The Hex Update: Issue 024

the hex update
media
News Americans seek out or come across; podcasting’s most valuable audience: Audio Primes; Google’s experimental feature to validate authentic bots; how to write poetry; and some other cool things I came across this week
Author

Collin K. Berke, Ph.D.

Published

May 8, 2026

Let’s catch up

Welcome to Issue 024.

I have several projects keeping me busy, both professionally and personally. While working on these, I’m constantly reminded of the power of small improvements. Insert any phrase that fits: 1% a day, one brick at a time, slow and steady wins the race, etc. I hope you had a week where you made some small improvements. They’ll compound over time.

Let’s get started.

Three topics recently caught my attention:

For a bit of fun, I share an article about how to write a poem. I certainly don’t see myself writing poetry anytime soon, but this article was so well written that I read the whole thing. So, I thought I’d share.

You’ll also find some additional links to other items I found cool this week.

Three things

Here’s what caught my attention this week:

What types of news do Americans seek out or happen to come across (report)

This link is to a Pew Research Center report. The report provides some data and insight into how Americans get their news. The key insight is a growing share of Americans are getting their news by coming across it rather than actively seeking it out (49% of U.S. adults). When it comes to deep dives, the majority of U.S. adults still seek out this information (55%). The report also drills down into these results by age group. Key differences exist between younger audiences in terms of how they get in-depth information, deep dives, and the most up-to-date information. Specifically, younger audiences tend to more come across up-to-date information by chance rather than seeking it out (52% for U.S. adults aged 18-29).

Why does this matter?

Be present in the spaces where your audiences are, especially when it comes to publishing up-to-date information. Then, prioritize providing a means and curate spaces for audiences to find in-depth information easily. Many media organizations who provide a news service and are seeking to reach younger audiences will also want to be aware of these information seeking behaviors, as a greater number of younger audiences tend to bump into information by chance rather then seeking it out.

Audio Primes: The Podcast Industry’s Most Valuable Audience (report) and Eyes are optional (article)

This report from Sounds Profitable and the related summary article by Tom Webster profiles and provides insights about people who are classified as Audio Primes. Audio Primes are podcast consumers who listen to 75% of their content as audio. Podcast producers should be aware of several audience characteristics about this group. From the research, these include:

  • Audio Primes are younger (35 to 54 year olds), which goes against the common held assumption that this group is mostly composed of 55+ individuals.
  • They over index in terms of video consumption. The article emphasizes this might not be what some would expect–this group consumes audio on video infrastructure. Despite this, the article clarifies video is still important to strategy, as it still serves as an important discovery mechanism.
  • They are deliberate, expect depth, and are built on routine. They consume genres rewarding sustained focus: political talk, self-improvement, and science content. Nearly half follow just one or two shows, and the majority only listen on one platform.
  • Audio primes are considered to be a word-of-mouth engine. As the article puts it, once you reach one Audio Prime, you’ve reached their entire network.
  • They are resistant to AI voices and value authenticity.
  • They over index in terms of short-form content consumption (under 20 minutes).

Why does this matter?

Podcast consumption continues to grow. Advertising spend will follow. For growth purposes, podcast producers should keep these listeners top of mind, as there are many benefits for reaching and engaging with this group. For one, even if consumption is mainly listening for this group, it’s clear video platform presence is important–it’s where they listen and discover what to listen to next. The type of content this group gravitates toward is an important consideration: short-form, deliberate, provides depth, but is packaged in a way that fits within their routine (e.g., available on the platforms they use routinely and fits within their lifestyle). Lastly, media organizations need to lean into the word-of-mouth characteristic of this group. They’re a leading driver of listenership and engagement. The characteristics listed above are just the ones that caught my attention. The report and article go into much more depth, so check it out.

Google Web Bot Auth: Validate Authentic Bots (article)

Google has an experimental feature that aims to help websites validate authentic bot requests. This feature will involve agents cryptographically signing their requests. Currently the industry and tech relies on self-reported headers and IP addresses, which limits the verifiability of agent identity. Adopting this specification has many benefits, including better observability into how agents are interacting with site content. Since the feature is experimental, it’s only testing via Google’s AI agents at this time.

Why does this matter?

Agents are purported to fundamentally change the way we interact with the internet and how the internet is structured and supported. With this fundamental shift in how users interact with the internet, what’s now more important than ever is greater observability into how agents interact with publisher’s content. Is a visit or a tracked event on a website a genuine user interaction? It’s challenging to tell with AI agents and the current protocols and infrastructure. Site owners and publishers will want to continue tracking this feature’s development, as it might be fundamental to being able to parse out genuine user engagement from AI agent behavior.

What I found interesting this week

I’ve been attempting to clean up my dotfiles, an ongoing spring cleaning project. A blog post covering some of the initial clean up I’ve done is forthcoming. I promise.

My Zsh configuration was one item I focused on this week. I loathed my organizational approach of my personal functions. So, starting small, I began addressing it.

I so far learned the following while tidying things up:

  1. You don’t have to reference every function and autoload them in your .zshrc file. You can just do the following:
fpath+=(~/.zsh_functions)
autoload -Uz ~/.zsh_functions/*(N.:t)

The benefit here is extensibility. Every time a new function is added to the .zsh_functions directory, it’s immediately loaded in.

  1. I also learned about Bash’s case statement while trying to create a function to more efficiently interact with my todo.txt file. This came about because I started using a chain of if-else-then statements, but I wanted the behavior and syntax similar to R’s switch() function.

Given my unfamiliarity with Bash’s syntax, there were a few false starts. I was quickly reminded of the DRY principle while working this out. I ended up in a good spot, though:

todo() {
  local dir="$HOME/your-todo-dir/"
  local file="$dir/todo.txt"
  local action="${1:-print}"

  if [[ ! -d "$dir" ]]; then
    echo "Error: Directory $dir does not exist."
    return 1
  fi

  case "$action" in
    "print")
      less "$file"
      ;;
    "edit")
      nvim "$file"
      ;;
    "diff")
      git -C "$dir" diff
      ;;
    "update")
      git -C "$dir" add todo.txt
      git -C "$dir" commit -m "docs: update todo"
      git -C "$dir" push
      ;;
    *)

    echo "Usage: todo {edit|diff|update} or leave empty to print"
    return 1
    ;;
  esac
}

Cool things I recently bumped into

A collection of links to things I’ve found cool recently (or was reminded are cool).

That’s it for this update. Take a moment to find something small and make it better this weekend. These small improvements compound over time (i.e., 1% a day). For me, it’s continuing to make small edits to my dotfiles. For you, that could be anything that makes your life a little easier, more enjoyable, and more productive.

Here’s to a great start to your weekend. I hope it’s a good one.

Cheers 🎉!

Let’s connect

If you found this content useful, please share. If you find these topics interesting and want to discuss further, let’s connect: