Review of Behind the Bastards - Balance your ad levels and reduce

Balance your ad levels and reduce some banter for a top notch podcast

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“Topic: #history #famous crime #weird history Host(s): Robert Evans, editor at cracked.com, former international journalist Production Company: iHeartPodcasts Review Date: 8/11/22 Summary: Some of the worst people in history are way more interesting than you ever heard of in school. Dig deep and find out the weird stuff. This is a host/guest-host style conversation about the weird aspects of historical figures. It’s well researched and interesting. The guests are there to riff, ask questions, or offer perspective if they share expertise on the topic. Or they’re just comedians? Scoring is 1-5 stars, 5 being top-notch, 1 being extremely poor or unlistenable Overall Score: 3.5 Score Reasoning: Good topic and conversation overall. The imbalance in ad volume relative to the podcast volume and recording quality across the history of the podcast knocks it down at least a full star. I would have given it 4 or 4.5. But If I’m cooking, washing dishes, doing chores, riding my bike, or attempting to fall asleep, the ads make this podcast a no-go. Otherwise it fulfills my thirst for history explained in a non-linear fashion. I’ll put this on my secondary list of leisure podcast choices, but not the first, again, because ads. Podcast Production Quality: 3 Voice recording quality is generally balanced, although it has started off a little hot on a few episodes. No sound effects or transition music. Podcast Content: 5 Well researched, going past the conventional history narrative about any given historical figure. Excellent source material and quotations where useful. Host/Guest Interaction: 4 Guests speak off the cuff and occasionally talk over each-other. Some commentary feels extraneous, but it lends to the extemporaneous style of the show. Listening to people argue at the beginning of the podcast makes me fast-forward. Guests seem to be chosen based on either their expertise or interests related to the historical figure at hand. Advertisements: 1 The volume of the three ads that kick off the show and pay throughout is substantively louder than the volume of the podcast. This is unacceptable for hands-free listening. The ad quality is also significantly more robust, whereas the podcast audio quality sounds a bit thinner or less robust, although this seems to have been slightly balanced out over time. Some ads are voiced by the podcast host, which results in slightly more consistent audio levels, but will then be followed by a loud radio-produced ad, leading me to have to play with the volume repeatedly. Also hearing ads for the same product over and over in an hour, or over the life of a show guarantees I’ll NEVER buy that product because now I’m really annoyed by their advertising style. Theme/Transition Music: 3 Neutral theme sounds, gets talked over. Not notable or annoying. General Length: 13 min - 1hr 44 min, average 50-60 minutes Frequency: Weekly Dates Produced: 4/24/18–current Number of Episodes in Total: 537 Number of Episodes Listened: 4-5, starting with episode 5, Osama Bin Laden, and ending with the July 12 episode on the Father of Gynecology. Podcast Service Used: Spotify, which seems to add some additional weed ads to the beginning of some episodes.”

RubyRubyRed via Apple Podcasts · United States of America · 08/12/22

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Djking_ishiphop via Apple Podcasts · United States of America · 05/27/18

Humour and history in one