Frank Racioppi
Frank Racioppi is a South Jersey-based author who publishes his daily podcast e-publication —Ear Worthy — on several platforms, including Blogger, Substack, ManyStories, Medium, Tumblr, and Vocal.
Tell us about Ear Worthy in 10 words or less.
Ear Worthy delivers podcast reviews, recommendations, and trends to podcast fans.
Why did you start it? What’s the origin story?
2007, I started a blog called Podcast Reviews. I remember that my first podcast reviews were for the PC Magazine podcast, BusinessWeek podcast, TWIT by Leo LaPorte, and Sword And Laser, a sci-fi/fantasy book podcast.
Perhaps it was too early in podcasting’s life cycle because, in four years, I had only garnered about 250 regular readers a week. It’s more probable that I did a poor job of marketing the blog because I’m inherently bad at self-promotion. In 2011, I closed Podcast Reviews.
In 2017, podcasting was ascendant, and I thought I’d try again with another blog called Podcast Reports. By 2019, I changed the name to Ear Worthy. Now, I have 20,000 impressions a week. That’s not because of me. Podcasting has become mainstream, at least for people under 50.
How did you first get interested in audio?
As I mentioned, I started listening to podcasts early in its life cycle. After I started Podcast Reviews, a reader contacted me and said she wanted to start a podcast and hoped that I could help her. It turned out that she lived two towns away from me.
Now, I had force-taught myself an early version of Audacity and had no knowledge of podcasting equipment. Nonetheless, we went into it truly with little idea of what to do. The podcaster, this delightful mid-60s woman named Florence (Flo to her friends), wanted to do a sewing podcast. She called it Sew What.
I became her helper, I.T. troubleshooter, scriptwriter, and producer. Flo was a natural. After a few episodes, she just needed bullet points. Listeners loved her. By 2015, she had over 1,000 downloads a month. As a thank you for my help, she had me on her podcast as a guest a few times. I know nothing about sewing. As a guest, I just said stuff like, “That’s interesting, Flo,” and “I didn’t know that.”
Sadly, Flo got COVID during the pandemic and passed away. Her family deleted her account, and those episodes are gone.
I started my own podcast in 2016 called Make A Connection. It was about how to communicate better in the workplace. In three words, it was terrible. I should have hired Flo to host the show. After eight episodes, I called it quits and became one of the thousands of podcasts that didn’t make it to ten episodes.
Many of us read your work, love it, and wonder…who is this guy?! Who are you when you’re not writing about podcasts?
Great question. The answer is going to make you say, “Huh.” As a young man, I used to write for a newspaper and publish articles in print magazines, which were dominant in the print world of the 1970s and 1980s. I have published in New Jersey Monthly, American Fitness, The Pet Dealer, and many other long-buried publications. But I always wanted to be an author. Since 2020, I’ve written and hybrid-published four novels and six nonfiction books. My most popular novel is Away From Home, a young adult fantasy novel. My most popular nonfiction book was The COVID Hotel, which was a memoir about testing positive for COVID-19 in December 2021 in Rome as I boarded a cruise ship and then spent 19 days in an Italian military hospital until I tested negative.
So, to answer your question, I write books and novels when I’m not writing or listening to podcasts. I’m also an avid reader, who is never without a book to read. I usually read four at a time. One in print form, one as an ebook, one on my phone, and one as an audiobook.
Have you had any good experiences with your readers or the people you write about?
This is a great question because I’m fortunate to have terrific readers. I attribute that to the caliber of people who are inveterate podcast fans. They are a unique group of individuals – smart, curious, and empathetic.
Anyway, here are just two of my reader stories, but I can fill several pages with my interactions with readers. First, five years ago, I published a review of a new mental health podcast. About two months later, I received a comment from a reader explaining that she had been contemplating and planning suicide for months. She had read my review of that podcast and began listening, which led her to reach out to a therapist and begin the road back to recovery.
Last I heard, she started her own mental health podcast a few years ago.
My second story involves my favorite people in the world – indie podcasters. I had written a review of an indie podcast hosted by two former top corporate execs about dealing with corporate life. I loved the show and recommended it to podcast fans. About a month later, I received a message from one of the hosts. They had worked so hard for several years on this podcast without as much success as they had hoped and were seriously thinking of the ending of the show. Until they read my review. Now, they are preparing for a new season. It doesn’t get much better than that!
What are the best 5 things you’ve listened to this year?
Lauren, seriously, just five. You’re killing me. Here goes:
Why Wars Happened?
Conspiracy, She Wrote
Every Single Sci-Fi Film Ever
5 Random Questions
Even If It Kills Me
What’s something that got made but flew under the radar?
Hobo Code is an audio drama made by film people (Shane Portman, Paul Pakler) and is a four-part limited "magical realist" series about two hobos (an acerbic rambler and a self-ordained monk) and a young girl with a best friend who lives in a coffee can. The journey stretches from the Roaring Twenties to the Great Depression and the Great Recession of 2008. Bill Pullman is a voice actor in the show.
Who is your favorite creator?
My favorite creators are independent podcasters. Whenever possible, I try to review and support indie podcasts. I love Next Chapter Podcasts with their Shakespearean plays. They make Shakespeare accessible to all, and the acting, music, and sound design are always at such a high level.
If you were going to make a podcast, what would it be? Don’t worry about any of the logistics (time/space travel is fine), whether or not anyone would like it (only you have to like it), or the budget (you have $1M.)
Another excellent question. Of course, Spotify discovered that you can’t buy your way to podcast dominance. Ironically, the best podcasts are often the cheapest to produce because they are indie podcasts. So, if I could make any podcast with a large budget, here’s what I would do. First, I’d like to develop an Ear Worthy podcast. I’d hire Rose Rimler, the senior producer from Science Vs, to produce the show. Then, I’d hire Arielle Nissenblatt and Ned Donovan from Arielle & Ned’s Daily Tips… podcast to be co-hosts.
Their show recently won the Ear Worthy Independent Podcast Award (AKA The Earlobes) for best short-form podcast, and there is a good reason for that. They have wonderful chemistry, their humor is light-hearted and uplifting, and they both know podcasts.
Once a week, Arielle and Ned would cover the podcasts reviewed in Ear Worthy. Arielle is already an icon in the podcast recommendation space with EarBuds Podcast Collective. This would be like her “swimming the English Channel” moment. Of course, Ned is an actor and producer and excels at both skills.
I’d have Wil Williams, Devin Andrade, and Samantha Hodder on the writing staff. Mathew Passy from the Podcasting Tech podcast would be our sound and I.T. expert, and we’d have Bridget Todd from the Beef podcast doing opinion pieces every other week.
What kind of podcast makes you really excited?
I love podcasts that take a familiar theme or genre and put a twist on it. Let me give you a few examples. 6 Degrees Of Cats is not a “cute kitty” podcast but an excursion through history and culture with cats as docents. Salad With A Side Of Fries is a podcast about wellness and weight loss for real life. No swearing off carbs for the rest of your life or doing 300 pushups at four in the morning. Because The Boss Belongs To Us is unique because the co-hosts began a campaign to make Bruce Springsteen a gay icon. Nerdpreneur combines entrepreneurship with nerd passions like collectibles.
Who do you wish would start a podcast?
My answer is going to cause almost everyone to go: Who? It’s Andreea Coscai. In 2022, she released a podcast—Who Holds Up Half The Sky—that I thought was inspired. The title comes from Influential activist figures in China’s history, from the Qing dynasty to the Maoist era, with the famous quote: “Women Hold up Half the Sky.”
What I love about this podcast is that it reveals feminism as more than a socioeconomic movement in highly developed countries. Coscai portrays feminism as a potentially powerful force against a Communist government like China. She’s talented. I’d like to hear more from her.
Are there too many podcasts?
This is such a simple question, Lauren, with such a complex answer. The number of podcasts—whether it’s two million total or 200,000 actives—is an eye-opening statistic. Yet, the number of new podcasts is going down. What worries me is that large podcast networks like Amazon, iHeart, and Spotify will dominate the podcasting space and push out all the wonderful indie podcasts. Don’t get me wrong. Large podcast networks have some excellent shows. Yeah, I F*cked That Up by Warner Music Group has celebrities actually admitting mistakes and expressing regret. Great show. But then you get the copycat shows. How many network podcasts do we need where some minor celebrity is having unfiltered conversations with his friends and neighbors? Everybody wants to Be Marc Maron and they’re not.
We need improved podcast discoverability. That’s why people read Ear Worthy. They know there are thousands of great podcasts out there that they’ve never heard of. TV and movies do not have that issue. I just found this wonderful podcast called Threshold that’s been out for four seasons. Why did it take me so long to find it?
That’s why I worked with my team to develop the Ear Worthy Independent Podcast Awards. Many of these winners are unknown to large swaths of podcast superfans. The Life Shift, Preconceived, Multispective, and Surfing Corporate – these are all shows that, if they were on a network, would have hundreds of thousands of listeners. They just need a chance. There are too many podcasts for any indie podcaster to say, “I’ll make a podcast, and they will find me and listen.”
That’s why they need companies like Tink Media that focus on the “indies.”
What do you wish that I had asked you but didn’t?
Who are the best writers in the podcast review space?
The answer is Wil Williams and Devin Andrade, hands down. They both write with such lyrical flair and narrative excellence. Hats off to two Substack writers: Samantha Hodder from Bingeworthy and Kattie Laur from Pod The North.
If you could get anyone to listen to The Longest Shortest Time who would it be?
Amy Schumer
Is there anything I didn’t ask you that I should have?
Yes. What is the best audiobook you’ve heard in the last year?
Answer: Big Swiss by Jen Beagin
Thanks, Frank!