I’m so excited! Jim has just posted my first podcast episode on my political-commentary website, “Intentional Conservative.” Those of you who get my weekly newsletter will perhaps remember that said newsletter came out late last time because we were trying to get the podcast up and running so that I could announce it. Such was not to be, so I went ahead and sent out the newsletter on Wednesday, telling my subscribers that the next one would be this coming Friday, March 16. But since I’m planning to do the podcast weekly, I’d be publicizing two of them at once. So I’m going ahead and sending out this two-post newsletter today. (Note that we’re not yet up on all of the podcast platforms, so you’ll be listening to this first episode directly from the website. But when we do get uploaded or downloaded or whatever, I hope you’ll subscribe in one of the feeds. I’ll notify you through this website when that happens.)
Let me say first of all, as I’ve done in the past, that I try very hard to keep my political opinions off this blog. So I’m not going to get into the content of the podccast per se in this post. You’ll just have to go on over there and listen! I have some more general thoughts here about what I’ve picked up along the way in getting involved with this new venture.
So, to begin with, nothing is ever as easy as it seems. Some podcasts are quite elaborate, with sound effects and interviews. Some are very bare bones, and mine definitely fits into that genre. (I think the podcast “A Slob Comes Clean” is done in the woman’s closet, which is not to say that it isn’t really good.) How hard could it be? I’d do what I usually do with a speech, which is to come up with an outline and a list of sources and then get up there and wing it, gaining energy from the audience’s reactions. Except, of course, there isn’t an audience, not a visible one anyway. I found that speaking into a microphone as I sat in my kitchen with the door closed didn’t necessarily make for compelling delivery. Frankly, my dears, I sounded kind of robotic. But I had already re-done the episode once because the microphone setting had been incorrect, and I told Jim I just couldn’t face doing it a third time. I could tell that he was a little under-enthused, but he went ahead and edited it for me. And then, yesterday morning as I lay awake way too early to get up, I thought, ‘I’m going to have to redo it. I don’t want people to be bored to death with the first episode and not come back.’ When I told Jim of my decision he sighed (discreetly) but agreed. And I said I’d do the editing this time. Again, I thought, ‘how hard can it be?’ and again I found out exactly how hard. Like, hard. The finished product sounds okay, but I have a lot to learn in this department. You have to avoid jamming words together if there’s a natural pause, which you have to distinguish from an unnatural pause. I’m sure it took me three times as long to edit it as it did to record it. (It’s about 35 minutes long, a good length for a podcast.)
Jim and I are fond of saying when we stumble into unknown territory that it’s a “whole new world.” If you listen to many podcasts you’ll probably have noticed that there’s usually a list of several people credited for doing various jobs. There’s almost always a producer, who is typically in charge of managing, recording, editing and transmitting the finished product. Other posts might include a researcher and a musician. Sometimes the group is simply called the “production staff.” I just went back and listened to those credits on several podcasts I follow, and so far the most names have been from the “TED Radio Hour,” with eight production staff plus an intern and also some others labeled “with help from.” Whew! Jim and I are it. It would be nice to just hand over my rough recording to an expert and not have to worry about it, except of course that these people have to be paid.
One other quick takeaway from this whole new venture: it’s a way for me to do something that I love and which I don’t get much of a chance to do any more, which is to tell stories. While I don’t miss the classroom at all, I do miss standing up front of a group of people and mesmerizing them. (Not that I was always fascinating, but it happened sometimes.) Whenever I have a chance to speak to a group I’m absolutely rarin’ to go, but those opportunities don’t come along too often. I’m down for teaching two breakout sessions at the women’s retreat I’m attending next month, and I’m really looking forward to doing that. But on the whole I don’t get much of a chance to speak to groups, and when I do it’s often because I’ve sort of battered down the door. I’ve been bursting at the seams with all this great stuff I want to say about our current political situation, but what venue is available to me? Suddenly I realized, ‘I’ll do a podcast!’ Even if/though my audience is small it won’t be nonexistent. And maybe what I have to say will be helpful. Maybe. I’ve extended the offer to come speak to local groups, so we’ll see if anyone takes me up on it.
I’m a little tickled at the popularity of podcasts and also of audiobooks. Dress it up however you may, the baseline content is just people talking, something that’s been going on since we were all living in caves. (If that’s indeed what we did.) Isn’t it interesting that they used to hire a bard to recite an epic poem after dinner, and now we’re all sitting with our earbuds in, listening away as we go about our lives? The means are different, but the medium is the same. I don’t have any hard statistics about how much people are actually reading words on a page vs. listening to those same words, but I know that my intake of the spoken word has gone way up over the past couple of years and my hours of just sitting and reading have gone way down. After-dinner bards, here we come!
So we’ve stepped out into another new venture. Did we understand how to do everything before we started? Most assuredly not. Do we even now understand all there is to know about running a website? Again, no. We’ve just forged ahead. There have certainly been blind alleys along the way, certainly time and effort that have seemed wasted. But we’re always trying to move forward, however slowly and tentatively, both with my material and with Jim’s. (Watch for the announcement about his new children’s book.) It’s exciting—and a lot of work.
How about you? Is there some new venture you could venture upon?