Followup on podcast criticism post, and thoughts on feedback

A few days ago, I wrote a post about podcasts as criticism (like literary criticism), and received a generous comment from Alan Levine, who I linked to in the post. He gave several other examples of media where the media in question was used to comment/critique an example of that media, and I appreciated reading his response/feedback. I agreed with his examples, and wanted to mention it here.

Thanks to WordPress sending a pingback on the original post by Alan Levine, Alan was aware I posted something that linked to his post. Since I allow comments on my site, Alan was able to reach out and offer his thoughts. It did not bother me – in fact, I enjoyed it! I also did not worry that some of the “flow” of interest from my five regular readers might be usurped by Alan Levine. I hope to hear from more people in 2026. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

What are the first words of “White Christmas”? It’s not what you think….

I know this is a little after the Christmas holiday, but still within the Christmas season. When I took over directing a company choir a long time ago, I went to the music store to pick out some octavos for a Christmas program. One of the ones I selected was “White Christmas” by Irving Berlin. When I opened to the first page, what to my wondering eyes did appear, but the following words…

The sun is shining, the grass is green

The orange and palm trees sway

There’s never been such a day

In Beverly Hills, L.A.

But it’s December the twenty-forth

And I am longing to be up North….

Then the words everyone knows….

I’m dreaming of a White Christmas…..

This was in the late 1980’s/early 1990’s, so no Internet around to check on this, but I always remembered as a “fun fact”. Later, I saw the movie “White Christmas”, and thought “I am going to hear those words now”…but no….

This year, I learned that the song first premiered in film in the movie “Holiday Inn”. I searched for a clip with the performance…but no….

Finally, I found an article where the author stumbled onto this “fun fact” and managed to find a recording of a 1968 TV performance where Bing Crosby (yes, Mr. “White Christmas” himself) sang the original words.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Thoughts on “Capitalism” episode of Open Source podcast

While catching up on podcast listening during the Christmas holidays, I listened to the Radio Open Source episode “A Thousand Years of Capitalism“, hosted by Christopher Lydon with guest Sven Beckert, history professor at Harvard University. The episode was a discussion of Beckert’s latest work, “Capitalism: A Global History”. I thought the discussion was excellent, and I found it interesting that he pegs the “start” of capitalism as an economic system to merchant businesses in Aden around 1000 AD (a city in now-named Yemen). These businesses financed trade expeditions to bring goods back, sell them, and re-invest the profits into more expeditions. Later, this practice expanded to Europe, then other countries, but this was the start.

The next interesting item to me was how the Industrial Revolution was the start of investing capital in means of production (factories, equipment, etc.), moving away from the financier-led capitalism, and how it was difficult to convince people to work in factories. They were used to working for themselves or in small groups (peasants/serfs) for a local leader. Another “step-up” in the growth of capitalism was the use of slavery, and how Europeans invested in plantations in the US, which used large amounts of slave labor. I was not aware that plantations arose from foreign investment. Also, Beckert mentioned that the island of Barbados in the Caribbean Sea was populated by slaves and ran large sugar plantations.

The final part of the episode discussed the impact that capitalism has had on the world economy, and the possibility of developing other economic systems. Overall, this was a very good episode, well worth listening to again.

Podcast commentary and podcast criticism

I think that many podcasts are basically commentary (see just about any political podcast where the host interviews someone on current events, no need to provide links here…). However, I think there is a growing list of podcasts that provide criticism/critiques of podcasts, similar in some ways to general media criticism or literary criticism. Recently, I listened to the first episode of a podcast (the Phongraph Podcast) which analyzed the very first episode of the show that became “This American Life“. The hosts talked about specific parts of the episode, how they thought the parts worked or didn’t work, or how they liked/didn’t like certain parts of the episode. The hosts admitted that they worked in radio, and had wanted to create stories in the manner that This American Life evolved into over its history. I listened to this podcast based on a post by Alan Levine who heard about it on another podcast (his post is titled “A Podcast about Podcasting Recommended by a Podcaster on a Podcast”). Interestingly, the podcast stopped in 2019, then resumed in 2024, broadening its scope to a range of podcasts other than This American Life.

I was aware of other “fan” podcasts about other podcasts, and “official” podcasts about podcasts, but this was the first one I had ever heard. I was also intrigued how technical it got (analyzing production techniques). Finally, it was amusing that a podcast was used as the medium for analyzing a podcast. For most other media criticism, the analysis occurs in written form. I don’t think there are many examples of radio broadcasts analyzing radio shows, or television broadcasts analyzing television shows. Dave Winer had some thoughts on “official” podcasts today, which I agree with: “There has to be at least a possibility that they will say something critical, or funny, irreverent, even inconsiderate things, and not are not 100% self-promotion”.

My last thoughts on this topic: I will not be listening to more of the Phonograph Podcast, as I would like to spend my time listening to actual podcasts, where people are sharing their thoughts/conversation/knowledge, as opposed to analysis of production techniques or deficiencies in story or plot.

Congratulations to Frank McPherson on his retirement! Keep those reports on the Chicago Cubs coming!

“Preserve This Podcast” podcast feed now fixed

A few days ago, I wrote about discovering that the feed of the “Preserve This Podcast” podcast had a problem (episode 1 link was no longer good). To correct this, I thought I would reach out to people who were listed on the About page to see if they could help. None of them responded, so I next went to the Preserve This Podcast Github repo, which houses the source data for the podcast website, and figured out what file needed to be updated to correct the error when the feed was rebuilt (the site was created using Jekyll). I then created an Github issue and a pull request, and within two days, someone merged in my change and re-deployed the site! After two more days, the site cache was updated with the new feed, and I was able to load episode 1 successfully from two separate podcast apps. Victory!

Does Dave Winer really want a RSS-based social web?

I am sorry to have to continue this thread, but there are more developments to assess. In a followup, Dave Winer shares he does not get much in the way of views of his content on Twitter. He then tells Ben Werdmuller (and the rest of us) that “we have to create our own social web”.

Well, there’s the rub, isn’t it! If someone wants to have a social web based on RSS, they are going to have to create it themselves, instead of trying to “boil the ocean” and get every other social network software platform to add features to use RSS as the transport mechanism for social network applications. Then, they are going to have to convince other people to use it instead of existing social network software.

From the Mastodon About page, Eugen Rochko created Mastodon in 2016 because he was “dissatisfied with the state and direction of Twitter”. That was 9 years ago! Mastodon as an application has taken a long time to reach the position it holds today. rssCloud has been supported in Dave Winer’s blogging tools since 2001, and rssCloud support was added to WordPress in 2009 (see reference here), but there has been almost no uptake of rssCloud as a basis for blogging or social network tools. Perhaps part of the reason why is how Dave Winer responds to negative feedback on his tools in a negative way (examples: Feedland and Drummer).

I have described what a social network should have, and that definition covers all current social networking applications. Dave Winer gave his own description of a RSS-based Twitter app in January 2025, and it matches up pretty well with the app I developed, My Status Tool (demo version, repo for code). I also created a portal site for RSS-based apps for social networking (The Feed Network), so there is a place for people to get started (but I do not see it as my mission to try to evangelize this area). Dave has talked about what his new vision would be using WordLand (September 2025), but this “new vision” is nowhere to be seen. Show us the beef!

Do users want a “Really Simple” social web?

I have refrained from commenting on updates from Dave Winer regarding Inbound RSS, two-way RSS, social web based on RSS…fill in the blank RSS…, since he did not do a “reveal” on any of the features he said he was going to demo at WordCamp Canada 2025. However, this weekend, he posted another mini-manifesto on RSS-based social web stuff, which deserves a review.

He references three posts by notable writers who have written posts on RSS in the past year. Of the posts, only one hints at more “social web” possibilities for RSS. The overwhelming majority of the content of the posts concerns the classic reasons for using RSS (control the content you read, control the way you read it, filter out shit). So – my first objection to this manifesto is that these prominent users are not sending out calls to action demanding “inbound RSS” or “using RSS as a social network”. The second objection I have is the demand that other people’s software should start supporting two-way RSS (Davespeak for “inbound RSS” and “outbound RSS”). This is nothing new from Dave Winer, but none of these three references say anything at all about this.

I have addressed this second objection before, stating “What is in it for the “other people’s software developers to add inbound and outbound RSS support”? My answer is – nothing – no users are demanding this – no users are clamoring for a RSS-based “social network” that can communicate as a peer with other social network software.

Now, can there be a RSS-based social network that does not peer directly with other social network software (Twitter/Mastodon/BlueSky)? Yes! I created a site to collect the tools that support this – The Feed Network. Many of the tools I list were created by Dave Winer – see a pattern here?

In my opinion, the only way that inbound RSS support will be added to other tools will be by developers other than the main developers. Dave Winer actually did this for WordPress (although I have not looked it, so I cannot confirm if it works or not). I think someone besides Mastodon developers will have to do that development, not sure about Bluesky…but, to re-iterate at the risk of being repetitious, the only person in the world that is making a stink about inbound RSS is…..Dave Winer. Not much user demand there, methinks.

Introducing a “hand-rolled” podcast – “The Songs of Mavis and Marvin Smiley and the Manhattan Valley Boys”

At the end of 2024, I wrote a post about creating a podcast feed manually (“by hand” or “hand-rolled”) as opposed to using the feed created by a blogging tool (such as WordPress). My example was a short feed of two audio essays by Ken Smith, a blogger friend of mine. Shortly after that, I wrote about Dave Winer’s idea of subscription lists for podcasts, and referenced my manual podcast feed. Dave’s idea was focused on being able to share a list of podcasts that could be imported in a podcast client, and that could be updated as the list was updated. For this idea to be implemented, someone would have to add a feature to a podcast client. I discussed creating standalone podcast feeds of episodes from other podcasts as a bridge. Users have the ability to subscribe to individual feeds, and a creator could update a feed with new episodes, publish the updated feed, and it would be available through existing podcast clients without waiting for some developer to “go first” with the subscription list idea.

Since then, I thought about curating audio from a public radio show (A Prairie Home Companion) within a podcast feed. There is a central site with an archive of many of the episodes, and there are a variety of interesting parts of the show that repeat across the episodes. One fun aspect of this show are the “commercials” from regular “sponsors” (like “Bertha’s Kitty Boutique” and “Powdermilk Biscuits”). I decided it would a good test of this idea to find all of the available instances of a particular commerical and create a podcast feed of those audio excerpts.

The one I chose was appearances on the show by Robin and Linda Williams, a husband/wife folk/bluegrass duo, and their band. They appeared as “Mavis and Marvin Smiley and the Manhattan Valley Boys”, recording for Do-Tell Records. One of my brothers helped with the research, and together we compiled a list of 17 excerpts. I created a website (MavisAndMarvinSongs.com) to provide a set of audio players for each excerpt, and created a podcast feed so that users could add it to their podcast client and hear the wonderful music for themselves. Enjoy!

“Preserve This Podcast” podcast lost an episode

Recently, I wanted to re-listen to the episodes from the Preserve This Podcast podcast (a podcast that discusses strategies for saving artifacts used in creating podcasts). I had written about this podcast when it came out in 2019, and poked at the creators for depending on the Internet Archive to publish the site instead of paying for hosting themselves. After all, they had a GRANT to cover the production costs! Surely they could have budgeted for 5-10 years of hosting. I went to the site, got the feed URL, added to my podcast app, then started listening. When I got to the second podcast (Episode 1), my podcast app displayed an error message that it could not download the file. However, the app was able to download the remaining episodes. I decided to open up the feed in a text editor to see if there was any problem. I found the URL for the episode and pasted it into a browser tab. To my surprise, the browser said there was nothing at that URL in the Internet Archive. I then checked the URLs for several other episodes, and they showed the expected files. After some searching at the Internet Archive, I found this collector page for Episode 1, which led to this URL for Episode 1, which did not match the URL in the feed. UGH!

It is quite ironic that a podcast about preserving podcasts has a problem with its own feed! I will try to contact the team from their About page, but if anyone knows how to get in touch with one of the producers, I would appreciate it!