Chapter One

Preproduction

What’s Your Podcast About?

WITH JUSTIN MCELROY

In podcasting’s golden era (or at least when we started our first show in 2010), you didn’t need your podcast to really be about anything. Hell, you barely even needed a microphone. There were fewer podcasts in those days, and listeners were just happy to have something, anything, to fill the terrible silence.

That’s not just me pining for a simpler time, though I’m thirty-nine now, so I do that a lot. But it’s important for you to understand that your favorite show, especially if it’s been around for a while, is probably not a good model for what a podcast can be about.

As of this writing there are something like 850,000 podcasts out there according to Podcast Insights. You might be the world’s most charming conversationalist or gifted storyteller, but unless you’re already a big star, you aren’t going to rise above the din without a great concept. You just won’t. There are just too many podcasts competing for the same oxygen. Ear . . . oxygen. You get the idea.

First, you need your concept. You can start with a paragraph about what you want to achieve and how exactly you’ll go about it, but it’s important to be able to boil it down to a single-sentence pitch. Remember, the pitch isn’t just for you. You want your audience to be able to spread the word about your show in a way that is both concise and interesting. Can you sell it in a sentence? That’s your pitch.

Heck, even the big stars have more success when they have a strong pitch. The first line of the Apple Podcasts listing for Anna Faris Is Unqualified is “Not-great-relationship advice from completely unqualified Hollywood types.” There’s your pitch right there (and it’s a good one).

The Big Sentence

You may be tempted to start with that one-sentence pitch, but it’s putting the podcast cart before the podcast horse (his name is Bucko, by the way, and he’s a delight). Instead, let’s use that one sentence as a navigational star to guide us through this process. Give yourself the freedom to roam around as you hone your pitch. But if you find you can no longer boil your pitch down to one punchy sentence, you’ll know you’ve gone astray.

If we were launching My Brother, My Brother and Me today . . . well, we wouldn’t. Or at least we wouldn’t in its current state. Let’s try to pitch it.

“Three brothers give bad advice, but it’s funny.”

It’s short! That’s good! But it falls apart in the last two words: “it’s funny.” The listener hears our pitch and rightly replies, “Who says it’s funny?” We look at one another furtively and blurt out, “Uh, we do?” Except we’re talking to nobody because the listener has already moved on to one of the other half million shows.

Let’s look at one of our much more recent shows: The McElroy Brothers Will Be in “Trolls 2.” I’d write the pitch out for you, but the title really says it (more on that later). Three non-celebrities try to con their way into a major motion picture. Now, maybe that’s a show for you, maybe it’s not, but you’re at least able to make an instant judgment call about whether you want to listen. My show Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine is . . . well, it’s right there in the subtitle, isn’t it?

So, that’s the big sentence, let’s start building it.

Why Are You Here?

Why do you want to make a podcast? Do you want fame and fortune? Do you want to spread awareness of something? Do you want to contribute to a community? Do you want an excuse to talk with friends? They’re all completely valid reasons to start a podcast, but they will each shape your show differently.

Justin just kinda casually granted you fame and fortune, but let me do a little expectation setting. Podcasting is a long game. I know podcasts that didn’t start getting real attention until they had already produced more than one hundred episodes. Most people don’t start listening to a show until they can binge at least ten episodes. If your show releases biweekly, that’s five months of work before you see any noticeable audience growth. It took us more than eight years of podcasting before we were able to all make it our full-time jobs. What I’m saying is making money is great, but you are probably going to be making your show for free for a while. Maybe for as long as the show exists.

Let’s say you have a great time talking about old movies with your friends and you think, “This is hysterical, we should be recording this!” That’s . . . well, it’s an extremely twenty-first-century impulse, isn’t it? Regardless, it’s not a bad seed for a podcast. But there are an unfathomable number of shows in that vein. Doug Loves Movies, The Flop House, How Did This Get Made? . . . we could go on. It’s dizzying. If it’s the show you wanna make, go for it! But keep in mind that unless you have an incredibly smart hook, it’s gonna be real tough to grow a large audience and stand out from the crowd.

On the flip side, maybe your goal is just to make a massively successful podcast, so you research current trends and analyze the stats and find that “profiles of artisanal yak shavers” is the next big thing. You pay thousands for your promotional art, you book Malcolm Gladwell for your first episode, and then you realize something: you fucking hate yaks. Can’t stand talking about the things. You may have positioned your show for success, but you don’t care about the topic, which is a recipe for disaster in terms of both building an audience and your personal happiness.

If you wanna make a show that’s just for you and your friends to goof around with, I think that’s great and cool and worthwhile. There are probably large swaths of this book you can skip if you want. That’s fine, you bought the book, do what you want with it. As an independent podcaster, you have the benefit of not having to worry about being canceled by a studio. So you might have an audience of only twenty, but if those twenty people really love your show and you really love making it, who cares? If you’ve made something that brings joy to yourself and to others, even if it’s only a few people, you’re a success.

If audience size isn’t your priority, make peace with that now. If you can free yourself from the burden of worrying about how many people are listening, you’re going to save yourself a lot of stress down the line.

Even though I’m not opposed to the idea of vanity podcasting, for lack of a better term, I would humbly urge you to take a moment and consider if there’s a way you could make your movie chat show something lots of people would want to listen to. You’re putting in the work to inject something into the world—why not try to make it something the world might want?

Whether the show is designed for an audience of one or an audience of millions, there is one constant: it’s not worth making a podcast you don’t really care about. Audiences are savvy and podcasting is an intimate medium; they’re gonna spot someone feigning enthusiasm for yaks a mile away and they’re going to turn the podcast off every single time.

What Do You Obsess About?

If I were to ask you what you cared about, your answer would likely be fairly instinctual. My family. My job. The planet. That’s good! You’re a human being with your priorities well in order.

But I want to know what you obsess about. What headlines are you irresistibly compelled to click on when they pop up on your timeline? What do you find your fingers googling before your brain realizes what’s happening? What do you passionately explain to friends and family despite the fact that they couldn’t give a solitary shit? That’s where your podcast needs to live.

You know something I’m obsessed with? Workplace training videos. I think the first one I saw was made in the mid-1980s and it was called “Wendy’s Grill Skills.” In it, a magical, digital ghost pulls a young man into a TV screen and then raps at him while detailing proper burger-frying technique. How could I not be hooked?

I could talk about workplace training videos endlessly. I show them to friends and family who always reward me with expressions of bemusement. If I could talk to the people who made these weird little examples of non-entertainment, I’d be in heaven. I’m utterly fascinated by them.

My other obsession is cereal, and I already make that podcast. It’s a meditative show about cereal called The Empty Bowl that I host with a cereal blogger named Dan Goubert. I don’t profit off it, and it has a much smaller audience than many of our other shows, but people have told me that it helps them to relax in trying times, and I get to talk about stuff I love, so it’s a success.

Do you have a weird little part of your brain that you devote to that kind of minutiae? I think it’s time you jam a metaphorical microphone up there and make that bit of think meat earn its keep by selling underwear and mattresses to eager listeners. The beauty of living in the internet age is that you don’t have to find a local audience! If .0002 percent of the world population is interested in your topic, you have an audience of 15,600 people! If you need more convincing, look at how many vibrant subreddits and forums there are devoted to obsessively discussing a facet of a sliver of a tiny nugget of pop culture. There’s one called, I kid you not, PicturesOfIanSleeping that is just pictures of some guy named Ian sleeping. It’s got more than forty-four thousand followers. It takes all kinds, folks.

You notice I didn’t say I’m obsessed with YouTube (where most of these videos live) or workplaces in general. I’d argue that those are too broad to justify an obsession. The cool thing about how fragmented the internet is is that you can find success without trying to cover huge topics on a very surface level. If you dive deep into a specific niche, you’ll likely find some willing souls to follow you down. Don’t be Entertainment Tonight, be Self-Produced Beanie Baby–Collecting Tips Videos Tonight.

Who Else Is Here?

Once you have an idea for the topic you want to cover, you’ll want to know how it’s already been done. (And it probably has, I’m sorry to say. Did I mention there are a lot of podcasts?) So, let’s research the competition.

Competition, by the way, is useful shorthand here, but it isn’t a very useful way of thinking about this. If you’re putting the work into coming up with a creative, smart approach to your subject, your show will be an entity unto itself. Just because someone already listens to a Survivor recap show, it doesn’t mean they can’t make room in their heart for yours.

According to a 2019 report from Edison Research, 32 percent of Americans listen to podcasts on a monthly basis. The way I see it, any podcast that makes a big impact and brings new people into the ecosystem is a boon for everyone who makes podcasts.

Let’s stick with Survivor. Search the various podcasting directories like Apple Podcasts or Stitcher for Survivor and see what’s out there. How are other people talking about Survivor? What’s working (and not working) about that approach? For example, the “Survivor” Fans Podcast is a recap that features audio from other viewers of the show. Rob Has a Podcast is hosted by a former contestant (there are more than a few of those). The “Survivor” Historians Podcast is about the highlights of the show’s past.

The Survivor market has been well saturated, but so has pretty much any popular TV show. You may decide that there are too many Survivor podcasts out there to rise above the noise. That might be true, and you may want to explore some other obsessions. Either way, you’ll be making an informed decision and won’t risk launching a replica of a show that already has a legion of fans and a feature film adaptation in the pipeline.

A Way In

Whether you’re dealing with a topic that’s been done to death or never been touched, where you’ll absolutely need to differentiate yourself is how you approach the subject you want to work in. The more specific you can make your angle, the better. When our friends Tim Batt and Guy Montgomery came up with The Worst Idea of All Time, they didn’t make “a podcast about Grown Ups 2.” They watched and reviewed Grown Ups 2 every week for a year. 99% Invisible isn’t just a show about design; it’s the remarkable stories of how unremarkable things came to exist in the world.

Competitive research is a good jumping-off point. Now that you know about the Survivor shows that do exist, you can find the facet of Survivor you are obsessed with that nobody else is talking about. Interested in how the strategic metagame has evolved over time? There’s probably a show there. Do you and your friends like predicting how it will all shake out? Maybe a Survivor fantasy draft would be a fun way to go.

If you’ve got a specific expertise in your topic, you should try to build an approach around it. My wife, Sydnee McElroy, is a physician, so we didn’t do a generic podcast about history, we did one about the evolution of medicine throughout the years and how it’s applied today. Sydnee’s expertise is the central strength of Sawbones, and it would have been silly not to take advantage of it.

If the topic you want to discuss is more general, or you want to talk about a lot of different issues, you can set yourself apart by switching up the lens through which you view these issues. For example, Travis and his friends Brent Black and Courtney Enlow technically did a news show, but Trends Like These let social media popularity be the metric for what deserved discussion.

Anytime you think you might have your angle, ask yourself two questions:

1. Do I actually want to put in the time, my most precious resource on this planet, to make this thing exist on Earth?
2. Did I wish I didn’t have to put in the work to make it exist, because I would adore being able to just listen to it?

If you’ve got a “yes” to both of those questions, you’re ready to pick a name.

The Simple Guide to Picking a Great Name

I honestly have no fucking clue. Nobody does. Anybody who says differently is lying. I don’t even know if this is the point at which you should pick a name. You could probably wait. I am pulling this out of my ass.

Sometimes I think of a funny name for a podcast and then build the show around it. For example, Positiviteeny! was such a fun name that I couldn’t help but develop it into a show. However, I do not recommend this way of going about it, because you will keep thinking of fun names and end up doing eighteen podcasts.

Okay, okay, I can maybe give you a few general guidelines, but then you’re on your own.

• Shorter is probably better. It’s easier to remember, easier to search for, easier to put on a T-shirt.
• Don’t put your name in it unless people know who you are. If I don’t recognize the name, I assume it’s not a show for me.
• Maybe it’s a manifesto. Guys We F****d communicates a staggering amount in three words: it’s funny, it’s for adults, it’s irreverent, it’s a show at least partially about sex.
• Maybe it’s not. Stop Podcasting Yourself doesn’t actually describe the show itself, but the silly intelligence of it communicates a lot about the show thematically.
• Maybe it’s bad. My Brother, My Brother and Me doesn’t mean anything and it’s not evocative of our show. But we figured it out. Who knows?

I’ve got one more guideline that I’m gonna break out of the list because it’s so important:

Make sure it’s original.

Ideally, you’re the only media source to use this name. There’s a Wild West mystery book called Sawbones with eighty-eight reviews on Amazon, and it still screws up my Google Alerts weekly. At the very least you absolutely want to be the only podcast with the name. The last thing you want is to have to explain to everyone alive that you’re “the other This American Life.”

If you’re torn between a few names, you should check if the name, or some simple take on it, is available on social media. We were very lucky to get @Sawbones. It makes sharing that handle so easy. @TheZoneCast sucks. Who can ever remember that?

The important thing really is that you know what you’re in for so you can plan for it. I once launched a podcast called The Besties without the knowledge that the now-defunct Whiskey Media made a video series of the same name. I learned that bit of trivia roughly seventeen nanoseconds after my show launched, though, from approximately seventeen thousand angry tweets that cascaded upon me like the Red Sea if Moses had gotten distracted halfway through the crossing.

The Short Version

• Pick what you want to talk about.
• See who else is talking about it.
• Figure out how you want to talk about it.

Cohosts: Should You Have One?

WITH TRAVIS MCELROY

One of the first things I tell people when they ask for advice on starting a podcast is to talk about something you like talking about with someone you like talking about it with. In fact, the majority of my podcasts exist because I had a friend or family member that I wanted to make a show with and they were built from there. Justin already went over the “something you like talking about” part, so it’s time to ask yourself: Do you want a cohost?

Don’t get me wrong, there are definitely formats that are perfectly suited for one voice. For example, a biography podcast where you tell the stories of forgotten historical figures needs only one point of view and strong writing. However, if your podcast is discussion based in any way, you are doing yourself a huge disservice to try to carry on a one-person dialogue. Having another voice will:

1. Provide different points of view
2. Keep things moving
3. Make the audience feel like they are part of a conversation

I always have a cohost because I like having someone to talk to. It is great having someone there to pass the energy of the conversation back and forth. It keeps it from feeling like work.

Cohost Particulars

So, you’ve decided that you need a cohost! Next question: Is it a permanent cohost or a rotating guest? The big pro of the latter approach is you get a regular injection of new energy, perspective, and expertise. The big con? It will be harder for you (and the listener) to fall into a consistent groove. Each episode might be new and different, which may be viewed negatively by a listener who just wants to binge a bunch of eps back-to-back. That’s not to say it can’t work; it just depends on what the show calls for. If your intention is to make a show where each episode reflects the guest (like an interview show or a day-in-the-life show), then it’s a perfect fit! Brace yourself, though; if your show is based on the guest, there will be listeners who skip episodes if they aren’t interested in the person featured.

I have also known shows that have started with one host, done a bunch of episodes, and then realized that the show works better with two or more hosts. Don’t be afraid to change things up if something isn’t working.

One thing I will caution against is having too many voices on one show. If no one is able to get a word in, it’s not going to be a very interesting discussion. I usually stick with two or three people, depending on the show. If the format is relaying information (like on Shmanners), I think two people are all you need. However, on My Brother, My Brother and Me, it really helps to have three so you have a chance to come up with jokes while the other two are talking.

One last piece of advice here: it’s always easier to add a new person if the show needs it. Adding Courtney to Trends Like These was an absolute pleasure and brought an important new perspective to the show. It’s a completely different beast to try to kick a friend off the show. I’ve been trying to kick Griffin off My Brother, My Brother and Me for years, and he still isn’t getting the hint.

If you have decided to go it alone, good news! You get to skip ahead to discussing guests. If you have decided to work with one or more cohosts, even better news! You get to keep reading my beautiful prose. Before you get too far ahead of yourself, though, there are a few things you need to figure out.

First—and this might seem obvious—are they interested in making a podcast with you? Podcasting is a labor of love. It can require a lot of time researching, recording, editing, and publicizing. Are they ready to take that on? Podcasts can go on for hundreds of episodes (read: years). The last thing you want is to constantly have to bug your cohost to record and do the homework required for the show.

Next, are they interested in the subject? Just because they’re your best friend and you find them super entertaining doesn’t mean they are the right fit for your show. If they are your ideal cohost candidate, maybe work with them to develop a different show focused on a topic you both enjoy. There have been many shows that have found success with the “expert and novice” format, but even in that scenario it works best if all hosts involved find the topic interesting.

Are they available? If their schedule is too packed, it could make it nearly impossible to schedule a recording. It’s not necessarily a deal breaker, but it’s definitely a factor to be taken into consideration. That said, I know lots of shows that find a day where all the hosts are free and bulk-record a stockpile of episodes.

This one can be pretty hard to nail down, but what is the nature of your chemistry? If you find yourselves agreeing on everything, how will that impact the show? If you tend to argue, do you think that will benefit or impede the show?

Remember, a great friend does not inherently make a great cohost. Your chemistry may even be too good. Hear me out. While it can be fun to have a conversation with a friend where you finish each other’s sentences, that isn’t necessarily fun for the audience. Having fun recording with your best friend is great, but it’s important to make sure you are including the audience in everything.

Include Different Points of View

When building a hosting team, I would encourage you to strive to include underrepresented voices, which can bring new information to the discussion and vastly improve the show. I had the idea to start Trends Like These with Brent because we had known each other for more than a decade, and we love discussing current events in an effort to understand them. However, we kept running into stories where we, as two cisgender men, had no frame of reference. I think the show didn’t really click until we brought on Courtney. Not only is she an incredible host and commentator, but she also brought with her a wealth of life experience that Brent and I simply did not have. She was able to offer up insights that would have never crossed our minds. Including different voices in our creative endeavors is something we are still working to improve, so please learn from our mistakes!

Whether we’re talking about cohosts or guests, it’s important to clarify everyone’s role. For some shows, one person assumes the role of the “expert” who explains the subject to the other host. Other shows involve a more balanced conversation among participants. Or maybe it’s an interview show. Do the hosts play the role of news anchor, taking turns presenting stories to the listener? There are many different forms the conversation can take. Figuring out what roles everyone can fill will help the conversation flow smoothly.

Getting Together . . . Sort Of

A lot of podcasters don’t put enough thought into the decision to record separately or in the same location. While being in the same room can often increase the chemistry with guests or among hosts, it can be easy to rely on body language and forget about the audience altogether, which may make the listener feel excluded. Recording in separate locations guarantees you are all reacting to the same stimulus as the listener and often means cleaner audio. If you are each on separate tracks in separate locations, you don’t have to worry about one person’s voice bleeding into another person’s track. But my favorite part about remote recording is that it makes scheduling a whole lot easier! No one needs to worry about commuting to the studio, and it is easy to record on the spur of the moment if you find you suddenly have an hour of free time.

Obviously, there are downsides to recording in different locations. You can feel disconnected. Separate locations also means purchasing more equipment. More recording setups also means more opportunities for something to go wrong. This can be especially frustrating if one person involved, say the dad of the other cohosts, doesn’t know how his computer works and keeps referring to it as “that box full of internet.”

If one host lives in Orlando and the other lives in Seattle, you’ve really got only one option. If that is the case, don’t worry! There are a couple of tips and tricks to help it go smoothly, but we’ll get to those in a later chapter.

If you want to record in the same room, go for it! Just remember to keep your audience in mind. If it helps you remember to include them, you can even set up an empty chair as your surrogate audience member.

Guests, Who Needs Them? (Answer: Maybe You Do)

Let’s talk about guests. Do you need them? There are many shows and formats that would be thrown off by adding an outside voice. Ask yourself: What would a guest add to the show? Would it work better if the guest joined for only a portion of the show instead of the whole episode?

One thing I would warn against is adding guests just to grow an audience. In my experience, it takes a really exciting guest to draw people in. Even then, it really only works if the guest does a lot of pushing when the episode comes out. It can work well if you have the guest scheduled and are able to publicize in advance to generate interest, but it’s no guarantee. The problem is that talking about an exciting guest on your show only reaches people who are already listening to your show. You are counting on listeners to spread the word and bring in new folks, but that can be hit or miss. I suggest that rather than focusing on trying to get “big-name” guests, you should book guests who fit well with the attitude and chemistry of the show. The ideal being that a listener walks away thinking, “That was the best episode yet!” and tells all their friends about it.

When it comes to finding guests, start with people you know. If you have an entertaining friend or know an expert in a field, that’s a great place to start! After that, the world is your oyster. Tweet or email performers you are a fan of to see if they are interested—it never hurts to ask. I suggest a short pitch, such as: “Hello, my name is [blank], and I host a podcast about [blank]. We were wondering if you might be interested in guesting sometime. Here’s a link to an episode to give you an idea of what the show is all about: [link to your favorite episode]. Thanks so much!” Then, you wait. Do not tweet/email them nine times a day. That won’t end well.

The Bones of a Show

WITH GRIFFIN MCELROY

So, you’ve got a concept! I’m sure it’s gonna be a smash hit; another in a long line of runaway success stories of the lucrative podcasting industry. You’ve also got your hosts! Your chemistry is off the charts. This podcast house has great bones, you know? Now it’s time to decide . . . how big . . . to make those bones. General bone-size stuff.

Up to this point, you’ve had to make some tough decisions about the fundamentals of your podcast. Now, it’s time to actually structure your show and turn your idea into the real thing. It can be difficult to nail down without actually recording a dry run in earnest, feeling out what formula works best for the concept you’ve devised.

Nearly every podcast we’ve ever done has changed organically in the years we’ve been doing it. My Brother, My Brother and Me began as a forty-five-minute show where we would intro an episode, read questions from the audience and Yahoo Answers, and then outro the show. Over our first few months, the episode durations quickly grew to the hour-long format that we still adhere to today—a length of time that accommodated new segments, like an advertising block, and various recurring bits (like “Farm Wisdom” and Travis’s much-despised “Sad Libs”) that we began experimenting with in an attempt to add some variety to our standard formula.

Sometimes, it makes sense for your podcast not to have a hard-and-fast rule for how it’s structured. The Adventure Zone is a good example of this; because it’s a fiction podcast, each episode lasts as long as the story we’re trying to tell. One of our episodes is thirty-seven minutes long. Our season one finale had a running time of two hours and forty-two minutes. Attempting to cap that show at a specific length would hinder the story we were trying to tell.

Scripted or Nonscripted?

Probably the biggest question you need to ask yourself when starting a podcast is: Scripted or nonscripted? You could find success with either, but try to choose the format that’s a good fit for your skill set. There’s a reason I’ve never made a scripted show: it seems really hard to write a bunch of words down ahead of time instead of making them up as I go along. I’m comfortable with my own limits.

I could always use a scripted podcast as an opportunity to hone my abilities as a storyteller. But I’d need to get comfortable with the fact that there might not be a large audience of people who want to hear a grown man fumble through script writing until he found his feet.

In general, though, structure is good.

Podcast listening is a habitual behavior. You want the structure of your show to build expectations in your listeners’ minds and reinforce their desire to participate in your show. If they listen to one episode and enjoy it, they’ll expect to similarly enjoy your other episodes. If you can consistently deliver on that promise, you’ll likely be able to turn your show’s listeners into your show’s subscribers.

Also, holy shit, having a structure makes recording dozens or hundreds of episodes of your podcast a much more palatable process.

The Adventure Zone is the most exhausting show that we create. Before we record, we have no idea what each episode is going to sound like when it’s finished. If your show doesn’t have consistent structure, you and your cohosts are going to be more likely to burn out, and the quality of your episodes is going to be all over the map. It’s like you’re building the plane beneath you every time you take it out to fly.

Just, like, generally speaking: this is bad for planes.

All of this is to say: figuring out a consistent structure for your show is as important as figuring out its concept and hosts—but don’t hesitate to tweak that structure during its early days until you find the composition that works best for you.

How Long Should My Podcast Be?

I dunno, probably an hour?

Next question.

Determining the perfect length for your podcast can be a real moving target when you’re just starting out—and that’s totally fine! Every podcast I’ve ever participated in has seen its running time fluctuate starting out, as my cohosts and I figured out what felt comfortable. Having a general idea of the scope of your show is a good idea, but don’t sweat it if you don’t settle on a target length right away. Wonderful!, the enthusiast show I do with my wife, Rachel, started as a half-hour podcast, but now it runs forty to fifty minutes, because that’s just what feels organic and good.

In fact, adjusting this number early on is actually a pretty good practice. You may want to consider keeping your episodes on the shorter side when you’re just starting out. In doing so, you increase your chances of new listeners actually finishing your earlier episodes, reinforcing the idea in their subconscious that if they finished listening to an episode of your show, they must have enjoyed it . . . right?

However, when trying to settle on a more permanent length for your podcast, there are two philosophical questions to ponder:

1. What’s the ideal length of a show, based on average podcast consumption statistics?
2. What’s the ideal length of my show, based on what feels right while recording it?

Trying to structure your show based solely on the first question will probably negatively impact your position on the second. Still, there’s some interesting data out there relating to the average podcast listener’s appetites that you should keep in mind when finding your show’s formula.

Rob Walch, vice president of podcaster relations at Libsyn (one of the most popular podcast hosting platforms out there), shared some data at the 2017 National Association of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas that seemingly supports the idea that longer shows can more effectively capture an audience’s attention. According to Walch, 84 percent of podcasts that pull in more than one hundred thousand downloads per episode are longer than fifty-one minutes, while a little less than 10 percent are shorter than thirty minutes.

There’s also some data about where people tune in to podcasts that appears to reinforce that assertion. In a 2017 survey conducted by polling firm Edison Research, 65 percent of folks who consume podcasts listen in their cars. If you factor in the average commute of an American worker—which, according to a recent U.S. Census Bureau poll, is about 25.5 minutes on average—there and back you arrive at that same fifty-one-minute mark touted by Walch.

As much as that sounds like a consensus, there are plenty of reasons not to use this data as a guideline for your show’s length.

First off, it doesn’t factor in the average length of all podcasts in existence. I don’t know the average length of all podcasts ever, but anecdotally speaking, I listen almost exclusively to podcasts with running times over one hour. That has little to do with my preferences with regard to podcast length and more to do with the fact that there are simply more hour-long podcasts out there than half-hour-long podcasts. That discrepancy probably throws off the numbers a bit.

Also, while 65 percent of participants in Edison Research’s poll listed their car as a listening destination, 84 percent said they also listened in their homes. There’s also nothing saying the 65 percent who listen in their cars demand the podcast cover the entire duration of their drive time on a given day.

“Aaaah,” Megan, an imaginary person I just made up, sighs as she pulls into her driveway, right as her favorite podcast wraps up another great episode. “Just how I, a completely fictional, nonexistent person, like it.”

No, the far more important questions you need to ask yourself are: What’s the correct length for my podcast? What best fits the topic? The Memory Palace works as a fifteen-minute-long show—it gets in, delivers a concise, powerful, intimate story, and gets out. Hardcore History works as a four-to five-hour-long show—it gets in, thoroughly covers the ever-living hell out of a subject, and gets out.

There’s a good guideline to use that will help shape your show, regardless of its concept, and that’s: How long will an episode of my show be entertaining to listen to? If you want to tell compelling short stories, your show should be short. If you want to tell exhaustive stories about every angle of a subject, it should be much longer. If you want to tell some jokes with your friends, it should be as long as you’re able to deliver primo goofs in one sitting. Do not just fill for time—there’s simply no need for it.

Throughout every step of creating your podcast, you’ll be well served by harboring a deep respect for your audience’s time. Let that, above anything else, determine the length of your show. Record a few episodes, allow yourself to be brutally honest about when it stops being entertaining, and wrap it up, right there.

Congratulations! You just discovered the length of your podcast.

What Kind of Segments Should My Podcast Have?

Rather than addressing the exact nature of the segments that would fit into your show—which would be impossible, because books are (unfortunately) a one-way method of transmitting information, and I do not know what kind of dark podcasting deeds you’re plotting over there—I can share some general tips on how to create a consistent structure that your listeners will learn to rely on.

The Beginning and the End

Each episode should have an intro and an outro, natch. Both should ideally have some kind of musical accompaniment—a genuine banger that matches and establishes the aesthetic of the show you perform (we’ll have more on that much later). Your intro should do what it says on the tin: introduce the title of the show and its hosts, and establish the tone or topic of the podcast episode your listeners are about to hear.

A general comedy show might start things off with a cold open, just making off-the-cuff goofs about whatever before transitioning to the rest of the episode. A more personality-driven show might begin with an update on the hosts’ lives before diving in. An educational show might open with a prewritten stage setter for the topic of conversation. Regardless of what you choose, your intro should be entertaining, succinct, and, at the bare minimum, explain who you are and what you do.

Don’t take that last bit for granted: you never know which episode will be the first one someone decides to tune in to.

You should keep your outro just as uniform as your intro between episodes. General consensus is that this is the ideal time to include plugs for your other projects, various social media handles, or whatever, as well as a call to action for listeners to leave reviews and share the show with their friends. However, don’t belabor this section: you don’t want to make it insurmountable, which will guarantee that your listeners will tune out early.

The Middle

The body of your podcast episode will be where the sausage gets made. The sausage of your . . . idea meat. It can be extremely helpful to compartmentalize this section when possible. The majority of an episode of My Brother, My Brother and Me is made up of listener questions and Yahoo Answers—when one of those starts to drag, we’re able to quickly pivot to the other, repeating this cycle until we approach the average running time of our show. This setup gives us a lot of control over the general direction of each episode while we’re still in the middle of creating it.

It’s worth mentioning that your transitions between segments don’t always have to be codified mile markers for the listener. On My Brother, My Brother and Me, we’re usually pretty explicit about when a new question or segment is about to begin. On Sawbones, Justin and Sydnee don’t really make a big deal out of signposting their transitions; they simply keep the next segment in mind, ready to hop over whenever the conversation starts to drag.

Again, audiences enjoy podcasts that fulfill their expectations, as established by the other episodes of that podcast they’ve listened to. Random one-off segments deployed hither and yon across your show can be jarring to your audience and cause friction in their listening experience. Keep in mind that your show is free. There’s nothing keeping a listener from unsubscribing, making it all the more vital that you avoid introducing any kind of listener friction like the plague.

That’s not to say you shouldn’t occasionally try to mix things up to keep your show fresh! But you should probably do it only if that new segment painlessly fits into the show you’re already making and if you plan to incorporate it on some kind of recurring basis.

And on a related note, if a bit isn’t working, don’t hesitate to drop it and start experimenting with something new. In addition, if your segments are reliant on things like news stories or other timely topics, and you’re unable to find anything good for a given episode, you should probably just skip said segment for that week rather than simply phoning it in.

Advertising Breaks

Regarding advertising blocks: almost nobody likes them. You probably won’t have to worry about this if you’re just starting out or simply planning on podcasting as a hobby. If they do become a part of your show, though, keep them concise, entertaining, and clearly separated—perhaps with a quick bit of music—from the rest of the episode’s content.

Troubleshooting Your Format

Having multiple segments can help you troubleshoot any weaknesses you identify in the content of your show. Finding it difficult to keep your discussions on a movie recap podcast entertaining start to finish? Add some segments to break up the conversation! Having a hard time engaging your podcast’s growing fanbase? Introduce a segment that gives them some kind of voice on the show! Jordan, Jesse, Go! accomplishes this with a “Momentous Occasions” segment, where fans call in to talk about a great, funny thing they saw recently. It’s hysterical and also a really good way to get listeners invested.

How Often Should I Release Episodes?

When figuring out a release schedule, you should keep two factors in mind.

First, the logistical considerations: How often can I get my hosts together to record? How long do we need to prep each episode? How long does postproduction take on each episode? How rich of a vein is the subject of my podcast? Will we run the risk of burning through all our potential topics if we release too frequently?

You probably won’t be able to make the exact calculation on those questions before you’ve recorded your first episode, but you should at least know enough to decide between the small handful of logical options: weekly, biweekly, or monthly.

The longer you go without releasing an episode, the more likely it is that you’ll interrupt your subscribers’ listening habits—you should really go that route only if you’re producing a show with appointment listening. Is your show super high-touch, beefy, and not reliant on remembering things from past episodes in order to dive back in? A longer gap between releases probably makes more sense. Is it competing in the already packed comedy podcast market, and, production-wise, is it a fairly light lift? You’ll probably want to target a pretty tight turnaround.

That said, the more important thing to keep in mind is the second factor, which is: How frequently can I consistently release new episodes?

One of the best ways to maintain subscriber retention is to allow your listeners to build your show into their regular routines. Maybe you’re their constant companion during their Monday morning commute. Maybe you’re how they kick off their weekends on Friday afternoons. Maybe they listen to your recap podcast first thing in the morning after whatever it is you’re recapping. Regardless, interrupting this pattern by skipping episodes or publishing off schedule is a surefire way to lose listeners, either in the short term or, if you consistently miss your established deadlines, permanently.

On weeks where we publish My Brother, My Brother and Me late—which is to say, not on Monday mornings—our download count for that episode invariably takes a hit. When we miss an episode entirely (which we try like the dickens to never do), it takes a few weeks for our download count to recover, for folks to get back into the “routine” of listening to our show.

If a weekly recording and editing schedule seems too rigorous to maintain, then by all means, do not attempt it. A biweekly or monthly publishing schedule can just as easily establish a routine with the listener. For The Adventure Zone, we realized very early on how difficult it would be to produce that show every week. Despite the fact that we moved to a biweekly schedule, the download count for that show hasn’t suffered—it just built a different expectation in our audience.

Whichever kind of schedule you establish for your show, there’s one target you should try to hit: publish new episodes of your podcast in the morning. If you’re on Pacific time, you might want to consider uploading the file and setting it to publish automatically for the morning of Eastern time. Not everyone listens to podcasts during their morning commute, but it’s generally a good idea to have your show ready for those who do.

I realize there’s a lot to unpack in this section and that a lot of it seems like pure guesswork, given that you haven’t actually sat down to record a proper episode yet. My recommendation is to do just that: record a trial episode that you don’t plan on releasing. Get a feel for your and your cohosts’ dynamics and figure out what kind of segments are fun to play around with. Have an honest conversation about how often you can rely on one another to consistently get together and record.

And then, at the end of that trial, if the episode you recorded isn’t as spectacular as you were hoping, throw it in the garbage! Nobody has to know.

Research

WITH SYDNEE MCELROY, TERESA MCELROY, AND RACHEL MCELROY

Interested in creating a podcast that has a research component? Don’t look to us for guidance. Research is hard, so we don’t do it. Luckily, we have far more capable and intelligent wives who have taken that up. I asked my wife, Dr. Sydnee McElroy, to handle this chapter, with help from Travis’s Shmanners cohost and wife, Teresa McElroy, and Griffin’s Wonderful! cohost and wife, Rachel McElroy.

SYDNEE MCELROY

Initially, when Justin asked me to help write this section on research, I was reluctant. I do not consider myself a professional researcher, and, as I state often on our show Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine, I am far from a historian. But here I am, seven years later, the host of a medical history podcast, still releasing new episodes every week. So perhaps I am uniquely qualified to discuss this very specific type of podcast research.

What Is Your Goal?

If research seems like an intimidating prospect, that’s because it is! That’s why it’s really important that you decide on the mission of your show before you start. I knew from the beginning that I could not provide an in-depth, comprehensive history of, say, cholera or vasectomies in a thirty-minute podcast. Nor was I particularly interested in doing that, as it would have relegated Justin to the sidelines. You don’t find a lot of humorous sidebars in academic journals or textbooks (though I would make the case that this is unfortunate).

A very simple way of making this choice is by deciding on a genre. We set out to make a comedy podcast. While I intended to include plenty of interesting facts that would inform the listener, the primary mission was to entertain. After listening to an episode of Sawbones, the listener has hopefully had some laughs and, perhaps, feels better equipped for pub trivia. But they’re not necessarily an expert on the week’s subject matter.

TERESA MCELROY

When we made a pilot show for Shmanners, I kept couching everything with “I’m not an expert,” thinking that because I wasn’t formally published in or didn’t hold any degrees in etiquette (does that even exist?) I wasn’t qualified to make a podcast. But, after sending it out to people for critique, the overwhelming response was that I was an expert—after I did my research, that is. That’s not to say that I don’t make mistakes, but I enter into a contract with the listener that I’ve done the work to ensure I know what I’m talking about.

If you do want to make a show where the primary purpose is to educate your audience on a specific subject in a comprehensive manner, you may need help. There are many podcasters who work with whole teams of researchers to fact-check their show and provide them with relevant sources. From the beginning, I knew I would not have the time or the resources for this approach. When we first started Sawbones, I was working full-time as a practicing family physician. We also had our oldest child during the first year of our show. Suffice it to say, researching and recording our podcast was far from the only thing on my plate. Learning about medical history was and still is a hobby for me, and Sawbones provides me with a very structured opportunity to indulge this very peculiar curiosity.

We started Shmanners while I was pregnant with our first child. I was doing all the prep for it until I became pregnant with our second. Now, our show uses a research assistant. Together, we’ll discuss the focus of the show, and then she will gather the information. Sometimes, I’ll send her articles I find interesting, and then she’ll write the script. Having another researcher in the mix helps make these shows more enjoyable for our audience (and for myself!).

In lieu of a whole team, I would advise keeping your topics narrow and your episodes short. You could also create a show that covers more ground and releases less frequently. While my goal is not to make a purely educational medical podcast, I am familiar with many podcasts that release extremely short episodes, providing bite-size, concentrated, up-to-date important information on a particular topic.

If you do want to tackle something a little more akin to “infotainment,” you can easily go it alone. In approaching the research, your focus should be on accuracy as opposed to breadth. If I am covering the history of bloodletting, I don’t need to locate every historical reference of its use and provide a complete chronological account, but I do need to ensure that the instances that I choose to highlight are factual. When you are doing a research-based show, there is an implicit understanding that the information you are providing is true, to the best of your abilities. It is important to honor that agreement. Or you will get emails. Lots of emails.

RACHEL MCELROY

I think it’s also fair to mention that, when selecting your goal, you should consider what you as a host can uniquely bring toward meeting that goal. If you’re starting with limited expertise, you’re setting yourself up for a lot more research. When I started Wonderful! with Griffin, we were riding the coattails of a previous show, Rose Buddies, that focused on recapping and critiquing reality dating shows. We started with that show partially because I felt, with the support of Griffin, that we were uniquely qualified to comment on these programs given our vast knowledge of The Bachelor. The only research that was required was watching the episode and taking notes. Our goal was to entertain, but as the reality dating shows became less entertaining and more concerning (trust me), we pivoted to Wonderful!, a podcast about, well, all the things we think are wonderful. While the goal is still to entertain, the breadth of focus gives us far more control over what we can discuss. It also allows us to choose topics that we already know a fair amount about. The research then becomes something to supplement existing knowledge, making it more interesting to both us and listeners. Because when we’re genuinely interested and excited, it’s more likely that the audience will be too.

Finding Individual Topics

Choosing episode topics is generally pretty easy in the beginning. You started the show because of your interest in a subject, so you probably already had a bunch of ideas for episodes before you even started recording the show. Over time, when that well of initial ideas starts to dry up, it has the potential to become more difficult, which is why I suggest enlisting the help of your audience. I don’t remember if we had explicitly asked listeners to email the show with their own topic ideas or if it just happened naturally, but I am eternally grateful for it. The majority of our show topics come from listener suggestions now, so choosing one is never a concern.

For Shmanners, we have always relied heavily on listener suggestions. The focus of our show is on societal behavior, so while the topics we choose are often rooted in history, they are relevant to our listeners today.

It is important that you do some light research on a potential topic before you nail it down. I have wasted many research hours trying to make a show out of something that just isn’t going to work. Sometimes, it turns out the topic is too narrow and there won’t be enough content to fill the episode. Occasionally, it will turn out that an area of history that seemed very exciting is actually pretty mundane or even a total bummer. Since Justin’s job is to make jokes about the information I’m presenting, topics that are total bummers don’t make his job very easy. Whatever the reason, if you start to dig into an idea and find there’s nothing there, be prepared to abandon it and pivot to something else. Not everything makes a good podcast episode.

This is where it’s helpful to return to your goal. If your goal is to entertain listeners, for example, it’s important to choose topics that will primarily be entertaining. Is your topic so complicated that you’re going to spend most of your time lecturing? Is your topic so simple that you’ve got very little to say about it? Is there another podcast already talking about this topic from a more informed and experienced perspective? If any of these are true, it’s less likely your show is going to stand out. Often, I’ll be drawn to topics that I think are fascinating, but after some research I’ll realize I don’t have anything unique to say about it. Or sometimes I’ll realize, after a thorough investigation, that the thing I wanted to discuss is more fraught than I initially expected. If this is the case, it will come through in your show.

Finding Your Information

Once you’ve done some initial reading and feel like there’s enough stuff out there to support a whole episode, find a good summary article. There is no shame in using Wikipedia as a starting point, but there is shame in also using it as your ending point. The other advantage to starting with a summary article is that it will generally include a list of references. This is where you can really start branching out into new information for your listeners. Follow the links to other articles, books, journals, primary sources, etc. Then you can begin to form a more complete outline in your mind before trying to translate it to an audience.

Because my show is about medical history, I look to medical and scientific journals for a lot of my information. This is nice for a couple of reasons. First, they are generally peer-reviewed and referenced, so I feel confident about the accuracy of the information being presented. Second, the bibliographies provide lots of great opportunities for digging further into the topic. The disadvantage here is that many journal articles are available only with a subscription or if you pay for the individual article itself. For my purposes, it has been cost-effective to subscribe to several journals that I find myself returning to frequently.

The internet is full of etiquette blogs, but I find myself sticking to more tried-and-true sources like the Emily Post Institute, Miss Manners columns, and Smithsonian magazine articles. I have also amassed a large library of books, but I rely on those for procedural advice and historical perspective. Our show is more about the “how to feel good doing it” and less about the “do it this way or else.”

One benefit of choosing to do a podcast about something you are already genuinely interested in is that your hobby can fuel your show. I have a fairly large library of medical history books that I have happily invested in throughout the years we have been making our show. Having access to my own reference library has cut down on the time I need to spend digging around for information, but I also just enjoy reading them.

After you accumulate your sources, I would advise reading them thoroughly before you start outlining the show itself. I do not type (or record) a single word until I have read at least a handful of articles or book chapters on the topic. You cannot communicate anything to your audience until you understand the complete story.

When I’m at the point where I feel like I know what I want to say, I’ll start generating a two-to three-page document summarizing the key dates, figures, and/or events that I want to focus on to keep myself on track. While I do not write what I want to say verbatim, I do give myself clues and key words in the outline as to what idea I am trying to convey by presenting that particular piece of information. I have never done a scripted podcast, but I am certain this step would take far longer were I to make that sort of show.

I do rely on the script written by our brilliant research assistant, but I hardly ever read it word for word. When I first started out, I did a lot of copying and pasting from other sources, but it was hard to create the fully fleshed-out story that Sydnee describes, and that is so important. Personally, I enjoy the voice and tone of our researcher’s scripts, so I am genuinely happy to present them. Or present them as much as I can—Travis provides a lot of derailing commentary because that’s his role on our show.

When I research, I always err on the side of too much material, so that I can pare down the content prior to making the show. The process of paring down helps me become more familiar with the topic and also better understand what information is essential to telling the story. Oftentimes, I’ll find myself debating whether a particular event or milestone is necessary to the topic, which usually means we’ll be fine without it. I will also think about whether the information is likely to elicit any response from my cohost, Griffin. This is why it’s a huge asset to know your cohost really well. If you have a fact that you think might be interesting but is unlikely to inspire your cohost, you will probably want to just leave it out. Your audience will ultimately appreciate it.

Finding Your Story

It took me a few months of actually creating the show before I began to realize what made an episode particularly enjoyable. Our early shows were largely deep dives into particularly wacky medical treatments or discussions of a shifting diagnosis throughout history. There was not necessarily an overarching story, and the focus of my research was very much on finding the grossest or weirdest things humans have done in the past and presenting them to the audience. After a few biographical episodes received some especially positive attention from listeners, I started to see what made those shows better. A person’s life naturally has a story, which means there is a built-in narrative arc.

I knew I didn’t want to focus the entire podcast on historical figures, so instead I started trying to find the story within each topic I researched. Whatever the subject matter—whether it be a person, a disease, a type of medicine, or a fixed time period—there is a hook somewhere in there that listeners will recognize as plot and connect to instantly. If I have one piece of wisdom about conducting research for podcasts, it is this: find the story. Until you find the story, your research will just be a collection of facts. They may be very true and very interesting to you and provide excellent fodder with which your funny cohost can make jokes, but those episodes will not speak to your audience in the same way that a good story can.

In order to achieve this, I believe you have to do two things well. First, you have to read about the subject with an open mind, without trying to synthesize or structure the data. Just read and learn and let all the information fill your brain until you feel really comfortable with the basic gist of things. It’s like a puzzle—the big picture will become clear to you only once you have a really good sense of the pieces.

This leads me to the second thing you have to do well, which I personally feel is the hardest part: be willing to scrap a lot of what you’ve learned for the sake of the show. Just tell the story and leave all that other research for your own edification. Or make another episode out of it some other time, I suppose.

Travis usually does this for me while we record the show. He will find a few things to discuss off the cuff and turn it into the best part. He is the comedian and I am the straight man of our duo. I can’t even count the number of times I have abandoned whole sections of facts because he jumped to the good part—and I usually have to follow him.

This can be really hard to do, so let me elaborate a little. For example, I will realize that while a treatment may have its roots in ancient Greece, the most interesting thing about it happened in the sixteenth century. In which case, I have learned to let go of all the other facts and articles I have accumulated in service to the real story. I may make a brief mention of the treatment’s Greek origins or etymology, or throw in a nod to Pliny the Elder (because I know how much our consistent listeners love that guy), but I will focus the whole show on just that sixteenth-century story. These episodes are almost always our best. This also speaks to my initial point about deciding what the purpose of your podcast is. If I set out to tell the comprehensive history of a given topic, I would not have this freedom. However, by allowing the information to dictate the content of the show, I can limit the show to the best stories and leave the listeners to investigate more if they so choose.

I often get bogged down in history because that’s the part I like the best. It doesn’t always serve our purposes because, with Shmanners, what our listeners want is actionable instruction, and frankly, that’s the reason they listen. Our best shows have the two halves of “here’s what history says about it” and “here’s how you can use this information.”

On Wonderful!, I have a segment called “Rachel’s Poetry Corner” that’s focused on a particular poet and poem that I enjoy. When I started this segment, I had many poems ready in hand from my favorite poets. These were poems and poets that I had studied in college and graduate school, so the research and story came easily to me. As the segment continued, I found myself having to draw deeper down into my reservoir of poets and begin featuring poems that I knew less about. Often there was only one poem or one fact that I had on reserve prior to researching. This made my story less clear and the task of putting together a cohesive narrative around a poem or poet more daunting. Now I’ve developed a framework of questions that help me get to the story quicker. Where is this person I’m talking about from, and how did that influence who they ultimately became? What are the major achievements of this person that make them impressive to me? What artists, writers, etc., influenced them? What makes their work uniquely appealing to me? If the answers to these questions are accessible and relatable, the outline of my story will be nearly complete.

My Mistakes

This brings to mind a few mistakes I have made along the way that, perhaps, you can avoid.

When it comes to ensuring accuracy, cross-referencing is your best tool. Basic dates and names probably don’t need more than a couple references, but if it is a fact that seems especially sensational or strange, look for documentation of it in several other sources. In addition, look to see where those sources got the information as well. On one occasion, I found a fact about ancient attitudes toward C-sections repeated in multiple different sources, only to be called out by listeners who let me know it was actually a myth. I went back to my sources and found that they were all quoting the same mistaken article. Again, not every single piece of information needs this much checking, but if something sounds like it can’t possibly be true, do the work to prove it to yourself before sharing it with others.

One thing I still don’t do consistently, but wish I had done from the very beginning, is keep a list of my resources for each episode. That can come in handy if, say, you are asked to write a book based on your episodes someday. Then you will really wish you had done this. It could also help with future episodes. Whether you choose to share that list with your audience for their personal enjoyment is up to you. I will say, for what it’s worth, that I am frequently asked to share my sources, and I don’t have any solid philosophical reason not to do so. I hated compiling bibliographies as a student and had sworn never to do it again unless forced by a teacher . . . but here we are.

Finally, as much as I hate to admit it, I have gotten things wrong before. As diligent as I try to be, the amount of information we have accessible electronically these days makes it hard not to include a much-repeated myth-as-fact every so often. When this has happened, I have confirmed my mistake and owned up to it immediately. Often, I will start our next episode off with a correction, so that the misinformation does not persist. I have found that by acknowledging when I get something wrong, my listeners will continue to trust me to get most things right.

My biggest mistake is putting the delivery of the research before my primary responsibility of being a charming host and partner to my cohost. It is not unusual for me to find myself in the middle of a dense factoid when I have to remind myself, “People aren’t coming here to listen to a book report, they’re coming to hear you talk to Griffin.” Nobody is going to miss the research you didn’t get to share. Your listeners aren’t going to be like, “The person the host mentioned died in 1972, but the host stopped discussing her achievements when she reached 1961!” Don’t forget to put down the notes and play with your partner in the space. That’s probably why you started making this show, right?

That’s All There Is to It

If all of this sounds overwhelming, please keep in mind that while I was trained in basic research methods in medical school and I have had some practice with lecturing through my job as an assistant professor, most of what I have learned has been through trial and error. You don’t have to be an expert on something to do a podcast about it. You do have to be enthusiastic about it, though.

My training is from the opposite end of the spectrum. I have an acting degree, so I’ve always felt comfortable with public speaking. I play the role of a teacher on Shmanners, so I had to become one. This is hardly the first time I’ve done this; my first career was as a swim teacher and lifeguard instructor. Not to belabor Sydnee’s point, but I too have a pupil in my cohost that makes it easy and fun to teach, but once again, that’s another section.

While I’m not a teacher by trade, I come from a long line of professional educators, and I currently work in higher education administration. I know that the best teachers are the people who hold on to their curiosity and their vulnerability. A podcast is an opportunity to intimately teach a listener about our world and ourselves, and this is most effective when we bring our feelings to the table. Ultimately, the research you do as a host is research your listeners could do on their own if they were so motivated. This can be embarrassing to admit and may make you want to throw in the towel. But the strength behind your research is in how you present it—you are uniquely you with your voice and your spirit. With this in mind, you just have to figure out how you’re going to share yourself with the listeners so that they not only want to learn about the topic, but they specifically want to learn about the topic from you.

So, what do I do? I find the things that interest me and try to lay out the facts of the stories in interesting ways. I attempt to do justice to the people and events that I share with my listeners and connect the past to the present with universal themes and empathy. I also have the advantage of a cohost whom I feel very comfortable sharing my quirky interests with and whom I trust to see the humor in what I’m presenting, but that goes beyond the bounds of this book section to which I was assigned.

Though I encouraged Sydnee to please feel free to take up more of the book singing my praises, she refused. I have requested that the publisher leave the next thirty pages blank so that the reader can imagine her thorough, touching account of my talents.