Ten mostly disjunct statements and one question about podcasts

1. I know very little about podcasts. (I've been listening to them for all of like two years, which even in podcast years is not many years.). So, uh, keep that in mind that I'm writing this as someone who has consumed them avidlyfrom 2015 onwards but prior to that thought they were basically a slightly techie version of a bunch of old dudes talking on ham radios.
2. Is it just me, or is the Podcast Ouroboros starting to show? Almost every podcast I've listened to in the past few weeks has had at least one ad spot devoted to another podcast. This isn't a thing unique to the medium (watch CBS for thirty minutes and you'll end up with a handful of advertisements for other CBS shows) but there's a difference between CBS Show Foo advertising for CBS Show Bar and CBS Show Foo advertising for some completely different network.
3. And some of these podcasts sound completely awful. Why does Goldman Sachs need a goddamn podcast? I guess in 2007 you could say the same thing about blogs -- Why does Goldman Sachs need a goddamn blog -- and now it sort of is just accepted as a thing that Makes Sense.
4. As far as I can tell, the Goldman Sachs Podcast is a charitable organization that subsidizes the production of other, better podcasts by donating resources in the form of ad buys.
5. I say that, but one of those 'weird corporate sponsored podcasts' ended up being very good! It was Containers by Alexis Madrigal, a fascinating eight-part deep dive ostensibly about containerization (the shipping kind, not the software kind) but actually about the way automation and commerce shapes culture. The final episode, according to SoundCloud, has five hundred listens, which... is not a good sign.
6. There are probably too many podcasts.
7. Okay, there are definitely too many podcasts. At some point the bottom will probably fall out of this market: ad rates will burst (either due to oversaturation of supply or, more likely, increasing evidence that being told seven times a week to buy Casper mattresses is not super effective.)
8. (I make a snarky comment about the repetitive nature of podcast ads, but then remember vividly the brand name that's so repetitive. So maybe I'm the dummy.)
9. Still, podcasts are great. I want them to do well.
10. My definition of a "good podcast" is evolving, but has mostly settled on a combination of arcana and production. My favorite is still probably Hardcore History, but You Must Remember This is rapidly gaining ground. I am very sympathetic to the podcast niche of "domain matter experts bombarding you with fun facts for hours at a time", which probably does not monetize or scale well.
11. Y'all remember Serial?

Happy Sunday. I hope you learn something new and exciting and useless.