Hey everybody, Chris here. Great news. Our first let's find out live show in a while is coming up this weekend. I am as surprised as you are.
Thanks to the great folks at the Alberta Podcast network. We'll be at Calgary Expo this weekend. So if you've ever taken a picture of all the pretty bubbles, under the ice at Abraham and the Rockies, you should come to Calgary Expo this weekend. On April 24th, you can join in the live hands-on workshop exploring three ways history can help us understand those photographs.
We'll be recording it for the podcast of course. That's 4 p.m. Sunday, April 24th. We'll be Calgary Expo in the quarter horse room.
A link to info and tickets and locations in our show notes. Our fellow Alberta Podcast network shows repodcasting and makeshift stores are also going to be doing panels this week. I got a little tiny extra for you. A little while ago, Trevor and I sat down to talk about the whole Spotify misinformation, Joe Rogan thing, whether or not to keep, let's find out on Spotify.
Big props to science versus for keeping the drum beat going on this. Anyway, here's some thoughts from Trevor and I. Hope to see you at Calgary Expo this weekend. Have a good day.
Postscript. You get a different adjective there, don't you? Yeah, do you have a different one? Well, that's OK.
You don't have to. This is entirely separate subject. OK. Postscript, Spotify.
We're off Spotify. Well, here's the thing. So here's my thinking on this. Spotify, like I'm horrified that they are one of the biggest players along with Apple Podcasts right now in podcasting and they're paying directly for Joe Rogan to spread COVID misinformation.
To me, his platform is way too big for him to get away with this. I'm just asking questions, saying he has a responsibility to actually find out if the answers that he got are correct. And as people who do a podcast where that's our whole job, obviously I'm quite worried about what it means to have us on Spotify. So let me tell you some of the thoughts I had on this so far.
I'm happy to hear your thoughts on this too. So I went into it like our actual listener record on Spotify. About 1, 100 of our listens each month come from Spotify, which is also one percent. Yeah, about that.
1% of our listeners. So it would not really hurt the show much to be off of Spotify. Like, right now we get a tiny bit of ad money from the Alberta Podcast Network, which is nice. We love being on the Alberta Podcast Network.
But Spotify is paying us nothing. So there's the moral thing of, yeah, should we be on this platform? The Finmate argument that I thought was persuasive to me, which was, hey, if we're on Spotify, at least we're one option for people that demonstrates how to actually do research with an open mind, looking critically at our sources and allowing our minds to be changed by the evidence that we actually see and looking for credible evidence from experts. So I'm tempted to keep us on there.
What do you think? Well, so my feeling about podcasting is that podcasting should be free. And the fact that there are now exclusive platforms for podcasting is very weird to me. And so I didn't even really think about the fact that we were on Spotify or not, because to me, it's like we have a podcast we should be on every platform because just like a web page is available from any web browser.
I feel like a podcast should be available from any pod catcher. So yeah, I mean, I wouldn't be in favor of being exclusive or being opposite of exclusive, what are exclusionary. I mean, it sucks that there's a, it sucks that Spotify is paying someone to have misinformation on their podcast. It does, I mean, I still pay for my Spotify premium because I really like getting the music and like having it on different devices.
It's like I've thought about whether I should or not, but I haven't done anything on that. But yeah, no, it does. The fact that Joe Rogan can be a really big deal pocket, well, the biggest subscriber base in the world for any podcast and have the attitude that he doesn't have to fact check. I think that does speak to the perception about podcasting, not only in the audience, but also in the production community, that it's not, it's not radio, it's not journalism.
It's something different. And that I didn't get into podcasting for a long time. I can come from community radio. And I liked that it has that ethical basis.
Like it's weird to say I like this, but I like that community radio is governed by the CRTC, the Canadian radio and television. And layers of internal like news ethics regulations too. Yeah, like there's journalistic ethics, that's kind of inculcated, but also just like, you can get taken off the air if your radio station is found to be irresponsible with the airwaves. And podcasts don't have that ethic built in.
And I kind of grew up around people just having conversations at the kitchen table with their, recording with their iPhones. And that's cool. But if it wants to grow up, then it has to, I think take on more, it has to adopt some of these responsibilities that public communicators have, whether that public communicators are journalists or not, whether they call themselves a journalist or not. So yeah, I think it's good for the podcasting industry that the conversation's happening.
And I don't blame Spotify necessarily. It sucks that he's making so much money. And I think Spotify could do more to have like a, maybe like a stronger moderation to its content, especially the ones that it pays for. That's the thing.
This is the difference between a browser and a podcast app to me is like Firefox doesn't pay us for our website being like exclusively available through Firefox. And Spotify does pay Joe Rogan to be exclusive. So that's the weird thing of this, I have this era in podcasting and I'm also from the like, more punk doing yourself like podcasting era before the celebrities to go over our whole medium. Yeah, I feel you unlike, yeah, it feels like we should be available wherever people download podcasts.
Yeah, yeah. Word on the street is that the celebrity era is over because the celebrity podcast, I mean, some of them make a lot of money, but they're hard to manage, I guess, because celebrities don't know how to make podcasts necessarily. They might know how to act in movies, but they don't necessarily know how to make a podcast. So now it's back to like, I've seen big companies recruiting like more traditional experts into podcasting.
That's good. Wendy Zuckerman and the team at Science Forces have a great episode of fact checking Joe Rogan's episode with Robert Malone and also talking about their own feelings about being on Spotify. So I recommend you, I'll link to it. You know owned by Spotify.
Yeah. Which is different from Joe Rogan, right? Like Gimlet's Owned by Spotify. Yeah.
Whereas Joe Rogan has a distribution deal. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So I mean, you'd be surprised they're even allowed to speak out about Spotify in some ways, biting the hand that feeds.
Yeah. So you're feeling as say on there also? I think let's find out should be everywhere I can be. That's how I feel right now too.
Yeah. Thanks. Especially on your phones that you're listening right now. And all your friends' phones and your parents' phones.
Tell everyone to download Let's Find Out. Yeah. And give us a five star review. Thanks.
Thank you.