Note to podcasters

I’m listening to Brave Men Run, and I’m thoroughly enjoying it. The author really captures a lot of what I remember feeling when I was fifteen, and when I had my first date. It’s an interesting story, well read, and I’m glad I decided to give it a listen.

The only thing that really bothers me, though, is the long intro and outro for each segment. I would really like for podcasters to recognize that some (maybe many?) people will be downloading and listening to these things long after the initial release schedule has passed. As such, the extended intros are kind of annoying. Worse still are the metacasts in which the author pleads for votes at some podcast ranking site. The voting for these things is long past, so their mention in the introduction to the podcast is jarring, and frankly superfluous by the time I get around to listening to it.

The one exception I make to the above rule is EscapePod. I like Steve’s introductions because he usually has something relatively interesting to say. The intros on Brave Men Run, however, are long blocks of music that just make me agitated because I don’t want to listen to music but the damned story!

So podcasters, please: either recognize that future listeners won’t care about your longwinded introductions; or at the completion of your original release schedule please make new files available that give us just the story.

Thanks.