Podcasts
 

http://www.tfproject.org/podcast1.mp3

Gotta start somewhere.



Do podcasts interest anyone? Does anyone here listen to them and subscribe to them? What kind of entertainment/information do you expect to get from them? If you don't listen to them, are you open to the possibility of checking one out?

I'm always looking to expand the reach of the TFP. Naturally, since we've covered the realm of internet discussion, I am looking to spill over into audio, visual and spacial coverage. A podcast is like a "radio show" that can be distributed over the internet and listened to on one's own time. It's named "podcast" because you can even upload it to your MP3 player and listen to it in that manner.

Ideas? Thoughts?

I've never listened to a podcast in my life.

I have no desire to ever listen to one.

Thoughts: Awesome idea. I'd definately subscribe. I'd also like to contribute.

Ideas: Picking a very popular thread and allowing a few members active in the thread to submit breif audio discussion points. I'd be all over that. The music idea is brilliant, and I'll be sure to send you some mp3s of mine.

Actually, music would work well. I can think of at least 5 musicians here of the top of my head. A music podcast would also eliminate the need for a whole panel discussion.

Interviews with the musicians could be a possibility.

this is the 1st podcast i will listen to and hopefully not the last if they can stay interesting and constant. i think it's a great idea. i could listen to TFP while i do my work. haha.

edit: from what I can tell, you need to turn up your volume on your mic and try to reduce the noise. it was very scratchy.

also: this could be a great way to introduce some new content or options in the future.

i hope we see more of this!

I listen to my stiletto basically everyday at work, I would listen to this if it ended up being pretty interesting.

me too and me neither :D

damn geezers



=p =p

Heh, I'm not interested in podcasts but I hope any attempts to spread the TFP are sucessful.

I like the idea. Who knows, one of these days we might have a TFP radio station. :)

My bandwidth constraints would mean I'd have to download them at work and then take them home. I'd definitely check it out if it were kept fresh and interesting.

Depends on the subject matter -

there are a few podcasts that i do listen to at various times...

In my head, some of you do not have radio voices - so the people speaking on the podcast would have to have a voice that is pleasing to listen to... otherwise it's fingernails on a blackboard and delete.

Journals I think would be more interesting - or a single person telling a story - good or bad - happy or sad - but the first person account of events would be more interesting than a debate about the color of the sky.

I listen to several podcasts. I'm a total junkie for the This American Life podcast, because I LOVE the show, but can never seem to catch it when it's broadcast on Saturdays.

I you turned podcaster, Hal, I'd definitely download you.

This will depend entirely on content.

It is one thing to have discussion via the slow medium of text. It is quite another to have that experience in person. It would require a host who can facilitate a conversation and keep it flowing in a certain direction. This is not an easy task.

I agree that journals might be the way to go as well but in that case, as Mal suggests, we need someone who has a radio voice. Not that they sound like a DJ more that they know how to use their voice in the way they can use the written word. Again, it isn't easy.


On the whole I like the idea of podcasts but the TFP lives in the text medium. I would not expect our content to easily translate. Better: I wold not expect our user base, who are more text-based, to translate to verbal.

It may require bringing in new talent.

I absolutely love podcasts. I'm a college student, and I have a ten hour drive to get home every break. So I spend a lot of time listening to various podcasts.

I'm a big fan of NPR's podcasts. Their Story of the Day and Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me podcasts are a lot of fun. The stories are always interesting and informative, and Wait Wait, Don't Tell me is a hilarious take on recent news.

I'm also a big fan of science podcasts. I listen to The Naked Scientists, which is a podcast put on by a British group (perhaps the BBC).

I love electronic music, and a number of DJs use podcasts to gain recognition. DJ SGL's house podcasts are among my favorites. He's got great taste in soulful house.

Agreed. I like podcasts and it might be worth looking into, but I can't think of a good way to translate TFP itself into a podcast format.


I really enjoy NPR as well. :) Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me always has me laughing the whole way through, and I also like how they relate it to current events. Did you catch the recent episode with Elmo (and his puppeteer) which poked fun at Bill O'Reilly? It was awesome. :thumbsup:

I'm excited about it, so much so that I made my own private example of what it could sound like HERE. Check it out and let me know what you think!!!

Shit will... that's what I'm talking about.

Bringing the A game.

Can you sustain this on a week to week basis?

Absolutely. What's more, I have original music that we can use in case that band that wrote the music from the Geico commercial doesn't want us to use it in the podcast, or just to show off or fill between contributions. Obviously I don't want to do the whole thing myself, because people would get bored, but when others can contribute things like journals, music, maybe whole discussions recorded of Skype (free), news, and humor, we could have something. As I told Halx yesterday, I'm very excited about this and I think it's a great idea.

And as an unrelated aside, Firefox 2.0.0.1 for Mac has spell check that works with TFP so no one will ever have to try and figure out what I'm saying anymore. At least because of my spelling.

I have some ideas about this, but not sure if I have the time to produce. To make this a success it will take a few people who are willing to produce it (i.e. come up with stories, etc. and do some research).

This *could* be good with some work.

will, that's a good sample.. I think what we need to do is get organized on what we would include with every episode.

Can we use this thread to not only make general suggestions, but to submit specific ideas for the first formal podcast? I think if we are able to get a working idea of what each episode would entail, we could get started soon.

I for one would like to use at least one piece of music I've written. I'd also like to give a mini-lecture on humanism (yes it might be boring, but it would serve to get the academic and philosophical juices flowing). If people have Sykpe, we can arrange to have active debates that are prerecorded and played during the episode. I like the idea of integrating the various things that make TFP great, and one of those things to me is the great discussions we have on various subjects.

Great idear! I think this could bring the whole TFP to another level. I would love to help out in some way if possible.

Okay, so I've improved on my previous podcast, adding news and music. I hope this might give people a better idea of what to expect or maybe inspire someone to make something better.

The new podcast can be found: HERE

Let me know what you think....

interesting idea. i dont make much of a distinction in my brain between a podcast and a netradio stream---i listen to quite a bit of the latter and not so much of the former (but that may be because while i know the difference in principle, it doesn't really function for me.)

one question: would radio tfp would be directed internally or externally?
both?


i dont really listen to people talking that much.
i am a tepid occaisonal listener to this american life.
but the format could be tampered with if something like it were to be imported into radio tfp. i would just try to argue against making it the only--or even the main--thing that happened.


while i suspect sometimes that the kinds of noise/music i am interested in is a bit....um...particular, i'd still be interested in sending as much of it as folk can tolerate out over the wires----manipulated naturlich.

personally, i'd be interested in getting folk to collect little soundscapes from where they live and crunching it into something.

This is something that interests me as well. What would make this work would if we had a producer who could work with the technically inept to help them make good sounding clips.

What about a one-on-one interview podcast with select members? I'd definitely listen to that and be up for participating. There could be a sub-forum where people submit questions for the interviewer to ask the interviewee of the week. Could be fun?!


You're a bit of a natural talking into the mic! :thumbsup: I'm not sure about news reading or that much music. I can get that anywhere, I'm not sure I want it from a forum. If you get me?

The only reason I would say we should be reading a news article is if it is context for a larger discussion (much in the way we currently post and article and a link and then talk about it). Otherwise, tigerlily is correct, you can get news from the BBC.

I listen to Podcasts all day at work... I subscribe to over 50 so glad to see TFP getting in there.

Looking forwards to the RSS Halx so I can subscribe.

YES!! Great job there Will.... this is more like it. Keep up the evolution and I'll subscribe for sure.

Wow willravel! Good job on the "example" podcast. I'm impressed.

My own thoughts on what the tfp podcast should be like:

As other have mentioned, there is no need for reading of news articles. These can be found elsewhere.

However reading a brief excerpt to set the context to a discussion would be fine. I really like the idea of getting a few of the board's member to discuss and debate some topic or other. Playing a recording of a skype chat sounds like a good way to do it. It would be interesting to see if people behave differently when talking live to a person rather than communicating through text. I wonder if people would find talking live to be more "real" and if they would be less likely to be impolite.

Original music is a great idea. Kind of an extension to Tilted Artwork/Tilted Literature/Tilted Photography for the musicians on the board.

Personally I think the intended audience for the podcast should be the current tfp community. Maybe when things get going we could consider aiming towards a wider audience.

i am listening to will's podcast as i write this....thanks for putting this together, sir.
it's true what they say above about your mic-vox.

this piece would be clearly directed toward tfp itself, though.
i would think that something directed outward, as a device for extending the reach of tfp and/or creating a sonic correlate of the community would have to be done differently.
what that would mean is an interesting question: i would think that getting an internally oriented podcast up and running would be the only way to solve it--use it as an ongoing experiment and eventually do a kind of greatest hits compilation or something.

who or what would be "the" voice of tfp?

(strange: when the podcast ended, it spilled into oum kalthoum singing live sometime in egypt...it's kinda cool.)


charlatan: i dont think that good quality recordings are necessary for soundscapes, really---in some ways, it's just as interesting to turn folk loose with whatever technology they have recording stuff from their environment in whatever way they imagine would work---at least that is what i have discovered from teaching courses over a few years that involved making and processing found sound--but i am not terribly committed to the idea that found sound/environmental sound is documentary in any straightforward way.

i would imagine that there are a number of folk who do audio processing, each of whom probably has a different view of how to treat material. it could be cool to initiate a kind of mixing/remixing format--create a webspace on the order of soundtransit (www.soundtransit.nl) where folk can post clips that can be used to generate pieces built up from them.
podcast the results.

it'd be nice if folk were to take real chances with what they did though, i think---make something potentially whacked out----or interesting and tricky and problematic for themselves: something that is NOT them and NOT variant on who they are in textform on the board, something Other.

there are alot of potentials--it'd be a shame to restrict them within a too-literal understanding of the relation between audio outputs and the textform that tfp deploys across.

I was actually reading off the BBC website. heh. The news article was just a shot in the dark. It'd probably be a lot more interesting in the frame of a discussion, sure, but that would have meant me reading the article, and then talking about it by myself with no counter point. That might have been a bit boring.

Also, you can't get that particular music everywhere, or anywhere for that matter. It's 100% original. Th piece was only like 3 minutes long, and I figure that's a good break between discussions or lectures or whatever.

One-on-one interviews or panel discussions or debates are great. So long as everyone has Skype, I think I can record it. I'll have to look into that.

Charlatan, would you like to be interviewed? I think people would be interested. Also, what specific debate or discussion points would people like to hear? Should we bring over active debates from GD or Politics? We could talk about the dead Dolphins or $12b vaporizing in Iraq. Ideas?

I would be willing to help my brother by putting together a comprehensive report on current and breaking news from various feilds of science, if anyone is as interested in that sort of thing.

I'm still interested. Maybe what I can do is post ideas and everyone can priase or shoot them down.

How about: a silly introduction ? Would that be fun or inappropriate?

I think it should be rather respectable until the listeners are more familiar with it. If it tries to be silly and ends up being annoying, that's the end.

I see your point. We'll leave that for year two.

Don't have a pod in which to cast....:(
Could this be internet radio as well?

You have a computer, that's all you really need.

is it just me or is your mic on low? i had my volume on high in winamp, in volume control and on my speakers just to hear it. to get the perfect volume, try listening to an mp3 and get it to that same volume.

ng: internet radio = streaming. this is downloaded so it's not on the internet anymore...

I was trying to be quiet for the beethoven....or do you mean for all the podcasts?

Okay, so I'm rounding up volunteers for interviews or anything you want to talk about. The idea is to gather content and create a working pilot show. I've already been contacted by several members who want to submit and contribute. To everyone else: welcome! I know there are a plethora of active journals out there just waiting to be vocalized by their author. I know there are knowledgeable people out there who have something interesting to talk about. It doesn't have to be a complex round table debate on Skype in order for it to have great creative value. Rant into your built in mic about how much you love Beck or how you were cut off in traffic by a prick in a BMW. If you want, just shoot me an mp3 via AIM.

I think this is an interesting, non-digg way of attracting new people and energizing old farts like me. I've seen the amazing creative talent here time and again and it's just waiting to be put into a new format. So far I don't have enough content (from other people) to have a full podcast. I'd like to shoot for at least 15 minutes per, and maybe a monthly basis. I'd also like to have different music at the beginning of every episode so that we don't fall into monotony. Just now I created an intro featuring the classic Beatles favorite "Hey Jude". I've also made one with "All Along the Watchtower" by Henrix and "Sunday Bloody Sunday" by U2.