Privacy policy

Last updated 28 July 2026.

Who we are

TalkMuch is an independent site published at talkmuch.org that measures how much podcast hosts talk. For data-protection purposes the publisher of this site is the data controller. You can reach us at hello@talkmuch.org.

What we collect

You can browse TalkMuch without giving us anything. There is no account system, no newsletter, and no login. We do not ask for your name, address or payment details, because there is nothing here to buy.

The data that does exist falls into three groups.

• Things your browser stores locally. Your light or dark theme choice, your cookie preferences, and any episode ratings you set are kept in your own browser using local storage. They never leave your device and we cannot read them.
• Your consent choice. When you accept or decline non-essential cookies we keep a record of that decision, so we can prove consent was given and honour it on later visits. See the consent record section below.
• Advertising and measurement data. Collected by third parties, and only if you agree to it. See the next section.

Advertising, and Google

TalkMuch carries advertising, and Google is our advertising partner. Google, as a third-party vendor, uses cookies to serve ads on this site.

• Google's use of advertising cookies enables it and its partners to serve ads to you based on your visit to this site and other sites on the internet.
• Third-party vendors and ad networks, including Google, may use cookies, device identifiers and similar technologies to collect information such as your IP address, approximate location, browser and device type, the pages you view on this site, and how you interact with ads.
• You can opt out of personalised advertising by visiting Google Ads Settings, or opt out of a third-party vendor's use of cookies for personalised advertising at aboutads.info/choices.
• Google describes how it uses data from sites that use its services at policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites.

Advertising appears on this site whatever you choose. What your choice controls is whether it is personalised. Agree, and Google may use cookies and the profile it holds to select ads it expects you to respond to. Decline, or make no choice at all, and advertising is served non-personalised: it is chosen from the page you are reading rather than from anything about you. Google still sets a small number of cookies in that case, to limit how often the same ad repeats and to detect fraud, but it does not use your browsing history to pick what you see.

Cookies we use

• Necessary. Required for the site to function and to remember that you have expressed a cookie preference at all. These cannot be switched off.
• Analytics. Optional. Used only to understand which episodes and pages people find useful, in aggregate.
• Advertising. Set by Google and its partners as described above. Whether they are used to personalise the ads you see is optional; a small number are used for frequency capping and fraud prevention either way.

You can change your mind at any time. Reopen cookie preferences. Withdrawing consent is as easy as giving it, and takes effect immediately.

The consent record

When you make a cookie choice we keep a record of it so that we can demonstrate, if asked, that consent was freely given and what it covered. A consent record holds the choice itself, the time it was made, the version of the notice you were shown, and a truncated, non-identifying form of your IP address used to establish the approximate region the consent came from. It does not contain your name, your email address, or your browsing history.

Consent records are held for as long as we are required to be able to evidence them and are then deleted. When you withdraw consent, the corresponding records are deleted rather than merely flagged, and the withdrawal is passed on to the advertising and analytics partners it applied to.

Podcast content on this site

The talk-time figures, question counts and other statistics on TalkMuch are our own measurements, produced by the process described in the methodology. Episode titles, artwork and short publisher summaries are taken from public podcast feeds and remain the property of their publishers. We do not publish transcripts. Publishers wanting a change or a removal should write to hello@talkmuch.org.

Your rights

If you are in the UK or the European Economic Area you have the right to access the personal data we hold about you, to have it corrected or erased, to restrict or object to how it is processed, to receive a copy in a portable form, and to withdraw consent at any time without affecting processing that already happened. You also have the right to complain to your national data protection authority.

To exercise any of these, email hello@talkmuch.org. Because we hold so little about any individual, we may need you to identify the specific consent record you are asking about.

Children

TalkMuch is not directed at children under 13 and we do not knowingly collect data from them.

Changes

If this policy changes materially we will update the date at the top of the page and, where the change affects what you have consented to, ask you again.