Episode: 3466
Title: HPR3466: Why HPR has less downloads
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3466/hpr3466.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-24 23:59:18

---

This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 34664, on 15 November 2021.
Today's show is entitled, YHPR has less downloads.
It is hosted by JWB, and is about 9 minutes long, and carries a clean flag.
The summary is, a short summary on Y podcast listening might be on decline.
Good day everyone. This is JWP, and I saw the mail from Ken saying that he needed some
shows, so I thought I would do another show.
I've been seeing a telegram group for Hacker Public Radio, and I'm in the mail group.
If you sign up for the mailing list, you get mails from the community and stuff, and
I wanted to talk about the declining numbers of podcasts, and why it might be declining,
and what's going on.
The first thing I want to say is that in last year, I've noticed that there's been several
attacks on people that publish content, and several very controversial shows about
COVID, and things like this, and so often I look through the list of things on Hacker
Public Radio, and I don't find as many technology type podcasts that we may have had previously,
and it may be that people get burnt out on technology, and they switch.
There's a lot of role-playing, and some pretty factual things about health insurance,
and things like this that I've listened to over the year, but there's not a lot about technology,
or something that you like, or the distribution that you're using, or something that really makes you happy,
something that you're passionate about.
I seem to miss this a lot, and I had to change, during COVID, I really changed.
So, I moved from being in the car, I don't know, maybe 16 hours a week in the car,
going to business meetings, and things like this, to my employer changing my work contract to stay home,
and the first year with Microsoft Teams, and Slack, oh my God, it was quite stressful for me,
so the last thing that I wanted to do was to sit down and listen to a podcast,
or even have it in the background.
And so, the other thing was that I found that a lot of the things that I was listening to,
the Ubuntu podcast, and things like this, were hosted by people that didn't share my beliefs,
or my values, and I'm evangelical, and I born again in Christian, and they're atheists, the British,
and I didn't think that I had much in common with those guys.
And so, I looked and I was listening to sometimes more than 10 hours a week of that,
and I was like, oh, sorry, my values are not that.
And so, I switched, and I moved the only one or two Linux podcast a week,
I think we all know Jupyter Broadcasting, so I listened to one or two from Jupyter Broadcasting again,
and so I don't listen very much to the guys from the UK anymore,
because the values systems are very different, are very different.
And the other thing is, is that the army is giving free audio books away at the library,
and so you can get audio content from the library, novels, history, help yourself,
whatever audio books for almost for free.
And so, I listened to a lot of it when I walk or when I drive now these audio books, these audio books.
And so, not so much of the podcasts anymore, not so much of the podcasts anymore,
and I do look at the feed, the hacker public radio feed, but if it's not something technical,
or if it's not something that I don't listen very much anymore,
and not that I don't like the role playing games or anything like that,
it's just that I don't play anymore on no time for it.
I work, I work in, I walk, and I try to take care of myself,
and there's just not a lot of time in my existence for role playing games.
And so, you know, I would think that to get things back into perspective,
don't have a podcast with anything controversial like COVID,
or something that God, God, help us if someone talks about Trump, or 6th January 6th,
or anything like that at all.
You know, that's something so divisive, or the green party in Germany,
or any of that stuff, it's just not something that's helpful,
and that to attack someone, you know, first off, you know, I read it,
and I went and listened to it, and the COVID one,
it's just too controversial.
You know, it would drive some people away, you know,
and for instance, in Germany, if you're not vaccinated, you don't get to do anything.
You have no rights.
If you don't show your phone, you're not going in a restaurant,
you're not going into an indoor coffee place to get a coffee,
you're not going into your workplace.
You know, my workplace has said that if you're not vaccinated,
hey, we'll still pay you, do everything you've got to do from home,
or wherever you're going to do it, but don't do it here.
And so, this is a completely different take than other thing,
than say the Southern Texas take on things,
where everyone is still going to the office,
and doing business meetings, and all of this stuff.
So, I would just say that, you know,
we probably need to get back to doing stuff that we're passionate about,
and things that we really enjoy.
I enjoy my devices, and so I will do mostly podcasts about devices,
and things that I've collected, or electronics that I've collected over the years,
or occasionally, if there's a piece of technology,
then I'm interested in hard drives.
I keep saying that I'm going to study up on VME,
and have a two or three podcast about VME.
You know, it's something that's really, really,
you know, that you're really, really happy with,
and, you know, I would really encourage it.
Really encourage it.
All right, guys, while I've been talking about the podcast,
and why we don't have very many shows,
and I think as a community, we should really try to take care of one another.
B is nice and courteous to one another,
as humanly possible.
All right, be safe, and if you need anything,
please write me at JWP5 at hotmail.com.
You've been listening to Hecker Public Radio at HeckerPublicRadio.org.
Today's show was contributed by an HBR listener like yourself.
If you ever thought of recording a podcast,
then click on our contribute link to find out how easy it really is.
Hosting for HBR is kindly provided by an honesthost.com,
the internet archive, and our sync.net.
Unless otherwise stated, today's show is released
under a creative commons, attribution, share-like 3.0 license.
