Chapter Three

Let’s Record

Okay, so this is the part that is the hardest to write a step-by-step guide for. As cringe-y as it is to say, recording is where the art of podcasting happens, and the step by step of making [sigh] art can be difficult to nail down. We toyed with writing, “Now just, you know, talk and stuff” in huge letters, but our editor said that would be “a total rip-off” and “kind of lazy, fellas” and “please stop emailing me, I have real books to work on, just write the chapter already.”

We can’t tell you how to record a great, compelling show, because we don’t know you and everything that makes you a great and compelling person. This is the cool part, the part where you really make it your own. There is only one expert in making your perfect podcast, and that’s you. So rather than a how-to, the following sections are more guidelines and best practices that you can try to observe while you’re making your show.

We can’t show you how to fly, so we’re going to whisper inspiration into your ear and then push you off the tallest branch.

Where’s Your Head?

WITH JUSTIN MCELROY

Before you sit down to record anything, it’s important to do a quick check-in with yourself to make sure you’re in the right headspace. Stressed? Sad? Anxious? Tired? Maybe you can reschedule so you give the best possible performance you can.

You won’t always have that luxury. Sometimes you have one solitary hour in the whole of the week when you and your cohosts are able to get free. Other times, recording can help lift you out of a funk. There have been many times when I have felt too stressed to record my meditative cereal podcast, The Empty Bowl, but ended the recording session feeling infinitely more chill.

It’s important to continue to police your mood while you record. Don’t let your mind wander or start poking around online where you could run into potential stressors or distractions. My brothers and I avoid talking about anything business related when we’re about to make a show. Silence and hide your phone so your good vibes won’t be slaughtered by a reminder that you’ve got a root canal tomorrow. (See also “Focus” below.)

Sometimes you won’t even be the one to realize that you’re not in a good headspace (because brains are weird and often bad). I can count more than a couple of times my brothers have pointed out mid-recording that I seemed a little out of it, which prompted me to realize that I actually had been awake with the baby all night and hadn’t eaten and wasn’t wearing pants.

Sometimes life happens and it means that recording can’t, and that’s fine. Making podcasts is hard enough without having to struggle with an uncooperative brain. Remember, you are the only judge of whether you’re in a position to make your art.

Focus

WITH GRIFFIN MCELROY

Podcasts are traditionally recorded on computers, which are often connected to the internet, which is an infinite distraction engine that will one day doom mankind. Keeping your focus on the conversation you’re having and off literally anything else seems like it should be an easy habit to get into. I literally got distracted by some emails that came in while I was writing that sentence, so let me assure you, keeping focused on your podcast conversation requires a level of discipline that you might not—and may never—fully possess.

The internet isn’t the sole thing that can break your focus in the middle of a conversation. Maybe a cool bird flies by outside. Maybe your brain conjures up a memory of that one time a cool bird flew by outside. All it takes is for you to miss a few crucial seconds of your discussion, and you could send the flow of your podcast crashing down around you. Listeners will probably know you weren’t really paying attention. Your cohosts, assuming they know you fairly well, will definitely know.

If you’re easily distracted (which all three of us totally, totally are), do whatever you need to do before you click Record to ensure you can stay dialed in on the task at hand. Before each recording, I close everything on my computer that I’m not actively using for the show and put my phone on the piano bench across the room. We don’t use video chat, so by default, I kinda just stare at the grain of my desk and listen as hard as I can. For an hour or two. I now realize this makes me look like a serial killer.

There’s a certain amount of focusing on focusing that you’ve gotta do if you want to stay sharp, but the more dialed in you are, the easier it is for you to listen, which makes it easier for you to keep the conversation moving, which makes it—you get the picture.

Remember the Audience

WITH GRIFFIN MCELROY

In Patrick Rothfuss’s Kingkiller Chronicle series, which are the best books ever, the protagonist uses a training exercise to increase his Alar—his supernatural mental prowess. In said exercise, the hero divides his mind into different chambers, each actively working through a different idea, question, or memory. In doing so, he’s able to think multiple complex thoughts simultaneously, which—I won’t spoil it—eventually gives him the power to kill the big evil wizard.

Oh, shit, I spoiled it.

Anyway, I mention this because I realize we’ve given you a lot to chew on in this chapter, a lot of lessons to keep in mind while doing your show. And I hate to add one more concept onto the pile, but it’s one that I think is vitally important—and is, in fact, the number one piece of advice I have for folks who want to make a better podcast.

When you’re making a podcast, remember that you’re making a podcast that people are going to listen to. Over time, with luck, you’ll have a good idea of what those people generally like about you and your show. Once you do, remember you’re making a podcast that those specific people are going to listen to.

I am in no way suggesting you pander to the people who have shown an interest in your mouth-speaking. Rather, I’m trying to put you in a headspace that will make it easier to realize when your show’s going off the rails.

That clumsy transition between segments: Did it seem uncomfortable to you? Did your conversation come off as unnatural and robotic? Did that last segment turn into an exhausting, self-indulgent info dump? Were you and your cohost a little too nasty to each other just now? Have you said something remotely entertaining in the last, oh, let’s say, ten minutes? Did your cohost just fucking burp?

It’s easy to write stuff like that off as a little transgression—or, hell, not a transgression at all—when, to your listeners, it’s probably enough to send them sailing away from Your Podcast Island out to fairer seas, where the podcast hosts don’t burp.

I don’t want this line of thinking to give you the yips before you even start, but believe me, it’s essential. Nearly every writing instructor I’ve ever had has advised me to read my first draft aloud before diving into edits, just to give myself a different, external perspective. While you can more easily achieve that perspective during postproduction, keeping it front-of-mind while you’re recording is going to make your show just so, so, so much better.

Mic Technique

WITH GRIFFIN MCELROY

Y’all remember Tay Zonday? “Chocolate Rain”? Man, that shit was hilarious. Remember the parts of the video where he makes a big point out of leaning away from the mic to breathe? What a funny thing to do, right? What a weirdo, huh?

Actually, you judgmental butthole, Tay Zonday was a fucking master of his craft.

See, there are lots of wrong ways to talk into a microphone—and I’m not referring to the things you say, but how you actually say them with your mouth and body and lungs and stuff. When Mr. Zonday moves away from the mic to breathe, he does so to keep you from hearing him gulp down lungfuls of oxygenated air like some kind of sick farm animal. Instead, you just hear the buttery-rich bass tones you tuned in for.

Okay, fine: you don’t have to lean away from the mic every time you breathe. But a big part of mic technique is paying attention to your proximity to your microphone and ensuring you’re not, like, wheezing directly into it. If you find yourself to be an enthusiastic nose breather, having your microphone directly in the path of your nostrils is going to force listeners to hear each and every one of your inhalations and exhalations in unwelcome detail. Since not breathing isn’t exactly an option, try moving your microphone above the line of nose-fire; or, if your mic has a pickup pattern that supports it, try rotating the mic outward a bit so you speak into it at an angle. I possess a sinus system that some have described as “Kafkaesque,” so that’s the technique that works for me.

You should also pay super careful attention to your plosives, which refers to the harsher letters of the alphabet that you voice by cutting off airflow to the vocal tract. Chief offenders include stop consonants that you create with your tongue (like k, t, d, and g), but the ones to really watch out for are your lip-based consonants: p and b. Plosives, particularly p and b, create little bursts of wind that, taken head-on into a mic, sound terrible. There’s equipment you should probably think about acquiring to limit this, like a mesh windscreen or foam pop filter, but you can also limit it with your technique. Just make sure you’re delivering those plosives not directly into the microphone but, rather, across it at a suitable angle.

If you’re struggling with this concept, just record an episode and listen to it, paying careful attention to the obnoxious breathing noises and sharp audio pops. Next time you record, you’ll hopefully know what to look out for.

Food and Drink

WITH JUSTIN MCELROY

Here are our two rules about eating food on mic:

  1. Unless you are doing a podcast specifically about eating food on mic and then reviewing that food, you shouldn’t eat while you record.
  2. You shouldn’t make a podcast about eating food on mic.

It might not bother everyone, but there’s a sizable portion of the podcast-listening population who are yucked out beyond all recognition when they hear people eat. It also makes you harder to understand.

If you need another reason not to eat, remember the unspoken contract between podcaster and listener: they are giving up their most precious commodity (life minutes) to listen to your show, so the least you can do is make recording your sole focus while you’re in front of a mic. Eating while you record makes it feel like you’d rather be anywhere else.

Beverages are a necessity. Water is obviously the gold standard. It’s really important to stay hydrated while you record if you want your best possible sound. We would, of course, be lying if we said we didn’t just as often have coffee. But we wanted to give water a hearty pat on the back. Hooray, water!

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Should you drink and record? Unless your show is specifically designed around you being inebriated (and there are many fine programs in that grand tradition), we’d avoid it, at least at first. You’re just never going to be as sharp as you would be stone-cold sober, and when you are just getting your footing, you’ll need all your wits about you to simultaneously talk, listen, and transition between topics.

We’ll have a drink now and then, but it’s a very rare (and not so great) live show where we’ve teetered on the edge of “drunk.”

If you feel confident that you’re at your most charming when you’ve got one in you, go for it.

Make sure, especially if you’re not recording with your own gear, that any beverages have lids or are kept far away from the equipment. There are plenty of reasons podcasts fail; don’t let yours be “because Jeff dumped a room-temperature Wild Cherry Pepsi on my computer.”

Recording Persona

WITH TRAVIS MCELROY

All right, dearest reader, I’m gonna put on my director hat and sit in my director’s chair while talking to you through my director’s megaphone for just a moment. When you sit down at that microphone, I want you to turn on and turn it up. No, not the microphone, you silly goose. I’m talking about your whole vibe. A common mistake hosts make is to bring the same energy to recording that they bring to their everyday life. That just isn’t going to do it, my friend.

In the next couple of paragraphs, I’m going to say this about a dozen different ways because it is important: you have to perform. Even if you are just being yourself, you have to perform. It is the energy difference between telling a story about a weird thing that happened to one friend and telling the story to a roomful of people at a party.

Now, let me be clear: I am not saying you have to be super excited and off-the-wall. It is way more esoteric than that. You need to be more engaging. That might mean high energy, but in my experience it usually means being attentive to whatever I am talking about.

In acting, there is a whole method based around tactics and objectives. I won’t go into it here, but suffice it to say that it is all about what you are trying to get from your audience and choosing active ways to do that. Think about the difference between the tactic “to talk” and “to fascinate,” “to thrill,” or “to inspire.” The former is bland and passive, while the latter three are all active and will yield far better results. When you sit down to record, think about what you want from your audience and what your active tactics are going to be to achieve said objective.

No matter what kind of podcast you’re making, you’re really performing every time you record. Your listeners are your audience, and you want to be sure that you’re being interesting enough to listen to. Take the time to think about your audience, the vibe you want to give off and what you want them to feel, and get into character, even if that character is just you getting amped talking about training videos.

Think about it this way: Do you think everyone who gives a TED Talk also talks like that in their everyday life? Nope! When they walk out on that stage, they turn it on. So, find out what that means for you and turn it up/on.

What to Talk About

WITH TRAVIS MCELROY

The time has come. Creative energy crackles in the air around you. You sit down to make magic, hit Record, and . . . you can’t think of one interesting thing to say.

Do not panic, it happens to everyone. We have been podcasting for a decade, and we run into this just about every episode of My Brother, My Brother and Me when it comes to the intro. There’s usually about ten minutes of discussion before we hit on something worth saying. So that’s lesson one: It’s not live, so you can take a minute to talk (even if it’s just out loud to yourself) about where to start.

There are a few ways to tackle this. First, let’s figure out what to talk about if your show is about a specific subject. This applies to shows in which you might review a movie (good or bad), educate the audience about one topic per episode, or discuss current events. A good place to start is to have a set of criteria that the topic has to meet to be right for your show. For example, on my wife’s and my etiquette podcast, Shmanners, the topic at hand has to have some kind of historical significance, to still apply to culture today, and to have some kind of process to follow that we can explain or actionable advice on the subject we can give. We obviously make exceptions when we do biographical episodes, but having these guidelines to follow means we are able to know right away if a possible topic fits the show.

Also, this may seem obvious, but pick a topic that you are interested in. I could argue that there is nothing more boring than listening to someone dispassionately talk about a subject I love very much. I once heard a podcast about Twin Peaks that started with the host saying, “Well, you all said you wanted us to talk about Twin Peaks, so I guess we’re going to.” I turned it off and never looked back.

Okay, now the second branch of our Choose Your Own Adventure: improv shows. This doesn’t have to mean comedy; it just means a show in which you have not prepared what to talk about ahead of time. This can seem really intimidating, but for reasons we will discuss in a moment (see “You Can Edit”), it’s not nearly as scary as it seems. The hardest part is to separate your mind into two levels, much like we’ll talk about in the “Listening” section. Level one is doing the talking and is focused on saying interesting stuff. Level two is keeping track of how everything is going analytically and is looking for the next thing to talk about. I tend to think of it in terms of swinging on ropes: you always have to be ready to grab the next rope. If the next interesting thing pops up, you have to be ready to let go of the old one and move on. Trust yourself to hold on and keep the conversation going. It is a skill that you will keep getting better at the more you do it.

One last thing: being funny. I’m going to paraphrase something I learned in theater school thanks to an old Russian guy named Stanislavski: if your goal is to be funny, you will always fail. Being funny is an inactive and amorphous goal. What does that mean? It is completely subjective, and thus impossible to know when (and if) you have achieved it. Instead, focus on active goals. When we record My Brother, My Brother and Me, I am trying to make my brothers laugh or to surprise them, impress them, whatever else I can think of. Your goals should be outwardly focused. You should always be trying to get some kind of reaction from your cohosts or the audience. Which brings us to . . .

“Yes, Anding”

WITH TRAVIS MCELROY

You may associate the phrase “yes, and” solely with improv, but it actually can be applied as a skill to every conversation (recorded or in person). “Yes, anding” is a momentum builder that is essential, and the good news is that you are probably already practicing it regularly without knowing it!

“Yes, anding” does not always mean literally saying “yes, and.” It is a shorthand way to describe buying into the topic at hand and then contributing to it to keep it going. For example:

COHOST 1: I would argue that Incredibles 2 is the best Pixar movie.

COHOST 2: Incredibles 2 is good, but the winner is obviously Wall-E by far!

Even though they are disagreeing, what Cohost 2 is really saying here is “Yes, this is an interesting topic of conversation, and here is my opinion so that we can continue said conversation.” Cohost 2 could have also agreed and then offered justifications. Or Cohost 2 could have simply asked Cohost 1 to justify their position. Anything that helps the conversation build momentum is good “yes, anding.”

If Cohost 2 had said, “Yes, it is, and now let’s talk about sandwiches,” they would have said the words “yes, and,” but actually they would be denying the topic that Cohost 1 had proposed and offered no new information to the conversation.

Okay, are you ready for the twist? You don’t need to always “yes, and” to keep the conversation going. To return to the ropes metaphor, if you see your cohost reaching for a frayed rope or a rope that leads to a dead end, sometimes the right thing to do is “no, but.” For example:

Cohost 1 and 2 have been discussing The Great British Bake Off when Cohost 1 says . . .

COHOST 1: Speaking of Noel Fielding, did you ever watch The Mighty Boosh? Wanna do a crimp?!

COHOST 2: Maybe as bonus content for our patrons, but right now the only crimping I want to talk about is on the edge of a piecrust.

In this example, Cohost 2 has made the decision to stick to the subject at hand. Now, if Cohost 1 feels strongly about the tangent, they could always push back. However, a lot of cohosting is about trust. Think of it like a catcher signaling for a pitch and the pitcher shaking it off. It’s not that the topic is “bad”; it’s just not the right time for it.

“Yes, anding” and “no, buting” are just two examples of conversational skills that you can utilize in your podcast to keep the energy going. Don’t worry if it feels a little clunky at first. The more you practice, the better you’ll get!

Listening

WITH JUSTIN MCELROY

If you’re recording a show with one or more people, you will be driven by a primal desire to say better, smarter, and funnier things than everyone else at the table. This is human! And it’s not even a bad impulse necessarily, but it needs to be balanced with the equally important skill of actively listening to your cohosts.

Think of it in terms of the end product. Your listeners are going to be following the flow of a conversation, and if your ideas don’t build off the ideas they’ve heard directly before, it’s going to be a jarring experience.

Of course, if you wait until your turn to talk to think of what to say next, you’re less likely to have a cogent, well-conceived thought or joke you can share. This is what breeds awkward silences, which aren’t a massive problem because you have the power of editing, but it’d be ideal to avoid them to keep from breaking the flow.

The art of recording with other people is simultaneously listening with the front of your brain while the back of your brain tries to build your next contribution to the conversation. That’s not anatomically correct, of course, but we don’t want to bore you with the technical jargon we’ve accrued from our years of intensive study of neurobiology.

The front part of your brain, then, should be preoccupied with listening to, processing, and responding to the contributions of your cohosts. That’s the part of your brain that’s an audience surrogate, hearing the jokes and pondering the ideas. If the front brain hits upon something you might be able to build on, it should pass it on to the back brain for further processing.

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Physical Listening

The front brain should also, incidentally, ensure that you’re physically demonstrating active listening (smiles, nods, etc.). There’s nothing that can kill your cohost’s confidence and energy like your thousand-yard stare. I find that this is even helpful when I’m recording with people remotely, as your physical actions can often force your brain into behaving. If you don’t believe me, try smiling for the next five minutes and see if you don’t feel a little happier.

It’s the back brain’s job to process the ideas being sent over by the front brain and build your next contribution. Even if you know exactly what you want to say next, you should keep the flow between the two brain halves going. You never know when a cohost might say something that will spark a better idea or help you solidify a loose thought.

It’s tough knowing the right moment to speak, but paying attention to the rhythms of your cohosts is absolutely crucial. A few obvious and not-so-obvious cues:

A trickier, though important, move is interrupting with intention. This is tough, but if the conversation merits it, I think it’s entirely appropriate to intentionally burst into your cohost’s flow if doing so can raise the stakes in a satisfying way.

For example, in My Brother, My Brother and Me, Travis or Griffin will often say something outlandish, and when I challenge them on it, they’ll either double down or immediately retreat—either one can be really funny. The key differentiator here is that I’m not taking the steering wheel away, I’m briefly jerking the wheel so that we careen into . . . I don’t know, a rubber chicken factory. Something funny. You get the idea.

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Oh man! “A rubber chicken factory”?! Is someone writing this down, because it is comedy gold!

You Can Edit

WITH TRAVIS MCELROY

Are you ready to learn about a podcasting superpower you never knew you had? You can edit! This is, no exaggeration, the most important thing you will learn from this book. As long as you are not doing your podcast live (a thing I have not heard of and would call “radio” instead of podcast), you have the ability to completely reshape your podcast as you see fit. In the next chapter, we’ll talk about how to edit. Right now it is just important that you remember that you can!

How can you utilize this amazing power to its full potential? For one thing, you can let it take the pressure off. Don’t spend your whole recording session overanalyzing the thing you already said. If it’s bad, you can cut it later. Focus on what you are currently saying and what you are about to say.

Have some kind of annoying sound pop up during recording? For me, it’s usually my dogs barking. It might also be someone ringing your doorbell over and over, a fire truck driving by with its siren on, your neighbor vacuuming upstairs, and on and on and on. Well, it doesn’t need to show up in your audio! Call “hold,” take care of it or wait for it to pass, and then resume recording!

Next, and this can be a tough one to get used to, but don’t be afraid to halt the whole discussion to talk to your cohosts. We call this talking “off mic.” It feels weird saying, “Wait, stop,” in the middle of recording, but it really can be the best option sometimes. Does it feel like everything is getting off track and you can’t see a way to get it back? Discuss it with your cohosts, edit out the conversation, and keep right on going. Did you move to a new conversation topic that you quickly realized is going nowhere? Stop, jump back, start a new topic, and edit out the false start later!

Not only is talking off mic a good way to quality control, but it can be an essential tool for maintaining healthy relationships. Sometimes, things get heated in conversations and people argue. It doesn’t even have to be that obvious. Maybe everybody just seems kind of tense or unhappy or whatever. Stop and talk about it. Even if working through the issue completely devours the session and you end up having to record another time, you’ll be glad you did.

What else does the power of editing offer you? Well, how about this: you don’t need to fill time. Occasionally, you’ll need to look up some piece of information, or a cohost will need to run and grab something, or a thousand other situations resulting in dead air. Sometimes you might have something incredibly witty and interesting to say, but if you don’t, then just leave it as silence and cut it later! No one will ever know!

You can also take a second pass at a flubbed line, even nonscripted ones! I’m really bad with names, so sometimes it takes me a couple of tries before I land on a pronunciation I am happy with. I also have a tendency to read one word as another word if I’m going too fast. If either of those happens, don’t worry! Just edit out the flub!

Ending the Episode

WITH TRAVIS MCELROY

The hardest thing in love and podcasting is knowing when to walk away. Wow, that’s a really great sentence I just came up with. I’m going to put that on a bumper sticker. Anyway, it’s time to end your episode.

Here’s what not to do. Don’t spend the last five minutes struggling to think of something else to say. If your episodes are usually forty-five minutes long and this one is only forty, that is totally okay. A slightly shorter episode is way better than an episode that ends with you scooping up the dregs from the bottom of the conversational barrel.

In fact, I would argue that it is better to end the episode before you run out of things to say. Hopefully, I’m not the first person to tell you this, but leave them wanting more. Why? Well, there are a couple of really good reasons!

One, when the conversation is clearly done but you are still talking, listeners are likely to go ahead and stop listening to the episode. So, if you have any important announcements or interesting information at the end of the show, you might as well just shout them straight into the garbage can.

Two, these days it’s all about binge-listening! I never listen to just one episode of anything. When one finishes, I’m right on to the next. However, if the energy of the episode I’m listening to hits zero, I’m way less likely to pick up with the next. Leave some gas in the tank to get them to the next station!

It’s a bit of a shortcut, but this is why I like having a rough goal for episode length. For Shmanners, we always aim for between thirty and forty minutes. So, if we have hit that thirty-minute mark and if it feels like we have covered the topic well, we can safely wrap it up!

Also, don’t forget what we said about editing. You should feel free to take a second to discuss with your cohosts off mic (you’ll edit it out later) about whether they think it’s time to wrap up. They may have some real bangers to throw out before you finish.

When it’s time to shut it down, don’t forget your outro. Mention things like where the audience can find you on social media, any input/feedback you are looking for from the audience, and the importance of sharing the show with friends. Also, be sure to credit anyone you need to credit for stuff contributed to your show. Anyone who has listened to my shows will know that I am a big fan of taglines to close out an episode. So, as always, catch you on the flip side, turkeys.

There they are, all of our recording secrets. Now you know everything! Wait, did we mention that you should make it good? That seems like a pretty important thing. Make your show good, not bad. Okay, that should be everything.