Compasses over Maps

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We use the word "goal" to talk about so many things.

I want to get better at piano. I'm committed to doing yoga every morning for 3 months. Someday, I'd love to run a marathon. These are all "goals".

Business school teaches that goals should be measurable, within a set timeframe. Sales targets and KPIs and OKRs are all goals with multiple axes: time and value. We plot our course as we go, adjusting as necessary, until we reach our final destination (up and to the right). These types of goals are maps.

But back here in the real world, life teaches something different.

Maps are rigid ideas. We place a destination marker and chart the shortest route to those coordinates. Maps don't leave room for exploration or serendipity. Changing course is difficult, and you certainly can't stop half-way!

These types of goals may yield some short-term success, but ultimately they lead to banality, boredom, and burnout.

A better tool is a compass.

A compass points you in the right direction, but doesn't dictate any particular path. It opens a door to adventure and possibility. We may get lost, but in those moments we often stumble upon unexpected treasures - hidden pathways, chance encounters, and new perspectives.

While a map goal has a time and value component (the x and y axes), a compass goal includes the territory and the direction.

  • I want to run (territory) more often (direction)
  • I want to improve (direction) my health (territory)
  • I want to learn more about (direction) cooking techniques (territory)

Compass goals remind us that the journey is more important than the destination.

Compass goals are still goals. It is possible to wander aimlessly with no direction at all, embracing a sense of wonder and delight in every experience. This can sound like:

  • I love being in nature
  • Spending time with my kids is important to me
  • There's nothing better than a book and a warm bed

That way of thinking is not without worth, but it doesn't move a person forward, it doesn't help with goal setting. In a kabbalistic sense, this sort of self-wandering relates the sefirah of Chesed, which represents devotion, love, and desire.

Map goals, on the other hand, are like the sefirah of Gevurah, representing discipline, limitation, and judgement. Like Chesed, Gevurah is an important and helpful part of life, but alone, it has ultimately negative outcomes for goals.

Sitting between these two sefirot is Tiferet. Tiferet is all about integration, beauty, and balance. Our goals serve our needs best when they strike a harmony between the whimsy and desire of Chesed, and the discipline of Gevurah.

The Tree of Life Diagram.

The Tree of Life

Compass goals, or we could call them Tiferet goals, retain the excitement and enjoyment of our task, while continuing to point us in the right direction.

Black & White

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There's something special about black and white photography. We cannot help but perceive colour all around us, so the black and white image doesn't capture the world as we see it, but rather, as we remember it.

It is said that we dream in black and white. I don't think that's true. Dreams, like memories, are a non-visual sensation. We might remember some colours that might have stood out, but that's a memory of the experience of colour, not colour itself.

As Andri Cauldwell puts it:

To see in color is a delight for the eye but to see in black and white is a delight for the soul.

I've loved shooting black and white film for a long time, especially on my medium format Mamiya 7II. Recently, I've been re-inspired by the work of Adrian Vila (I highly recommend his blog).

The birth of photography occurred in 1826 when French inventor Nicéphore Niépce created his groundbreaking View from the Window at Le Gras. The process involved coating a pewter plate with bitumen and exposing it to light for eight hours. The light exposure hardens bitumen, so in areas where less light reached the plate, the bitumen remained soft and could be washed away. After polishing the plate, Niépce was left with a negative image.

We've obviously come a long way since then, via the daguerreotype and the calotype, and eventually colour photography. Yet, despite the popularity of colour photos, it's still black and white photos that we remember best.

Here's some of my favourite photos that I've taken over the years.


A sleeping baby.

This is baby Eli, snuggled up in his pram.


A portrait of a young man in a motor racing uniform.

My cousin Michael, before an important go-karting race.


A cut marble cliff-face.

The marble quarry which has been in use since Roman times, just outside Carrara, Italy.


A woman making coffee with an espresso machine.

My friend, and barista, Sofie.


A boy holding a fence.

This is Lior, on his way out of the chicken coop after collecting some eggs.


The front door of an apartment, with Hebrew handwriting, tiles, and the number 5.

The door to our apartment in Nachlaot.


A man using a large format view camera.

I met this guy in Yosemite National Park. He was shooting El Capitan on his large format camera.


A double exposure of a woman on a motorcycle.

An accidental (but very welcome) double exposure of a friendly bikie.


A group of people meditating in a city.

A group of people meditating in San Francisco.


An Indian bride, laughing with her bridesmaids.

An Indian bride, laughing with her bridesmaids.


The dust and scratches in the images below a result of me bring a lazy while processing the film.

A fat little baby, looking at the camera with his head tilted.

ELI!! What a cutie!


A boy with a crooked bowtie and messy hair.

Lior being Lior.


Hanging film negatives.

I used to process my own film. Here the negatives have been hung out to dry after being bathed in a fixer and washed clean. These are photos of my trip to San Francisco.

Raising Pirates

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I've always been a troublemaker. It's in my blood.

You see, through my father's line, I am a descendant of Cornish pirates.

You may have heard of the Pirates of Penzance. The Gilbert & Sullivan opera was written about real pirates who harboured in a town named Penzance, at the southern tip of the United Kingdom. If you drive 15 minutes north from there, along the A30, you'll come to a place called Carbis Bay.

That's my namesake. I'm a Carbis.

Carbis Bay, nestled in the larger St. Ives Bay, faces the Celtic Sea. From here you can easily sail to Cork or Cardiff, Plymouth or Porto. It's an excellent place for a seafarer to setup shop. And many did. Cornwall became known as a place of refuge for pirates.

An elaborate system of piracy was carried on intermittently during the whole of the [Elizabethan] reign… A few of their havens-one in Dorset, one in Cornwall, three or four in Ireland, and one or two in Wales-were immune from sudden attack. They were nearly always privately owned, some of them were never used for legitimate traffic, and they were all more or less secret.

No search was ever successful. In Cornwall and Wales it was impossible to muster such forces as the Crown controlled without arousing suspicion. No pirate captain was ever taken while unlading a cargo in secrecy, and it was above all the secure possession of these harbours that made the traffic successful.

David Mathew, The Cornish and Welsh Pirates in the Reign of Elizabeth

The world needs troublemakers. Or, as Seth Godin puts it, people who "make things better by making better things". The status quo is like an old freezer. It can get jammed, and sometimes needs a good shove to break the ice, so that it can open smoothly again.

Steve Jobs penned it beautifully, in the famous 1997 "Think Different" ad.

Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.
— Steve Jobs, Here's to the crazy ones

This really resonated with me as a teenager. It was foundational. Another foundational text was the Hacker's Manifesto (which in hind-sight is a little more angsty).

This is our world now... the world of the electron and the switch, the beauty of the baud. We make use of a service already existing without paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn't run by profiteering gluttons, and you call us criminals. We explore... and you call us criminals. We seek after knowledge... and you call us criminals. We exist without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias... and you call us criminals. You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and lie to us and try to make us believe it's for our own good, yet we're the criminals.
The Mentor, The Conscience of a Hacker. Phrack Inc., Volume One, Issue 7, Phile 3 of 10

This is our world now... the world of the electron and the switch, the beauty of the baud. We make use of a service already existing without paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn't run by profiteering gluttons, and you call us criminals. We explore... and you call us criminals. We seek after knowledge... and you call us criminals. We exist without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias... and you call us criminals. You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and lie to us and try to make us believe it's for our own good, yet we're the criminals.

My pirate heritage has had plenty of opportunities to play out in my tech career. Standard software and media piracy, of course (information wants to be free, man!). The very spirit of open-source software is pirate-like. Taking fancy Spanish wine from Galleons and distributing it cheaply to the masses – is that really so different from what the internet did to IBM and Oracle?

Beyond that, breaking rules has defined my career. I'm known by friends and colleagues for ignoring expectations and experimenting with new ideas. I have little respect for ladder-based leadership (I don't tend to do well at large companies) and embrace meritocracy – those who do the work get to decide. That's been my history, but also the history of the tech sector. Tech has been taken over now by men in ties, but it was started by rebels and rogues with dirty jeans and dirtier hair.

In education, mischief is more important than ever. Our school systems reinforce conformity. It rewards students for the right answer, and punishes a better question. The world walks on tip-toes, hoping not to offend anyone. This stifles new ideas, hard questions, and growth.

It's time we taught our children to make a ruckus. Our kids need to learn how to pursue their own goals, not some curriculum designed to make everyone think the same way. Let's fly our skull-and-crossbones flag high, and raise wild, fearless, dangerous pirates.

Starting Point

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I recently wrote about the way AI is making it possible to build software essentially for free. That's not exactly true – at least not yet.

Starting work on a new project is hard. It's the classic blank page problem. While AI doesn't yet do such a great job of programming, one thing that it's great at is giving me a starting point.

From there, it's much easier for me to say "that sucks, it should be done this way instead", and rewrite the whole thing.

I was chatting with a friend of mine, Aaron West, about this phenomenon just now, while he worked on fixing a whole bunch of poorly generated React components. He put it this way:

The review and edit workflow is much easier than building everything from scratch. Even if it means you end up rewriting the whole thing.

I've found this to also be true for writing. Occasionally I might ask ChatGPT to write something for me, only to find that the attempt inspires me in what not to do. I'll read it, abandon it, and feverishly begin my attempt to show the LLM how a real person does it.

Take that, ChatGPT.

I don't ever take that approach with this blog, since I only write what I'm inspired to write. I do occasionally prompt with "this paragraph doesn't quite work, can you fix it?" or "finish this thought…". Even then, I take the suggestions and run with something entirely different.

AI hasn't yet proven itself as a great writer or programmer, but it's an excellent tool for getting the creative ball rolling.

🥙 Pita: Devlog 1

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On June 28, 2005, Apple release iTunes 4.9. From the release notes:

With iTunes 4.9, you can now browse and subscribe to podcasts from within the iTunes Music Store. Podcasts are frequently updated radio-style shows downloadable over the Internet. You can also transfer podcasts to iPod, for listening on the go.

At launch, Apple's podcast directory was home to 3,000 shows. The BBC at the time described podcasts like this:

Podcasts are downloadable audio shows that can be created and listened to by anyone with the right equipment.

Who could have imagined that podcasts would grow to become an entire media category, right alongside film, television, music, and books?

In 2020 over 1,000,000 new podcasts launched! That number has died down quite a bit – only a quarter that many in 2024. Even so, there remains 260,000 active podcasts as of this writing.

Despite the popularity of podcasting, publishing a podcast still requires a good amount of time, skill, and money. There are some great tools to help, but there are also some gaps.

The way I see it, a podcast production workflow requires three keys steps1.

1. Record

This step is well covered by existing tools. You could use music production software like Logic or Garageband, a simpler tool like Voice Memos or Quicktime, or a SaaS that also handles video calls like Riverside. Most of these tools have native Mac and iOS apps. Most are easy to use and well established.

2. Edit

When it comes time to edit, things get a little trickier. You could learn some of the more advanced features of Logic or Garageband, keeping the editing and recording software the same. Or you could try AI tools like Descript which automatically trims silences and remove filler words. Many podcasters swear by Ferrite, an iPadOS native app that makes podcast editing famously simple using the Apple Pencil. Again, there are many native apps, and while editing software can be more complex, there's lots of help to be found online.

3. Publish

This is where things take a bit of a turn. You've recorded and edited your podcast in Garageband, and managed to export it as an M4A file. Now what? Or maybe you recorded in Voice Memos on your iPad, and edited using Ferrite. Again, what to do now that you've exported that file?

There's really only one answer: Find a podcast hosting platform to take care of the rest for you. You're kicked out of these simple native experiences, and suddenly find yourself logging into a web page (each host with a different UI), with top-bar navigation and an upload button.

Good luck doing it on iPhone. And don't forget the monthly subscription.

Publishing is really quite a departure from the user experience of recording and editing your show. There's a real friction there, while you wait for web pages to load so you can manage the description and meta data for any one of your episodes. This is not what it should feel like to publish a podcast!


I'm working on an app to fix this. It's called Pita. It's based on 3 Principles for Podcast Publishing.

1. A Native Interface

Podcast publishing should feel native, like editing an Apple Note or using the Mail app. There should be workflow support to drop a new episode in through the Share Sheet, or a Shortcuts integration. Our podcasts are important to us. We want to see how they're faring with widgets and notifications.

2. Hosting Independence

A podcast publishing app should support any hosting provider. Why learn a whole new interface for each of the different hosts you engage with? Publishing a podcast should be like opening your favourite FTP client and choosing which server configuration to connect to. Or an email app that supports multiple accounts. All your podcasts, managed from a single app interface, no matter where they're hosted.

3. Support to Self-Host

You might not want to pay a $12 monthly subscription to host your podcast! Perhaps you have a cheap S3 bucket ready to go, or would be happy to host your podcast with a Creative Commons license for free through the Internet Archive. There should be an app which enables these self-hosted options, with an auto-generated RSS feed based on your episode data.


So that's what I'm building. It's still early days, but a work in progress nonetheless. Stay tuned, and if you like the idea, please let me know! Those feedback loops help keep me motivated.

An early build of Pita.

An early build of Pita.


  1. Arguably, we could extend the three podcast production steps to five or six. Most podcasts also need to distribute, promote, and monitor analytics. However, these seem ancillary to the primary production pipeline, so I've not included them here. ↩︎

Malleable Software

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Ben Thompson's aggregation theory posits that the internet created an entirely new disruptive business paradigm, because for the first time in history, products could be distributed with zero marginal cost.

Now, large language models have triggered a second wave of disruption: while the internet eliminated distribution costs, AI is eliminating creation costs – making software essentially free at every stage.

Internet = zero marginal cost
Internet + LLMs = zero total cost1

Geoffrey Litt, via X:

Today's software ecosystem evolved around a central assumption that code is expensive, so it makes sense to centrally develop and then distribute at low marginal cost.

If code becomes 100x cheaper, the choices no longer make sense! Build-buy tradeoffs often flip.

LLMs are making software development quick, easy, and accessible to everyone. So the big question is: How will this disruption change the way we use our computers?

One likely answer is that we'll see a decline in bundled software, in favour of scripting tools and API services. Rather than subscribing to an accounting SaaS, which might meet most of my needs (with a bunch of other features I'll never use) I can just build my own accounting software, specific to my particular use-cases.

Since I own the source code, and an LLM can be given full context into how the software is written and what my business needs are, features can be added as needed.2

A personal anecdote:

Yesterday I was wondering how I might be able to host a podcast for free. I had a few requirements, very niche.

  • Convert my M4A files to MP3
    • Attach my show artwork, show name, and episode title
    • Use 64kbps mono
  • Upload the converted file to a free hosting service (the Internet Archive)
  • Copy the public URL of the service to my clipboard

I could have simply chosen to host with Buzzsprout or [choose your favourite podcast hosting platform] and paid a monthly subscription. But in about 4 hours, I was able to get a much more personalised solution up and running. Not only is it free, it's a simple AppleScript droplet that I can pop my recorded audio into, and have a URL returned in about a minute. Just what I was looking for.

If I didn't know that Claude was capable of the heavy lifting, I'd have never bothered with the project. I'm a capable senior software engineer, but this sort of project would just have taken too long and required too much mental effort.

The shift from bundled software to personalised solutions isn't just about cost or efficiency. It represents a fundamental change in our relationship with technology. When software becomes malleable, shaped by our exact needs rather than vice versa, we move from being passive consumers to active shapers of our digital environment. We create software that can bend to fit us, rather than us bending to fit it.


  1. When we say "zero cost", we're rounding down. Of course distribution online does have a cost to it – hosting isn't usually free. And building software with AI still does take some time. The point is that the costs have been so far reduced as to be essentially zero, comparatively. ↩︎

  2. AI isn't perfect, and maybe it won't ever be. We might see small development teams added to small businesses to develop all their in-house software, with everything built precisely to requirements by AI, and guided by human engineers. ↩︎

Housekeeping

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A little housekeeping post, with a few updates to the website.

First of all, if you're reading this in your RSS reader, THANK YOU for keeping the dream alive.

You might like to click through for this post, because I've made some small changes to the website.

I've updated the header with some neat ASCII art, and I've been adding a little more detail to the About page.

I've also added an email subscription option, using the excellent Buttondown. Let me tell you about Buttondown (not a paid endorsement, just a recommendation).

So email newsletter software is largely terrible. I've tried MailChimp, Campaign Monitor, Brevo, even a native Mac app called Direct Mail. The story is the same – polished brands, terrible software. Hard to use, full of bugs (especially Brevo), and clearly steered toward nabbing your sweet sweet monthly subscription.

Buttondown is a bit different. Firstly, it actually includes my niche feature request out of the box (automatically trigger a new email whenever I publish a new post), instead of having to jury-rig some Rube Goldberg Zapier stack.

Secondly, it's got just the right amount of personality. I love that in software. It really has small-team vibes, in the very best way possible. The developer behind this is clearly influenced by the likes of Jason Fried, Amy Hoy, and DHH (complete with homepage manifesto). It's so easy to use. Everything just landed under my fingers.

Also, this, this, this, and this.

Lastly, I've been working on a new feature, to provide yet another way of keeping up to date. I'm working on adding a Podcast, which will mostly just be me reading each post. But who knows, maybe I'll throw some bonus content in there too. I'm hoping to have that live by next week.

Thanks again for reading!

Documenting Uninteresting Minutia

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I was inspired by something I saw on Joshua Wold's blog a few days ago. He was reflecting on why we write.

When I sit down to put words to the page I have an idea of what I want to write. But I’ve purposely chosen not to plan it out.

The experience is much the same for me, except that sometimes I don't have an idea of what I want to write.

Sometimes you've got to just power through and write anyway. And there's a tension there– am I writing for myself or for an audience?

Because if I write for myself, then I'm likely to blather on, documenting uninteresting minutia. Getting words out for the sake of getting words out, because getting words out feels natural and cathartic. This blog's origin was an unfiltered journal with a voyeuristic audience.

But if I write for an audience, it's so easy to tell myself "it's naval gazing1", or "it's not good enough", or "who cares?".

I'll hold that tension.

For me, a large motivating factor is recording a piece of myself for my children. The more I write, the better they'll know me. It's easy for kids to forget that their parents are actually real people, so one day, when they realise this fact, they might take an interest in learning about their Dad. And, more morbidly, someday (B"H many years from now) they'll have a little extra to remember me by.


  1. Like this article. Archetypal naval gazing. ↩︎

Circle of Fifths

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My method for practicing bass guitar is based on the Circle of Fifths, inspired by a method taught by Scott Devine.

The Circle of Fifths is a music theory concept which links each of the 12 notes in a sequence. Start with a note, and increment it by 5. Play that "fifth", and then increment another five. As a bit of code, it could be expressed like this:

notes = ["C", "D♭", "D", "E♭", "E", "F", "G♭", "G", "A♭", "A", "B♭", "B"]
index = 0;

while playing {
    index = index + 5 // Move foward 5 notes in the sequence.
    index = index % count(notes) // Make sure our index is within range.
    play( notes[ index ] )
}

In other words, count forward 5 notes, looping back to the start as needed. This would result in the following repeating sequence: C / F / B♭ / E♭ / A♭ / D♭ / G♭ / B / E / A / D / G.

Which results in a rather beautiful star dodecagram.

The Circle of Fifths

Step 1: Learn the progression

This progression is helpful to practice, because it's very common in many varieties of music. Additionally, bassists often enumerate a triad while playing, which includes the fifth note in the key. Practicing fifths help you find interesting harmonic structures. If the guitarist is playing a C, consider an F.

Step 2: Practice major triad shapes

A triad is simply the first (or root) note, third note, and fifth note in a scale.

 ↓     ↓     ↓
 1  2  3  4  5  6  7
 C  D  E  F  G  A  B

There are essentially 3 patterns you could use to deconstruct a major triad on the bass guitar. Here's a C triad, in those three shapes (R for root note, 3 for the third, 5 for the fifth).

Shape 1:
G|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
D|---|---|---|---|-5-|---|---|
A|---|---|-R-|---|---|---|-3-|
E|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|

Shape 2:
G|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
D|---|-3-|---|---|-5-|---|---|
A|---|---|-R-|---|---|---|---|
E|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|

Shape 3:
G|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
D|---|---|---|---|-5-|---|---|---|
A|---|---|---|---|---|---|-3-|---|
E|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|-R-|

I practice these by playing through the Circle of Fifths using shape 1 first, then shape 2, and finally shape 3.

One thing I do to help me know when I've "got it under my fingers" is to throw a drum track on (I use my electric piano for this). When I'm comfortable playing through each sequence with a 110 bpm, that's when I know to move on.

Step 3: Practice inversions

When I first start practicing the major triads in their various shapes, I'll be playing the triad in order: R / 3 / 5. But as I'm feeling more confident with this, I'll invert the triad once (3 / 5 / R) or twice (5 / R / 3).

Keeping in the Circle of Fifths sequence, you get this:

  • (C chord) E / G / C
  • (F chord) A / C / F
  • (B♭ chord) D / F / B♭
    … and so on.

Of course each of these inversions can be played in each of the shapes listed above! So go through each inversion using each shape. Again, a drum track helps a lot!

Step 4: Combining shapes

Okay with this next step I implement some limitations on myself in order to force brain and fingers into uncomfortable territory.

The task is: Play through the Circle of Fifths triads using only fret 1–5 (or fret 6 if necessary). No open notes.

Once I'm feeling comfortable here, I'll move the whole thing up the neck, playing frets 6–10, or 8–12. This usually takes some time to figure out – I'm still becoming familiar with the notes north of the fifth fret! But that's why it's good practice.

Limiting the frets in this way forces you to choose a different shaped triad for each note in the circle.

Repeat with each inversion. Or sometimes I just throw in a random inversion while I'm playing through.

Step 5: Minor triads

Rinse and repeat steps 2–4, but using minor triads instead. Figure out your shapes, and proceed from there.

 ↓     ↓     ↓
 1  2  3  4  5  6  7
 C  D  E♭ F  G  A♭ B♭

You could even do the same for diminished or augmented chords, but I haven't bothered to learn these yet.


Many of these concepts have helped me on other instruments, too. Inversions on piano, and chord progressions on guitar. I'm not sure if bass is the best lens with which to approach a new instrument, but it's one that's worked for me so far.

Turn-Based Podcasting

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Every so often you'll come up with an idea that you're pretty sure nobody has tried yet.

99% of the time you're wrong.

But I think our invention of the turn-based podcast falls into that 1% of truly unique ideas.

Joshua and I have been working asynchronously for nearly our whole careers. So when we started a podcast that required a scheduled calendar event every week, something didn't quite sit right for us. So we decided to try something really different.

The podcast is called Async, and you can find it on all the best podcast networks. It's a podcast about technology, app development, and remote work. The unique aspect is that each episode alternates between hosts, switching back and forth between Joshua and me. This allows our conversation to unfold gradually over multiple short episodes.

Since this episode-to-episode asynchronous exchange is a new idea, I thought it would be good to define the term "Turn-Based Podcasting" a little more, and talk about the pros and cons of this novel format.

What is turn-based podcasting

I never liked the game Age of Empires. Some people will tell you that it's all about strategy, but they're wrong. It's all about speed. How fast you move your cursor, how well you know the shortcuts, how quickly you can react. This type of game is called "real-time strategy", because you're thinking and reacting synchronously with other players.

I've always preferred games like Chess, or Polytopia. In these games, play progresses in turns, each player receiving all the time they need to decide on the best course of action. These are "turn-based strategy" games.

Most podcasts are real time conversations. Sure, they're often heavily edited, and the end product may not be chronological, but the production requires collaborators operating concurrently.

Turn-based podcasts allow each host the time they need to think through a response, responding whenever is most suitable. Joshua will record an episode, which will appear in my podcast feed. Once I've had a chance to listen, I will record my response – often including a new topic or idea for Joshua to react to – and publish it. Each episode passes from one to the other, like a relay race passing on the baton1.

Turn-based podcasting is not limited to two hosts, nor does it require hosts to participate in a particular turn-order. The key distinction is that each episode contains a single speaker.

How is this different from asynchronous podcasting?

Asynchronous podcasting involves recording audio asynchronously, then stitching the segments together to form a single episode. Often, the interviewer records all of their questions all at once, and later, the interviewee answers them. The two audio clips are merged, and voila! You have an episode that was recorded asynchronously, but sounds synchronous (although, these types of shows often seem to be lacking a certain je ne sais quoi).

Turn-based podcasting, on the other hand, leans in to its asynchronous nature, rather than trying to hide it in post.

What are the advantages of turn-based podcasting?

The primary advantage is flexibility. Joshua and I are both busy working Dads, and our weeks are constantly in flux. We love podcasting, but between work, kids, family holidays, and religious events, we can't realistically dedicate a calendar slot every week.

Turn-based podcasting gives us the flexibility we need to make the conversation happen.

Another huge advantage is the time-to-publish. Since the listener (and responding host) needs to keep track of various topics and threads across episodes, we recommend keeping each episode short. Five to fifteen minutes works best for us. I listen to Joshua in my own time (driving, cooking, washing up) so the time I spend sitting at the microphone is limited only to my response.

Joshua and I pair our turn-based podcast with a live-to-tape policy. Without an edit, it takes me 15 minutes to record an episode, 5 minutes to upload and write a title, and another 5 minutes to add AI transcription and chapter markers. I consistently get an episode out in less than half an hour.

Lastly, our release frequency changes the game. Since our episodes are short, we tend to release 3 or 4 back-to-back episodes every week. This keeps us in regular rotation for our listeners, and top of mind.

What about the disadvantages?

If you look at any poll asking people what they like about podcasts, it's inevitably the conversational flow and the chemistry between the hosts that draws listeners.

There's no getting around the fact that verbal backchannel cues and even interruptions make for a more dynamic conversation. Turn-based podcasting misses out on that. Even so, over the course of a few episodes, listeners discover a flow between hosts. There are in-jokes, references, sledging, and snide remarks. The chemistry can be a little more subtle, a little more long-form, but it's there.

Won't listeners get confused?

Maybe? I mean, you've got to give listeners a little more credit than that, right? If you explain the situation up front, I'm sure the audience can figure it out. Here's how I introduce the Async podcast:

Saadia

Hi, welcome to Async! This is Saadia. Async is a back and forth conversation between Joshua and myself about technology, app development, and remote work.

Additionally, we recommend prepending each episode title with the name of the host in square brackets, like so: [Joshua] Pausing infinity wells.


I love podcasting. Talking through my thoughts and experiences helps me process them in a way not dissimilar to journalling or blogging. It helps me think. Finding a format that fits my lifestyle has really opened that up for me, and most importantly, made it sustainable.

Turn-based podcasting may not have the conversational dynamism of traditional formats, but it brings something unique to the table: flexibility, thoughtful exchanges, and a unique rhythm.


  1. I considered terming the practice "Relay Podcasting", but that might get confused with one of our favourite podcast networks: Relay FM↩︎