Have you heard about this whole glue-on-pizza thing? 🍕

Well hey. Guess who’s back?

No, it’s not Slim Shady. Although he is back, and spurring Gen X to craft narratives around Gen Z being up in arms. It’s quite fun to watch. I’m staying out of it.

Anyway.

After a year and a bit away, I’ve decided to bring back my favourite newsletter, just like I brought back my favourite podcast. And now you, my favourite human, get to read it. You lucky duck. 😉🦆

If it’s been a while – or you joined in the interregnum – The Big Minute is where I write about a minute in podcast audio and tease out what makes it good. It’s part podcast-discovery, part lesson in what “good” sounds like, so you can use it in your own work.

So with the table set, let’s eat some pizza.

As radio shows delivered in podcast form go, Search Engine is one of the better ones. It shares some DNA – and a co-host – with Reply All, which juddered to a halt a couple of years back.

The nominal hook to PJ Vogt’s show is that it covers questions too difficult to Google. But the episode I’m bringing to you this week was a bit of an anomaly, put together quickly (not hastily) in the wake of the debacle around Google’s AI “advising” people to put glue on pizza to stop the cheese sliding off.

The story – if you haven’t already heard it – is that Google’s new AI engine doesn’t understand jokes, so took an intentionally wrong but funny Reddit answer as an earnest one. It also did the same with an article from the famous American satirical site, The Onion.

Well, someone actually did it – for the lols and the views – and Vogt interviewed them for his show.

Yes, the guest actually stirred glue into their pizza sauce and ate some of it.

And thus, your minute of audio for this week, which begins at around 35:15 in my copy (as ever, timings may vary due to dynamically-inserted ads).

In a more cookie-cutter podcast, this would be the clip you’d hear right at the beginning before the U2-style echoey guitars came in and the host asked you to follow their Instagram.

But the narrative style means we’re lead to it gently. And it’s a great pay-off.

This show does a good job of somehow maintaining a narrative feel in what’s really a straight-up interview. I’m a fan of this approach as it’s more engaging, but it does take a bit more work.

Should more interview podcasts adopt a narrative approach – where the host dips in and out to add context, rather than just playing the interview from start-to-finish? Is it something you’d consider?

Let me know in the comments.

Until next time, stay glued to your podcast app, not to your pizza base.

Love you,
-M