If you listen to podcasts, what are the formats of your favorite shows? Are there certain things that make the format work particularly well for each?

@accidentalciso I mostly listen to Risky Business, sometimes Darknet Diaries and Citation needed.
The latter is almost an audiobook, but convenient when I'm driving.
Things that work for me are knowledgeable hosts that don't take themselves too seriously.
Between Two Nerds is my current favourite.

@accidentalciso

I listen to a lot of podcasts. And I skip a lot of them, because I'm 8 months behind.

I'm not sure what you mean by formats, but I'll tell you what I don't like. 1) Sequential introductions of people whose sole value is to introduce the next person. 2) Bad sound quality. Interviews conducted over phone lines. Hosts who speak too fast. 3) First names only. 4) When the co-hosts have similar vocal qualities. 5) In jokes between people you have no reason to like. 6) Frequent interruptions, either by the hosts or by ads. Put the ads in at the beginning or end. And the host should let their guest finish a thought. 7) Interviews that are broken up among several episodes despite the episodes being short. Just make it a long interview. 8) Bad politics, bad takes, no diversity of opinion, or overexplained simple ideas.

@aka_quant_noir Thanks for the input, it is very helpful! By format, I mean the structure of the show. For example, my show is a call-in radio format, but I’m starting to rethink that due to the amount of work that it takes to line up 3-5 people to participate in every episode. Lots of shows are an interview format, but I don’t know if that is what I want to switch to.

@accidentalciso
The podcasts that are auto-added to my listening queue are mostly 2 or 3 people talking about a specialist subject, taking turns bringing a topic every episode.

I have some more podcasts with only 1 person. If they're noticeably just reading, I'll get annoyed after a while and unsubscribe, but usually I want to know more about that subject.

I really dislike interview podcasts, because the audio quality varies wildly per episode or per interviewee, and I hate having to stop to reorganise my queue when I am out on my bicycle. Which is where I listen to most podcasts.

There are some podcasts from public radio that I threw out or am close to throwing out, because they put their ads in the middle of a sentence, and then resume afterwards with the rest of the sentence. BBC is especially bad with this.