My Podcasting Presentation… in Summary and Cartoon Form

I presented my “What It Is: Awesomizing Your Podcast Using Secrets From Radio” workshop this past weekend at Northern Voice, Vancouver’s annual blogging conference. (I’ll be presenting it again on June 20th at Podcasters Across Borders in Ottawa.)

The basics of the presentation focused on what “it” was — you know, that little something, that thing on the end of your tongue, that makes you know if you like a radio piece or personality or if you don’t. We all know if a host has It, but I tried to outline exactly what It was so one could duplicate it. Here is how I defined It:

• It is intimate. You are speaking directly into someone’s ears — even more so when they’re using earbuds… you can whisper to them. Radio listening is almost always done today by one person at a time; families don’t gather around the radio any more. And yet so many podcast hosts talk as if they’re speaking to a room — they use a hyped voice, or they call their audience “everyone.” Remember, you are only speaking to one person. There may be thousands of these one-person audiences, but aim to speak to just one.
• It breathes. One big mistake that many beginning podcasters, radio reporters, or audio editors make is they edit out the um’s and ah’s, and the long reflective breaths that sometimes inteview guests make. Unless they are completely distracting, you should aim to leave breath in. Breath is emotional punctuation. It gives richness to the words being spoken. One long, thoughtful breath taken before answering a tough question can say so much more than just the answer.
• It seeks the Universal Truth. The great radio shows, like This American Life, are always seeking a Universal Truth in their stories. It’s not enough to report the flow of what happened — try to find out why it happened and what your characters learned from it. In short, great stories give us pause for reflection. Great storytellers draw out those moments of reflection and give us the space to reflect.
• It takes time. It’s said that the best portrait photographers throw away the first few rolls of film they’ve shot with the subject. Why? Because in those first minutes, the subject isn’t as relaxed or comfortable with the photographer, so they appear stiff and uneasy. The documentary filmmaker Errol Morris is famous for interviewing people for hours at length, even if he’s only going to use a short clip, because he knows the longer one stays with a person, the more comfortable they’ll feel, the more they’ll tell you, and so on.
• It is everywhere. Always take your digital recorder with you, because amazing audio will happen when you least expect it. Even if you’ve got a podcast coming up but no ideas on what to talk about, just look around, take in your surroundings, examine the patterns you do each day. Content is everywhere if you know how to find it.
• It does not abuse music. Great music under a podcast should sound like the scoring of a film — like harmony to the melody of the words. Avoid recognizable songs because your listeners’ mind will be transported from your narrative directly into whatever memories those lyrics evoke. Avoid songs with words that “comment on” what you just said — for instance, don’t play “Life Is a Highway” just because you finished talking about hitchhiking. It’s predictable and a cliché.
• It is phony. Realize that the best storytelling employs a lot of tools to make the  a podcast or radio story really come alive. It’s okay to add a pause where an interview guest thinks. It’s okay to “act” while reading a script — in fact, it’s very much your job to make that script come alive.

Rob Cottingham, who pens the hilarious Noise to Signal cartoon, was in the audience of my session and did up this great cartoon summary of my points: