Podcast recording recommendations

The short answer is "It depends" - long enough to cover the topic at hand but short enough not to lose listeners.

Start with the listeners. Who are they ? What they are looking for and how they will listen to the podcasts. Are they doing a short commute or are they busy with a long chore? Do they want a punchy update or to get really invested in a deep topic?

Most podcasts do well in the 15 to 30 minutes range but quick news updates can be as short as 5 minutes. More in-depth podcasts tend to be longer, often around 40 minutes or even more. While a number of long-form podcasts are extremely popular, one needs to be exceptionally talented to keep an audience engaged for 3 hours or longer like Joe Rogan or Dan Carlin. When in doubt, shorter is often better.

Shorter podcasts are easier to get into, provide more time to produce more episodes and publish episodes more frequently and also allow more ad slots for monetization. (Breaking up longer content into short segments can also improve the experience for listeners.)

Longer podcasts give you the opportunity to discuss topics in much more detail, better explore multiple topics and finish the conversation with experts and special guests and gain trust as an expert. Some cases, like publishing recordings of meetings or seminars, also lend themselves to long audio files.