I am excited to announce a new podcast in addition to my existing podcast (Pod of Jake), which I plan to continue unaffected. The new one is called Purple People. For this podcast, I will be having conversations with some of the most interesting people on Farcaster. The only criteria is that the guest is on Farcaster. So I expect the guests and our conversations to be as wide-ranging as the people on Farcaster and their interests. Of course, there are certain areas of interest such as crypto which are common across most of the people on the network. And I expect Farcaster itself will be a frequent topic of conversation. But we will certainly not be talking about crypto or Farcaster all the time. I am much more interested in talking about all sorts of things.

The People of Farcaster

This podcast scratches two itches which I have had for at least one and three years, respectively. The first was to start a podcast focused purely on the people of Farcaster. I think Farcaster is an interesting network of people which can continue to grow in quantity while retaining some of its early community's common qualities such as civility and curiosity. Ultimately, I believe Farcaster has the potential to become the power law leading, sufficiently decentralized social network of the future. More importantly, I generally enjoy meeting and talking to new people I meet on Farcaster, and I hope to meet many more as a result of starting this podcast.

Walking Recordings

The second itch was to figure out a way to record podcasts while walking outside and still retaining a high enough audio quality so as not to be less than satisfactory for the average podcast listener. I think I finally figured it out. So I plan to record most, if not all, Purple People episodes while walking outside using my Ray-Ban Meta glasses to record. If you are aware of a better walking recording device, let me know what it is. Otherwise, I am as surprised as you are to find that a pair of glasses ended up being the form factor which, after years of sporadically searching, finally seems to have satisfied my criteria for a lightweight, high-quality audio device I can use on the move. Fittingly, I was recommended the glasses by one of my good friends from Farcaster, @phil.

Minimum Preparation, Maximum Spontaneity

Beyond the fact that it will be focused on Farcaster people and recorded while I am walking, Purple People will differentiate from Pod of Jake in a few other ways as well. Most significantly, I will intentionally limit my preparation for each episode for the sake of enabling myself to do more of them and seeing what happens when the conversations are maximally spontaneous. Unlike an episode of Pod of Jake for which I might prepare anywhere between a couple of hours and a couple of weeks, I expect to limit my explicit preparation for an episode of Purple People to a maximum of 30 minutes. I am optimistic about how these conversations may differ as a result. I don’t know that they will necessarily be “better”, as if conversations could be judged so objectively anyway, but I do expect that they will be substantially different. I expect the increase in spontaneity to lead the conversations in less expected directions, with my questions coming more purely from a place of curiosity than an intention to drive the conversation in certain directions I have predetermined might be interesting (which, to be fair, still comes from a place of curiosity in the first place).

Other Small Differences

Since I will be walking while recording, I will be recording Purple Purple as an audio-only podcast just as I did for the first 140 episodes of Pod of Jake (since then, I have included video as well for most episodes). I have always preferred recording podcasts audio-only for a number of reasons, so I am excited to return to that simpler format as opposed to forcing the addition of video. Another small difference is that I will not commit to a publishing cadence as I do with Pod of Jake, where I have expected myself to publish an episode every week or two for the last 4 years, and roughly have done so with some exceptions here and there. I want Purple People to feel low pressure and just for fun. So I want to strip out any unfun parts of the process, most notably the various parts of post-production and publishing, which I mostly have minimized for my main podcast already, but will seek to do even moreso for Purple People. I don’t enjoy editing or making clips or doing the kind of overhead-type work that most people consider a prerequisite for getting an episode published. And I don't think it really matters either. So I’ll decide what matters and what doesn’t for myself and I will aim to release the conversations I record as simply and as quickly as possible for anyone who wants to be able to listen to them anytime.

In Closing

I officially decided to start this podcast a week ago. Since then, I have set everything up and recorded a few episodes. My next step is to publish the first one. I could have never predicted all of the good things which have come from starting my original podcast, Pod of Jake. So now, as I start this new podcast, I am excited about the unpredictable potential for Purple People.

If this sounds interesting, you can subscribe to the Purple People podcast on Apple or Spotify.

Thank you for reading, and if you do decide to tune in, thank you for the listening.