300th Episode Special

Automatically transcribed. Accuracy is good but not perfect, and words are sometimes wrong. Trust the audio over the text.

1. 0:13

   Welcome to good christelphian talks. I’m Lee. Hey everybody, this is a pretty funny episode, but we are running the recap special episode for episode 300 of Good Christelphian talks. So I’m here with my old friends Jason and Chris and my still old friend but from across the country brother Brian. How are you guys all doing I’m. Good, I’m good.

2. 0:34

   Stoked to be here. We decided to release this separately from the actual episode 300. We recognize how the show is doing so far. Pull the curtain back a little bit to reveal some of the magic. Not a lot of magic. I’ve I’ve got an opening question. So who was it that put the idea in you and Chris’s head? Like was there a conversation with somebody? Like what started the actual podcast? So at the men’s camp out, which is that the Southern California men’s camp out, we do a kind of a men’s retreat in the spring. There’s a conversation which would have been what we figured it out, Chris, I think it was May or June of of 2018, right? And in that conversation was me and Chris and brother Andrew Stiles, who runs Christopher bibletalks.com, which used to be livoniatapes.com.

3. 1:23

   And basically, I don’t, I don’t think Chris and I don’t have like a clear idea on whose idea was to specifically start a podcast. But it was kind of a combination of in the conversation, it came out that I’m, I am to this day still a huge podcast consumer. It’s just the specific kind of media that I listen to. I have a long commute kind of talking about how I think the basic premise of the show, why we call it good yourself and talks is if ever someone would e-mail me, And I think this is same, the same for a lot of people. If I ever got an e-mail that was like, Hey, listen to this talk, it’s good, then I would like 100% right. And while a lot of talks in our community are good, it was it took the specific recommendation, I think, and then the idea of making a podcast that was just a suggested weekly episode that was born in that conversation. The conversation started because you were curious to ask Andrew what are the most talks that he had on his website. Oh, then I think we had gone, we went down the rabbit hole of what’s the best way to get stuff from the website to be able to listen to it.

4. 2:25

   We were brainstorming originally, like how do we just load it into a podcast? And then at one point Andrew talked about that he had tried to do that on a site at one point, it’s making a podcast feed, but he didn’t know how to decide what goes on there. And at one point one of us was like, well, we, we need a way to make a recommended feed and we just have a podcast for everyone else because you and I can figure out how to take audio files and loaded onto a podcast player, but not everybody can. So we’re like, we need to find a way to make this easier for people without it involving us, each individual person, how to how to create your own custom podcast. And it’s like, we should just do it. And it should be like good Christopian talks. I think you literally threw the name out. It’s like that was like the brainstorming project idea and it just.

5. 3:05

   Stuck. The idea being that it’s not like we’re measuring the quality or value of a talk. But when we say a talk is good but not, then people will listen to it, yeah. I just want to. I think it’s funny that I was there and I did not get involved for years. I was there when like this was all happening and I just, it was like it just didn’t come together. Not that you’re not busy.

6. 3:33

   I think we, Chris and I handled it obviously, and I’m so thankful that now we’re at as as far as the size of the quote, UN quote organization, there’s four hosts and supporting us and it’s all entirely volunteer, obviously. But for the first couple years it was just Chris and I and and that’s, that’s still with Chris doing most of the work.

7. 3:52

   I mean, that’s something that I do think is worth saying that Chris does all, almost all the back end work for this. And, and I think it just grew as part of a necessity because the demand was so big. And I think that’s what I want to talk about is we’re going to say some of the numbers.

8. 4:06

   We’re not going to go crazy on this. This is not a matter of pride in in my heart, it’s really just a matter of like, this is clearly something that people wanted and people are using, which I’m very thankful for. It was a good idea. Whoever’s idea it was, it was a really good idea. Yeah, I agree.

9. 4:23

   It’s definitely been one of those blessed things. Yeah, so. Speaking of how big it’s become, how many different speakers have you guys been able to cover so far? Well, as of as of June 2nd, we have 188 different speakers, which is pretty crazy. It’s still our our listenership is still mostly in Australia.

10. 4:44

    So thank you to our Australian listeners. They are the leading kind of country as far as listenership and downloads. Chris, you want to read some more of these numbers that are interesting to? You I do think it’s a little funny when we’re talking about all the different speakers that Jason is tied with brother Harry Kennett as being on the podcast the most.

11. 5:02

    That’s not including all of his times as a as a host. So bringing in them the MVP to to introduce talks. So that’s always really fun. I think it was more a conspiracy behind the scenes to slow down his momentum. So once he, yeah, once he hit seven to tie it Harry, where it’s like, all right, there has to be a clause in here somewhere. I started tracking the different speakers mainly just so that I could be aware of what had and what had not been covered in the recommendations.

12. 5:31

    Because I’m, I remember when I jumped in, we had like a multi year deep backlog to dig through. So I was trying to just track on my own, make sure that we’ve been getting through the list bit by bit by bit. And I started noticing a trend that there are certain speakers that were really getting pushed. And I started color coding it.

13. 5:49

    And that’s kind of how we’ve been able to now figure out that we have had featured over 300 episodes, 188 different speakers. But if you’re asking someone, oh, like what’s that Jason Hensley episode or the Harry Tennant episode, it gets harder to narrow down because now that the two of them, we’ve run seven different episodes from the two of these brothers. And then the next tier down from there, we’ve got a slew of brothers that have been featured five times. So if you feel like you’ve heard a lot of talk from them, we’ve had a lot of Tim Badger talks, Rodger Lewis, Nathan Lewis, brother Jim Styles.

14. 6:25

    And then now with this episode 300, it’ll be Bob Lloyd’s fifth episode as well. I think the other thing that jumped out at me when you’re asking about the, the numbers other than that one that really jumped out to me is this past year we were able to get it set up to have a YouTube channel where all the talks from the podcast are going on YouTube now. And that has taken off in some ways even faster than the original podcast did.

15. 6:50

    So there, that’s another one of those where there is a demand and it’s, it’s really interesting getting the updates where still like 50% of the people that watch the videos aren’t people that are subscribed. We have like 500 subscribers. So it’s not super big compared to the number of people that’s the estimated audience for the podcast itself. But over 30 days, it’s like 400 hours that people are watching the videos and 50% of that are not people that are subscribed. It’s one of the advantages of the the YouTube algorithm is it just gets introduced to people that might be interested in the topic, which is a totally different way of doing reach than how podcasts spread, which was I, I think has been kind of interesting to see because there’s been more comments and people commenting on the YouTube channel asking questions and things in in various places.

16. 7:38

    I, I would be surprised if there are people that listen to the podcast and watch it on YouTube. So it’s really, it’s just kind of entirely different audience. And it’s interesting that I didn’t know that number, that double kind of. So there’s about 1000 people that watch slash listen on YouTube wrote to 630,000 individual episode plays.

17. 7:58

    Can’t wait for a million at some point. And I don’t we didn’t put the numbers on our on our Google doc here, but there’s definitely a couple episodes that are above 3000 individual listens, which is pretty amazing to me, especially if you consider the amount of English speaking Christadelphians in the world. Our most popular episode ever is 4200 Listens. Oh wow, that’s a large number.

18. 8:19

    Is episode 200 cool? So it’ll be interesting to see if episode 300 surpasses episode 200. People. Care about their friends? Let’s hit 5K. There you go. Yeah, I remember, Levi, when you and I got excited when we had one that hit 1000. No, it was a big deal when we hit 1000. It’s crazy.

19. 8:39

    We. Were like oh we hit 1000 listens on one episode and now now it’s like it estimates our audience size is almost 1200 people, which is blockers. Anything else to jump out to anyone else? Well, I mean, I’ll ask the cliche question. Podcast you would think would skew more towards a younger generation. Do the numbers support that?

20. 9:01

    No. The range is about half of the audience is between 35 and 60. Basically there’s another 4th that are below 34, which is scary to me to realize that now I’m suddenly in the old category.

21. 9:18

    Be careful, move those brackets. Yeah, I know the brackets are moving. I’m like, all right, we need to move that that number up a little bit more. But and then the remaining is those that are 60 or older. It is interesting to see because to your point, Brian, I think this podcast listening in general is definitely something that is more. The whole reason that Levi and I started this up is we were in that young category when we came up with this idea originally because we were listening to so many different podcasts and we’re like, we should be listening to Bible talks and consuming them in the same way.

22. 9:49

    And so I don’t know if that means that the podcast generation is aging up. I don’t know. I don’t know what those numbers mean. I just think it’s it, it’s a testament to how accessible I think you guys have worked to make it so that it’s a lot of work has been done behind the scenes to make it shoot across so many different platforms, you know?

23. 10:09

    So hats off to you for figuring that out so that it is able to be accessible in order to keep promoting the message of the gospel, essentially. I think that’s one of the things that I just really love. Well, I mean, that’s really what brought me to wanting to be involved in this, that it, it really is so open and available to so many people and it’s filling such a need for so many people that it just, it really feels like this is, this is something very useful and very helpful. And so it’s, it’s really neat to see what, what God has done with it and think about hopefully where we can go with it then too.

24. 10:48

    Yeah, there’s a thing in marketing and where like, again, why I think this is a good idea is we’re just trying to reduce clicks. Like we are serving a talk and and if you listen to podcasts, you get this and it’s literally one click. You could go, you could find all these same talks on the Internet.

25. 11:01

    That’s where we get almost all of them. Well, except I, I guess I should say, except now Chris is digitizing tapes. So we’ve got the the good stuff that no one can find a. Commodity. But like you could, you know, you could go and find this stuff, but we just, you know, we’re just, and it doesn’t take us like a ton of work. We just make it easier.

26. 11:19

    I want to talk about the first downloads within the seven days number because the short, short story is we’re in the top 10% of podcasts as far as downloads within the first seven days, which is pretty great. And that is, I want to thank those listeners specifically. That’s a number that encourages me as a host or a volunteer doing this, seeing how many talk, how many people listen basically immediately.

27. 11:41

    Like it’s not surprising to have 4 or 500 people that listen within the 1st 24 hours. Which that to me, if you’re one of those people, I’d, I’d, I want to thank you for doing that. And I mean that really just because that isn’t that to me is like, OK, I got to get this out by 5:00 Pacific Time on Sunday because 500 people expect it, right? And I know if, if I said that to your face as you were listening, you’d be like, no, no, don’t worry about it. You could be a day later.

28. 12:06

    Whatever that audience is, is when I really think about regularly. Yeah. And on that point, Levi, I think now is a perfect time. We’ve done this in the last several specials, but to especially thank everybody who is ever written in and sent in a suggestion, as well as all those throughout the years who have also volunteered behind the scenes to help work out things and those that are currently helping.

29. 12:30

    Now, the social media and all the stuff we’ve got going on is being done by people that are not the four of us. And it’s part of why the social media is so much better than it was. If you go and look at some of the earlier posts, you can see what it looks like when one of us is in charge of the social media and the graphics.

30. 12:44

    It is not great, but I wanted to especially thank the people that are helping us run the podcast on behind the scenes in taking suggestions, and then also everybody who takes the time to send in suggestions, helping us to figure out how to get access to the talks. I know I really appreciate that sometimes you might get weird emails from me asking you how to talk, sometimes months if not years after you recommended it.

31. 13:06

    And the link doesn’t work. But all the work that we do to try to capture these amazing talks and share them with everybody is so, so appreciated. And we even mentioned it in the new intro that all of these talks are because of suggestions and recommendations from people literally all around the world, helping us to gather the material that is being taught and shared and spread all around the world.

32. 13:30

    And I just want to make sure that we thank each and everyone of you because this podcast would just be the four of us or originally the two of us, just Levi and I talking about Bob Lloyd talks and a few other speakers that we want to enjoy. If the rest of you hadn’t sent in recommendations and suggestions that we were able to enjoy the process of screening through. So thank you.

33. 13:49

    Cool. Well, Jason talked about what we’re doing in the future, major like announcements. Brian’s gonna be back more full time. Do you have any other like, thoughts about what’s going to happen in the next 100 episodes? I think the the only other thing we were going to mention in this one that we wanted to announce in July, each of us is going to pick one of our own talks to share. Because I don’t know about the rest of you, but every once in a while someone will ask, well, if you were going to put your own talk up on the podcast, which one would it be? And we always try to do in July something different, partly to give all of us a break so we can enjoy Bible schools and things like that with our families during the summer. And this was an idea that we had on the back burner. And now that Jason’s joined and Brian is going to start coming back into the mix a little bit more, we, we have enough hosts to cover an entire month.

34. 14:39

    So it allows us all to do that. So that’ll be what’s going on in, in July. So it’ll be fun. Yeah, I’m excited about that. It’s it is kind of funny. We are picking our own talks so and we’re doing our own introductions. So I think that’ll be obviously very different than what we usually do.

35. 14:55

    All right, well, thank you all. I thank you guys here with me and thank you to anyone who’s listening. Like we said, we’re excited for 100 more episodes. You know, we, we pray that the Our Lord continues to bless this project as long as he remains away. Thanks for hanging out guys, Appreciate it.

36. 15:11

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37. 15:57

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38. 16:13

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