Podcasts with constraints

A couple of days ago I listened to the most recent episode of the Under the Radar podcast with David Smith and Marco Arment which was all about working under constraints. One big topic here was also the 30min limit they set for their own podcast about which David Smith said the following: It’s basically about being “respectful of the listener”.

I could not agree more. I love podcasts that have a set time window simply because I also only have a finite amount of time and I want to learn as much as possible and therefore want to listen to many different podcasts instead of just the one 3h behemoth every week. That’s also the main reason why I unsubscribed from the Giant Beastcast and the Giant Bombcast. I loved both shows and I loved listening to the people on it, but they usually took between 1.5 and 4 hours and that just prevented me from listening to other shows.

IMO a strict constraint usually also helps with the quality of the content. Only the most important aspects of a topic are discussed with interested listeners being given enough hints to do into the details on their own if they want to. That’s also the reason why I prefer conference slots with 30 minutes than those with 45 or even 60 minutes. There are only a handful of speakers that I could listen to all day (ok, probably only Damian Conway 😅).