Rule of Google: if it works, kill it.
I know, I know, using Google apps isn’t the best, but this was a perfectly good Podcast app with all the features you might want.
Apparently they’re moving everything over to YouTube Music, where a lot of the features of Google Podcasts aren’t implemented yet.
I’ve moved over to an app from F-Droid.
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I don’t really understand how they consistently manage to screw things up. And they always say that the features are coming, but they never do.
I’m still bitter over Inbox.
I used to be excited about new things from Google. Tried to get into every beta, downloaded the newest released apps etc. But not anymore.
I just read about tasks being removed from Google Keep. Then the feature removal from nest hubs. Do they have a unified strategy at all? Or is it just the whims of a manager’s daily musings that drive what development does?
I’m still pissed over the loss of inbox.
I’ve heard a theory that says all the apps and services they make only have the purpose of collecting data. Sort of like limited time experiments. Once they get all they need from one of them they kill it and move on.
Sometimes they pretend to roll a dead service into another product in order to drive customers to that product but it’s done only in name, by a completely unrelated team and with only a vaguely related feature subset.
It would certainly explain a lot.
I’m not ready to be reminded of the loss of inbox
They have an agenda, which isn’t aligned with your agenda. They only care about profitability, so they kill any projects not supporting that goal. Some projects are created to gather specific data sets about users, and the project is shut down when the data is captured, regardless of how popular the project was. They are always doing something with an ulterior motive. Once you understand that then you won’t be mystified by their decisions anymore.
They only care about profitability
It’s not even profitability. It’s about what looks good on a resume.
New projects look good. Maintaining old projects doesn’t.
I always felt Google is just a collection of startups each doing their own thing, and they live and die like startups, too. There’s barely any overall strategy, and whenever they actually try to do something strategic, the result sucks (e.g. G+)
Man, Inbox was so good. I still start typing “inbox” into the address bar to get to my emails.
Try AntennaPod, it’s on F-Droid
One of the best apps on any platform
Grabbed AntennaPod from the Play Store. It’s been a perfect replacement.
I’m kind of into Podscast Addict. Not sure how it compares, but its pretty good.
I just ignore any new Google service these days. Unreliability isn’t even as much of a concern as privacy.
Antennapod?
Fine. I finally installed f-droid, because while I don’t listen to a lot of podcasts, I am trying to listen to more, and YT Music is ass for finding new podcasts.
Please give me recommendations for more podcasts that may like based on what I got
No Such Thing as a Fish seems like a natural extension for you. It’s a podcast run by the team who writes for QI. It’s funny and informative.
Oh man I used to love watching QI. Forgot all about that show (I’m in the colonies. The one that tossed out all that tea).
Darknet Diaries
Based on Behind The Bastards, check out Knowledge Fight. Dan and Jordan have co-hosted on BtB. They track Alex Jones and Infowars. They’re funny and delightful.
Based on Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me, check out The Unbelievable Truth. Hosted by David Mitchell on BBC Radio 4. Very funny celebrity panel show where they tell outrageous lies about a particular topic, but try to snuggle truths undetected past their opponents. Very funny, and there’s years of back catalog to listen to, if you’re so inclined.
“smuggle” not "snuggle "
Check out Darknet Diaries. High production, in-depth stories on hacking and cyber security. Good for tech-heads and non-tech-heads
TrashFuture is great if you want to be amused/depressed by tech journalist news.
Lions Led By Donkeys is a great war history podcast series.
Neither have ads, which I really value in any podcast. Probably the only reason I don’t subscribe to BtB.
Hi. I listen to half the podcasts on this list. My favorite podcast is oh no! Ross and Carrie they don’t just report on fringe science, spirituality, and claims of the paranormal, but take part themselves. For example, they did a whole series where they joined scientology. They took part in experiments with flatearthers. They go to psychics and then talk about their cold reading techniches etc It’s very funny and they are very nice they don’t go and try to debunk or whatever. They go with genuine curiosity and skepticism. They are on maximum fun which was recently turned into a co-op, I think that’s pretty cool. Other shows I enjoy from max fun are Sawbones, it’s about medical history and judge John Hodgman which is more wholesome fun. Another skeptical podcast I enjoy is Skeptoid, it’s from another network, and has very short episodes every week. Adam Conover’s Factually is also funny and educational
- Breaking Down: Collapse
- It Could Happen Here (also by Robert Evans from behind the bastards)
- Popular Front
- S-Town
- The Moth
- Some More News
- Revisionist History
Thank you, subscribed to most, they seem right up my alley.
I was apprehensive about the first two because they sound (from their titles) like the type of conservative conspiracy theory my FIL talks about. He was talking to my BIL (FIL’s stepdaughters husband) about the collapse, and where to go yesterday. He decided Mexico since “they’re only doing all that shit in the industrialized countries” , and I couldn’t help but silently laugh that a.) he thinks Mexico isn’t an industrialized country, and b.) he would illegally immigrate there to avoid politicized chaos.
No problem! I get that about the first two, but they’re really interesting. Of course It Could Happen Here is fiction, but his stories / predictions ended up having quite a few eerie synchronicities to what happened in the years following its release in 2019. Breaking down collapse is much more analytical and heady than conspiratorial. They talk about stuff like why monocultures crops are bad, the decline in insect population, or like how complicated and poorly understood the financial system is and how that sets us up for instability. Their followup podcast is called Building Up: Resilience. I haven’t started it yet, though
Parents man… The other day my dad told me he wanted to watch some new movie because, and this is literally what he said, “it looks violent.” I didn’t know how to respond. Like, I consume media that has violence in it, but as an adult I’d never watch or play something solely for the fact that some dude beats the shit out of people in it? It’s sad.
Our lists are very similar! I also enjoy “stuff the British stole” and “cautionary tales with Jim Hartford”
“Search Engine” is essentially the replacement for Reply All, but with just PJ Vogt. It’s really good.
I don’t know about that with Jim Jeffries is one of my go tos. They see how much Jim knows about a given subject and have an expert in the field listening and grading. It’s funny z and I’ve learned a lot from it too.
Love it!
Another vote for Antennapod.
Now that it has **rudimentary Ad-Skipping **
You can set et to skip X seconds in the beginning and Y seconds at the end of each podcast individually.
Maybe one day we will get Sponsor block integration for crowd sourced ad skipping , or AI using the crowd sourced skip points as a guide to fine-tune skipping on device , ( everyone tends to get different length advertisements , depending on targetting or region )
I’m more inclined to not be annoyed too much by ads on podcasts where you know it’s just some guy or gal getting compensated for the work they are putting into their podcast. That said, maybe I’m getting way fewer ads on Antennapod because of said adblocking, not sure.
I will say, it has a bug where it will not work in a work profile. You can install it but it won’t playback. Which is annoying. But for me it is a small complaint.
You should switch to AntennaPod.
That’s my go to, FOSS app that rivals the major apps.
There are other podcast apps on F-Droid also.
I still miss Google reader
You might enjoy feedly
Those features will never be implemented. Just like with Google Music.
I’ve been using ‘Pocket Casts’ on Android for years. Highly recommend it.
Yeah but that price jump is nuts. I’m sure there’s something out there 70% as good for 10% of the price.
I’ve been plugging it too, but apparently new users have to pay monthly fees to use it? Maybe there are now better alternatives.
Damn :(
Yeah, this was the only Google product that I really liked, and of course they’re killing it just to force people to use YouTube Music. AntennaPod is an open-source alternative that functions very similarly, I’ve been using it for a couple of months now and I’m very happy with it.
Yeah, that’s where I ended up, too. At least Google had the decency to support OPML export so I didn’t have to redo my subscriptions manually.
Yeah, that was decent of them. I was expecting some sort of dark pattern bullshit to make exporting to a third-party extra hard, but it was actually pretty simple.
Sorry - the data we used to spy on you for through this app, is now available to us by spying on other apps and devices. Its therefore too expensive for us to keep running it when it is no longer necessary
I mean, at some level, how many podcast apps do we need?
But on the other hand, you’re fucking Google and this is a glorified RSS feed. Why is it so hard for this company to maintain quality apps? The Google graveyard is filled with so many good ideas.
google should launch an euthanasia clinic
Tombstone 2025-2027 Google Euthanasia
Will be killed 3 years from now, Google Euthanasia will have been a service to order remote drone assassins for instant palliative relief. Closed due to privacy laws in the EU.
I moved to Podcast Republic, and sometimes AntennaPod, on Android, Downcast on iPhone, and just import the OPML from one of those into gpodder to listen on desktop/laptop.
No accounts or other BS to keep up with, just the latest OPML export. Much nicer, and no one can take it away from me or “shut the service down” in the future.
I second the support for Podcast Republic
Plugging Podcast Addict. I don’t even use the paid version, but it is awesome!
Same here. Had it for years and it’s always been great. Eventually paid for Pro to support them.
My almost 7,000 hours of podcasts listened through Podcast Addict since 2019 would agree
PocketCasts is good.
Good app but they got bought and immediately upped their price by a lot from what I recall. It’s why I moved on. I think it was a more than 3x price hike in the US and as much as 5x elsewhere.
Shame because their desktop option is tied to that subscription. I couldn’t justify paying that much just to swap phone/desktop.
Ah, the free plan meets my needs so I didn’t notice the price increase.
Podcast Addict is THE feature rich podcast client. A boatload of features and if it doesn’t do what you need you request it in the support site.
It has its issues: closed source (if that matters to you), I’ve read that there are trackers, and ads, but it’s still the best podcast app out there, hands down.
I switch from Google to PA with the first email like this that I got from Google.
I tried maybe 4 alternatives and ended up sticking with PA. I don’t really like it…it’s most used icons are small and hard to reach, navigation is very unintuitive to me…but basically it sucked less than the other options.
