59 Comments
User's avatar
EvanBall's avatar

The podcast needs a compressor on the audio

Justlaxin's avatar

If we subscribe, will we be able to listen in our podcast player of choice? The Substack player is truly awful.

Alex O.'s avatar

How about a free podcast subscription for $500/year subscribers? I'd rather have that than a coffee mug.

Reed Dressler's avatar

Do you all plan to interact with the other podcasts that talk about the election: Hacks on Tap, The Politics War Room, and sometimes FiveThirtyEight?

Nick's avatar

Yeah I’m out sorry, won’t be renewing my slow boring sub. I think it’s a big mistake not including the podcast in the sub. I think it’s always going to be hard for one writer to generate enough content for a stand-alone sub and writers should be looking for ways to add value rather than further split their output into other revenue streams.

Even with someone as prolific as MY, it just doesn’t feel good value to be paying a monthly sub for only a portion of a person’s output.

Obviously YMMV and it’s Matt’s decision and the market will decide.

Jacob Manaker's avatar

Is this market segmentation? That is: will Slow Boring will now consciously avoid discussions of the election, or can I still get 2024 content (when warranted) here?

Milan Singh's avatar

This logo reminded me of one of the Young Thug lyrics of all time: “Pushing more Peter, more sweeter, more completer, than any Peter pusher around”

Griff's avatar

Let's hope they are able to fix the audio....

Max Hniebergall's avatar

I've been looking forward to new MattY podcasts since the end of his time on the weeds, but I'm disappointed the new one were getting is just going to be election coverage. I always loved Matt's speculative takes on things outside of the media cycle, but Im doubting that this podcast topic will be conducive to that style. I hope this doesn't indicate the beginning of 24-hour-news-cycle-ification of slowboring.

StrangePolyhedrons's avatar

I'm a little reluctant, because I'm worried a podcast solely devoted to the 2024 election will end making me feel a lot of anxiety over something that realistically I can't do anything about.

Is there a sense for how much this is going to be a presidential/federal focus versus how much it might delve into state elections and ballot initiatives and such to tell me about candidates or questions I didn't even know about?

David K.'s avatar

Has the price of the Podcast subscription been mentioned yet? Or is the price still to be determined?

James C.'s avatar

If you go to sign up, you'll see it's $50 for the year or $6/month. I already paid, but I hope I don't miss out on some great year-end-2024 content because I jumped the gun!

Matt Stern's avatar

Speaking of podcasts, I think you should listen to Rob Reiner's, Who Killed JFK? It's an important subject and one on which you have previously shown alarming ignorance. God bless.

Matthew Yglesias's avatar

Can you just tell me who killed JFK? I'm curious to know but don't particularly want to listen to a whole podcast about it.

Matt Stern's avatar

Matt, I appreciate your center-left perspective as a rule. But you asking me--random guy on internet--who did it seems like you don't want to know. Because if you invested the time and attention necessary to untangle what is in reality a very complicated case then you would have a much more difficult time avoiding the fact that this is still, 60 years later, a taboo subject in our society. So I'll leave you with this: Kennedy was killed because he took international peace too seriously. And Americans should know that, and know who was responsible.

City Of Trees's avatar

As it's already been said (as well as with RFK), after all it was you and me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgnClrx8N2k

Jonathan Robinson's avatar

Will this be able to work on Spotify? Was never able to get the private feed of the SB episodes working there

Jon R's avatar

It looks like the previous version of Politix is on there now (along with some teases for 2024), so I'm assuming yes for the preview episodes at least? Maybe not full the full subscription ones, because I'm not sure how that authentication works with Spotify.

Susan's avatar

I have been sedulously avoiding most 2024 election speculation and punditry. What's the point at this point and why indulge the anxiety? But your podcast about it I will definitely listen to. Thanks!

John C's avatar

This sparked a quick thought for me. I believe Matt has talked before about how many media companies are learning is that a subscription-based model is still the best way to be profitable even in the online era (might be misremembering this a bit, but that's the gist). Seems like this is a lesson Matt is taking to the podcasting world. I'm curious if we might see other podcasters or musicians start to move towards a direct sale model rather than streaming?

Matthew Yglesias's avatar

I think you are already seeing this in the podcast space as the same forces that devalued web display advertising (algorithmic targeting, automatic insertion, content glut) have started to cut away at the value of podcast ads too.

Lost Future's avatar

Ben Thompson of Stratechery thinks that Spotify will successfully roll up the market for podcast algorithmic ads, similar to what Google did to banner ads 20 years ago. He said it's a fragmented market wide-open for a centralized platform, and that Spotify seems to have the inside track in doing so so far. Maybe that will drive down individual ad prices, not sure