The Formats

In the modern world, what format is best? The answer ultimately depends on your intent. That's a pretty common answer to most things as it just so happens to turn out. Very often in life, there isn't a set cookie-cutter solution. Things are usually a matter of trade-offs and balancing. It certainly takes some of the fun out of things. There's a romance to a world where one can live free and pure and disregard trade-offs entirely. That's not the world we occupy though.

At any rate, the question that prompted this essay was the one in the first line. Having the Stop To Think podcast, I was questioning the need for a blog like this to exist. Anything that I might put in a blog post I could just as well do a podcast episode about. The podcast is generally less work. Just put the mic on and start talking. It doesn't get much easier than that. However, upon thinking about it some more, I think I like this written format for certain situations. Said situations are what drove the name change from the standard blog to "Essays".

The written format allows the creator to stew on what's being created before tossing it out into the world. The same could theoretically be done with video and audio formats as well but not with the same degree of ease. You wouldn't re-record a whole podcast to improve word flow. You might do some heavy editing, but unless you're exceedingly diehard, you likely wouldn't take the time to redo the whole thing. Especially in cases where you have multiple participants. The same applies to videos if you're making short-form videos. The standard ticktock for instance. You could potentially redo the video a half dozen times. However, each time you're simply trying to capture a transient state. It's similar to trying to hold water in your hands. It's beautiful but it ultimately slips through your fingers or evaporates.

Writing is different. It's more clay-like. You can create it and then mold it and shape it. It exists outside of the confines of time. It's maybe more abstract in a way. So that's why this blog, which I'm going to call "Essays", will exist. There are cases where I'd rather write something and spend some time molding it into exactly what I want than talking about the same subject on the podcast. "Essays" also sounds better than blogs. It makes me feel like less of a goof.

That fun aside, now to answer the original question. The video format seems best suited to cases where there are spatial concepts that would be beneficial to grasp. You wouldn't want to listen to a podcast about differential equations. That would be rather painful. The podcast format seems best suited to telling stories or talking through lengthy ideas. There's a bit of overlap in the video and podcast space as many podcasts feature video content. This is especially useful during interviews because you can read body language. That said, by far the biggest drawback to the video format is the fact that it requires your full attention. You can listen to an audio podcast and do calculus, albeit at a cost to efficiency. You can't watch videos and do calculus with much success.

Long-form writing seems best suited for long stories and dense concepts. You could maybe say that an audiobook isn't much different than a podcast that runs long however I'd argue that it comes down to a matter of structure. An audiobook is naturally derived from a book and the primary benefit of writing, as noted above, is the fact that it's more moldable and less transient when compared to video or audio content. A tightly scripted podcast could be on par with an audiobook but in practice that doesn't seem to be common.

Getting to the shorter and medium-form writing, you have news articles, scripts, and the like. Songs are poetry set to a piece of music. We could get into reports, academic papers, essays, and blogs, but now having written this far, that all seems a bit boring. The main difference between these kinds of writing is the level of formality and the length. So there you have it. Each has its merit.