Full Transcript

Something is wrong with the Apple Podcasts top charts. As a podcaster, this personally annoyed and intrigued me. I investigate how this is happening and who is behind it.

Images of Podcast Promoters

In my quest of finding who’s behind this, I learned it is always someone from Bangladesh. I asked podcast promoters to send me a photo of their office and equipment. This is what I got.

Thanks

Thanks to our guest John Perotti, check out his show Last Seen, it’s great!

Thank you to Phil Stamper, for sharing his story about the NY Times. Phil is a YA author and publishing professional from Brooklyn, NY. His debut novel THE GRAVITY OF US comes out February 2020 from Bloomsbury Teen. Go to philstamper.com to learn more.

Also, a big thanks to Seth Godin for letting me use a snippet from his podcast Akimbo. Check out his new book This is Marketing.

Lastly, thanks to Podnews, Discoverpods, and Rob Walch at Libsyn for helping me research this story. Thank you to Dave at Chartable for letting me use the term “Chartbreakers”, which is a title of an article he wrote about this topic. Such a cool title isn’t it?

This episode was sponsored by Nord VPN. Visit https://nordvpn.com/darknet and use promo code “darknet”.

This episode is sponsored by LPSS Digital Marketing, your source for honest, transparent marketing services for businesses of all sizes. Visit LPSS at https://www.lpss.co/ for details.

Apple Podcasts Links

NY Times Best Seller Links

Attribution

Theme music created by Breakmaster Cylinder. Theme song available for listen and download at bandcamp.

Additional music by Epidemic Sound.

“Monkeys Spinning Monkeys” by Kevin MacLeod Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License.

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Transcript

[FULL TRANSCRIPT]

JACK: [MUSIC] One day a crow became jealous of a raven. [CAWING] That’s because people listen to what ravens say, but not crows. What the raven says is important because it’s a bird of omen and it can foretell the future. Because of this, the raven is held in great respect. The crow really wanted to get the same attention and reputation as the raven so one day he saw some travellers coming down the road and flew down to a tree by the roadside and cawed out as loud as he could. [CROW CAWING] The travellers were nervous and in dismay hearing the calls from this black bird. They feared it might be a bad omen until one of them who knew the difference between a crow and a raven said to his companions it’s alright, my friends. We can go on without fear. It’s only a crow and it means nothing. This is one of Aesop’s fables. The moral; those who pretend to be something they aren’t only makes themselves look ridiculous but maybe it also means those who are capable of knowing the difference between a crow and a raven will be better off in life.

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