Freakonomics: Public Transit Free?: What's Up At Podcast Movement 2022; Libsyn Surpasses $50 million in Ad Earnings

 Freakonomics: Should Public Transit Be Free

This week's episode of Freakonomics Radio asks the question "Should Public Transit Be Free?"

In the episode, host Stephen Dubner speaks with:

• Boston Mayor Michelle Wu about her push to get Boston a free bus system
  
  
• Former Kansas City Area Transportation Authority's Robbie Makinen about lessons from the biggest U.S. city to implement free public transit
  
  
• London transportation executive Shashi Verma about whether congestion pricing there has increased public-transit use
  
  
• UCLA transportation researcher Brian Taylor about why some of the seeming benefits of free public transit, in areas like pollution and congestion, may not be what they appear
  
  
• Stockholm traffic planner Marcus Finbom about his "fare-dodging insurance plan"

Listen to the episode and find a transcript at freakonomics.com or on any podcast platform. 

 Notes from The Podcast Movement 2022 in Dallas

 Every summer since 2014, Podcast Movement has gathered thousands of passionate podcasters and industry professionals from around the world under one roof to learn, grow professionally, and most importantly evolve and improve the podcast community. Some highlights from the conference so far:

• Tal Minear is a Southern California-based voice actor, sound designer, and fiction podcast producer. In Dallas, they created an amazing Indie Fiction Booth that they and other independent creators are running. This booth has an audio fiction Spin the Wheel and a whole array of shows to go on a blind audio date with. 
• Lauren Passell and Arielle Nissenblatt conducted a session on how podcasters can do promo swaps to grow their show in a sustainable manner; Tink Media tweeted a thread on this.
  

 Libsyn announces it has passed $50 million in Advertising Earnings

 Libsyn, one of the largest podcasting hosting companies and owner of AdvertiseCast, announced that the company has surpassed generating $50 million in advertising earnings for podcasters and has completed a new Automatic Advertising Solution to assist publishers with generating programmatic advertising revenues. 

That's a lot of Geico insurance ads and pitches for Hello Fresh. How I miss the "old days" when podcast advertisers consisted of mattress companies and Audible.  

 “As the industry pioneer, Libsyn has provided the industry’s first podcast hosting platform and has continued to invest in industry-leading hosting and monetization tools to help podcasters thrive,” said Brad Tirpak, CEO of Libsyn. “We have successfully connected thousands of podcasters to over a thousand advertisers. I am proud of the team for reaching the $50 million milestone.”    

If podcasts start running ads with Joe Namath or Jimmie “JJ” Walker talking about Medicare enrollment, I’m out.