A focus on practical applications of understanding and predicting behavior, with an occasional focus on political polarization.

My main claim to fame are my books on poker tells (poker behavior). I started this podcast because I was interested in talking to people from a wide range of fields and jobs about how they interpret and analyze human behavior in their work. I wanted to interview not just psychology/behavior experts, but also people with jobs like bus driver or restaurant manager or door-to-door salesman to talk about some of the lesser known ways that reading people can play a role in their work.
 

My goal was to create something psychology-focused that I would want to listen to. I wanted to delve into topics that were off the beaten trail, in terms of thinking about psychology and behavior. I think a lot of media is focused on the same things (for example, well known people, well known books, well known research) but I'm more interested in the everyday, the way so many of us are constantly interpreting the behavior of others to accomplish certain tasks.
 

I spend a good deal of time on the podcast. I've been releasing probably on an average of every couple weeks or so lately. I've spent a small amount on advertising (less than $1000), but the growth has almost entirely been organic. One reason I feel compelled to work on it so much lately is that I feel that political depolarization and political bridge-building is one of the more important things anyone could be working on, and sadly I feel that way too many people are incentivized to act in us-vs-them ways that are not helpful. So I wanted to do my part to bring some nuance and empathy to political polarization topics.
 

I have had no revenue. The only thing I've gotten out of it is probably: a) a few more sales of my poker tells products (likely not much), and b) feeling like I'm helping contribute to more nuanced and empathetic political discourse.
 

Technical details: I use Buzzsprout to host/distribute the podcast. I use Zencastr to record interviews. I use Audacity to edit the audio.
My guest ideas are based around things I happen to read about and think are interesting, or else a conversation that I think is especially important to have (like "election is rigged" viewpoints).

I interview them online, via the service Zencastr.
 

The two main platforms listeners are on seem to be iTunes and Spotify. I see different stats depending on which service I'm using, so it's hard for me to know what exactly is the case. But my understanding is that it's almost entirely iTunes with Spotify a bit behind.

I tweet about shows but I don't think this does that much based on the clicks I get (though maybe they listen later, who knows). I think replying to prominent people or tweets on specific subjects is a good strategy and is probably where I've gotten most of my twitter clicks. I have an email list of about 5,000 people, and that helps.
 

Spend some time researching about audio hardware and software. The audio is important. (I actually need a better microphone setup myself.)

Take the editing seriously, both in terms of audio quality (it's hard for people to excuse bad audio) and content quality (so many podcasts don't edit and there are long boring stretches, which you easily erase with a short voice-over note saying that you're skipping). You may think "hey Joe Rogan and others have long podcasts" but that's bad thinking IMO; aim for efficient delivery of interesting ideas as much as possible. Most people are turning off after a few minutes so that's what you're fighting against.

In the intro, include a teaser of the interesting things they'll learn/hear in the podcast. This may get people to stick around longer.

Directly ask people to leave you ratings/reviews. If you don't ask, they probably won't do it.
 

My podcast site is at www.behavior-podcast.com.
My twitter handle is at www.twitter.com/apokerplayer.
My poker tells work is at www.readingpokertells.com.