Episode 275: "Off The Rails"

Podcasting 2.0 October 16th 2026 Episode 275 - "Off The Rails"

What is the future of independent Podcast apps. OR any apps for the matter? Adam and Dave don't agree

ShowNotes

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01 - 🎙️ THE ROBOT GOES ON PNWR — "I DON'T SEE THE NECESSITY FOR PODCAST APPS" (summary, no clips)

Podnews Weekly Review, 16 Oct — "Adam Curry's AI Podcast Future" (1h29m; Adam, 4:00–53:45)

Sam's setup: on our last show Adam "changed Dave Jones' mind… from a skeptic to a believer". Adam: "I went back and listened… the first thing that Dave went to was advertising. It seems like anything with podcasting always evolves around advertising, even though… we don't have advertising on our podcast."

On Muse and the "spying" story: "Muse is collecting all this data, it's making files of every single one of your friends… That is a feature, not a bug." — and the five machines at home running local models.

Sam: Reddit removed RSS and charged for its API ($43M from selling data); Lightning/L402 "worked for a while, but then… legislation and technical challenges." Will clients pay x402 to reach the Index through the MCP? Adam: "I don't see the necessity for YouTube apps, podcast apps, email apps… all clients that access all data will be some version of an agent working on the user's behalf." And: "Amazon did the stupidest thing ever by blocking Muse."

On the newsletter: "40% of all value for value revenue always comes after we send the newsletter."

On RSS: "RSS stays. It's a perfect format… no different from HTTP or SMTP." Podcast Index Robot "goes into this structured RSS feed, which is very low overhead."

On podcast apps: "Podcast apps has been probably the crappiest part of the entire podcasting business. It's truly a labor of love… Do you want to be an interim step in between the data and the user? Maybe, but I don't know." And on Godcaster: "We're in the app business too… same issues apply."