I vote for more e-mails and less call-in. With all due respect, callers tend to ramble on and repeat themselves when their question can be stated in one sentence.

Another explanation of how money is worth what culture decides it is.

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/423/the-invention-of-money

Hey Jack, another great show. Why does it have to be either or on the call in vs. email thing. Why can’t you just mix the two together and just do both on in whatever percentage you feel like on that day? You can still call it the “Listener Feedback Show” or whatever.

Hey Jack, Great show! In regards to vermicomposting, I’ve been doing it indoors for about 6 months now. If you stay away from meat or dairy products the smell will be minimal, but you still want to keep it in a well ventilated area. I have trouble with raccoons, so I keep mine in the garage. I use a food grade 5 gallon bucket, you can usually get these free from a bakery, make sure to drill lots of very small holes in the lid and around the sides, but only near the top. The small holes will keep the insects out but still allow air flow. Liquid will build up and it must be removed, the “soil” (50% dirt & 50% food scraps) should be moist, but not soaked. The liquid works great for watering my herbs. The worms seem to like dark warm areas best, if it’s too cool they slow down on their consumption. A layer of dirt a couple inches thick across the top, I have found to be helpful in reducing the odor too. Hope this helps!

10.00 a pound for tomatoes coming next week!

I like both, it mixes it up. But Jack, you gotta do what you gotta do.

I just wish i knew about the Polar Bears invading Brooklyn. Any idea which route they’ll take? I could be in their path. Damn, another thing I gotta plan for.

Outstanding show today, Jack. Your podcast/blog-craft is growing at a healthy pace.

I really appreciate you giving us a glimpse of your vision for the future of TSP. (GO SIS Wolf and TW!!)

And, thanks for asking our opinions about the listener feedback shows. My personal opinion is much like Jonah’s above. But you will have to continue to give John from West Virginia a few minutes of air-time each month so we can all enjoy his awesome accent.

But I understand your possible desire to shy away from e-mail questions – sorting through all that electronic chit-chat takes dedicated concentration to the task at hand. Previewing listener calls is more conducive to multi-tasking…making another batch of biltong or what-have-you. You seem to come up with a good solution each time you grow the TSP realm, so be assured that your decision will be embraced by the likes of me.

I’ll have to vote for email as well. Occasionally there is the diamond in the rough who sounds good (I believe there was a female a couple of shows ago, but I may have that mixed up with another ‘cast), but for the most part, us laymen don’t belong on the radio. Leave it to the professionals. You do a great job, Jack!

The audio on the voice mail calls is often not the same level of volume as the rest of the podcasts. So I have a tough time hearing the question. I also agree that it is a better use of time to get right to the point. I vote e-mails over podcasts.

How about an email show every other week? then the rest of the time Call in shows? I think emails should still be used. Get the good ones tho.

I’d like to suggest a potential interviewee if I may: Samuel Thayer, author of the outstanding Forager’s Harvest, and most recently Nature’s Garden. His website can be found at: http://foragersharvest.com He has an incredible depth and breadth of knowledge of wild foraging, and both of his books have been incomparable. I think he probably shares a lot of similarities philosophically with TSP, and although I’ve never seen him use the word ‘permaculture’, parts of his books seem to almost describe it; probably not surprising given that his expertise is understanding nature. In any event I’d love to hear you interview him, and I suspect most TSPers would enjoy it as well

Hi Jack I much prefer the email shows to the call-in shows, if I’m driving in the truck even with it turned up really loud i still sometimes can’t hear the questions and if I’m listening on my mp3 player then sometimes I’m fast forwarding through to the answer.
I really like the idea of different e-mail headings.
The best shows are the ones that you find a subject and just talk passionately

I was honestly shocked at how many people said they prefer the email shows over call in shows. I’m not dissing on the email shows, I think they have their own place and use within the podcast as I mentioned in my earlier post. I guess I like more of a variety and the interaction. I do like the themed shows that compile a lot of listener feedback into one show.

Couple suggestions:
On having folks separate out questions and comments, awesome idea. However I can see people misspelling commentary, putting the wrong word in like comments for jack or something like that and your filters missing the email. Maybe keep it short and simple, something like “info for jack”?
Also, I think it would be cool if the emails were sprinkled in everyday as a little listener feedback segment. Maybe a couple emails a day after house keeping and before the main topic? It might also break up the culling process to a few minutes each day vs. however long it takes to get a whole email show ready.

Just my 2 cents for what they’re worth. I love the show and what you’ve created here. Rock on dude.

As an international listener, I prefer emails to calls. I don’t have skype and calling a US number is expensive, but an email costs nothing to send.

Also, some calls ramble, some are noisy, some mumble – I prefer an easy email read out by Jack.

Hi Jack,

Did you misspeak in Episode 618 when you said that if you deposited $200,000, the bank would be able to loan out 90% of it?

I thought the way fractional reserve banking worked was that if you deposited $200,000 they could loan out 9 times that, or $1,800,000. Thereby keeping 10% reserves.

So instead of them being able to loan out 90%, they can actually loan out 900%.

Jack, regarding whether or not call-in shows are desirable, I want to offer a consideration that might not appeal to you, but this is coming from a screenwriter (me), someone with an eye toward how to package a media presentation meant for the general public. Now I realize that you yourself have an impressive background in marketing, so you also have both training and experience as far as media presentations go. It’s just that I am concerned my effort to point this out to you might come off as my being all plastic consumerist-minded when your show so obviously rises above that.

But anyway, here goes ….

I think call-in shows do a good job of breaking up the auditory monopoly that Jack Spirko’s voice would otherwise have on the show. By allowing an auditory variation via the occasional insertion of different voices, you provide auditory interest. It’s sort of the auditory equivalent of the video trick used in broadcast TV news where instead of just one unwavering camera trained unflinchingly on that sole newscaster for the full half hour of news, the engineer keeps switching back and forth between a second or even a third camera angle trained on the same newscaster, but from different perspectives. So we (the audience) need that break-up to lend relief. It’s not that you’re not interesting to listen to, it’s just that monotony is never a good thing.