On this week’s Curmudgeon’s Corner, Sam and Ivan talk about the scandals with the various Trump-related doctors. More on Dr. Jackson. Some on Dr. Bornstein. And even a little on Dr. Pena. Then it is time for Rudy! Not quite Rudy all the time, but Rudy Giuliani did make quite a mess this week, and we talk about it. Finally, a bit about Judge Ellis’ comments about the Mueller investigation, the efforts to impeach Rosenstein, and would it be wise for the Democrats to impeach Trump if they get the chance? To round things out, a bit on Cinco de Mayo and Wiki of the Day. Busy show! Enjoy!
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Show Details:
Recorded 2018-05-05
Length this week – 1:46:54
(0:01:50-0:17:41) Intro
Cinco de Mayo
Wiki of the Day anniversary
Agenda
(0:18:49-0:50:36) Trump Doctors
Dr. Ronny Jackson
Dr. Harold Bornstein
Dr. Jennifer Pena
(0:51:51-1:13:58) Rudy!
Reimbursement
Jared and Ivanka
Master plan?
Emmett Flood
(1:15:18-1:46:30) Other Controversies
Judge TS Ellis
Impeaching Rosenstein?
Impeaching Trump?
The Curmudgeon’s Corner theme music is generously provided by Ray Lynch.
A year ago yesterday, the first episode of my Wiki of the Day family of podcasts was published. It was about, well, Load Testing.
A few days later, once there were episodes of each of the variants of the podcast, I officially announced that I had launched three new podcasts. Soon after that, the podcasts were included in the Apple podcast directory and we were off to the races.
For those who don’t remember, these are COMPLETELY AUTOMATED podcasts. Each of the three variants pick one Wikipedia article per day to highlight (they just use different ways of picking which article they highlight) and use Amazon Polly to do text to speech on the article summary along with some intro and outro text to generate the podcasts themselves. Apart from the increasingly rare situations where something goes wrong and I have to debug something, this all happens without any human intervention from me at all. Which I think is kinda cool. :-)
At the 100 day mark, I posted an overview of how it was doing, but I figured now that we are at the one year mark it would be good to look again.
This is looking at unique downloaders in the trailing 7 days for all three variants combined based on IP address and UserAgent, excluding some obvious robots. In the first couple months, downloads went from zero to about 250 a week. After that, aside from spikes, the number slowly declined, so by early this year, it was more like 150 a week usually.
There were three big spikes though.
The first spike, in July 2017, was driven by the episodes about Chester Bennington and Linkin Park after Bennington’s death.
The second spike, in October 2017, was driven by the episode about Tom Petty after his death.
The third and biggest spike, which is still in progress as I write, was initially looking like a small bump for the episode about Avicii after his death, but that was then overwhelmed by the article on the Golden State Killer after Joseph James DeAngelo was arrested for those crimes. As I write, that episode has been downloaded 848 times and counting.
Also, by pure happenstance, serendipity, and coincidence (I’m practicing my redundancy), on the exact one year anniversary, the three podcasts combined exceeded 1000 unique downloaders in the previous 7 days for the first time ever. Now yes, this is from the Golden State Killer spike, and it will recede soon, but maybe we will have picked up a few long term subscribers who found the podcast through that. We shall see.
Now, the other thing to point out is that the “popular” variant is BY FAR the most popular. Excluding spikes, over the last three months or so the breakout has been something like this:
popular Wiki of the Day: 100-200 unique downloaders per week
random Wiki of the Day: 10-20 unique downloaders per week
featured Wiki of the Day: 10-20 unique downloaders per week
By comparison, my actual human recorded current events podcast I do with Ivan Bou has been in the range of 150-250 unique downloaders per week over the same time period.
Of the Wiki of the Day podcasts, popular gets all the love, because it highlights Wikipedia articles that were at the top of the most viewed Wikipedia page list the day before. So it is topics people are searching for information on anyway. So people search in their podcast players and find these episodes. Now, when they get there, they just get a 2-3 minute quick summary of the topic, not an in depth discussion of the subject, so it is quite possible some of the people who find it are disappointed with what they get. But hopefully at least some folks find it interesting or helpful, and end up subscribing to hear more.
They are certainly “different” sorts of podcasts though, and I can understand why it might be an acquired taste.
But it was fun to set up, and I at least find them fun to listen to each day, and sometimes I actually learn new things!
If you want to support Wiki of the Day, you should of course search for these three podcasts in your podcast player of choice, subscribe to all of them, and start listening on a regular basis! :-)
Anyway, so that is where it is after a year. It generally seems like it is in somewhat of a steady state at this point, so aside from big spikes when celebrities die or other news events, I don’t really expect much more growth. But we’ll see where it ends up in another year…
After a bit of testing, on May 4th the first episode of popular Wiki of the Day launched, followed by random Wiki of the Day on the 5th, and featured Wiki of the Day on the 6th. Then I posted about it. It has now been 3 months since that first episode launched. Stretching it back to 100 days to include some of my testing, here is a look at how these fully automated podcasts I created have been doing. If you haven’t yet by the way, please subscribe!
I’ve been looking at it in terms of unique downloaders in the trailing 7 days. (Defining unique based on IP address plus user agent, excluding obvious robots… which has some flaws of course, but it will do…)
Anyway, lets look at the three podcasts…
popular Wiki of the Day is by FAR the most, well, popular. It has been trending upward in terms of number of listeners pretty much from the moment it launched. There have been spikes when particularly popular episodes were released. For instance, that really obvious spike in July is due to the release of the episodes on Chester Bennington and Linkin Park. That peak isn’t over, so we’ll see if we end up back on the growth trend from before those episodes, or if the growth trend stops.
With my other podcast, Curmudgeon’s Corner, the pattern is that at any given time, most people are downloading the most recent episode, and only a few people are downloading older episodes. Just recently, in the last week or two, that has started to be the case on most days for pWotD, but for most of the last 100 days, generally speaking the latest episode would NOT be getting the downloads. Instead, a handful of episodes with nice popular search terms would be getting the most downloads.
I don’t have stats running the whole last 100 days easily available, but I regularly generate stats on downloads over the past 30 days. In the 30 days ending August 2nd, the most downloaded episodes for this podcast were:
There does seem to be a theme in the current top 5. They are all music related. The episodes are on all sorts of different topics, but for whatever reason those are the most popular.
In any case, the number of downloads for the podcast is growing, and we do seem to have transitioned to the current episodes being the most downloaded episodes in the day or two after they are released, so it looks like the downloads are starting to be dominated by people who are actually subscribed rather than people finding individual episodes through searches. And that is without any ongoing effort from me, or any money for advertising or anything.
So that is good.
The “popular” variant really is the only one of these getting significant numbers. It is almost 24 times as popular as the next most popular of the three podcasts, which is the “random” variant, random Wiki of the Day. After the initial spike of people I know checking out the podcast, it was basically just me listening to this one. Because I listen on multiple devices while on several different networks, my metric often detects me as 3-5 different “people” over the course of a week. But in the last few weeks, random Wiki of the Day has been trending upward as well. It is still tiny, but there are a few people other than me listening.
The top 5 episodes downloaded in the last 30 days for this one are:
Notice all of these are very recent, no really old episodes showing up on the Top 5 list.
Finally, the least popular of the three, featured Wiki of the day. Least popular, but also growing slowly. A handful of people other than me are actually listening to it!
The most downloaded episodes over the last 30 days:
Oh, and just for comparison I guess… over the same time period:
Curmudgeon’s Corner, the podcast I actually put about 5 or 6 hours a week of work into, is at about 100 downloads per week right now. That’s after a big spike we are seeing after we switched some stuff around on how we promote the podcast a couple of weeks ago. (We switched from Facebook and Google ads to an ad in Overcast, a popular podcast player.) We’re getting a bunch of new people checking us out at the moment. Don’t know if they will stick around if we turn off the ads, but for the moment the trend looks good.
Of course that is a bought and paid for trend line. And even with that popular Wiki of the day has 4 times the downloads Curmudgeon’s Corner does. Guess people just like their Wikipedia content!
I don’t actually mind this… it was actually what I hoped would happen… the automated podcasts… which each contain a promo for Curmudgeon’s Corner… slowly growing listenership via people finding them via searches and such, but with no additional promotion and no additional weekly effort on my part… and maybe pointing a few people back to Curmudgeon’s Corner. They key is now that it is set up, it is very little continuing effort on my part. I basically just check the stats periodically, and listen to the new episodes to make sure nothing breaks.
On Curmudgeon’s Corner this week, Sam and Ivan dive into the latest developments in the Trumpcare saga, the revelation of the second Trump/Putin meeting, and Trump’s revealing interview with the New York Times. Rounding out the show, shorter discussions of wearing different sorts of glasses, John McCain’s diagnosis, odd happenings in Florida, and some factoids from Wiki of the Day.
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Show Details:
Recorded 2017-07-20
Length this week – 2:15:16
(0:00:58-0:38:59) But First
Agenda
Glasses
John McCain
Beep update
Mensch correction
Florida tag
WotD factoids
(0:39:38-1:12:56) Healthcare
Feedback
Several rounds
The conservative case
Entitlement ratchet
Deal making
Bipartisan approach
Odds for Trumpcare
Obamacare crash and burn
Logic of repeal only
(1:13:32-1:38:47) Trump and Putin
Trump on Russian winters
1st Trump/Putin meeting
2nd Trump/Putin meeting
Perceptions
Expanding Don Jr meeting
7 circles of Trump
Too stupid to know?
Quid pro quo?
(1:40:07-2:14:57) Trump Interview
Trump on Sessions
Staffing agencies
Christie’s cellphone
Why aren’t more people quitting?
Trump on Mueller
Manafort finances
Trump on other people
The Curmudgeon’s Corner theme music is generously provided by Ray Lynch.
This week on Curmudgeon’s Corner Sam and Ivan talk about… well… could it be anything else? Almost the whole show is on the many Trump-Russia developments from the last week. Developments in the Mike Flynn story. Trump talking about tapping conversations. Trump meets with Russians and says things that get him in trouble. Reports on Trump-Comey conversations. The Special Counsel. The continuing investigation. Talk of Impeachment and the 25th amendment. Basically all Trump this week. Except for a Wiki of the Day update.
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Show Details:
Recorded 2017-05-20
Length this week – 1:57:21
(0:00:54-0:14:08) But First
All Trump
Things not covered
Negative news tone
Wiki of the Day update
Alex interlude
(0:14:56-0:45:31) Trump-Russia Part 1
Ignored warnings about Flynn
Trump tapes?
Trump meeting with Russians
Trump is a moron
Fox effect
(0:46:36-1:25:09) Trump-Russia Part 2
Taking notes at meetings
Trump/Comey meetings
Coverup vs Crime
Special Council
Follow the money
McCarthy/Ryan on Trump/Russia
Kushner is a person of interest
Trump still likes Flynn
Russians bragging about Flynn
Who Trump people trust
(1:25:50-1:57:01) Removal Options
No President Hatch
Impeachment Route
25th Amendment Route
What next?
The Curmudgeon’s Corner theme music is generously provided by Ray Lynch.
On this week’s Curmudgeon’s Corner Sam and Ivan spend most of their time on all of the events surrounding Donald Trump firing James Comey. That really is enough for a whole show! But they also talk a bit about bitcoin, Wiki of the Day, the travel ban court cases, and they respond to a listener’s comments on the healthcare debate. Then Sam’s son Alex comes to shut down the show.
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Show Details:
Recorded 2017-05-12
Length this week – 1:34:54
(0:00:15-0:21:11) But First
The Big News
Agenda
Digital Hoarding
Bitcoin
Wiki of the Day
(0:22:54-1:04:36) Crazy Trump of the Week
Comey Firing Logistics
Win-Win Scenario?
Trump’s Reason(s)
Trump’s surrogates
Trump’s NBC Interview
FBI Reaction
Investigation Next Steps
Trump making it worse
Reactions
(1:06:35-1:34:33) Immigration and Healthcare
Travel Ban Arguments
Our response to Bruce on Healthcare
The Curmudgeon’s Corner theme music is generously provided by Ray Lynch.
I just finished a secret project! It is THREE brand new podcasts I am officially launching as of right now. I hope you will check them out!
These are quite a bit different than Curmudgeon’s Corner, the podcast I have done with Ivan Bou since 2007 where we talk about current events each week. That podcast will continue as always. (If you aren’t already listening to that, you should of course check it out too!)
Instead, these are short quick hit podcasts. Little bursts of knowledge to enlighten your day. Just a few minutes long each. Often shorter than 2 minutes long in fact. The podcasts consist of the summaries of Wikipedia articles. Each of the three choose which articles to highlight in a bit different way. Because it is just the summaries, not the whole articles, they are quick digestible chunks of information.
I of course don’t have the time or consistency to create three podcast episodes every day, even 2 minute podcasts. So the trick here is that these are fully automated podcasts. There will be new episodes every day, even if I am super busy and swamped with other things. Now that things are all set up, they will (hopefully) just run on auto-pilot unless I decide I need or want to change something.
The idea for these had been percolating in my head for a couple months, and a little over two weeks ago I pulled the trigger and started working on it an hour here and an hour there as I had time. Basically, the daily topics are chosen from Wikipedia APIs or RSS feeds, I pull the content from Wikipedia using another API, then I generate the actual audio for the podcast using Amazon Polly and assemble the Podcast RSS feeds. I also set up a website… wikioftheday.com… that dynamically shows the most recent episodes of each Podcast, gives easy access to old episodes, and has a detail page for each episode with the text of the episode script. I did most of this with PHP since I’m pretty familiar with that, with a few Unix shell bits where that was more convenient.
It was fun to do, and I hope at least a few people will find the actual podcasts interesting too. Go to wikioftheday.com and you can check them all out and listen to a few of the episodes that have been produced so far. There are just a handful so far, but there will be new ones every day!
They are indeed read by computerized voices… a bunch of different ones episode to episode for variety… but that technology has come a long way in the last few years, and they are actually pretty decent to listen to.
I’ve started to submit the three podcasts to the directories for this sort of thing, but it will take awhile for them to start actually showing up when you search for them in your podcast player of choice. So for the moment if you want to subscribe, you’ll have to tell your podcast player app to subscribe manually using the link to the feeds. Below are descriptions of the three podcast along with the feed links. Please subscribe! And listen!
popular Wiki of the Day: The most visited Wikipedia page each day. This very often gets you pages related to topics that are in the news or otherwise timely. But if there isn’t much going on, they can be on almost anything. Feed: http://wikioftheday.com/pwotd/pwotdpod.xml
random Wiki of the Day: What it says on the tin. A completely randomly selected Wikipedia page. You’ll get all kinds of articles about all kinds of topics, some well known, some completely obscure. Just a fun random sampling of knowledge. Feed: http://wikioftheday.com/rwotd/rwotdpod.xml
featured Wiki of the Day: Every day Wikipedia picks one article to feature on their main page. These are articles that they consider to be among the best quality articles on Wikipedia. They can be on any topic, but have been selected for their quality and accuracy. Feed: http://wikioftheday.com/fwotd/fwotdpod.xml
For each of the three, I exclude articles with no summaries or really short summaries. I exclude “articles” that are just lists, disambiguation pages (which John Smith did you want to know about?), and other pages of that type. I also have each of the three podcasts set to not repeat the same article within 100 days, even if it comes up again in the source feed. Stuff like that.
Anyway, please check them out, and subscribe if you enjoy them! And let me know what you think of them! :-)
This week on Curmudgeon’s Corner Sam and Ivan’s main topic is Trumpcare passing the House, the implications of that, and what comes next in the healthcare debate. But they spend plenty of time on other things too. From the latest book Sam has read, to Ivan changing data plans, Puerto Rican bankruptcy, Clinton on why she lost, violence on Facebook Live, and much more. Oh, and at the very end Sam reveals his new secret project.
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Show Details:
Recorded 2017-05-05
Length this week – 1:37:10
(0:00:12-0:17:53) But First
Agenda
Book: The Fellowship of the Rings (1954)
Mobile Data Plans
(0:18:32-0:54:16) Healthcare
House succeeded!
Voting for “something”
Big win for the R’s?
Counting the Losers
Preexisting Conditions
Other impacts
What will the Senate do?
Getting things done
(0:55:58-1:36:50) Lightning Round
Puerto Rico Bankruptcy
Violence on Facebook Live
Clinton on why she lost
Georgia 6 Runoff
Impact of Healthcare on 2018
Trump leaving the country
Bill O’Reilly and Fox News
Zuckerberg 2020? Others?
Budget Deal
Sleep Deprivation
Secret Project
The Curmudgeon’s Corner theme music is generously provided by Ray Lynch.
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