Lately I've been listening to a lot of podcasts, and a wide range of topics, from politics to pro wrestling, Star Wars to medeival literature. Most of these are amatuer podcasts, and I never fault them for middling audio, but still many of them are just bad.

A few rules for the podcaster according to the Boost.

1- I don't care how much you like that song. DONT play the whole thing. No matter how clever of a transition it is, if I wanted to hear music, I wouldn't have downloaded your podcast. In fact, never play more than maybe 10 seconds of music.

2- If you're not a sports podcast, I don't care what ballgames you've been too, are planning on watching, or how your team is doing.

3- Start your content withing the first couple minutes. If you need to spend the first 8 min thanking people, mentioning other podcasts, explaining why you haven't podcasted in a while, or answering listener mail that doesn't relate to your podcast topic, I'm deleting your file.

4- If you can't be great, don't be long. 10-20 minutes of hearing people ramble on about a movie might be entertaining, but once it's going 30-50 min, if you're not extremely insightful and witty, you become boring.