I’ve never really been a numbers (or maths) guy, instead preferring to operate in the world of words. For me, the qualitative trumps the quantitative and true generalisability of human experience through numbers is a myth. What really matters are individual and shared narratives among people, no matter how cheesy that may sound. More meaningful data can come from a detailed few than from surface-level mass.
Even with this strong view of mine, I’m often struck by how much I expect or rely on numbers in a range of contexts. Every day, I repeatedly check times, dates and calendar events on my Apple Watch, watch gigabytes of data download and upload for creative projects at work and for my podcasting and pay close attention to the naming of files, such as 2023-01-21 No Numbers for this very blog post, as I draft it in iA Writer on my Mac.
One particular example of numbers that has given me pause during this very project is the question of episode naming and ordering. If you’ve been listening to Really Specific Stories, you’ve probably noticed that no episodes have a number at the beginning of their titles. Since the advent of podcasting, numbers at the beginning of titles have been an excellent way of denoting how far into a podcast the producers and listeners have ventured. Not every show does this, but it’s quite common and tech shows certainly do it. Not to mention, if you engage in the stereotypical Siracusan follow-up, revisiting earlier episodes and topics, it’s easy to go back, explore and refer to previous instalments in the archive.
When I launched Really Specific Stories in July last year, I found myself instantly wanting to number the first few episodes once they were complete—then I stopped myself. The very first episode of the podcast is Introducing Really Specific Stories, which is a monologic discussion of the project and its background; following the introduction is the first interview episode, whose style matches all the episodes that follow. Would it have made sense to number the first real episode, Jason Burk as ‘2. Jason Burk’? That felt odd to me.
‘Aha!’, you may be thinking, 'Couldn’t you just have named the first episode, "0. Introducing Really Specific Stories"? That would enable the first interview episode with Jason to have the number one!’
Well, I’d say that the number zero denotes that there is nothing and it isn’t terribly elegant. I would also argue that it serves as a more of a distraction than a useful way of ordering: ‘1.’ means the first, but the second one would carry this number, which doesn’t really make sense. I’ve seen and done this elsewhere but I haven’t been totally happy with it, unless it somehow indicated a demo or pilot.
This led me to question what the value of numbers in titles would actually be. There isn’t really any benefit other than referral and navigation in archives. I decided that in the Really Specific Stories archive, there would be no numbers. When people listen to the podcast, whether they’re a fan of tech shows, an interested academic or someone who just stumbles on the site, I wish for them to dive into any episode—free of the assumption that stories should be consumed in a particular order or that one came earlier than another because it was more important. It doesn’t matter if participants are producers, listeners or both, they and all of their experiences are all equal. Their order depends purely on when I am able to approach participants and when they agree to be featured. That’s it!
To be clear, numbers make sense for technology shows that prioritise news and current events. Really Specific Stories may be a technology podcast, but it is also a narrative-based show that is free from the news and rumour mill.
For those of you who are thinking ahead, if for whatever reason a participant were to return for a follow-up interview post-project-completion, I could always include a ‘2’ (and so on) in the permalink. Numbers can play an important role technically behind the scenes but we don’t always have to stick them front and centre.
Now, to you! How much do you rely on or actively think about numbers in your day-to-day life? Do they help or hinder your thinking as a human being?
I'd love to know what you think! Feel free to let me know on Mastodon.