So how much is that?

So

you

and welcome to the podcast editors of Master Mind, this

show about the business of podcast editing. I'm your host

tonight, Cory Coffield. Eric. You can learn more about me at

Kari Dot Land, L, A and D. I'm joined by Ryan and Slinger of

top tier audio and not able to join us tonight. Daniel

Abendroth from Roth Media and Jennifer Longworth of Bourbon

Barrel podcast. We are excited to welcome tonight Bethany

Hawkins, founder of the podcast service agency Crackers in Soup.

You can find her at Crackers in Soup dot com. She also has a

wonderful podcast called Chatting over Chowder, which you

should definitely check out.

Thank you for having me. And you know, it's it's hella

late. It's 9 p.m. I've usually been in bed for a good hour

because I'm super old. So however you want to see my name.

It's, you know, I'm tripping over because it's 9:00

and just say, God.

I literally had to take a nap to appear at this meeting

because I'm in that stage of my life.

I know Steve said something about a drinking game,

but I think it's a little bit early for us to start that. So

not.

Yet. Can our drinking game be coffee?

Yeah, totally.

You know, we'll pick a day and have a drunk podcast at

any discussion that you might mind.

That could be fire. Fire.

So we are talking about the future of the podcast

editing in history. Lots of things have been happening and

the podcast landscape is shifting. Podcasting is becoming

more mainstream and I just thought it was a good time to

like take a minute and be like, Hey, what do you see? What's

going on? What do you think? And kind of open up the conversation.

And Steve says, We can't play the drinking game because we

should not influence the outcome. So yeah, this show would be like

in Coherent if I were drinking. Steve didn't take much, but we

wanted to talk about what is going on in our industry

particularly. We don't have a ton of these conversations like

out loud in public. I mean, we do like privately and we have

our little things, but so I thought it would be great to

start a conversation with you all. And one of the reasons I

have Bethenny on here is because she is so insightful and she

like she straps podcast editing wisdom bombs that. So I just

knew I had to have her on for this topic. And thank you,

Bethenny, for saying yes. But before we begin, can you tell us

a little bit about what you do specifically, Bethenny?

Sure. Firstly, let me say hello, Steve. Hello, Sandra.

Steve, you in the past? Me, I do what I want. Let the drinking

games commence.

Secondly, I am Anthony Hawkins. I am the CEO and founder of

Crackers in Soup. Crackers and Soup is a podcast production and

coaching company. And we have worked on over 80 podcasts. We

are winning an award nominated production company, which is

just wild to me. Our business started in 2019 and since then

we have hit the ground running. It is really interesting to see

the changes of the podcasting industry in that short amount of

time. I feel like if you started in podcasting in any aspect, in

podcasting, whether it was production or management or copy

or just creating a podcast before COVID, it's like you're a

dinosaur, a

But it's because there have been so many changes since COVID

happened. It's wild. The courses that I took and the information

that I learned in early 2019 to create this business. A lot of

it has become obsolete now because of A.I., because of the

technological advances. And I just think that it is so

interesting to watch the progression as somebody who

started before, like the AI explosion and podcasting.

So I wanted to ask you all, what specifically have you

seen recently as kind of an emerging trend? How about you,

Bethany?

So with the explosion of YouTube creating podcasts.

Wait, did you just say YouTube, creating podcasts.

YouTube, creating podcasts?

I'm sorry, that's fake news.

Now that YouTube is saying we're a podcast hosting

station, I see a lot of what I consider soft editing. And if

people are going to be using the audio from editing, they're now

at a point where they are not taking the time to do all of the

audio enhancements that your listener really deserves. So

taking out those long pauses, taking out the incessant filler

words, normalizing the audio so that you're not blasting their

ears out, or even the little things that Steve actually often

talks about, like making sure that your microphone is working,

making sure that you have plug in headphones. They're not

taking the time and opportunity to do things like that. They're

just making sure that they're surrounding as pretty because

it's going to be loaded up on on video and then they're not

understanding why they're not getting the downloads from the

audio because you're not doing your due diligence when it comes

to the audio. So I like to consider it soft editing. I'm

not going to use the word,

but I feel like it's a disservice if you are going to

be calling yourself a podcaster and not clean up the audio when

you're uploading it and it's going through the distribution

like Apple and Spotify and such. So that's a trend that I'm

seeing and it may give me hives, I'm just saying.

So there's a disconnect for me here that I don't just

understand why people do this, because there's still audio on

video. So I'm not just like looking at you. I don't just

want to stare at you watching, you know, for the entire

experience. So why do you think that they don't consider that at

all? Like, what am I missing that make people not care?

I think what's happening now is everything is

short stints of information, so they want it quick and they want

a visual, but they want to call it a podcast. So when I started,

I was taught if it's done on RSS feed and uploaded into a podcast

hosting station, it is not a podcast and I'm probably going

to die on that hill. And I like that the video is coming out. I

think that that helps with engagement because you really

get an opportunity to see the people's facial expression and

it gives it a little bit more nuance than just listening to

the audio. But if I am listening to a podcast, I am listening to

it as an audio. So please make your audio good. If not great, I.

Will take comfortable.

I get moved all around. So if there's somebody who's

consistently having noises in the background like a dog

barking or like like a garbage truck happening and that's not

taken out, I'm immediately distracted by that. And I've

missed a good 5 minutes of what you were talking about.

This is just my perspective. I think there's

really two things going on. One, I think we've gotten the

consistent message that audiences don't care. And so if

you come from the world of lean manufacturing or value based

pricing or something like that, a thing that you do that

somebody won't pay for is waste. So why would I waste my time if

my audience, as somebody told me, doesn't care? And I think

there's alongside that, there's maybe a little bit of a lack of

pride that says, well, if it's good enough for my audience,

then I shouldn't care. It doesn't represent me. But in my

view, and I could be wrong, the best channels on YouTube are

edited, the most popular channels on YouTube, even if

they're blathering, idiots are edited and they are strategic

and they are done well. The best podcasts are done well. If we

want to live in a world where Wayne's World, where two guys

living in a basement make a stupid show with really low

production quality, we're going to look back five years from now

and say, Oh, it's just the big money that came into podcasting

that ruined everything. No, it's that you didn't care enough

about your craft to defend your ability to do something. Well,

this isn't about defending my turf. This is about saying I

care enough to make something that I'm proud of, that the

people that listen to will enjoy and be pleased by. And I care

enough to take out all the garbage before I invite people

into my house and ask them to sit down for an.

Hour with me. Yeah, I love that. I think that's a good

point. Now I'm just thinking about the irony is I'm sitting

here like I forgot to turn the air conditioner off and my dad

is calling on the intercom, so.

But that won't be in the final.

I don't know that Alejandro is good, though, so.

No, but, you know, I have noticed. Okay, so I'm not going

to lie. I love it. And I love it for two reasons. I love it

because there are some really brilliant content creators on

there and great interesting content, but also because you

can see the rise of somebody who does take the time to create

good content. You can literally like watch them grow day by day,

and it is just the most kind of amazing thing. And I just been

dissecting kind of what what are they're doing that's working and

one of what's not working. Like, why are some like getting stuck

and why are others taking off? And I and I really think it it

comes down to kind of the quality, the consistency and the

content, right? I don't feel like that's really heavily

taught consistency, you know, maybe content, but like quality

is, is the really hard part. I think. Jesse McEwen says the

longer the content is, the more important quality becomes.

Absolutely. People can tolerate poor audio for a couple of

minutes on a real but not much. About 30 minute piece of content.

Yeah, unless you are exceptional like a phenomena. Is there

anything we can do about like is it ever going to change or are

we going to have to adapt to it? Because, you know, the reality

is people's perception is people's perception. A lot of

the market isn't interested in quality like, you know, what do

you do about that?

The market won't endure forever, right? The market will

not abide this forever, because the ones that do care will rise

to the top and the ones that don't will say, well, podcasting

doesn't work and they'll get mad and they'll throw down their

ball and bat and go home.

But the crazy thing is, if you're good, if you're good

at podcasting, you make the money. I mean, to spear you like,

you can monetize yourself.

But I think that this is when it's really important

for people who are creating courses or people who are

teaching either podcast management or production or

audio engineering to emphasize the importance of having great

audio. So even if you are not editing the video, you are doing

all of the things to set yourself up for success. When

you extract that audio from that video and also being able to

explain it to your potential client or your potential

audience, why you are taking the time to work and admire and not

just throw it into some API and cross your fingers and hope that

they do all of the things that it usually would take you hours

to do. So I think the onus is put on the people in the

industry that are paying their mortgage with creating this

content on behalf of the people that are retaining them.

Part of me also says, you know, there's in the past

there's been a culture of gatekeeping, not so much within

podcasting, but in other media, right? And so for a long time,

the message of podcasting was just get started, figure it out

on the way and keep getting better. The problem is we've

forgotten about the continuous improvement part as a broader

community is speaking in broad strokes, right?

What did podcasting ever consider what its adulthood

would look like?

Probably not, because it's only 20 years old right now.

It can't even so podcasting can't even rent a car right?

Can do car. So Emmy isn't a dolt, but is it really an adult? I

remember when I was 20.

Yeah. I wouldn't trust me with anything.

I can't believe I was allowed to vote on this.

And the beautiful thing about podcasting is that you

don't have to be old enough to vote to have one, right? In fact,

if you can get a parent to sign off for you, you don't even have

to be 13 to have one, unlike getting a YouTube channel or

something like that. I mean, of course there are terms of

service and stuff, but it is the place where you can do

essentially whatever you want, so long as it's legal, right?

You don't get shut down for that reason. But that doesn't mean

you should and it doesn't mean that you shouldn't continue to

try to improve. I know of a couple of shows that are quite

unedited and one of one or two of them are pretty popular. The

thing is, the people that are hosting those shows have been

doing it since before podcasting was a thing. And they're good.

They were good before they started and they've only gotten

better and they've built their entire process to take them live,

to drive so that all they have to do is export the file. I'm

not that good. Me not edited as well. This. Yeah.

It is a train wreck. Yeah.

So but I think that that also goes back to learning

to listen to your content and learning to listen to what you

put out and learning from that experience of listening. As a

person who hasn't heard this content before and saying, Oh,

this is where I can make changes, This was super dope, I love this.

Let's keep that in. When I talk to my clients, I let them know

the first season is usually 12 episodes. We usually do the

first season of the 12 episodes. That season is for learning like

we're not going back and listening to your episodes as

soon as they're published. Not only are you helping you

download numbers, but but you should be taking just mental

note. I say like too much. I pause significantly. I'm not

taking an opportunity to think about what I'm going to say

before I verbalize it. Those little nuances are going to help

you in the long editing process. If eventually you want to take

control of your podcast and do everything yourself.

And I would argue that a lot of us, before we started

editing for other people, we were listening to our content,

we were critiquing ourselves. We were like, Oh my God, it's and

again, and I'm going to work on that. Like you made that

commitment because you were like, If I can shave an hour off of

editing, I'll be thrilled. And that's the exact thing that we

are wanting to relieve our clients from that laborious

editing part. They don't like that. They obviously aren't

doing so. Does that mean that maybe the customers will not

want editors quite as much because they're not for the

podcasters and aren't going to need editors quite as much

because they're just throwing it on YouTube. And then if they do

have an editor, then are they going to want a video editor,

for instance? Like should we all be learning like DaVinci Resolve

or Adobe Premiere? I mean, what is you know, because those two

things like audio is not going away, but neither is video. And

if a person can or if a content creator or anybody can just make

them all together and like just repair, you know, divide up the,

you know, whatever, distribute it, do we need to learn those

skills?

I do not offer video services because I'm not good at

it and I'm not going to have somebody pay me for something

that I am not good at. Like, don't waste your money on me and

I don't want to edit video.

I don't either.

I have no desire and I think knowing who you are and

what you want and what services you want to provide, where is

your zone of genius? Where do you want to learn to be better?

I think those are the services that you that you should offer.

I think that people get very caught up in that. What is the

quickest way to make a buck now instead of saying Where am I

going to take the time and energy to invest in my craft so

that I can make my craft better, even if it's not the end thing?

Now? Because everything has a season and everything circles

back. So all of these people that are abandoning audio

editing to do video editing only what happens when the video

party ends where all of those audio people are going to be

they're going to switch back. I just have the time nor the

energy to want to offer that as a service. And there are people

that do. And I'm like, Go queens, I'll refer you to that.

Right. And I'm ready to start building a list.

Though, like, let me give you my affiliate link. Yeah,

and enjoy them. But I think that you really have to tap into you

and what you're just one of geniuses and what you want to be

in this podcasting.

World does this as hog and and as businesses and other

media, like traditional media, starts to really realize the

value of not only the audio, but, you know, the long and short

form video. They are one team to come in and do what they do and

like put their money in, dominate the space, and use it

to make oodles and loads of money for themselves. You know,

on the flip side, there will be more kind of corporate network

production, house jobs opening up and and this kind of leads in

to that trend I was noticing, which was Hollywood companies

wanting to find parts, service providers. I've talked to a

couple people from a couple different companies in the past

couple of weeks. You know, they're like, Oh, we're looking

into this company. I'm like, I know that person and we're

looking into that company. I'm like, Oh, okay, they're great,

you know, kind of thing. And it's these larger it's it's

editing companies that do volume right at a lower rate, but

they're starting to offer more expanded services like the

dialogue editing, like the sound design, even, you know, writing,

right, putting together the content and being the ghost

producer. So I think that it's maybe like, I don't know what

that's going to be, but what I hear from Head to productions

and studio people is that the film and TV people do not want

to touch podcasting like the way they do editing and production

in TV and film from, you know, everything I've been told is

that you do it with the like executive producer or the writer,

you know, whoever is in charge of the story of that show, you

sit down with them and you do the actual editing, right? You

decide what to cut. And then when you do the sound design,

you sit down with them. You sit down with whoever is in charge

of making the content for the show and making those creative

decisions. And you do it together. And what Hollywood is

starting to discover is it can work when you are not in the

same room. And I think this is going to start to open up more

opportunities for people like us that come from the indie space,

largely because I don't know how many times. I mean, I started

teaching dialogue editing because I couldn't referring

buddy to do it because I didn't know how to do it. So I think

these jobs are going to start to open up more and more. And I

think I think what's going to end up happening in terms of

post-production production in general is I think that the way

we have done things is now going to filter out into other

industries and there is going to be a lot of merging in the

future as companies, as I don't know, businesses figure out that

we've been doing it really smartly and really efficiently

for a very long time and making money for ourselves and they

could actually do that. And I think that's what the pandemic

started to teach them, that this remote work thing, it actually

in a lot of situations, especially creative situations

like I can't be creative in an office, okay, it's not it's not

happening right? I need you all to go away.

So anyway, that is what I'm saying.

But I think that that's where what you call yourself in

the title, all that you hold is really important. And that's

what differentiates a producer versus a podcast manager. MM You

can manage your podcast that doesn't mean that you're a

producer, that doesn't mean that you do script writing, that

doesn't mean that you do dialogue content, that doesn't

mean that you are helping your client. And the creative process

of talking about which order their content should be going in.

Yeah, and I just want to like throw out one more, one

more title, and that is story editor, which is halfway between

in like regular podcast editor and producer, right? So you're

just helping edit the story in a way that makes sense and getting

to do that creative stuff.

And I think that because podcasting isn't

something that you can go to college and get a certification

or a degree, there is this opportunity to label yourself as

something that you're kind of not because you haven't had that

experience yet. So when I first started, I started as a podcast

manager and I did show notes for free that that was my first

client. That's how I got my first client. I didn't call

myself a producer. I started calling myself a producer when I

was walking my clients through the creative process of, What

are you talking about? What are you talking about? This? When I

started doing content editing and moving all of those

paragraphs around and doing the hokey pokey and making sure that

it all fit well, when I started inserting music and special

effects, that's when I transitioned myself into calling

myself a producer. But I don't think that the industry talks

enough about those titles and what all of that story editing,

all of that entailed.

Like there's language you use for the indie space,

right? And then there's language you use for all the other, like

the business to business and the network and the corporate and

the production houses. There's a different set of language. And I

think that that kind of I don't want to say like professional

because we are all professionals, corporate, corporate, you know,

I think like I think they're starting to get it.

And I think it also should be defined on your skill

set because there is a particular tool that everybody

raves about in regards to editing, and I'm not going to

name it, but it's not a duh and people adore it and they're like,

All you have to do is type in a remove filler words and all of

the filler words I removed. Are you listening to the audio?

Because it chops off the very next word. There are words that

don't even show.

Up.

On this platform. They're just I don't know where

they go. They going to. The strategy is.

Sometimes stuff just disappear. I can't.

Transcribe them. It's silence.

Yeah, it's just crickets.

And sometimes it, like, has gotten out of sync for me.

So, like, just makes things disappear, stuff it.

So I will periodically do content editing, like moving

words and paragraphs around in that tool.

That's the only thing I use it for.

And then I abort the mission. I click out of it and

that and I insert that audio into a it because I have more

control.

Mm hmm.

Yeah. Where I feel like I don't have control in that

tool. And I feel like a lot of people or it has become

commonplace now to say, I only work in this tool and I edit in

there and I get it and I do all of these great things, but the

sound quality remains something to be desired. Desired?

Yeah, yeah. And Sandra said it is not ready for prime

time and she's right. And I think it has specific use cases.

But again here they took an audio tool and zip video.

I would argue that they took a transcription tool and

tried to use it for audio and then pushed it to video.

I think that that is the downside of of I yeah,

because these tools are very easy to use versus mastering a

dog and because podcasting is becoming well is so popular and

people need assistance in it, it's something that you can

utilize quickly in charge well for it. So that's where I feel

like I is a little bit of a of a downfall and taking kind of the

easy way out for using some of these tools and mechanisms that

people are just bragging about. And that tool isn't cheap.

It's just as expensive as like Pro Tools or additions

or additions, right? It's actually I pay less for audition,

but I will say like, first of all, anybody who wants to like,

help build like if there's a developer out there wanting to

build the next competitor and wants to make a really good tool,

you know, come see us, right? We will give you because we

understand that this tool that like people may like, we will

still have customers. It'll be okay because nothing is going to

be that great, but it'll be if we can simplify our lives, make

our work faster, then I am all for it. If it can do

collaboration, all that stuff. So that's, that's what I want to

do. I just want it to assist me smartly, right? I don't need to

have every like I don't even know. They're like filler. Word

list is like a mile long. And I'm like, Nobody cares that much.

Like, okay,

so but that brings me to something Brian kind of

mentioned in places and that is chat chip.

T Yeah, so sorry, Steve, You're going to have to probably

I don't want to be responsible so whether you play the game,

that's up to you. But actually before I start talking about

A.I. and chat, I'm wondering for those of you that are watching,

like what are some of the trends that you're seeing also, because

those might be some things and the reason I and by extension

chat shows up for me is because I see two sides of this in the

I'll call it the news, right? There's the one side that says,

Hey, this is going to make everything so easy. And we've

already talked about how that's sort of true. It's sort of not.

And as a note, I have one client where there's very little that I

do for his show. It's just I'm involved in one part and one

part only. And one of the things I noticed is that this

particular client has started now taking a summary of the show

and just running it through chat to get his show notes and his

description and all that stuff. And there was one that I got

yesterday that it was I thinking, did you even read this like

sentence one and sentence three or the same sentence with

different words? And this absolutely does not capture the

tone of the episode. I think tools like captions and cast

magic, and some of those are trying really hard to capture

the tone of the show, to capture the tone of the episode. Whether

or not they nail it is maybe 5050, right? But they're trying

to do that. And I would say that there's the same kind of thing

going on. On the audio side, we talked about one tool where

there some editing stuff, but there are other tools trying to

essentially replace quality tools like Isotope Hour X or

ACON, Digital or cedar was at Cedar Wood or Cedar something or

other. These tools that are built to reduce reverb, fixed

background noise, all of those kinds of things. And what

they're doing is they're basically recreating it and

sometimes it works, and sometimes it's a train wreck.

It's just you don't know what you're going to get. And the

reality of these tools are that while they're probably free now,

some of them are they're probably not going to be free

forever because servers aren't free and bandwidth isn't free.

And unfortunately, free doesn't pay the bills. So like, I just

kind of throw that out there. But on the flip side, I'm

thinking about like the person who's going, is I going to take

my job and I'll go back to a Gary Vaynerchuk quote that I

heard in an interview a couple of days ago, maybe a week ago.

And it's a bit fear based, so I'm not super happy about it.

But this was the quote I'm not going to replace your job. A

human using A.I. is going to take your job. Now, that may or

may not be true, right? He likes to speak in absolutes. Probably

half of his predictions don't come true. Whatever. It doesn't

matter. But my thinking is how can I use A.I. tools to help

speed up my workflow? I think, Bethany, you talked about that.

So there are a few plug ins that I use that have an AI component,

one for IQ, one for compression, one for some other stuff. And so

I use those. I'm trying to get good with that.

I have to link those somewhere so I can look at them

later and maybe buy them.

Yeah, it's horrible. It's not inexpensive, but I like

their IQ. I like their compressor. Okay. And I like

their limiter. I don't use them on everything. Sometimes they're

not the right tool for the job. And that's the thing. If you

take your car to a mechanic's shop and he only has one wrench,

he's not fixing your car,

right. Unless you need a ten millimeter not replaced. If

that's the only thing he's got, he can't fix your job. So as

professionals, we need to have different tools. We need to know

what our tools can do. Well, sometimes it's an A.I. tool

that's maybe good at diagnostic in recommending something, which

is what I use the IQ for, because sometimes it can find

those resonances way faster than I could and fix them. Right? So

I would point that out. But then also just keep in mind you need

to be good with the tool. If you if you're watching this and you

read the description of the event, that was literally me

writing like five prompts in a row to chat, describing what

this episode was going to be about and then say, Give me a

description. Okay, well, can you make it better? Can you put it

in an ADR format, like doing all of that kind of stuff? And when

I got done, it was still a garbled mess.

Okay, I have to share something about that. Okay. And

this was like, just very quick. Your reactions to the posts you

made. Okay for this livestream. And I saw it was like five

paragraphs. It's like Random wrote this.

I was like, okay. And I skim to the bottom and I was like, Is

this the is this the livestream? And then I saw it was shipped

and I was like, Wow, that's terrible.

So I'm so sorry. I didn't I didn't actually read the

description to her to this.

That's okay. I didn't either. I got like halfway

through. I'm like, This is dumb. We might as well just make this

an object lesson.

Yeah, And that's why I rewrote or I wrote my own thing,

because usually I just copy Bryan What Bryan says.

The thing with it with chat shipped is I find my

clientele part of the package of of retaining us is we do their

copy, we write their podcast description, we write their show

notes. I can capture their voice because I have very different

clients. So I need to capture how they would share information

in a very different way for each client that I'm working on on

their podcast.

Chat.

She, I find, can't get the voice because it's a very

distinctive, individualized thing. And I absolutely agree

that AI is getting better faster, but I don't think that it will

get to the point where it is able to pick up the nuances of

that particular host and that is what the listeners gravitate to.

That is why the listeners are showing up. The copy is

attracting the listener, but the host and our hosts and or story

is what's keeping the listener engaged. So I guess it's great

to use a I in chat get or the other, you know, Happy Scribe or

Tammy or Cas magic or classic because there are so many in our

caps show to kind of give you a baseline, but you have to put in

the work and making it sound either like yourself or the

particular client that's paying you.

I would agree. And I think the other thing is to

build on what Jesse said I'm fine with I tools. I want to use

them to help with the process. But I mean, I spent an hour

yesterday rewriting a description that came from an AI

tool, right? I used the tool for what? It's good at transcribing

a lot of audio, summarizing it, and then giving me some ideas.

And then I said, Yeah, but no, no, not really. We're not going

to find a way to use the guest's name in every single paragraph.

Right? But it's doing that for SEO, right? And that

what it.

Might be, but I'm not going to do that because in the

end I want people to find it. People that are looking for

things because eventually the keyword stuffing gets caught,

Google tweaks the algorithm and unfortunately they have a lot

more engineers that make a lot more money. And a single AI tool

will never outsmart their ability to use their AI tools to

go, Yeah, no.

Yeah, no, it's wrong. It makes a good point. And also a

scary science fiction point. A.I. is learning from us,

testing every day too fast. I imagine that in one year

everything will be much more accurate, and I think she's

probably right. I think especially as more people adopt

the AI, the eye learns from more people and that growth becomes

exponential. And until there are robot overlords.

Can I just say something about that?

Yeah.

So I'm going to bring a little blackness into it because.

It is picking up from people who are blogging. It is picking up

from people who are writing content. The majority of the

people that are blogging and writing content are cis white

individuals. They're it's so it's really hard as a black

woman whose majority of clients are black women, to utilize a AI

and have it sound like AI sound or have it sound like my clients

because there isn't enough information out there for many

different reasons. Gatekeeping not allowing our voices to be

heard to extract how we would sound and utilize that in such a

way that's going benefit us. So I think that it's really

problematic if it's bringing things in from only one type of

demographic.

Well, you know, this point was made to Apple with

their facial recognition, and I didn't know that. Guess what?

They forgot to consider.

I'm a Detroiter all day, okay?

The people aren't all white. And so, like people with

darker skin, they couldn't unlock their phones with face

recognition because the camera didn't read them as people. And

you know, this oversight, which is probably the wrong freakin

word, but it's late, has existed in film forever and still exists

to this day. When I see watching movies and TVs and there's a

very dark person in in like the Shadow List where, you know, for

a white person, for a lighter skinned person, they're visible

at like clearly. And so that that is absolute technological

thing. And if anybody is interested, technically human is

a podcast that deals with ethics and technology. Yes. And it's

put out. I work for them. So full disclosure. But it's so

interesting.

And I think it's an important aspect that people who

aren't underrepresented, they don't have to be aware of it. It

doesn't have to be something that they think of regularly

because they're not impacted. Right. But I feel like people

who are underrepresented voices and that's why I love podcasting,

because I want to get so many underrepresented voices on this

platform. Because there Brian said earlier, there isn't a lot

of gatekeeping. We have an opportunity now to share our

experiences, to share our stories, and to share how we

walk through the world. And if a guy is moving at warp speed, but

they're not combining our stories or our experiences in

the information that they're pulling, they're taking our

options away. So that's another idea for A.I.. There's a lot of

others, but there's also those.

But I think there's a huge opportunity for us to

connect with the developers of these technologies because they

start out in the indie space too, and they rely on people like us

service providers to help them not only create a product that

we will love, but a product we will recommend to other people.

And through that, I mean, how many we've all seen it. I mean,

those of us who have been doing this for more than a few years

have all seen the companies that come in. They give us our dream

products and then change it to like consumer like, you know,

mass market product and take all those things that we love away.

And I just like somebody not to do that or people stop doing

that. But it happens all the time, right?

To that point, I think there is something else to be

aware of when you think about whether or not you want to use

A.I. and we've already touched on it, but to make it really

overt, A.I. tools don't create anything. They are not creative.

They are never smarter than the material they've been trained on.

So if they're trained on material that's created by a

particular segment of highly skilled people, they'll be very

good at that thing. If the training is by every single

person that uses the software and 95% of them don't know what

they're doing, it's only going to get better at doing the wrong

thing. More quickly. So when you choose your tools, be careful

about how they're trained, right? And then use them well and for

the benefit of the rest of us. Get better at your craft with

them so that we can all get better with you too and benefit

from you. But be aware it's not going to create something. It

might synthesize something, but it's only as smart as the stuff

that it's been trained on, and it will never create something

totally unique. Right? So if that's what you want, it's okay

to have an A.I. tool involved. But just remember, it's the

human that creative act within us as the editor or them as the

host or the writer that we have involved, or the graphic

designer or whatever. It's that choice. Full use of all of those

elements that creates the absolutely new thing that is

that voice that represents you.

I could like keep talking about this. I think this

is a fun topic. I think we need to do this again.

In about three years if we still have jobs.

Yeah. When we're all living together because we're

all homeless.

Actually, I think that would be a lot of fun.

Yeah, I think we need to do a part too. I think we need to get

like Daniel and Jennifer's voice in this. I would love to hear. I

mean, I love I love you, Bethany, but I'd love to hear from, like,

maybe some other people. No, I really I think this is like

there are a lot of really smart people that we know. We're very

fortunate. And I think it would be great to have on other, you

know, amazing, insightful people who really are. Because one of

the reasons I did have Bethany on, because her business is so

awesome, like, I love the way Bethany does business and I

house like I get to watch her grow and expand and test things

and try things. And so that and I ask her questions about

podcasting in like insight. And she always gives me such really

insightful answers. So I would like to bring on some more like

thought leaders like Bethany in our industry, because I think

that maybe some of us should start calling ourselves like,

you know, I think podcast editing. I think us is an

industry and it and I now stop here. I think we need to start

like taking agency over the narrative of podcasts, editing.

We shouldn't rely on the other trades. I know there are

newsletters and things, but I think we need to start coming

together a little bit more to have these conversations.

Carrie I would be really interested. I my one of

my friends, Akilah, she actually created an SEO tools. It's

called SEO Assist and you know, shameless plug for her just

because I love her. But I think it would be interesting to have

developers of tools on.

Yes, yes, yes.

Like, like people like her and like other people who

are creating these tools.

Yeah, we'll take that idea and run with it and then

we'll have some more thought leaders on. And I like to get

some really diverse group anyway and planning the show while

we're so. Yeah.

Thank you. Carrie is the new producer.

Yeah sorry. Next question. Do we want to do a

project question? Yeah.

Do we have time?

Yeah, we've got 6 minutes.

Bethany, I need you to pick a number from 1 to 5 four.

Oh, come on. That's a you picked an easy one.

It's a softball. Give me a softball. It's late.

Yeah.

This is the John Lee. Dubious question of the day,

apparently. What's the best piece of advice you've ever been

given?

It's so cliche, but trust your intuition and that

visceral feeling. It's. It's so cliche, but it's so true.

The best piece of advice I ever received was don't eat

the yellow snake.

I knew it.

It is good.

It could be lemon. It could be a lemon slushy. You

don't.

Know. You try it and let me know.

Is it worth finding out? So because this it actually this

kind of relates to my best piece of advice that I have ever

gotten. It's you get to decide. So you get to decide Yellowstone.

Are you willing to take the risk? I'm not. But you know, if you

are, that's cool.

I live in Tennessee. Hey, no, there's no way I'm touching

the hills now.

I want to go funny. Okay? The best advice that I saw

was I know that Ellen DeGeneres was canceled, but I love this

quote. And she was she said, be yourself unless you're a serial

killer. I think I have it on my Facebook as far as like the

quote.

All right. What do we do at this point?

I think we let people know what what they can do if

they want to be a guest on the show and join this bit of

craziness, which would be good to podcast editors. Mastermind

Dot com slash should be a guest that will redirect you to a

little form that you can fill out. And then we've actually got

it figured out to where we actually get notifications. If

you're interested in being on show or if you have a question

for us, if there's a topic you want us to cover. So like part

two of I and chat GPT or something like that, you can you

can do all of that there podcast editors mastermind dot com slash

be a guest at some point we probably need to give our names

and let people know who wasn't even going.

To introduce us.

Well I mean those that are joining us live now where

they can read so it's just horrible.

I'll just throw it in later.

Replay. We're sorry in advance.

Yeah. Yeah. Just intro us in in later. But I do want to

say just one one more thing. You should subscribe to our

newsletter to encourage me to purchase an upgraded

subscription because we're only a few away from hitting our cap.

But no, never going to do it unless I absolutely have to see

something like that.

Yeah. So if you've got extra email accounts, just make

Carrie push us over to something that's not the free service that

we've been using.

It's not free. It's not free. That's a horrible thing.

It's not free. We got to upgrade.

Yeah, we need to talk about that. We need to get on to

something free. Yeah, because there's no reason Carrie should

have to cover that cost. And then the rest of us think that

it's free.

Well. Oh, I don't really, Because I want to be able to do

the gifts and that.

All right, This is where therapy starts, and we end the

episode, right, Carrie?

Yes. It's been a long day. Thank you. Bethany Hawkins

of Crackers and Soup for joining us. You can find her at.

Crackers and Soup to Come.

I'm Brian Springer. I've been here all night so far. You

can find me at top Tier Radio.com and mostly on Facebook

because I'm old and all that stuff. Do you want me to do Who

wasn't here?

Yeah, I would love that.

Yeah. So unable to join us was Jennifer Longworth of

Bourbon Barrel podcasting at Bourbon Barrel podcasting dot

com and on all of the socials and Daniel Abendroth at Ross

Media Audio was also unable to join us tonight. And you can

find him on almost none of the socials. And above me on this

side is Harry Caulfield.

Eric you can find me at Kerry that land and also hiding

in my room just editing away. Oh my gosh do all the things

subscribe and stuff and we'll see you, you know, later. Thank

you so much for having me. You're welcome. Thank you,

Bethany. Bye. I think I reached my limit.

So how much is that?

So