Tuesday, February 01, 2005

Cleaning up podcasts

The other day, I pulled down a couple of podcasts to listen to on the way down to school. One I have listened to a number of times in the past and the other was a recommendation from a friend. My experience made me want to petition publishers to consider cleaning things up some. Now in all fairness, I am one of the most conservative people on the planet, but I personally do not want to listen to someone rolling and smoking their marijuana or describing their intimate encounters in their podcast.

I would love to be able to listen to podcasts with my wife (or even kids) in the car, but I don't ever feel like I can. One of the podcasts I listened to made me squirm (just before I deleted it from my Muvo) and I was alone in my truck. I just don't think that's necessary and I'm not alone on this either. A good friend of mine who is more politically open-minded said that he too was downloading some podcasts that he would never listen to in mixed company (and has stopped listening to a couple of shows altogether).

The other thing I have noticed is that guys who do podcasts seem to slip even further down the path of vulgarity when they are joined by other guys. Adam Curry and Dave Winer seem to exhibit this behavior - together, they use far more colorful language than either of them do on their own. I think it's too bad because they are very intelligent people with some great ideas, but speaking like they do doesn't help convey that message.

Now I'm not calling for a rating system, censorship, or anything else, but what I am saying is that I have stopped listening to some fairly interesting programs because they can't keep it clean. I'll vote with my feet and listen to programs that are less offensive to me, but it's too bad that it's not going to include some of the most popular titles in the RSS world.

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