This week, I chat with Arielle Nissenblatt, founder of the Earbuds Podcast Collective newsletter, Community Manager at SquadCast, and whole lot more.

On Why Quality Control is Important

Arielle's newsletter, Earbuds Podcast Collective, celebrated its five year anniversary this year. The newsletter sees a subscriber/podcaster curate five different podcasts around a specific topic, and has brought many interesting shows to the table. While it's a smooth process today, it wasn't always the case as Arielle shares.

Community is a Learning Process

Arielle is extremely well-known for the sense of community she brings to her interactions, as well as the community she helps foster around the brands she represents. While it comes naturally for her, Arielle also believes it can be learned, whether from those you follow online or even classes. 

At the End of the Day, We're All Just People

As a leader in the community space, Arielle knows what it takes to be a good community member, and what it means to be a not so good one. Despite what some podcasters might believe, sharing nothing but your links across multiple social media channels is not the way to get people to listen. But even then, there may be a different person behind the keyboard than the one behaviour might suggest, so it's important to always keep an open mind.

Why We Need Podcast Taxonomy

As the podcasting space grows, and more people come on board (including larger production companies), it's becoming clear that there can be a lot of people that put a show together, outside of the name on the artwork. To recognize these people and the important work they do, the Podcast Taxonomy was created, of which Arielle is part of. She explains what this means for creators of all skill sets, and how it's also being used to address pay inequality in podcasting.

We're Addressing Diversity, But We Can Always Do Better

The podcasting space has been questioned over the last couple of years around the topic of diversity, or lack of. As Arielle herself pointed out earlier in the episode, too many "best of" lists are all centred around white men. While there have been movements and conversations to redress this, it's still only a small splash in a bigger pool of conversation and action. Arielle shares her thoughts on what she believes we can be doing to be better.

Key points:

00:00 Arielle Nissenblatt on Earbuds Collective, Podcast Taxonomy, and More

06:37 The Power of Community: An Interview with Arielle Pardes

09:29 Community Management: A Cross-Sectional Approach

18:01 The Squad Cast Community: From Feedback to Feature Development

22:52 Podcast Taxonomy: An International Initiative to Standardize Roles and Credits

27:56 Inclusion in the Podcasting Industry

31:00 Women in Podcasting: The Work is Not Over

33:29 How to Make Your Podcast More Inclusive

36:02 The Importance of Listening to Podcasts Outside of Your Comfort Zone

Connect with Arielle:

• Twitter
• Earbuds Podcast Collective

Contact me: danny@dannybrown.me

Products I use for Pod Chat

Note: these contain affiliate links, so I may get a small percentage of any product you buy/use when using my link.

My equipment:

• Electro-Voice RE320
• Motu M2 Audio Interface
• Sony MDR-7506 Studio Monitor Headphones
• Podcast Pro Boom Arm by Accu-Lite and O.C. White

Recommended resources:

• Captivate.fm
• Aweber email marketing
• Boomcaster remote interviewing
• My Podcast Reviews
• Reel.so audiogram creator

Mentioned in this episode:

Check out Trailer Park Podcast

Trailer Park Podcast focuses on the art of the audio teaser, and is hosted by Arielle Nissenblatt and Tim Villegas. Season 1 consists of 8 episodes featuring trailers from very different podcasts.

Trailer Park Podcast

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Initially. That's why I started the newsletter was to have people curate lists for me that were outside of my comfort zone, which at the time were 99% invisible. The Memory Palace, This American Life, those podcasts that definitely have a feel to them. And I wish there was a way to help people find audio and stories and books and all types of media that would expose them to new things, and I think that that would go a really long way.Danny 00:00:33

Hey, Danny here from Pod Chat. Just a quick note about this week's episode. During recording, there was a small technical staff which impacted the sound quality of this episode. Hopefully it doesn't impact your enjoyment of this episode and normal service will be resumed in the next one. Thank you. Today, I'm delighted to welcome Arielle Nissenblatt to the show. Arielle is a hugely popular and respected part of the podcasting space and has quite an impressive background to go with it. She's the founder of the Earbuds Collective publication podcast, community manager at remote recording platform SquadCast, part of the Podcast Taxonomy team, and co host of leading industry publication and podcast Sounds Profitable and some other things on top of that as well. We'll be chatting about that and more in this episode. So without further Ado, the person who puts the unity in community, Arielle Nissenblatt. Welcome to the show.

Wow, that's such a nice thing to say. Thank you for having me.

I was trying to think of a nice introduction just to like tie it. I try to tie in everybody's introduction to them as a person, from what I see. And I just felt community and unity.

Beautiful. I love it.

You're welcome. You'll have to set it in your profile bio now, so first of all, Congrats, five years of Earbuds Collective just passed. Did you envision that milestone when you first started it?

I am a stick to it kind of person, so I do not see an exit ramp. So we will be celebrating 100 years.

I don't know if I'll be around to celebrate that, but I'll give you a pre-birthday slice of cake for that.

Very good.

What I like about Earbuds as well, it takes a pretty interesting approach where it not only asks readers to create their own list of five recommended podcasts, but also in specific genres and topics and niches. And I'm wondering, I really find it a really interesting approach. It brings some really cool podcast to the four and topics around that. But I'm wondering, is there anything that's ever been suggested but you've had to turn down for whatever reason?

Yes, definitely. Well, I'll tell this story. When I first started the newsletter, which was in 2017, I didn't really have a process for vetting submissions and the way that submissions worked is that people would sign up to curate a list and they would leave me their name, their email address, and then a general idea of the podcast that they wanted to recommend. And then about two weeks before their week of curation, I would email them and I would say, your week of curation is coming up. Here is a list of questions for you to answer. Please get it back to me on this date. You're probably thinking that is incredibly inefficient. I have learned since, and it's a much better process now. But that also didn't give me a lot of time. If they either didn't get back to me or got back to me with a list that was not okay to post, I would have to scramble to find other people to curate. Early on, I want to say, two months after I started the newsletter, I had somebody curate a list called mancasts Podcasts by Men for Men. And I published it because I didn't really have another choice. And I want to blame it on me being young. But I wasn't that young. I was like 24. I should have known better publish the list. It was not something that I'm proud of now. It's not something that I would do again. So after that, I decided I needed to have some programs in place, some stops that if I needed to make sure that if something like that were to happen again, I could point to something on my website that said, we don't make lists like this, or ultimately I have editorial control over what I put out because it is being associated with my name. A few years later than in 2018, somebody submitted a list called Best Interview Podcasts, and it was five podcasts of men interviewing men, which is now something on Twitter that I talk about a lot, which is if you're making a list calling something the best, please include women. Include people of color. Include nonbinary folks, gender nonconforming folks. It cannot be that the best of something is all white men. It's just not true. It's just not a thing. So make sure that your list is representative of the people who are going to be consuming that list. I published that list, though, and it's again because I did not have programs in place to make sure that things like that wouldn't happen or that I didn't have a backup. And I knew almost immediately that I would get pushback. And I did. I received an email about 30 seconds later that was like, surely there should be some women on this list. And I was like, I completely agree, but I messed up. So from then on, I added something to the submission form that says three out of five of the podcasts need to either feature or be hosted by or be produced by. I forget what the exact wording is. People who are traditionally underrepresented in podcasting or in media. I did get somebody unsubscribing last week saying that that was racist of me. And I was like, okay, thank you.

Yeah, you can't please everybody revisit that further in episode as well, because it's a great point about where the industry is at the moment as well. But it's like the list that is doing Twitter at the moment, like there's just been the 20 best rock book list. I think that's been published by whatever publication it is. And they're all white men, and it's creating quite the conversation, obviously. But yeah, knowing your focus on Twitter and some of the conversations over there, I can imagine what a man cast about men podcast and interview, what kind of reaction we get today.

I think it featured Joe Rogan, and now I'm pretty sure I don't have it written anywhere. But I won't put an episode of Joe Rogan on my newsletter. I just won't. And look, this is not to say that men don't make great podcasts. Danny, you make a great podcast. I'm excited to be on it. You're a white man. I think you let me know otherwise, but it's just not representative of the larger listening population. So we need to go out of our way to include voices that do not reflect exactly who we are. And that's just the challenge that we have.

And it's a challenge. It seems to be getting picked up more, which is good, and especially by white men, which obviously needs to be done more for sure. Now, as I said in the intro and I was using this plain words, but there is truth to it. I mentioned that you put the unity in community. As anyone that follows you on Twitter or online, for example, can see, you have a very distinct knack for foster and engagement, conversation and support for yourself and support for the communities that you're trying to give the voice to and share more voices of. So I'm curious, is this always been natural to you, or is this something you've had to foster over the years?

Thankfully, it's been natural. I pretty naturally come up with prompts to share on Twitter, prompts to share all over social media that seem to bring people together seem to answer questions, and it has been pretty easy for me to do that. And I want to say I'm lucky. It's pretty cool. I saw a tweet a few months ago that said it was pushing back against the idea that community leaders, community managers should naturally be good at bringing community together, because I agree with that. I happen to be good at it naturally, and it is my full time job as the community manager at Podcast. But it is also definitely something that folks can learn. Just because it doesn't come naturally to you doesn't mean that you can't follow people who do a great job at it and learn this skill set yourself. I also took a class through OnDeck, which is a global network of community based cohorts for learning things. So I learned some concrete skills that come with the community management profession, such as slack management and using no code tools to reengage people and things like that. So I think I come to community management, community building with a nice cross section of what comes naturally to me as a community builder, and then what I have learned and continue to learn from the school of life. I also feel like I should mention that growing up, my life was definitely very community oriented. I grew up in a relatively, I don't want to say observant household, Jewish wise. But we celebrated Shabbat dinner almost every Friday night with either just my family or with other families around the neighborhood. And it was always fun and it was always natural to come together and sing songs and have fun. And the kids would go and play when the parents would continue to sit around the table. And I think that has inspired me to want to be around community and to create in person community spaces for myself as an adult. I love hosting dinners. I love creating offthebeate and path adventures in person with my friends and with strangers as well. So I think it extends to all aspects of meat.

And you mentioned there that sort of come. My interest was you say that community, obviously it takes a certain person to a certain approach to really grow and nurture and look after a community and make sure it's welcoming to all. And also community can be a challenge with a lot of different viewpoints coming into the four from different people, different beliefs, et cetera. And I'm curious what's been some of the best and the worst examples you've seen in the podcasting community in general, without necessarily naming names.

I won't name names. I'll start with the worst. So I can end on a positive note. Some not so stellar examples of the fostering of community are when people just don't know how to utilize the community. So in theory, the podcast community, however you take that term, can help you. And you can help the podcast community. You as a podcaster you as a podcast listener, you as a podcast person, you can bring in your expertise and share that with others. You can bring in your questions and get those answered by others. But I think where there is a little bit of an issue is when people find out that there are communities of podcasters hanging out on Facebook, hanging out on Instagram, hanging out on Twitter, Discord, Slack, and then they go in there and then they just post links to their podcast without any regard for what is going on in that community. So they're not actually sharing value. They are just spamming links. And that does not do anything for anybody. It doesn't do anything for you as the person who is spamming the links. Nobody wants to read a link that nobody wants to click on, a link that doesn't have an explanation attached to it, or you are not familiar in these people's minds, and then nobody within that group is going to actually consume your podcast just because you drop a link. So I think that is an example of when community is utilized in the wrong way. I've also seen people just be straight up mean to each other on the internet, and there's no reason for that. But it makes sense. We really are quick to judge based on words, and that's why I think in person events based on written words. And that's why I think in person events are so important, because we're going to put faces to names for the first time at podcast movement in two years, one and a half years or so, although there was podcast movement in August. But this really feels like more and more people are going to be at this coming event, which is in a few weeks from now from when we're recording in Los Angeles. Are you going, by the way?

We're not actually. We were hoping to be there this year, but we're probably in the one in May or June there's the one coming up.

Dallas.

Yeah, Dallas. That's what we're going to think.

Okay. Very nice. Yeah. So I'm just excited for folks who may see each other's personalities on Twitter or on Facebook and say, oh, I don't like that person or I don't understand that person. What are they always posting about? And then we can actually meet them and understand that we're actually all people and sometimes our in person personalities don't match our internet personalities. And that's why I think we need in person get togethers or at least synchronous get togethers.

And it's a little bit less brave if you're not hiding behind a keyboard, just throwing stuff off than either, for sure.

Right.

I'm looking forward to getting back to in person events. It's like just a different dynamic altogether, as you mentioned. Yeah. You're the community manager for Squad Cast, which is a remote recording platform, and you're very, again, very community driven with Squad Cast. You have the newsletter, you have the special events, etc. You just had that big month long giveaway that was awesome to watch that happen. And people get really involved with that. And clearly you get a lot of great feedback from the users of Squadcast as well. So I'm curious if there's any really cool features that became a Squad Cast feature because of the community interaction and feedback, et cetera.

I have an answer for you on that, but I realized that I left it on a negative note before. The best thing about community? No, not at all. I am also podcast host, so I understand bringing it back full circle. We're all learning here the best example of community that I have seen, or I'll share one of the best examples because there are great examples of Internet community for the podcast space all the time. I really love I want to give a specific shout out, but I'm thinking about who or what account. I'm going to shout out Albin Brooke from Buzz Sprout. Is that okay? Because I know you're a competitor.

No.

Okay. I'm going to shout out Albin, who does a really great job. Alvinbrook at Buzz Sprout does a really great job crowdsourcing questions via Twitter that the average independent podcaster has and then producing videos or Twitter threads that are incredibly helpful for those people. And the videos are high quality. They answer the questions, and then you can see reflected in the responses to those videos and to those Twitter threads that questions were answered and people were helped. And I think he's a shining example to me of somebody who genuinely sees an issue or sees a question that is lingering, wants to answer that question for no reason other than wanting to answer that question. Not for ego, not for growing his own Twitter following, not for growing Buzz proud, per se, but really getting those answers answered, really getting those questions answered for independent podcasters. And I think that that's so great. And whenever somebody asked me, how do I get more plugged into the podcast space? I think Twitter is such a goldmine of information. I think newsletters are great. You should be subscribed to all the podcast newsletters out there. And also Twitter to me is like LinkedIn. But for podcasters, I think there's such a great community of podcasters who are hanging out on Twitter and asking questions and answering questions.

And you've got the community feature now on Twitter. I know you run one yourself. Yeah, I think. Is it?

I do, yeah. I want to say in December or so released communities in beta. And what they mean by that is you can tweet to a specific group of people who are in a community. So right now the community that I run is called Podcasting Twitter, and it has a couple of hundred people in it. And I can go in there and post a question specific to podcasting. And people who are in podcasting, Twitter will see it and respond to it. It could be questions, it can be comments, it can be welcome to the group, introduce yourself. We're really trying to figure out how to use it because it is new and has some issues. But I think ultimately it is fun so far.

No, I'm part of it. I can attest Pod chat for sure. And it's part of what you mentioned there, like Twitter's, like LinkedIn for podcasting. I always say that podcasting community is one of the best around. When it comes to your point about Alban, no egos genuinely want to help people, and you get a few bad eggs for your old school, maybe that might want to hold onto some power trips that they might be on. But for the most part, I think overall, the podcasting community, there's no competition. Everybody generally wants to help each other, which is awesome.

Yeah. And I hope that doesn't change. And look, I'm sure if you talk to some people, they will say, oh, it's vicious out there. People are so competitive. But I think for the most part, people subscribe to a rising tide, lifts all boats. I think that's the phrase. And that's definitely how I like to view the podcast base.

Now, you're the community manager for Squadcast, and obviously it's a very interactive community. I know that you've got the Squad Cast newsletter. Is it Squad, as you call them? I think the nickname for the Squad casters Squad Pods waters. And you had a great giveaway recently a couple of months back, I think, where you run a month long event where people could show how to use Square, all sorts of cool stuff. And it's very clearly a platform that listens to its community and builds products for that. So I'm curious, has there been anything that's come from the Squad Cast community that Squad Cast has then gone and developed as a product? I'd never been discussed up until that point.

Yes. A few things come to mind. The first and the most obvious one is video recording. When Zach and Rock started Squadcast in 20, 15, 20, 16, they thought it was for podcasters. And podcasters don't need to record video. So for the first three and a half, four years of Squad Cast existence, you could look at each other on the screen and communicate using verbal queues. But the video was not recordable. But a few years in, we started hearing, and I wasn't working for Squadcast yet. They started hearing that there was a desire to record video, whether that was to upload the entire thing onto YouTube or to create Snippets for social media purposes. People were starting to want to record video for their podcasts, and still there was some resistance. Zach and Rock were like, okay, but the real podcasters, they don't want to record video. Right? And that persisted for a bit. And then we ultimately decided, based on community feedback, which was persistent. Thank you all community that it was time to make video recording available. And that came with its challenges as well. Because I know you work for a software company, but I don't know the intricate back details of what it takes to make something work like that. But I can tell you that it is more complicated than I initially thought. And I learned a lot just being around it and being in the Slack Channel and hearing about it every day about the challenges that would come up and the solutions that would come up and the creative way finding to make sure that we could get this product out to the people in a way that made sense and in a way that was going to be really effective for them as creators. So it was a lot of asking questions of our Slack Channel. You know, if we have video recording available, what should the price be? Should it be double? Should it be some other sort of incremental increase? We didn't know exactly. And so these are all questions that we were openly having discussions about on our Slack channel and through our beta communities. That's one example. The other one is something much more simpler. It sounds simple, but I can tell you the back end is not simple. Whenever you're in a Squad Cast session, I encourage you to take what's called a Squad Shot, what we've decided to call a Squad Shot, which is just you recording. You press the command shift for a control shift for whatever it is on your computer to take a screenshot of your session so that you can post it. And when you post it and you tag us, we will promote you. We have a page, Squadcast. Fm Share, where you can submit your Squad Shots. You can submit a testimonial, you can submit your most recent episode, you can submit a preroll for your podcast, and we will share it to the world. And that was also something that came from the community. We said, what are you lacking in your podcast experience? You have the production, you have the community that you're reaching with your show. But how can we help with our question? And overwhelmingly the answer was how do we grow our show? And so my job as the community manager and this is pretty standard across the board. Everybody has a show in mind. Some people are really great at making that show sound great. Some people need a little help on the technical side and also on the production side of things, but everybody wants to reach an audience and people are struggling with that. And my job as a community manager, from what the community has told me is to help them figure out a way to grow their show beyond just their friends and family who are maybe already listening. So one of the things that we came up with was making Squad Shots clickable right on the screen. So rather than pressing Command Shift four, you can just press a button and you can tell your people to smile, and then they'll smile, and then you have an automatic share button to Squadcast. Fm Share and to the social media worlds. And that is coming in V five of Squadcast. And yeah, we're very open to suggestions from the community, and I think that's a very big part of it. It is just being extremely transparent about what we can and what we cannot do with our team. With the size of our team, which is much smaller than some of the other remote recording platforms as team sizes. So we're working really hard because we just think creators are great and because we're creators ourselves. So we know what you need.

And I think there are multiple benefits to that. Obviously, you're highlighting the creators, so it helps them grow because they've got in front of a trusted audience. It's not just someone that's put up a Google Ad or whatever. It's squad cast who are in the space and who products for podcasters. And it also shows me as a podcast, for example, hey, that's a really cool effect, a really cool result that that podcast I got. I'm going to reach out and ask him or her how they did that. So it's connecting people as well that way. So it just seems a win win all round. It's just a pretty cool approach.

Thank you.

Now, one of the other things I'd mentioned at the start when I was introducing you, Ariel, is podcast taxonomy. You're part of that team, which I love as a creator myself. And knowing what goes into the production of a show, the podcast taxonomy is a really cool initiative. So for anybody that doesn't know what this is, what is that? And how did that come about?

Yeah, podcast taxonomy. Let's see if I can get this right is an international multidisciplinary attempt to standardize roles and credits in the podcast space. And it came about because I'm sure at some point you have said, what does a producer actually do? What does a podcast producer actually do? And I first started experiencing this in 2017 after I started my newsletter. I wanted to do whatever it took to work in the podcast space. And I was living in La at the time, and I was writing this newsletter, and I just wanted to be paid to do something in podcasting. And my newsletter is not monetized yet. So I had a stroke of I had an idea, and I emailed a bunch of different coworking spaces around La. And I essentially pitched myself as the podcast librarian for these coworking spaces. I said, can I come in and run podcast discussions once a month or something like that? And one place in particular got back to me, and they were like, we don't want that per se, but can you build us a studio? And I just kind of pretended that I knew what I was doing, and I built a studio. And then I ran the studio and I filled it with customers and I filled it with engineers and all that. And once we got customers, a lot of those customers at the time, this was 2018, they had heard the word podcast, but they didn't necessarily know what it meant to have a podcast and how to promote that podcast and how to even make that podcast. And so I found myself in a producer role, but without really knowing what a producer did. And so I thought that that was just a symptom of a new year. And I finagled my way into this role where I'm a studio manager but have no idea what I was doing. But it turns out across the industry, that question was being asked. And it's not just from people who don't know what they're doing. People who even do know what they're doing sometimes can't define these terms because they are so amorphous and they might mean one thing at one studio and one thing in another studio. So the goal of podcast taxonomy is to put descriptions to these terms. Pod chat. We can also figure out what those titles should be paid and what should a standard scale of pay be across the board? And how do we make sure that women are being paid the same as men and that there's not any gender pay gaps there, and also racial pay gaps. So these are all things that podcast taxonomy hopes to eventually address. What that means now is there is an ongoing, living, breathing document, a white paper that you can find@podcastonomy.com. We also have a Slack channel where if you have a question or a comment about something in the white paper, you can say, I don't agree with this. We're also thinking about what it means for British English and American English, and then eventually translating it to other languages and even Australian English, all the Englishes. So there's a lot going on with podcast taxonomy. We have a monthly newsletter where we highlight somebody occupying a role that is described in podcast taxonomy and show that role in action through that person. It's really fun. Yeah. So technically I'm the community manager of that. So I run the Slack channel. I do the newsletter, all the things, just try to keep up with it all.

And looking at the partner page of the taxonomy website, there's a lot of big names there, like big companies, big podcasting companies, like founders, et cetera. It's a very strong if that was like your Council, for example, that's a strong board of directors, even. And I'm curious, how did you manage to what was the process of getting them involved? Was it just the connection you made over the years or did you reach out or how did I go.

Yeah, I am very lucky to be working on podcast taxonomy with Cole Raven from Pod Chaser, who has a lot of connections with these people. One of the other co founders is Daniel Rosenberg, who at the time worked for a company called Staff Me Up, which is mostly working on staffing positions in Phil and TV. However, a lot of people started reaching out to him and saying, I want to staff a podcast. And he would say, okay, I don't really know what I'm doing, but my friend Ariel does. And Daniel actually worked at the Coworking space that I was the studio manager at, and we became friends that way. So it's really all about making friends with people, being very open and shaking hands. When I first started being a, quote, unquote professional, I was like, I will never shake hands. I will never be buttoned up at a professional conference or whatever. And then when I started to have to be professional and buttoned up at a conference. I felt so awkward and I would hate myself after. And then, you know what? Now I love it. That's true. I love being like a cheesy networker. Can we grab coffee? Can we chat about this? I love it. I love meeting people.

Pod chat. I do love about the goal. And you mentioned yourself is to be as inclusive as possible. So it represents people of all backgrounds, people of color, women, podcasters, marginalized voices. And you sort of alluded to it at the beginning of the episode about how that's going at the moment and what percentage of women are represented and marginalized. How do you think the industry is doing where it stands now and where you hope it's heading? Is it doing enough?

I think we can always do better. Everybody can always do better. It's Women's History Month right now. And so there are a lot of really great in the US. In the US, it's Women's History Month right now, maybe worldwide. I'm not sure. No, I think it's international. It is International Women's History Month. No, it was International Women's Day earlier this month. And in the US, at least it is Women's History Month, the month of March. And because of that, the podcast space is definitely seeing a lot of initiatives pop up that are pro women, pro nonbinary folks, pro people who are not white men usually. And one of them that stands out right now is Libson LC. Escobar in particular, started an initiative called Claim Pod Parity, which is essentially women should take up as much of the room as men have for so long. And again, none of this is meant to be offensive. It is just meant to say that these lists that are created that suggest that the 15 best podcasts about finance are by men. That is not okay because women and people who don't identify as men need to have role models that are not just men. And I just encourage if you see a list that is featuring all men, all white men in particular, at least think critically about that list. Think about saying something about that list, because not only might it be offensive for you, but it also offensive to a point that people don't even understand if they're consuming it and not even able to voice what's wrong with it. Because maybe you don't know what's missing. Maybe you don't know. Maybe you're not being exposed to somebody who you would be exposed to otherwise who really could speak to you. So, I mean, just there's so many financial experts, so many investing experts who are women, who are podcasters, who are sharing their messages and whose platforms are not being amped up and raised up. And so hopefully Claim Pod Parity will help raise up those platforms and open up those doors to more and more people, podcasters, but also listeners. So that's one cool thing that's going on. There's a lot of really great initiatives going on right now, but I think ultimately the work is not over. And March 8 was International Women's Day, and a lot of people were posting about women. And then the next week, not as many people were posting about women, and it just fades from there. So when in doubt, raise up a woman.

Well, it's like I always look at people that say when something really bad happens. Well, what if that was your daughter? Anything? Well, why does it have to be someone's daughter for you to care or to take action until you find a thing? It's great that there's noise, initial noise on a certain day or a certain week or month, for example, but then as to continue for the other eleven months of the year or 364 days of the year, for example. Now I know that yourself and Brian Barletta or it Sounds Profitable. You're doing a two part miniseries at the moment, which is awesome, which has been really insightful around women in podcasting. So was this brought about by discussions with Elsie? What else is doing, for example, was it planned a hair? How did that come about?

Are you referring to the two articles that have come out? Yes. Sounds Profitable.

Yeah.

Okay. So Brian and I co host the Sounds Profitable podcast, Ad Tech Applied. There are a few podcasts in the Sounds Profitable ecosystem. We co host Ad Tech Applied. There are a few other podcasts. I am actually not part of the writing team for Sounds Profitable. I contribute a podcast recommendation each week to the newsletter, and then I run the social media. But the articles were actually an idea of Kayla Litman and Shreya Sharma. So they worked with Brian and Evo and a few other people on the Sounds Profitable team to come up with the idea for Women's History Month articles at Sounds Profitable. The first one came out March 8, and it was quotes from women and gender nonconforming folks from around the industry or non binary folks from around the industry, their thoughts on gatekeeping and quote, unquote girl bossing in the industry. So big thing is making sure that if you have information about somebody or about something, making that open and available to everybody so that you are not the one benefiting from your knowledge, but everybody can benefit from your knowledge. So really, really great quotes from some amazing people in the podcast industry there. I definitely recommend checking it out. And then the article that came out today was all about statistics for women listeners, for female listeners around the world. So really great and definitely something that you as a reader can take and apply to your own podcast production schedule. Maybe that means having more female guests because there are more female listeners. And one of the stats was that people like to listen to people who sound like them. So really applicable stats in there.

So as we mentioned, there's a Pod chat the industry still needs to do to lift up underrepresented voices and be better. Pod chat. Diversity and inclusiveness. So what's the one single thing? If you had the magic ball or the single power that you can make a change, that one single change would make it all different. What would that be? And how could the industry be better? Tomorrow onwards.

People need to make an effort. Everybody needs to make an effort to listen to voices, to read voices, to consume the stories of people who are not like them. And luckily for the podcast world, if you're a creator, you probably also listen to a lot of shows and there are a lot of shows out there that are different from your show. I wish there was a way and maybe this is what I would do. I wish there was a way to make people listen to podcasts that are outside of their comfort zone. And that's why I started earbuds actually was because right when the Trump was being elected in the US, it was like October of 2016 and we weren't sure yet what was going to happen, but it was not looking good. And we were hearing a lot about how we're trapped in these bubbles and how if you live on the East Coast and you're a Liberal, you're probably only listening to Liberal media. You're not being exposed to other viewpoints and definitely has some resonance and some truth to it. And so I thought, okay, if I could start a newsletter where each week we commit to listening to podcasts outside of our comfort zone. I'm not saying we're going to listen to right wing talk radio, but if I'm not naturally into science podcast, but you tell me about an amazing science podcast that is digestible for me, I'm going to listen to that and my brain is going to expand. So if I can gamify that in a way, I think at the time I had aspirations of people signing a pledge, essentially, of saying, like, I will listen to these podcasts that are outside of my comfort zone, I will commit to listening to these podcasts each week. Obviously, you can't require anybody to do that. But I think initially that's why I started the newsletter was to have people curate lists for me that were outside of my comfort zone, which at the time were 99% invisible. The Memory Palace, This American Life, those podcasts that definitely have. And I wish there was a way to help people find audio and stories and books and all types of media that would expose them to new things. And I think that would go a really long way.

I'm wondering if podcast apps might come into play. I was chatting, I was speaking to AJ from Apollo and one of their filters or some of the search filters and parameters they have in place on the app is to have fiction podcasts that are only created by people of color or by women on business and they've got all these filters and then you break down interest based on your demographics, where you live, et cetera. And I'm wondering if apps maybe with some of the podcast and 2.0 Tags could lead some of that field.

I think that that's a great idea. I would love for there to be a way for podcast technology to make my dreams easier. So yes, I am all for it.

Well, Steve, I'll call Egypt back up and ask if we can do that. Ariel, I really enjoyed your smarts today and chatting with you. I could chat a lot longer but the show has got a limited time frame but I really enjoyed it. So for anybody that wishes to know more about the Earbuds collective, about podcast, tax on about Squad cast about the sounds profitable anywhere that you're connected online, Where's the best place for them to find and connect with you?

You should Google my name. It is Ariel Nissenblatt and as far as I know, I'm the only one I say this on every podcast because I would really like to find another Ariel Nissenblatt so prove me wrong but until then you can find me by searching for my name and then you'll find all my social handles. I have pretty good SEO for my name and that's a challenge.

I need to find someone that I need to find another.

I don't think there is one, unfortunately. I would love to meet my name Twin but Nissan Blat is a pretty unique last name which is cool.

As you mentioned, it's a very easy one to own. Pod chat change. That's awesome. Again, thanks for coming today. I really appreciate it.

Thank you for having me. Bye.