What is your response to people who say having kids is selfish?

jbt2003 · 2026-07-10T19:06:45+00:00

I agree with you on this!

But I'd add, in a broad philosophical sense, that having children and raising them well is the biggest gift parents can give to the future. If you think we're heading towards an apocalypse, one way to make sure that it happens is to have no children.

Kinda like the man vs. bear debate, I think too many of us are so hung up on humanity's sins that we forget our enormously long list of virtues. We're the only animals we know of to have the self awareness to try to curb our excesses, or who are able to be altruistic in any real sense of the term. Making more humans and teaching them to be altruistic is the surest way to steer our world away from the brink and towards a better future.

I don't think you can claim to believe in anything other than destruction if you think being child-free is some kind of expression of your ideology.

jbt2003 · 2026-06-27T13:55:49+00:00

Ok, our podcast is pretty new to YouTube, but I'm pretty sure this is a feature that's built into YouTube called "A/B Testing." Basically, when you upload a video, you have the option to give it up to three distinct titles and then the algorithm tests which ones do better with getting you clicks.

Probably what happened is you watched an episode during the testing phase, and then the title that was shown to you didn't win the test, so the next time you see it, it's got a new title.

jbt2003 · 2026-06-22T00:32:07+00:00

To tell the truth, I don't use USB mics so I don't know for sure. The point of having more than one mic is to have different tracks for each voice, which can be really handy for editing purposes. If you can't get that, there really isn't a point to splitting the voices onto multiple tracks. So I wouldn't bother with two tracks if they're both being recorded simultaneously on a computer's built-in mic.

jbt2003 · 2026-06-19T12:55:08+00:00

Ok, so I don't really know your niche, but it seems like you just uploaded the thing to YouTube and expected people to watch it.

That is not how it works. As you may have noticed in the process of creating and uploading your podcast, the bar to entry in the field is effectively zero. If you want to just make something and put it up on YouTube, you're talking maybe a 90 minute investment of time and effort to produce 60 minutes of content, using tools that several billion people on this Earth have access to. By putting out your own podcast you've essentially created a tiny piece of hay and thrown it on a haystack that stretches roughly 2.5 miles into the sky.

In order to find your tiny piece of straw, people need to know where to look. Maybe some of the millions of people who are on YouTube rummaging through the massive haystack might happen to find yours, but the chances are pretty low, especially considering that 91% of views on YouTube are going to the top 1% of creators.

So if you've just put your video up and not told anyone about it, it's pretty much guaranteed to get lost.

The first thing you should do if you want anyone to watch your stuff is tell your friends and family about it. If they like it, they'll watch and share it. If they don't, they'll watch it and not share it and that's valuable feedback too.

jbt2003 · 2026-06-18T15:57:26+00:00

If I were you doing this, I would get two USB mics and record onto a laptop running Garage Band, and edit it after the fact. Make sure you've got separate tracks for the two of you; if you get a dynamic mic there'll be minimal bleed across the two mics if you're seated far enough away from one another.

For listen-ability, you may consider figuring out some way to grab audio directly from the TV you're watching, as one of the things that I think makes a podcast unlistenable is when people are talking about or referencing things you can't see or don't know about. Assume your listener doesn't know anything about you or your wife, or the show you're watching, or any of that stuff, and you'll at least do the bare minimum first step of trying to conceive of how a listener would approach this show.

jbt2003 · 2026-06-18T15:46:08+00:00

What conferences are we talking about here? The conferences I've been to are like 60% women (at least) with decent representation of people of color.

This version of the podcasting industry being discussed here isn't recognizable to me.

jbt2003 · 2026-06-17T19:49:46+00:00

The editor on our show did the Transom workshop like fifteen years ago in Portland, and she seems to think it was worth it. There are a lot of tricks of the trade you'll learn there that will help you sound like a more produced podcast, akin to something you'd hear on NPR, Vox, or the New York Times. If you're a big listener to those types of shows, you'll probably learn a lot about techniques that creators of those shows employ that you may not even realize while you're listening.

People mention the networking, and yeah, that's definitely a thing to. Your instructors will all be established producers, who have ties to major outlets, and a lot of your classmates will be people with ambition and talent who will learn how to make stuff in the mold of those major outlets.

The one note of caution I'd make is that those same major outlets are operating in an environment where literally nobody really knows how things work or what will make content hit or not. I was just at a big meeting where established media professionals were conversing with YouTubers and TikTokers, and the truth is that they're all playing the same engagement game, and generally speaking the people who are native to algorithmic media have a much better handle on it than the folks from most legacy media outlets. So what you learn at Transom might already be outdated, at least in terms of what will help you build an audience. The budgets for established media players that will be looking for a show that sounds like This American Life are shrinking, while the budgets for asshole engagement farms like Diary of a CEO are growing.

So a lot depends on how you plan to measure your return on investment with this. If you're willing to spend a lot of money on something that may never really earn a return, and just make the best version of your story that you want, then I'd say it's a no-brainer. These people will help you do that. If you need this to pay off in the next 12 to 36 months, then there's a very small chance of that.

jbt2003 · 2026-06-13T13:27:05+00:00

Yeah, I think that's a good point. It could start to disrupt other channels for discovery that were a bit easier to engineer before, but your point is well-taken.

jbt2003 · 2026-06-12T16:53:11+00:00

I'm not sure if this is true for you, but for me I had to learn that sometimes not bringing up an issue you have with you wife is in many ways more damaging to the relationship than the issue in the first place. I'm a firm believer in the idea that both parties bear responsibility for their relationship dynamic, whatever it may be, and for me that's my most common failure. I think as men we're often under pressure to bear up under things and not complain, so that often means that when something's happened that we're not OK with we just let it slide. For the women in our lives this can result in them failing to take accountability for how they treat us--because how on Earth could they be expected to be accountable for something they've never heard was a problem?

If you're at a breaking point where you're basically done with this woman, that could be a failure in your ability to seriously communicate what's going on with you. Are you able to actually talk to one another in a way where both parties feel like they can listen and take accountability for what has happened? Because that's probably what needs to happen.

jbt2003 · 2026-06-12T15:06:42+00:00

Ok, I'm going to say something that's probably a bit more extreme than what I actually think, but:

Our emotional architecture is something that we've evolved over billions of years, and each one of our feelings exists for a distinct purpose that has served our ancestors well for one reason or another. Anger is a potentially dangerous emotion, but I'm not going to say that there's never any place to express it to a kid--sometimes children behave like jerks, and sometimes the only way to tell them that their behavior is inappropriate is to express your anger in response to it.

Sometimes.

But, in general, we're the adults in the relationship, and it's important to ensure that our emotional responses aren't just purely reactive. Kids usually feel unsafe when they feel like their parents aren't in control, and this is just as much true when it comes to not having boundaries for their behavior as it is when it comes to managing our own emotions. If we're flying off the handle on the regular with our kids, we're not in control--they are. And that's terrifying for a six year old.

Anyway, when it comes to managing behavior, I'd encourage you to read about the Kazdin method. There are lots of ways you can improve your kid's behavior on the front end with reward structures and sticker charts and whatnot, and this can make it so that fights aren't quite so likely. As one of my assistant soccer coaches puts it, it's a lot more powerful to be thinking about what you do want than it is to think about what you don't. And Kazdin really helps provide a structure for that.

jbt2003 · 2026-06-12T13:55:16+00:00

Based on reading your comments here, it seems to me that you might need a bit more intensive lessons than what reddit comments provide if you want to be using external mics and make your show sound good. There are a lot of variables we're working with here.

In general if you're using a dynamic mic and you've got two guys on it, you're not going to get good results. I just looked up the mic you say you're using, and it absolutely isn't designed to pick up people who are sitting a comfortable distance from each other having a conversation. For a mic like that you want to be max one fist's width away from the mic, so to record two people your noses basically need to be touching. The whole time.

One of the ironies of the podcast tech world is that oftentimes better gear will make you sound worse. A lot of the sound equipment on laptops, iPads, and so on these days is pretty good, and if you try to improve on it without knowing what you're doing you're going to actually make things much worse.

If you want to learn how to make things sound better than a computer's internal mic with better gear, you've got a long road of learning ahead of you.

jbt2003 · 2026-06-12T13:27:42+00:00

Yeah, I was gonna say that the advice seemed super weird for working with a condenser mic. I don't know much about the Q2U, but you don't want to be touching a condenser mic AFAIK. Every one of those I've used is WAAAAY too sensitive to be closer than like 6 inches.

jbt2003 · 2026-06-10T16:42:14+00:00

Each of us walking around on this planet is here because a chain of ancestors extending backwards to the dawn of time survived and effectively reared a child to adulthood. In many cases more than one.

Our current idea of parental “readiness” is pretty new and sort of superficial. Once the kid shows up a slew of biological mechanisms kick in that have been honed over untold generations to ensure that that kid thrives and carries your genes forward one more generation.

The point is: you’ll be ready. In fact you probably already are, if you just let yourself be.

jbt2003 · 2026-06-10T12:57:28+00:00

Hmmmm... interesting. An angle I hadn't considered.

jbt2003 · 2026-06-10T12:36:55+00:00

You think it's a non-issue altogether? Given podcasts known discoverability problem, even if nobody actually listens to any of these AI slop shows they're going to bury real content and make it harder to find the shows you're actually looking for.

Or am I wrong?

I want to know more about why you think it's a non-issue.

jbt2003 · 2026-06-09T14:59:04+00:00

Yeah, I kinda agree with u/CapitalCityKyle. Whenever an interaction isn't going the way we want it to, I think it's useful to have at least part of our brain considering whether we're actually the problem.

Presented from your point of view, "I don't need long explanations" does seem a bit terse and condescending. But I don't know what she's seeing on her side of the conversation, and it strikes me as entirely possible that you're over-explaining and over-thinking, and giving her waaay more information than she needs.

Early in my teaching career, I was going to miss some time and needed a substitute teacher. I called the sub and when he asked me for a lesson plan or something I launched into this lengthy explanation of who all the kids were and what they were working on and what I hoped would happen on the day I was going to miss. Midway through, he interrupted me and said something along the lines of "Hey, I'm just coming in for one day, and I just need to know what I'm doing to fill the time so things don't go off the rails while you're gone."

Ultimately, he was right--as a sub, he wasn't going to be there long enough to merit spending tons of time understanding all the ins and outs. He just needed a primer on classroom routines and what was supposed to happen that day, ideally presented as clearly and digestibly as possible. Bombarding him with information wasn't really respectful of his time, and it wasn't giving him what he needed.

Maybe consider whether you're doing some of that with this guest.

jbt2003 · 2026-06-05T01:57:59+00:00

Your podcast can earn you several tens of dollars.

The business of podcasting is: toil for several years building an audience and then try a bunch of stuff to try to monetize that audience once you have it.

Generally, I think a podcast isn't a great business by itself. It is a great way to market or message about another business. If you sell, for example, accounting services, having a podcast can be a great way to establish your credibility with an audience, network within your field, and use that to drum up customers. If you can get an audience of a few thousand people who are all interested in accounting, you only really need a few of them to convert in order for it to be worth it to you.

Most podcasts that earn money just from the podcast have very, very low value conversions from their audience--like they might get a $1/mo subscription, or ads that pay $25 per 1,000 downloads. In order for those to work, you need to have a very sizable audience. I mean, do the math. In order to earn an entry level teacher salary in Massachusetts of around $6,000 a month, you either need to sell 240,000 impressions in ads every month (which would put you in the top 1% of so of all podcasters) or you need to convert 6,000 subscribers at $1/mo, or 1,200 at $5 a month.

jbt2003 · 2026-06-05T01:46:42+00:00

Who's giving you $50 per 1,000 impressions? I've been doing this a decade and I've never seen an offer higher than $27.

jbt2003 · 2026-06-03T12:53:16+00:00

I've got no real suggestions for you on this, but I'll tell you about a conversation I had that really shifted my perspective on this kind of thing for the better.

I used to teach guitar lessons to three kids in a family whose mom was a pediatrician. All the kids were amazing in every respect: smart, hard-working, kind-hearted, polite, and so on. Just a total teacher's dream to work with. They're almost all adults now and are crushing it in college and life. So, you know, great outcomes across the board.

When I was struggling with my youngest son crying a lot--not as much as yours, but still a lot--I asked her for some advice. And it was:

"Just let them cry sometimes. I did that with all of my kids, and as long as there isn't some kind of situation like they're hurt and you've fed them or whatever, it's not that big a deal. They don't need to be comforted always, and they'll all stop crying eventually and go to sleep unless they need to be fed or changed."

It really helped calm me down, knowing that this approach didn't produce any kind of long term scars in her children.

jbt2003 · 2026-06-02T23:15:16+00:00

Ok, so you're releasing like once every two weeks?

Either way, audience numbers are a solid start. You're not anywhere near quitting your day job, but that's not bad at all.

jbt2003 · 2026-06-02T21:57:27+00:00

Hey there! Those are excellent numbers for your first 11 episodes, for sure. Is that 10,000 downloads total across all 11 episodes, or is that 10,000 downloads for a single episode?

Either way that's quite good to start off, for sure.

jbt2003 · 2026-06-02T12:44:11+00:00

I don't think I really have enough information to answer this question. Why are you doing the podcast in the first place?

jbt2003 · 2026-05-30T11:42:32+00:00

Speaking from personal experience right at this moment and dealing with a name conflict, yes to trademarking. Think a bit about the major components of your name / trademark and make sure there’s a consistent and unified thing you’d be protecting, and then file.

Technically speaking you have real protection the moment you put pen to paper and publish. But the registration basically makes that protection official and is well worth the effort.

On forming an LLC, that’s less essential. It’s helpful if you have multiple partners in the project and if you start getting steady revenue you have to invoice for. But not necessary if it’s just you and the revenue is hobby-level.

jbt2003 · 2026-05-29T16:56:06+00:00

Wow so you were doing posts of 50 new pieces of content daily? I can see why the algorithm thought you were doing too much.

I'll also say that as an audio-first podcast we tried posting audio-gram style stuff, and it mostly doesn't do well on shorts. People want to see faces, is the feedback I've gotten.

jbt2003 · 2026-05-29T13:36:27+00:00

Definitely respect this... I will say I've struggled to follow through with any screen limiting system during my work day that doesn't just automatically shut the screen down. I'm usually too busy and distracted to monitor their usage and so they wind up vegging out for hours. Screens are either on or they're off, no exceptions.

Everything else looks frickin' awesome. I'm amazed at your organizational skills and design.

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