How many people will be speaking? Where will they be when they do? Are they talking to the audience or each other? These are the most basic questions about the shape of your podcast, and different answers to them can yield wildly different results.
On the premiere of (A Podcast About) Making Better Podcasts we dive headfirst into the possibilities of format. And no, it doesn’t have to be an interview.
Want to know more? Subscribe to this series (and leave a like and review) wherever you get your podcasts, read weekly posts from the whole CitizenRacecar team on our blog, Notes on Good Podcasting, follow us on LinkedIn and Instagram, and feel free to reach out any time: pitcrew@citizenracecar.com
(Music begins)
David: This is a podcast about how to make better podcasts. And we're going to start by talking about the most fundamental creative choices that affect how your show is put together.
(Music fades out)
What is the show about? And how, on the most basic level, are you going to present that information?
(Music begins)
This is a podcast about how to make better podcasts. That's the subject I chose for this series, because it's something I know something about. I've been running a company that produces branded podcast series for around 12 years now. And in that time, my colleagues and I have produced thousands of hours of audio stories of all different kinds. Stories about science, and education, and business, and medicine, and history, and all sorts of other things. And in that time, there are two consistent things I've observed.
(Music intensifies)
Now, the first might sound screamingly obvious, but I'm going to say it anyway, just to get it on the record. And that's that all successful podcasts are shows where the people behind them — the hosts, the talent, the writers — have something interesting to say. If you don't have something to talk about that's either useful or entertaining or both, all the careful production in the world isn't going to matter. But the second observation is that if you do have a good concept, a topic, a set of stories that is worth telling, careful production matters very much.
(Music intensifies)
Now, when I say careful production, I don't just mean the technical side of things. Choosing the right mics, mixing, EQ-ing, things like that. That stuff is really important, and we're gonna get into all of it, but that's only a small part of it. What I mean is making conscious choices about every aspect of the show that affects how people listen to it.
(Music fades out)
Every piece of audio is built of the same elements. There is a story of some kind, and that story either has a compelling shape that brings people from a beginning through a middle to an end, or it doesn't. There's a format. The story is either being told by one person or many people. It either sounds like it's being made in a very slick and professional way,…
(Sound quality degrades)
or in a looser do-it-yourself way.
(Sound quality improves again)
There is a texture to the sound. It's either just a voice, or voices suspended in silence,
(Sound gets echoey)
or you can hear some of the room they're in,
(Sound returns to normal)
(Sound effects in background: fly buzzes by, lands and is swatted)
…or there's music or sound effects under and around them, or there isn't.
(Music begins)
If you're making a podcast, you are using all of these elements, and more like them, whether you realize it or not. They are the molecules your show is built from, the bricks you're building it out of. And all of these choices, whether they're being made consciously or accidentally, are making a huge impact in how people are experiencing the show.
(Music fades out)
Now, if you're ignoring all this stuff, or failing to understand it, you might get lucky and make something awesome anyway. Some people have an extraordinary talent for making choices about these things instinctively, without really thinking about it. And even if you don't have that talent, you might make good choices by accident.
But if that success was accidental, it's going to be really hard to recreate and do consistently. And if your show isn't creatively successful, people aren't responding to it the way you hoped they would, I'm going to make the educated guess that it's because you're failing in making good choices about one or more of these basic elements.
(Music begins)
This consciousness is what separates professional producers from amateurs: the ability to harness these concepts and use them as building blocks to make bad stories into okay ones, and good stories into great ones, and great stories into exceptional ones, consistently, over and over again, from episode to episode, and season to season, on and on and on.
(Music fades out)
So what are these elements? We talked about picking a topic a little bit, and we're going to get back to that later, but for now, let's move on to the concept of format.
(Sound effects: cassette tape begins playing)
And by format, I mean the most basic aspect of the structure of your show.
(Music begins)
When someone turns it on, how many voices do they hear? And how are those voices presented in the broadest possible sense? Is it just you speaking? Or are you interviewing someone else?
(Echo: “interviewing someone else”)
Or are a group of people all having a conversation together?
(Multiple echos: “all having a conversation together”)
Are we in a studio?
(Sound quality degrades)
Or recording out in the world somewhere?
(Sound quality improves again)
Is the format always the same, or does it vary from episode to episode, or even from section to section within the same episode?
This is a choice you should be making very carefully, because different formats have very different effects on the listener, and are better for telling different kinds of stories.
(Music ends)
The simplest format is a monologue, one person speaking directly into a microphone in a clean, neutral environment. This is what I've been doing since the beginning of this episode. This is very simple and straightforward, but there are still different ways you can approach it.
I could speak in the first person, like this, and tell you what I'm doing, what I will do, what I have done. Like, telling a story, or writing in a diary, or a soliloquy from a play.
Hi, this is me. My name is David. This is my new podcast, which is a podcast about making better podcasts. I'm sitting in my office on the ground floor of my house in the suburbs of New York City. I'm at my desk in front of my computer speaking into a microphone.
(Music begins)
This format, this way of approaching the storytelling is very direct and very intimate. There's no one involved except me and you. I am talking and you are listening and there's nothing in the way. It's very easy, when talking like this, to make it seem like I'm speaking directly to you, one on one. I'm also speaking about myself, what I think, what I'm doing, which compounds that intimacy. How does it make you feel, me speaking directly to you like this? This is very powerful, this intimacy. And it's something podcasts do extremely well as compared to other kinds of media.
If you're watching a video, for instance, there's always a physical distance between you and the screen. And the screen creates a frame around the image, separating the world of the show from the world you are sitting in when you're watching it.
A podcast, on the other hand, usually plays on earbuds, which are literally inside your head. That distance is obliterated.
(Music fades out)
If I want to, I can literally whisper in your ear.
(Music begins)
There are surveys that show that people trust the hosts of podcasts they listen to more than any other media figures in their lives. I've thought a lot about that, and I think this intimacy is a big part of that trust.
And of course, this is me speaking. And I have a certain kind of voice. I'm a middle-aged, middle class white man with a kind of generic northern American accent, and that affects how you receive the information I'm presenting.
Someone with a Different Gender and Accent: What if I were a different gender? Or had a different accent? How would that change things? Does it make you think differently about what I'm saying?
Someone Much Younger: What if I were much younger, or much older? What difference would that make?
(Music fades out)
A.I. Voice: What if I weren't a real person at all? how does it feel to listen to me talk?
(Music begins)
David: And of course, this first person monologue is only one of many ways I could approach it. Let's try something else. A subtle shift. I could keep this as a monologue, but switch to the second person. Instead of “I”, the main idea becomes “you”, and my story becomes a set of directives to you, my listener.
Listen to this. It is important that you pay attention. I am talking to you and telling you something that you need to know.
Instead of a person confiding in you, I'm now the angel on your shoulder, or maybe not the angel. I'm instructing. I'm cajoling. Or, if not directions, then questions:
Do you make podcasts? Are they successful? What does success for your podcast mean to you? Are you expressing what you want to express, conveying what you want to convey? Think about that. How does this make you feel?
(Music ends)
(Sound effects in background: a typewriter)
Alright, how about a new technique? What if I switch to the third person, like I'm reading you something that I wrote?
(Music begins)
The host made this change, and the listener considered it. They both found it made a surprisingly big difference in their experience of the show. Nothing had really changed. The host was talking, telling a story, and the audience was listening to him, but this was far less intimate. It immediately created a tangible distance between the host and the listener.
But also, that space that was created opened up new possibilities.
(Sound effects in background: sounds of a busy city street)
Being a little more distant from each other allowed the world of the show to become bigger. The host found he could much more easily bring in new elements, new ideas, new locations. He could even de-center himself entirely from the story. The podcast continued. It had only been a couple of minutes since it began, but it had already taken some weird turns.
(Sound effects in background: a rocket launches)
The listener really had no idea what was going to happen next, but they were excited to find out.
It turns out the show was going to move beyond monologue, into dialogue. A conversation between people.
Alright, so, so what do you think?
Em: (Laughs) I went… I went through a journey.
David: (Laughs) Tell me! tell me about your journey.
Em: I went through a journey… The music, yeah, I really like the music. Did, um, José do the music?
David: Alex did.
Em: Oh, wow! Good job, Alex.
Hager: It makes such a big difference. This is my second time hearing it, and this time is with the music.
David: Yeah, Alex did the music, and José did, uh, the sound design, all the, uh… the, uh soundscape stuff.
Em: Oh, that's cool. There was one though. I will say there was one track where I was like, I swear you're going to tell me someone's dying, or you're going to talk about how you got a horrible diagnosis.
Hager: Yeah, the stakes were very high
David: Did I get too, a little too serious. A little, yeah
Em: And I was just like, Oh God. And it was when you were talking about intimacy.
David:(Laughs)
Em: So I was like, Oh no, you're going to tell me going to tell me a, a really horrible secret.
David: (serious voice) Well Em, actually, the reason I've brought you here today… (normal voice) It's, no that's a total joke. There's nothing…
So, so now we're doing a new thing here, which is we're all just kind of hanging out and talking and, I don't know… What do you think… What do you think that's gonna do for the experience? Like, how is it gonna be different now that's just us hanging out?
Em: There's more people to wonder about… and maybe even… I think with groups, there can be a feeling, a FOMO feeling, or like a, “Oh, I want to be there, or I want to…”, it's like you're a fly on the wall when people are having a good time
Hager: Yeah, I think it's the same level of intimacy, but, um, yeah,
David: (Laughs, Interrupting) Are we having a good time? Assumes facts not in evidence.
(Everyone laughs)
Em: Yeah, you're sitting on the floor.
Hager: No, I agree. I think that people want to feel like they’re part of the conversation when it’s a group of people just hanging out. We all have that experience, and then you just feel like you’re in the room with those people, so I like that.
David: I mean, I know as a grownup…
Hager:(Laughs)
David: …this is getting kind of weird, but it's kind of hard to make friends, you know? Like…
Em and Hager: (Laugh)
David:I don't have… I often… there are absolutely podcasts I’ll listen to because it's like, wow, I get to like, hang out with an interesting group of smart people…
Hager: With my friends!
David:…and like, listen to them have a cool conversation. And I sort of wish I could do that more often, you know?
Hager: Yeah.
Em: So much of media is filling the void made by loneliness.
David: Totally. Is that all that it does? Is that what it's for?
Em: A lot of it!
David: What do you think this kind of hangout would be good for, and what do you think it would be bad for? Where would this fall apart and not succeed?
Hager: I don't think this builds a lot of authority. Like, I don't think that I would want to hear my news in this way or, like, any type of real information that I want in terms of, like… like, educational information. I don't think that's how I would want to hear it.
Em: Yeah, I think it's any for… it's a good format for having… when you… it's a good format when you want a certain cast of characters that either… the same people who, and you know, maybe it's built on, “Oh, the three of us have this relationship”, they're friends and so they're in on this whole thing.
So I think it's any… it's good for anything where you want a point of view, but I think, like you said, it's a little less formal. So if it's a really serious topic…
Hager: That's why comedians do well with this format. 'cause they have the ability to, like, improvise and…
David: Yeah
Hager: …constantly be on like, yeah, you gotta be a good speaker.
David: it has to be a good conversation. It has to…
Hager: Right.
David: Because otherwise it's deadly dull right because nothing's happening.There's nothing driving us forward. There's no structure There's no…
Hager: You have to be a personality and you have to be a good conversationalist. Or like you said, then you have to, if you're not that way, then I think you have to segment it, and, like, introduce, like, prompts constantly that you're reacting to.
(Music begins)
David: And of course, this kind of loose, free-flowing conversation is only one of many kinds of dialogue you can have in a podcast. You can have a debate, you can have a panel discussion. The most popular of these, almost certainly the most popular podcast format there is, is an interview. This is like a conversation, but more targeted, more specific, and more formal.
Often they start with the host saying something like…
(New music begins)
So today I'm very pleased to speak with Hager Eldaas, a very gifted audio storyteller who's one of our producers here at CitizenRacecar. Welcome, Hager, thanks for joining me.
Hager: Thank you so much for having me.
(Music fades out)
David: So Hager, I'm curious. From your perspective, what makes an interview an interview? How is it different from an informal conversation?
Hager: Yeah, I think in an interview It's a more controlled conversation. you're coming in as the interviewer knowing what you want to ask me, usually, and if not exactly what you want to ask me, you know the direction of where you're trying to go.
You know, you go into an interview knowing this is where I want to land, these are the questions I want answered. And you might not know exactly what the other person is going to say, but you know where you want the conversation to flow to.
And there are other controls also, like you could be controlling for tone. There are different variables being controlled in an interview. Whereas, in an informal conversation, we kind of let it go where it goes. Both people come into the interview knowing that, and that I think changes the demeanor of the conversation.
David: Hmmm. And what is the nature of that control? What do you think that does to the experience of the dialogue itself? The fact that there is that… is it just… is it a question of power dynamic between the interviewer and the interviewee?
Hager: Yeah, I… from where I stand, the way I see it, I think the interviewer has more control, and they also give less of themselves. Like, in an informal conversation, I think we're both equal, we're giving as much of ourselves as an informal conversation demands. But, in an interview, someone is being asked the questions and another person is answering.
I walk away from a lot of interviews I've done — specifically if it's interviewing someone about their personal story — feeling like they now think that they are my friend because they've told me so much about themselves. So, just getting someone to open up so vulnerably about themselves, that already kind of sets that tone for the power dynamic, because I'm not giving that much of myself, because the interview isn't… isn’t about me.
David: What do you think are the strengths and weaknesses of this format? Of an interview?
Hager: I find myself actually listening more and more to interview shows than anything else. And I think it's because it's an easier listen. Um, I don't think it requires as much mental power to listen to interviews, and it doesn't mean that they're not as well crafted or as good as other formats. But if an interview is done well, the interviewer's role is to make it more listenable, right? And less fragmented, and there's patterns that we can follow in a direction that we're supposed to be all headed to, and there's an understanding of that.
(Music begins)
I think something more informal and loose. I'm showing up as a listener, being completely okay with the fact that I'm going to miss certain sections of this. I'm going to wander off, and that's okay. I think that's what those shows kind of signal. And I think a formal interview is very cognizant of that experience and is doing its very best to make it easier for you to pay attention the whole way through.
David: The energy of a dialogue or an interview is very different from the monologues we talked about at the beginning of this episode. It's less intimate and a little more… voyeuristic, for want of a better word. By definition, you are listening in on someone else's conversation.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing. Listening to a show that sounds like it's speaking directly to you can be too intense sometimes. And I think the emotional distance of listening to other people speak to each other, and how that allows you to step to the side of things, is a part of why interview shows are so popular.
Hager: For me, because it feels like I'm just dropping into a conversation…
(Music fades out)
…versus other formats where I feel like information is being presented to me and I have to pay attention, I have to come in with all my brain power to receive that information. Whereas in an interview and feeling like you're a fly on the wall. it just feels like I'm receiving information through a conversation that I feel like I'm sort of partaking in, not by speaking, but just by listening.
David: Here's Anna Van Dine, another one of our excellent producers here at CitizenRacecar.
Anna: Something that I like about audio is that, You know, you can do it while you do something else. And there are some things that are good enough that I want to give it 100% of my attention, and that can be an incredible experience, but I also have the option to listen to something while I'm on a walk, while I'm doing something with my hands. And I… I like that you can sort of give it different, different levels. You can engage with it on different levels, depending on, like, what you want to do. And different kinds of podcasts are good for different kinds of engagement.
If it's like, you know, catching up on the news, I might prefer to do that while I'm washing the dishes. But, if it’s, like, a really beautifully produced documentary, I might, you know, lie down on my bed with the lights dimmed and just, like, be in that sonic space.
Hager: I gravitate towards those in times when I really want to be immersed in what I'm listening to, and I really want to get deep into a story and I want to let my imagination go, that's when I'll go to an audio documentary.
(Music begins)
David: In terms of format, a documentary like she just mentioned is what we're doing now. There's a host who speaks directly out to you, setting the tone and guiding you through the story, but then clips of other audio, other speakers, field recordings, whatever, illustrating the points that the host is presenting.
Hager: I think of documentaries — audio documentaries — like movies for our ears. So, I feel like they're a lot more layered than other formats. We're using different elements to tell a story. So, we're using interviews, but not just from one person, we could be using interviews from multiple sources.
Anna: Multiple different people
Em: Multiple people.
Hager: We could be using archival tape.
Archival Clip #1:
Man’s Voice: “Say, how does this sound?”
Archival Clip #2:
(Orchestral music in background)
Man’s Voice: “There are many stops and starts, many takes and retakes. That's because the end object is a planned illusion”
Archival Clip #3:
Woman’s Voice: “We'll see that they all get the message.” Man’s Voice: “Oh, swell!”
Hager: We could be using, you know, Ambient sounds,
(Abstract ambient soundscape)
So there's just a lot more elements layered on top of each other to get us from point A to point B.
Anna: I guess what makes a documentary with a variety of voices good is, first, that it's not boring. Um, it's sonically varied. It's really boring to just listen to one person talk for a long time.
Archival Clip #4:
Man’s Voice: “Other methods of communication were slow and tedious”
(Music begins)
Anna: You have different voices, and ideally different kinds of voices and different perspectives. You're encountering a much more textured picture of something.
Hager: I feel like it creates this experience of shutting out the world and focusing on building a story in your imagination. And it highlights the power of audio.
David: When this is done well, it has an interesting effect. Because the host is guiding you through other pieces of tape, it's almost like you're listening to them together, you and the host. You're companions on a journey.
Anna: Like, when you listen to a good documentary, both you and the host, you know, start out in this place of like, not knowing anything, and you go on this journey together and find something out by the end. There's almost this relationship where, like, I as a listener am like, all right, I've committed to being along for this ride. And the host, and whoever has produced what I'm listening to, their end of the bargain is that they're going to kind of take me on this ride. And it's like this pact you enter into as a listener. And you have… there are expectations that go along with that. Like, you want to learn something new. You want the questions that are posed at the beginning to be answered in a satisfying way. (Laughs) If good, that's what happens.
David: This multiplicity of voices also gives this format the feeling of having more authority than a monologue or an interview. The host isn't just telling you things, he's bringing the receipts. He's backing it up with evidence, or at least testimony, that is presented in a way that seems more expert.
Anna: You might have authorities on a certain subject, or people who have lived experience with something who are all adding to this understanding that you're developing over the course of listening. You know, like, I'm coming from a background as a journalist, and I absolutely would not listen to something where one person was speaking authoritatively on something without quotes from people who actually knew what they were talking about, or could present new information, or maybe opposing viewpoints or different nuances to a situation. I don't trust one single person, (Laughs) because people make stuff up all the time.
Well, I mean, that's why we make documentaries, and a documentary is understood to be, like, a longer thing. You know, we're not… we aren't making TikTok videos where we say like, you know, “here's a take” or “this is”, you know, “five fun facts you should know”. Like, it is long, it is nuanced, and it's so that people can learn something or experience something
David: This is a really versatile format.
(Music begins)
You can present just about any kind of information in a really rich and nuanced way, but it's a kind of show that takes a lot more time and care to create than just recording a monologue or an interview and then cleaning it up.
Hager: An audio documentary, obviously, is a higher lift, right? Like, you're doing a lot more work. But it gives a producer so much more control. Like, for example, if I'm doing an interview and I'm not getting all the parts that I want from that interview said succinctly, I can step in and use narration and tell that part in the way that I understood it. Or I could go back and find archival tape of someone else explaining it in a perfect way. So I feel like it gives us so much more control as producers. And I also think it's just More fun. (Laughs)
(Music fades out)
David: But let's take a step back. Why are we doing this? What's the point of this show and all this flipping from one format to the next?
This is a podcast about making better podcasts. And if I can leave you one idea from this first episode, it's that this is a uniquely powerful medium, podcasting. And there's so much that can be done with it. So much more than many people who are making podcasts tend to consider.
Here's Em Löwinger, the Director of our Education program, where we teach kids in afterschool programs and summer camps how to create their own podcasts.
Em: It seems like the most popular type of podcast that people are aware of is just a, like, oh, an interview show. Like, I'm a celebrity and I interviewed people about a topic. So I think that for a lot of people, that's what they might think a podcast is.
In the Education program, a lot of kids, when you ask them, what is a podcast, they'll say “an interview”. So they don't necessarily… they get that an interview is often a really integral part of a podcast, but that's part of (what) we explain is that it's not only an interview. You can do interviews, yes, but you can do so much more.
How do you quote-unquote “show” this when there's nothing to look at? How do you show that with either what you say, or the music, or sound effects?
There's the game we do in the education program in the beginning, “The Power of Sound”.
(Miscellaneous sound effects begin in the background)
And I love it, because it's, you know, playing different sounds and trying to see, can you get an idea of how old someone is? Or where they are or what's going on by just the sounds that you hear?
People have loved audio mediums for a long time. Podcasting is… it's a kind of a new version of radio. It's radio's renaissance people were doing radio plays, lots of different things with radio. So I think… but again, radio kind of died and now it's kind of coming back in this new way.
But, also the very first entertainment ever was spoken word. So I actually think weirdly a return to the roots of basic human storytelling. When you had just… “let's recite poetry, let's sing songs, let's tell tales”. So I think it's actually a renaissance.
Anna: That’s the thing about audio in general, I think because of this quality of how it gets inside you, or how it fills the space around you, it makes you feel less alone. I think that's what audio does, is it makes people feel less alone.
(Background music begins)
And I don't think anything else has quite the ability to do that aside from, like, actual other human beings. And I think we're, you know… we're in a moment where loneliness is an epidemic. And I don't just say that for dramatic effect This is literally something the government has said. Loneliness is classified as an epidemic. And I think audio… it's a balm. People like to feel like they aren't as alone as they might actually be.
And there's something like kind of sad about that and something kind of beautiful about that, but I think that that is where some of the appeal for the kind of podcast where you do just feel like you're hanging out with people comes from.
And also where the appeal of like really good stories comes in. Maybe it takes you out of your life for a while. Maybe you get to inhabit the life of somebody else. And that can be really nice.
David: And there are so many ways this medium can do that. Take you out of your own head and bring you somewhere new. The possibilities are much broader than most people realize.
We've looked at expanding from one voice to two to many and moving from more formal to less formal approaches. But why does this have to be entirely built on the spoken word?
(Music fades out)
For that matter, why does it have to be non-fiction? There are innumerable ways to tell a story.
(1920’-style music in the background)
Particularly in the pre-television world, radio dramas were a huge and expansive medium, with millions of listeners tuning in to everything from detective stories to detective stories, to superhero stories, to family dramas, to soap operas. Scripted fiction has a whole developed audio language, combining dialogue and narration and sound effects and music.
(Music fades out)
Why not bring some of that energy into what you're doing?
(Heroic music begins)
Back in the day, one of these shows might have started with something like:
(As if speaking into an old microphone) Welcome back, listeners, to The Adventures of Dr. Swashbuckle in the Forest of Sound, episode 37: The Discs of Wisdom. After weeks of searching for the Temple of the Ancient Podcasters, our heroes once again feel that they've been walking in circles.
(Music fades out. Sounds effects begin in background: Jungle sounds, footsteps crunching over foliage, the occasional whoosh and chop of a machete)
Dr. Swashbuckle: What does the map say, Lombardi? Surely we must be close.
Lombardi: Doctor. I'll look again.
(Gentle underscoring begins)
Lombardi: It says we must find a convergence of three ancient huicungo trees and a walking palm, somewhere to the left of a fast flowing stream.
Dr. Swashbuckle: Look, Lombardi, there… just there. Could that be it?
Lombardi: Doctor, look! A door!
Dr. Swashbuckle: It bears the ancient signs from my journal! At long last, my friend, our quest may be complete.
(Sound effects in background: scraping away debris, an ancient stone door creaks open, footsteps in a stone hallway)
David: The heavy stone door, unopened for centuries, slides open to reveal more of a tunnel than a hallway. A hard dirt floor and stone walls covered with cobwebs and ancient writing.
Lombardi: It's so dark, Doctor.
Dr. Swashbuckle: There, torches.
(Sound effects: torches lighting, flames, footsteps)
Dr. Swashbuckle: Keep your wits about you, my friend. Who knows what dangers lurk ahead.
Lombardi: There, Doctor! It appears to be some kind of altar.
Dr. Swashbuckle: And unless I've missed my bet, Lombardi, That chest in the middle contains the very thing we've been searching for these many long months.
(Sound effects: more footsteps, a huge stone box creaks open)
David: They open the strange container, and inside find something beautiful. Golden discs inscribed with a symbol they both immediately recognize.
Lombardi: Doctor, is that a picture of a microphone surrounded by a pair of headphones?
Dr. Swashbuckle: Yes, it is. And it means our quest is at an end.
Lombardi: The discs of podcast wisdom! We found them!
Dr. Swashbuckle: Indeed, we have Lombardi. And inscribed upon them is all the knowledge we will need to create the greatest podcast the world has ever heard.
(Music intensifies)
Lombardi: What's that one say, Doctor?
Dr. Swashbuckle: It says, “Have something interesting to say”.
Lombardi: Ooh, seems like good advice. And the next?
Dr. Swashbuckle: This one says, “Make thoughtful choices. Details matter”.
Lombardi: Interesting. And the final one?
Dr. Swashbuckle: This one says, “Be bold. Doing something different is more likely to get people's attention than doing the same thing as everyone else”.
Lombardi: Like all the silly things we're doing in this show.
Dr. Swashbuckle: Yes, my friend. Exactly like that.
Lombardi: This part is REALLY silly, isn't it?
Dr. Swashbuckle: Of course it's silly! But don't you see? It's MEMORABLE. If this whole thing had just been an interview, we might have gotten the same information crammed into it. But who would have talked about it the next day?
Lombardi: But a ridiculous cut rate Indiana Jones parody? No one was expecting that, were they?
Dr. Swashbuckle: No one indeed. And that's the point of taking a big swing like this. What you say is only half the battle. How you say it is just as important, if you want to make an impact.
(Music ends with a big climax)
(Closing theme music starts)
David: This is a podcast about how to make better podcasts.
I'm your host, as well as the writer and producer of this show, David Hoffman.
My guests today were Em Löwinger, Hager Eldass, and Anna Van Dine.
Aisha Lomax performed the role of Dr. Swashbuckle.
Luca Evans performed the role of Lombardi.
Hager Eldass performed the role of Someone with a Different Gender and Accent.
Walter Hoffman performed the role of Someone Much Younger.
Original Music and Post-Production by Alex Brouwer.
Sound Design by José Miguel Baez.
Publication and promotion by Candice Chantalou.
This series is a production of CitizenRacecar, citizenracecar.com.
(Closing theme music ends)
Anna: Yeah (Laughs), I did get that on tape.