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The Monkey Patching Podcast: six‑month check‑in

About six months ago, Murilo Kuniyoshi Suzart Cunha (long name, great human) and I kicked off a new show: The Monkey Patching Pocast. Before that, we’d been running the company‑linked DataTopics Podcast for over a year. When I left Dataroots (in very capable hands), the company podcast naturally stayed put. But the habit stuck: we still enjoyed jamming about what’s new in data & AI. So we started a new, independent pod.

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Do I like the name? Yes. Is it the best for discoverability? Unsure. “The Monkey Patching Podcast” is (in my humble opinion) charmingly nerdy, but probably no-one is going to search for it. We may iterate. Naming is hard.

What we actually do

Roughly weekly, we round up ~8 things worth your attention in data/AI and talk through what matters and why. During the week Murilo and I drop links, papers, and posts in a shared channel; each recording we curate that firehose (that sounds professional doesn't it?)  down to an episode‑sized set.

It’s somewhat opinionated but friendly. Less breaking‑news frenzy, more signal‑to‑noise. And I add a touch of grumpy old geek every now and then.

Where to find us

Long form

Short form

(If you prefer a different channel, tell me. We can add it.)

On monetization (eventually)

I sometimes hear people say “I don’t need get any value from my podcast, it’s just for fun.” I don’t really buy that, aside from some rare exceptions. Even if you don’t make money, a podcast at the the very least boosts your resume and open doors. That’s valid.

For me personally, after building a company, the resume‑boost part matters less. What I care about is the signal: if advertisers or listeners are willing to pay for something you create, that’s a clear indicator the content is valuable to a certain audience. And I'd argue it's a wildly stronger signal than a thumbs‑up or a whatever‑star click (though those are highly appreciated too 😁).

Because we don’t rely on monetization financially, we also have the luxury of staying true to what we like, and we can be picky about partnerships. If we ever run ads, they’ll be for things we can stand behind.

Growth so far

Steady, modest growth. Definitely no hockey sticks on the horizon so far. I guess, for now, that’s fine. Longevity > virality. We’re shaving and sculpting the format as we go.

You can slice and dice these numbers hundreds of different ways, to make them look impressive, or to make it look like how much work there still is. So, am I thrilled? Not yet. I’m super grateful for the audience we have though, but we still need to widen the aperture. We’re in a hype‑heavy space, so clarity and our own point of view matter to cut through all that noise. That takes time and packaging, which sometimes rubs against the “this is for fun” energy. We’ll need to keep balancing both.

What we could do next

We can do more, deliberately and at a sane pace: we should probably package everything better with clearer titles, thumbnails, show notes, and a cleaner landing page; add a simple newsletter (you can already pre-signup here) with weekly notes and 3-5 standout links; publish faster when news hits between episodes; run community events or live recordings if there is interest; and we have some ideas to use the pod as a lightweight bridge between founders and aligned investors.

I often have to remind myself though: let's focus on longevity. Just having fun and shaving a bit off and pasting a bit on here or there. It's easy to have all these things feel urgent. But I believe that urgent efforts without a long term view can often lead to tiny results (a tad like constipation does).

How you can help

Thanks for listening, and for the nudge to keep making this better. If you have feedback on format, guests, or the name 😅, I’m all ears.