With any tournament-style bracket, the creators organize the field by seeds to ensure major contenders are likely to play in the championship rather than the first round. The lower the seed number, the better. With March Madness, the bracket has overall seeds, but more visibly are the 1 through 16 seeds within each quadrant. They matter to a degree. For instance, no 16 seed has ever upset a 1 seed in tournament history. I tell you this because I designed the Podcast Madness bracket in a similar fashion, or at least that was the intention.

Though we didn’t have a 1 seed loss, all four of the 2 seeds lost including Atlanta Monster, Hi Phi Nation, The Joe Rogan Experience, and The Blood Crow Stories. Out of these, I was most surprised by Crimetown beating Atlanta Monster (and it wasn’t that close), not because I have any issue with Crimetown, but because Atlanta Monster is the current true crime podcast of the day.

50% of the “underdogs” won in the Up & Comers, Audio Dramas, and Figureheads quadrant. Basically, I’m terrible at predicting things. Remember when I filled out a Discover Pods Awards bracket and picked 0 winners?

The closest match was between Up and Vanished and Embedded, which according to how I had it, was a 13 seed upsetting a 4 seed. Insert the shrug emoji here.

Also close was Wooden Overcoats narrowly edging out Deliberations. Though technically an upset, this was an 8 vs. 9 matchup which is basically a coin flip most of the time. So I predicted this would be close … and it was.

Looking at Round 2

Round 2 already has a ton of tight races and some powerhouses facing off against each other. Some particular matchups I have my eye on:

• WTF with Marc Maron vs. Fresh Air
• 99% Invisible vs. Pod Save America
• Podcasts We Listen To vs. Wine and Crime
• S-Town vs. Dirty John
• The Black Tapes vs. Tanis

Early results suggest some of the 1 seeds may be in jeopardy of advancing and we could have some double-digit seeds entering the Sweet 16.

full bracket here

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