I was just listening to that and thought, well, that's quite close to a pub quiz, which is a thing I enjoy. And would that be something i would want to listen to yeah so that's that's how it started really and so you call that a pub quiz we in the u.s we don't really call them pubs but now that makes sense so is that what sparked the name for pod quiz versus pub quiz that's right yes yeah that's so that's like one of those things that seems pretty obvious when you hear it, but until you hear it, it's a mind-opening experience.

That's cool. Have you mentioned that on the pod itself? I'm not sure I ever have. I don't explicitly remember doing that. Probably something that's… I think there's a slightly um different feel between maybe trivia in north america and a pub quiz in the uk in that but the impression i get is that it's taken very seriously and and you know everyone obeys the rules to the letter and

and all of this whereas in the uk is much more relaxed um people are there to have a chat and a drink mainly and and the the quiz is a is a a little aside and a chance to win some some extra drinks yeah i i've participated in very few of them like you said i've done them they're fun but i don't seek myself out looking for them all the time. But I do listen to PodQuiz hundreds of episodes at this point. So I don't know. I've never found them too, too intense, but maybe I'm just doing the more low key ones and not the weekly, extremely competitive ones. Back when you started PodQuiz and you said you were listening to some early podcasts, do you remember kind of, or can you explain to us, I'm sure a lot of our audience were not listening to stuff back then but what

was the podcast landscape kind of like and what had you interested in it that made you think you want wanted to push the platform with your own stuff it was it was a very sort of amateur affair um back in those days um there were no professional podcasts at all um and uh certainly no sort of corporations producing podcasts um so i suppose the reason i got into it is i was i was a bit interested in the technology of it the delivery of audio via via rss um and i got got it got me into it in the first place um and then i just the early the early podcasts were mostly just couples and groups of friends just sitting around having a chat um and um and i i just enjoyed the informal nature of it people would build up a small audience but it would be be, they'd all be very involved. It was very much a community. You used to all talk inside of the comments, and the way that they created videos just seemed like this very tight-knit group of people watching videos and watching other videos and then commenting on all of them. And there is kind of like a magic behind that small-knit community of stuff like that.

Absolutely. I can totally see, and I kind of wish I got to experience that back then because it sounds like a lot of fun. experience that uh back then because it sounds like a lot of fun and i'm sure in these days every company or person is trying to create that next niche magical moment that feels like it absolutely but thing is success kind of ruins it to a degree sure and i'd love to talk about that later and see what your thoughts on podcasting is in today in comparison to back there. But I'd like to like, PodQuest to me feels, I'm going to hype this up a little bit here because I truly love the show and I really like want you to know how much I appreciate it. But I kind of describe it when I'm telling friends about it is like,

it's almost magic in this way that it can take a long car trip or no one likes driving for more than an hour. And when I take a longer car trip like that, turning on PodQuiz feels like it can just melt away that time of what the boring sitting on a highway for hours on end that I get so excited knowing that, hey, my wife and I are driving to X place. That is four pod quizzes away. And by the time I get there, it was like, I kind of wish we got stuck in traffic and we could do one more

because maybe we didn't do very well on the last one. And what I was most surprised about, and you think a thousand episodes, you find your flow and you've created that perfect show and time and everything. But I went back and listened to the first episode and it is almost exactly the same to the T in terms of timing of everything. It's 20 questions. It's four categories. It's music first round. Other than you sort of explaining the rules more so in episode one because it's brand new you're it's almost exactly the same how did you how did you come up with something that worked so well so long ago and has have been so consistent over that long sorry

that's a lot of questions in one but i think well i think there's quite a lot of dumb luck. There always is. But I think part of it was that it does very closely follow the format of the pub quiz or the pub trivia down to normally it's four rounds and that sort of thing. Normally there's a break in the middle. So that was a lot of it. I think it has developed a little bit over the years uh those those first episodes were quite a bit longer just because there were bigger gaps i was a bit slower but the basic format hasn't changed just because i've not felt it needed to really no i mean it's great. Did you always know, and maybe it's different with pub quizzes in the UK,

but is it always music rounds and stuff out there, or is that something you consciously decided, like you thought was a really fun way to start an episode off? That is, again, it's a fairly normal structure, even down to it being the first round very often. It's either a picture quiz, which doesn't work so well as an audio podcast, or music. Okay, interesting. Yeah, the couple I've been to here in the US, we don't have those.

And the music category is my favorite of every episode. The music category is my favorite of every episode. Sometimes it can make me be a little bitter towards the rest of the episode if I do really poorly off the start. I'll be like, I feel like we've started this one bad already. Maybe I should just skip to the next, but I'll always push through it. But I guess I love music and you do a great job. And I think it's a really fun way to start it, each episode. Yeah, I think the issue with music is that it divides people by generation very often. So the feedback I'll get is, oh no, you did all music from the 2010s.

I got nothing. I'll never be able to do that. And very occasionally I'll do classical music, and obviously there's a lot of people that don't like that, but I, yes, it's just trying to get a balance over the course of, of many episodes, I think. For sure. But I think at the same time, some of the, like some episodes, I don't remember the specific episode, but I remember trips in which we were playing. And one of them was, it was me, my wife, and my mom. We were road tripping up to see my sister. And I remember it specifically because it was the first time

between the three of us that we'd gotten all 20 questions, right? And we were really proud of it. And it kind of made the rest of the trip. But I think a reason of that is it was probably like a connection or something where there were a lot of different eras of music. And because of two generations working on it at the same time we figured it all out and when you get the first five right you're like okay we're rolling we can we can do the rest of it you got your sights set on that 20 exactly yeah do you get a lot of people reaching out to you being like

i hit 20 this time or is that a big accomplishment yes yes i do um and equally i get i get people saying i've been doing pod quiz for 10 years and i've never managed to get 20 out of 20 that's awesome i do encourage people to to to sort of feedback the scores um and so this um you'll see a small community of people on the website who who post scores each week, which I find really useful just as a feedback mechanism. So, yeah. 20 out of 20 is an achievement, though. It's not something that people get every week, certainly. That's awesome. episodes you have you have episodes that are probably from pre-2010 and there are people from

2020 plus still commenting on some of those putting down answers and stuff like that and i thought that i thought that was really really cool um i mean i love your website it's very like web 1.0 and just so easy to go back and see everything yes um by my uh front end web development skills are are 20th century vintage and that uh that definitely shows but i love it but yes i i'm amazed the number of people who will who will get in contact and said say i discovered pod quiz a couple of months ago and now i've listened to them all you know just listening to a dozen a day which i i couldn't put up with my own voice for that long at all so i don't know how they do it that's that's a brings up an interesting question is when you first started this and you were

editing and listen like i've done it when we started waveform um i kind of pitched it to marquez and i had to be the one i was was editing everything. He's used to his voice. I am not used to my voice. And that is a strange thing to hear for the first time. And not just the first time, maybe the first 100 times. Absolutely, yeah. So doing that off... I think everyone hates their own voice, don't they?

Yeah, because it's so different. And you're just like, oh, is that how I talk? And did you get to... Do you think you got to a certain episode where you're like, okay, I've listened to myself enough. Now did you get to, do you think you got to a certain episode where you're like, okay, I've listened to myself enough now, I'm used to it? I think so.

I don't think it took all that long, really. But yeah, I'm also told by my partner that I have a pod quiz voice. It's a fantastic voice. It's different from my normal speaking voice. I don't know what that means, but apparently it's softer's uh it's uh softer spoken than i normally am and i suppose subconsciously i'm i'm just trying to make it

as understandable to a wider range of people as possible you know um people do struggle a bit sometimes with my my accent and i try and turn it down as much as possible i mean that's going to happen with any accent from when you have people around the world listening to it. I mean, I think the voice is fantastic. I think it is a big part of the show itself. I hope there's some people who come and listen to this episode because we are video and are like, I finally got to see who the man behind Podquiz is and the voices.

If this voice is the same as your PodQuiz, it sounds very similar now. So I don't know if this is your speaking voice or you've got the PodQuiz voice on right now. I don't think, I think it's my normal speaking voice. But, you know, I find it difficult to judge. But yes, she tells me there's the PodQuiz voice. You mentioned, and maybe this has to do with the way you pronounce things and your voice on there,

but you said earlier episodes were quite a bit longer and you do feel like it's changed a bit. Are there any specific things you remember? I know we've said the format has stayed the same, but maybe the way you cut things together so it's quicker, maybe the way you said pronouncing things, maybe you have feedback from that. Are there any big changes you've seen that you feel like happened despite us you know seeing 20 years of 20 questions i mean i've definitely got more proficient i said over the years that that first episode i think i spent about eight hours recording and editing it recording it took it took a ridiculously long time you know i'm down to to an hour and a half or two hours to really so it's uh yeah um so that's

that that's a big thing i i think certainly now i make a lot more effort to make it international than i did when i started because when i started know, I didn't have a particular audience in mind. I was just playing it to friends. I mean, it took a long time to get up to 100 listeners, you know. And so I wasn't thinking about the international element of it at all. So that's certainly changed over the years. of it at all um so that's that's certainly changed over the years but um it hasn't changed a huge amount though i mean it's it it kind of works as it is yeah i think people like the consistency um but i think people like that they can listen to a five-year-old episode or a 10-year-old episode

and and not have to learn new rules or anything like that. For sure. I mean, yeah, it's always just like small changes can make things slowly better over time. But I think consistency definitely is key. And like, yeah, going back, you definitely have a show where the back catalog is almost sometimes just as important as the new ones because people love finding podcasts and going through a back, I mean, I'm one like that. I probably found around like episode 800

and then just kept going backwards through the Spotify library until it cut off. I forget where it's cut off on Spotify, but now I've had to dig into the website to listen to previous episodes. When you were starting out, so you said you were originally sending it to friends um i know even in today's world podcast discoverability isn't really the greatest thing um back then so did you send it to friends and it's just friends of friends and word of mouth started getting out or did you make any more deliberate pushes towards uh trying to grow an audience or was it always just more of a a hobby that you were doing and if it goes that's awesome it's always been a hobby yeah absolutely

um so i've never i've never spent a huge amount of effort on on growing an audience um early on i did um spend a little bit of effort appearing on other people's podcasts i think that's that's a really good way in both directions actually having having other podcasters appear on your podcast is is a good way of intermingling the audiences a bit so i definitely did a lot of that in the early years but more recently you know there's plenty of people listening yeah i love my listeners they're great it's a really great community i don't feel the need for it to to grow i think it does gradually over time i've not had any big pushes to do it in recent years now that's awesome and also a really cool that, that doing something just because you love

it is always the best way to keep pursuing through making some form of content. Because if you are just pushing for just the audio or just the listeners or the engagement or the growth, that's when burnout happens. And I think you're a testament to someone who hasn't hit burnout. I, maybe that's me assuming, but 1,000 episodes is extremely impressive. Thank you. And I don't feel burnt out yet. Although people have been saying, you know, I'm looking forward to the 2,000th episode.

And I'm thinking, well, I'll be 70 then. That seems like it might be a stretch right now no it's it's just good fun I enjoy doing it and that's why I do it that's I like how you're saying it might be a stretch not that is a stretch and that is a very very uh difficult thing to hit so that that's awesome I look forward to as as far as you're willing to go before hitting burnout whatever episode that may be I think something you do extremely well is just the hit. So that's awesome. I look forward to as far as you're willing to go before hitting burnout, whatever episode that may be. I think something you do extremely well is just the variety of difficulty you have in all of your different questions. It's when I'm listening and a category

happens or a round happens, it feels like there's always one that I have a shot at getting at least a guess in, even if I know nothing about the category. And if I know a lot about the category, there's always one where I'm really scratching my head. How long or is there anything you specifically do to try and have variables for the difficulties of the questions? I do think about it, yes. I always think for each round, there should be at least one question that almost everyone will be able to answer. That's usually, but not always, the first question in the round. Oh, really? Okay. And similarly, I want to have at least one question in a round

where I think you really need to know your stuff on the subject in order to be able to answer it. But because too far either way is no fun for anybody. For sure. Trying to have that balance across each round is what I try and do. But don't always get it right. We're going to take a quick break, and when we come back, we're going to see how James develops all of his different categories.

Be right back. we're back at New Balance we believe if you run you're a runner however you choose to do it because when you're not worried about doing things the right way you're not worried about doing things the right way, you're free to discover your way. And that's what running's all about.

Run your way at NewBalance.com slash running. You know what's great about ambition? You can't see it. Some things look ambitious, but looks can be deceiving. For example, a runner could be training for a marathon, or they could be late for the bus. You never know. Ambition is on the inside.

So that road trip bucket list? Get after it. Drive your ambition. Mitsubishi Motors. Not sure what to get the young people on your list? The latest phone? Sneakers? Video games? Get the one thing they need now more than ever. Give their feelings

a place to go. When you donate to Kids Help Phone, you're giving the young people in your life and across the country access to free, 24-7, judgment-free support. Because at the end of the day, it's their thoughts that count. Donate at kidshelpphone.ca, and together, we can give their feelings a place to go. So when you're thinking of a category, are they things you're fairly knowledgeable about? Or are you going out and looking for maybe something happened just within the last month that you think is interesting and that's how you select a category um i find i find writing questions for

things i know about harder than writing for questions things i don't because if you know something about a subject it's i think it's it's much more difficult to assess how difficult the questions are um because they all seem relatively easy um but um so yes generally i don't i don't know a great deal i mean i couldn't possibly have a great deal about everything I've asked, all the 20,000 plus questions I've asked over the years. But, yeah, no, it's usually it's just a case of the difficult thing I find is coming up with the topic, not coming up with questions. Because I don't have a perfect record, but I try to avoid repeating myself um which again is is becoming more and more challenging um but once i've got once i've got a topic um then then finding questions is

just usually a case of hitting wikipedia yeah kind of like the wikipedia game you start at the topic and then you find links that are associated with it and go through there. Yeah. That's awesome. In terms of sort of current affairs, I try to avoid that. Mm-hmm. Because, again, because people go back 10 years to listen to old episodes and stuff that's current affairs now will be really obscure trivia 10 years time um so again it's it's difficult to completely avoid that um but i i try to where possible well one really interesting way you've done it and i i wanted to throw a couple um like categories that you've created that i think are

really um creative uh at you is one you did did a segment called Old News, which is where you play a news segment. I know I'm just saying this for you, but our audience might not know. Playing a news segment that has some sort of piece of news and you have to guess approximately the time it happened in. But I think what's so interesting about that is rather being when did X event happen as just the question, you have this more context to maybe guess something like that because if you don't know the very simple question, maybe you could figure it out. So me being a production person,

sometimes I'm like, well, that microphone definitely is like pre-1990 or something like that. So how do you come up with more fun ways of categories rather than just a very black and white question i'm not sure i've got a good answer no i can list off a couple of my other favorites and maybe that would help or maybe you can if you remember how you came up with those specific rounds um for certainly for well for the old news um it was it originally i thought i would

just ask questions. It's more like a history round of asking questions about specific events. And then in the course of researching that, I ended up on YouTube watching an old newsreel. I thought, well, hang on, that's that's quite interesting in itself. And so I thought I'll pick that up and actually use the audio clip instead yeah and it helps because if you don't know a specific event maybe in that clip they mention a president or a prime minister or they mention something else that happens that you do know about so it gives us as the listeners way more opportunities which is

so much more fun or you can recognize the speaker you can say oh that's walter cronkite so it'll be in a certain time period or whatever yeah yeah that's what's so fun i also really enjoy um like who am i is rather than just who is this person that's x it's five different questions with varying levels of difficulty to get to somebody is that something that's um popular in in pub quizzes or is that something you developed no that's um that's something i came up with i'm just making sure that's true because a lot of a lot of these rounds have been listener suggestions oh cool over the years um but i think that was that was one and again it was sort of one of those things where I was, you know, I often ask questions about famous people.

And if it's just a single question about somebody, you can't really sort of dig into the details of that person. And it's difficult to vary the difficulty a bit. Whereas that sort of structured round where you get more and more clues, they're getting more and more obvious over the course of the round. you get more and more clues they're getting more and more obvious over the course of the round it allows people who who really know about that person to get really quickly and to and to feel like they they've cracked the code as it were there's a there's a really good feeling if you actually do make the guess i think it's happened once which was a total uh or at least since i've been playing one time on like the date and where they were born just total guess and then like the next question you're like wait I think I'm still on the right track and then you get to the end you're like okay cool that was very lucky but so much more fun um and then my

other favorite category I always love this one is natural world where you play animal sounds and rather than guess the exact species it's how many legs do they have which is brilliant and so much fun yes i've done similar rounds with uh with um vehicles of various sorts yes yeah how many wheels they've done um which um part of that is because it's actually very difficult if you play the sound of an animal to say what species is it. There's a large number of different animals that sound alike. And also, it's just a bit of fun, I think. Yeah, it's fun.

And even like you get to guess then, right? There's only probably so many wheels or so many legs or a lot of times there are multiples of two. So you have somewhat of a guess it's like multiple choice but not quite multiple choice uh that's one of the animals one is my favorite i like a lot of the categories where you play sounds and guess things um maybe that's just me like to listening to stuff like that uh do you have any particular like category favorites that you've come up with or topics i don't think i've got specific topics i do like my favorite i think uh the quickfire rounds it's it's a category of things um so the

questions um it might be like for example um directors first films or something like that so it's just a list of the questions are just a list of directors and you have to name their first films um and maybe that's not the best example but no i i feel i can get quite creative about that um and also it's quite easy that's um i know you said music so music rounds are my favorite um and i know you said that because a pub quiz generally starts with that. But have you you've come up with I'm assuming some of these or maybe audience ones, all these different ways you play the music round. So whether it's what year they're out, maybe a connection. Some of the connections are so much fun and feels like you're solving like a detective case on them i think one was all different it was like a king queen prince between all the names of everything and finding that one out was awesome um i personally love terrible twins because hearing when two of them play at the same that i believe that's mass same artist two songs at the same time. That's right. It's really easy to pinpoint one if you recognize it. But even though if you know the band to a T,

guessing the second one when you already are hearing one in your brain is something that's so hard to explain. So that's why I love it so much. But are there any favorite music rounds you have? Or how did you come up with some of these ideas? For a lot a lot of them is just trying to find a way of making it different because because there's a music round every week for sure yeah i feel it would just get boring um so um yeah i do i do try and come up with new rounds there's a there's new one coming actually really again it was a listener suggestion um in a couple of weeks time i think we're going to have Yeah, I do try and come up with new rounds. There's a new one coming, actually.

Really? Again, it was a listener suggestion. In a couple of weeks' time, I think we're going to have a round where the vocal's been removed. And you have to guess just from the music. But I think my favorite music round is a very, very occasional one I do called La Di Da. Okay. is a very very occasional one i do called la di da okay um which uh is just me trying to reproduce a song really badly with no instruments so just sort of humming and and badly beatboxing and all that sort of stuff i remember some did you all great fun to do did you also do one of i thought it was a recorder for christ music? I've done a tin whistle.

Tin whistle, okay. And I've done a, I've lost it. I used to have a stylophone. Okay. Which is a very simple synthesizer thing that I used to use as well. But yeah, they take a surprising amount of effort to do those ones. I'm sure. You do them occasionally, but yes.

Are you a musical person or is this coming from you're really just learning just this for these rounds? I am a slightly musical person. I play guitar badly. You played it in the thousandth episode, right? I did, yes. Yes. But generally speaking, when I do these sort of rounds where it's me performing a thing i i don't i don't try too hard okay um because because i mean if it was perfect

then it would be too easy but also it's i think i think it's just more fun if i do it badly um so i put i put a a strictly defined amount of effort into each one that's awesome um can we talk a little bit more about uh you you mentioned it a little bit but how you we're we're tech people here we're produced production people here we love cameras and audio equipment everything can we talk about how you produce pod quiz sure yeah when uh i mean i have to ask right now what is your setup like do you know the name microphone and everything just for car yeah uh okay about see that there so the road enter usb so fairly standard podcasting microphone um and yeah i just record in here no particular studio or anything um

and i've always just used audacity audacity nothing nothing more complex than that that's i mean that's a extremely efficient setup uh our what yeah sorry our producer adam guessed that before he's like i bet he uses audacity so he's very excited that he guessed that correctly um do you remember what you started with um in 2005 i don't remember actually it was a shaw microphone or something but i don't i don't remember um but it's the same i started with audacity 1.2 or whatever it was back then. And I've just kept up over the years, always slightly dreading the next update.

So there's a different set of bugs to learn. Yeah, we know that all too. Marques is always dreading any Mac OS updates when we're just in our workflow really well. You said it used to take about eight hours and you're down to about an hour and a half is that um that's just the full recording how long if you had to give an approximate amount of time from starting your questions to publishing the final episode what would you give it i think i put about eight hours a week in in total um so the research is is the majority of the time really but i just spread that out through the week you know just spend half an

hour here an hour there so um the the sort of recording and editing is the one block of time that i do but probably about eight hours a week cool so yeah so you have recording and editing pretty quickly into a very efficient timeline at this point yeah that's right yeah yeah i guess usually in with about five minutes to spare before it's due to go oh really just right up to the the published it yeah amazing right up to the wire yes that's that's kind of awesome and now i've i kind of like usually listen in like three to four episodes so i'm not i'm not the person who's listening right as it comes out but i feel like i need to catch one now right as it comes out knowing that 10 minutes

before you might have still been putting the finishing touches on it that's that's a fun little that's that's that's That's fairly normal, yes. And are you, you're recording, I'm assuming with that, you're recording each episode each week, you're not batch recording episodes? I'll batch record if I've got a reason to, if I'm going away for vacation or whatever. But generally I don't, partially because I'm too lazy to. Sure. But also because I like getting the sort of immediate feedback from listeners and people want messages read for birthdays and that sort of thing. Oh, yeah.

And if I back up too many recordings, then I'm too late for people for that. Yeah, it feels out of whack sort of we're um it's cool to hear that because we are here we are very week to week uh studio i mean marquez usually we know our schedules sunday sunday night and then we do everything for that week whether that's a couple videos across all our different platforms. And people think that's wild because there's a lot of different people on YouTube doing two to three week, one plus month it takes for a video. But we just like to know, do what we're talking about right then, get it into a video as fast as possible and publish it while still obviously keeping production quality up. But I don't think there's a lot of people out there doing it this quickly.

And I think there is something really cool about the immediate audience feedback from that and being able to make it applicable next. Yeah, that's awesome. Do you mind, and if you don't feel comfortable answering any of these questions, that's totally fine. But in my mind, PodQuiz is like the trivia podcast that every time I search on reddit about

any other ones the top answer is always pod quiz there's nobody ever making an argument against it and i've tried other ones and maybe because of poor uh discoverability in terms of podcasts i haven't found any other good ones but i found pod quiz and i think it's the best do you have like an approximate amount of listeners that you know of it's it's really difficult yeah um because um i can i can tell you the number of downloads yeah which is which is about about 40 000 40 something like that incredible um but that's that's only part of the story because it gets aggregated um you know spotify and whatever else they'll serve it off their servers it doesn't that doesn't uh count towards the numbers as it were um one uh one delivery mechanism i i was really chuffed about when i heard was that a listener emailed me to say that he really enjoyed the quizzes that he got on audio cassette from a service who recorded podcasts onto audio cassette to send out services for the blind. Oh, wow.

Okay. That was really cool. That's fascinating and sorry i i'm stuck on audio cassette because i'm trying to think about even 2005 like we're well past cds at that point absolutely yeah yeah wow okay that's really i need to look into what some of these services do you happen to know what the service was called or i can't remember. It was many, many years ago, but it did make me chuckle at the time.

We'll try and figure that out and post it when we edit this, if possible. I don't know if our research will be good enough for that, but that's really awesome. Podcasting metrics seem to be really tough um in terms of figuring stuff out i mean even was it like a year ago that apple stopped auto downloading if you didn't listen so like they change all the time that wasn't it yeah i think so um do you have and i guess you kind of answered this but an approximate total number of like downloads you know for pod quiz lifetime or has metrics changed in so many different ways well metrics certainly have changed but also i've just not kept not kept it good

records to be honest um i i i do remember being very excited that the first the first week in episode got 100 downloads yeah um which was i think more than a year after i started um so that that that was a a little bit of a milestone that i remember but actually to be honest i only keep a few weeks worth of logs just to see what it's not yeah yeah um but you know because it's a hobby um the actual numbers don't really matter so much. I'm not having to sort of report these to a sponsor or something. So it doesn't affect me. I'm lucky.

I mean, yeah, that's amazing. And that's the reason I just have to ask why you've never looked for a more typical YouTube ad. Sorry, not YouTube, but like podcast, uh, ad integration or anything. You've never looked for any of that and probably don't plan on it just because I have, you know, I've,

I've got a day job that, uh, that pays me more than enough to, to live off. Um, and I just think that if I took pod quiz in that direction, it would become a job and not a hobby. And,

and I don't think I'd enjoy it as much. I think that's super respectable. And I think there are a lot of, I've, I've talked to people on YouTube as well who have done stuff like that. And I think that's, what's kept their channel like very pure and fun for them. Um,

which I think is super, super awesome. We're going to take one more quick ad break. And when we get back, we're going to see James's final thoughts on the current landscape of podcasting. Support for the show today comes from NetSuite. Anxious about where the economy is headed?

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can help you get there. All you need to do is make a new deposit before December 31st, 2024 to pay $0 in management fees on net new deposits until the end of 2025. Lower fees means you can keep more of your money I'd love to jump in just quickly, kind of like our last thing here is you've experienced now podcasting over 20 years and i think it's safe to say that it's changed very much and some of that change maybe doesn't really feel so much like the original podcasting anymore i think our channel specifically is far far different from what podcasting uh used to be i'd love to ask what your thoughts are on the

landscape today um and i'm totally okay with you using waveform as um if you think we are not a podcast or more of a tv show or a show online um i will take no offense to it um but i'd love to hear your thoughts on it it It's absolutely a podcast. Okay. I mean, it's... That makes me feel very good. I'm not sure that... It's just the asynchronous delivery

is what makes it a podcast in my mind, whether it's video or audio or whatever, I don't think makes a difference at all. I think there is a bit of a difference potentially in how that's consumed and certainly a difference in terms of how that's produced i think if i were to make pod quiz a video podcast which i wouldn't but that that recording time of an hour and a half would at least double and probably more. But yeah, absolutely, it still counts. Appreciate that.

When we were first pitching this, I do remember specifically Marques and I made the conscious agreement to do audio first because we knew either way we would be releasing an audio format and being video people it's very easy to just reference something on screen so we felt like we needed to learn how to be able to talk about things that people can't see and while I still don't think we're the best at it we did spend two years trying that before we moved to video so I'm happy we did that it was a it was fun and it's really cool to be able to just use audio sometimes whether it's just like you're not feeling the best that day and you don't want to be on camera for tons of people to see yeah i do feel i have the ideal face for radio yeah no i know you have an incredible voice for radio you would be fantastic

on video have you ever thought i know you said not a video for pod quiz but maybe like the audio with like a video animation playing over it like a waveform animation that that would be possible certainly um and it certainly looks like um um google would very much like me to do that in the way they're they're pushing uh they're retiring um the podcast app and wanting people to to get everything to youtube music um i've i'm reluctant to do that um and the the reason i'm reluctant is because it feels like giving up ownership a little bit. Okay. At the moment, everything Podquiz is I host myself. Okay.

No other services involved at all. And I quite like it that way. Whereas, you know, as soon as it's on YouTube or any other service for that matter, it's, you know, as soon as it's on YouTube or any other service for that matter, it's, you know, you retain the rights. It still feels like you've given up a bit of control. Sure. I mean, we're here wondering if OpenAI is just scraping every episode we have because it's on YouTube. And I know it should be. I'm sure that's true.

Exactly. So, yeah, that's really interesting. I was going to say, or I was going to ask you what your thoughts were on podcasting discoverability. I've mentioned it a couple of times and I don't think it's the best ever, but I'm assuming you haven't dug that deep into it with it being more hobby focused and you've had your loyal listeners for a while. I feel like word of mouth is the best way that podcasts still seem to get around unless you do go the YouTube route because YouTube is obviously a search engine.

Yeah, well, it's an algorithm, Snap. So, again, yeah. Yes, you're subject to that algorithm, but that algorithm can work very well for you potentially. So, absolutely, yeah. I mean, back in the day, to that algorithm but that algorithm can work very well for you potentially so absolutely yeah um i mean back in the day discoverability for for podcasts was through podcast directories really and i mean they still exist but it it relies on people sort of actively seeking them out and i don't and that worked in the early days when when you know you

were expected your audience to have a certain level of technical proficiency to do all that sort of stuff i mean to download a podcast in the first place that itunes didn't support it you know you had to install a special piece of software yourself and manage copying it to your mp3 player so um back in those days just having a directory online worked really well but yes i don't i don't feel it works so much anymore and i i don't i don't know what the what the solutions are i'm not necessarily convinced that um for everyone a service like youtube is or at least i'd much prefer it if there was a more sort of open source oh i of uh of sharing these things i totally agree uh it it works and maybe it's the best but that

does not mean that it is the ideal situation by any means um all right i think uh i'd love to just last question pretty much is a thousand episodes in. You mentioned before that people were wishing you good luck to your 2000th. Do you have, I mean, future of PodQuiz? Are there any other milestones you're specifically looking forward to or any special ideas coming up that we should all be excited about or that you're excited about? I think it's it to a certain extent it's keeping on keeping on um i don't have any particular milestones although the geek in me will look forward to episode 1024 just because we're hitting 10 bits awesome um but yes i've i've got a couple of ideas for new rounds and that sort of stuff coming. But there's no big revolution.

Again, it's the consistency. And I think people take comfort in that. For sure. I'm not planning any big changes. Cool. That's awesome. I do have one more question, and it's something that we ask all of our guests on Waveform. Do you know how fast you can type the alphabet?

I don't, but I am a terrible typist no not be very fast would you mind if we tested you on the show you can okay can i um i'm gonna send you a link um i think i can send it just right here in riverside do you know like top, the reasonably priced car leaderboard they have? Yes. So we do this, all of our guests, it's just this website that's just how fast you can type the alphabet. We give everyone three tries and we have kind of a leaderboard of everyone that's been on here. Okay, so what do I, so I just go ahead and start, do I? Yeah, so the way it works is once you press A, it'll start. You don't have to press enter. And

if you miss a letter, it's just don't have to press enter and if you miss a letter it's just going to pause where that is so that it should follow along in the abcd right above that um and then we just say three tries and we'll put your best score as the final okay what's the slowest uh it's like almost 10 seconds i also being a good typist i don't know how much it helps here because nobody types the alphabet A to Z like ever. It's very hard. That's true. Yeah.

Okay. Here we go then. 6.7 something. You're definitely in the middle. I don't know if I have the leaderboard on me right now but oh here 6.7 you're like dead center pretty much with that okay i'll give it another go then yeah That was slower.

That happens a lot, yeah. Do you want to give it one more try? One last go, but... Yeah, I'll give it one more go. Sure. yeah that was also slow okay so 6.7 you're right um between i don't know if you know who colin and samir are or simone yurtz she's the like makes all the different robots on youtube yeah i do yes right between those two cool james thank you so much for joining us. Personally, this was an absolute blast for me. And I know Adam's a big fan also.

We're very thankful for you joining the show. For any of our listeners, where can they find you? Any other projects you're working on that you'd like to shout out? Well, thanks very much for having me. I've really enjoyed it. Yes, you can find Podquiz atquiz.com um and all the normal places you find podcasts um as for other projects if you're interested in computers and movies i have a website called starring the computer.com which is like imdb but for computers and films it's

awesome we took a look at it and it's really cool. I really liked it. I was just asking people around the office, like, name a movie. I'll name the computers that are in it. But I appreciate that you show all the photos and exactly what they are. It's an awesome website. Cool.

Cool. Congratulations on 1,000 again and can't wait to see what else you do. Thanks very much. All right, that was it. I thought it was a great interview. He was, he's just like the purest podcaster I feel like I've ever seen. It's a good word.

He does it. Does it for the love of the game, I think is what you were saying. I'm so glad we're a real podcast. Yeah, I'm very glad that he considers us a real podcast. That's a badge of honor. But yeah, thanks for joining for another bonus episode. Oh, fun fact. In next episode, we asked him to create the trivia questions

for our regular episode. Okay. I'm so happy he agreed to do it because I thought, you know, you make 20 trivia questions a week for 20 years. You probably don't want to add two more to it, but he was kind enough to do it for us. So next episode, we will be getting trivia questions

from the Trivia Master himself. Yeah, that could be about anything. I did ask Tech Relayed. Okay. but that still could be about pretty much anything that's a wide range okay I'm excited for that it also just occurred to me I don't know if he included the answers so I might have to look this up oh I'll leave that to you I won't I obviously don't know the questions either but yeah well hopefully everyone's subscribed and you'll see if we know what the answers are on Friday. In a couple of days. In a couple of days.

See you then. Waveform is produced by Adam Molina and Ellis Roven. We're partnered with the Vox Media Podcast Network and our intro outro music was created by Bane Silver. Thank you.