Finding your podcast style and character

...and some mechanics of podcasts like editing and mics. Plus some new Garbage Chairs of Amsterdam, and links.

Aug 17, 2024

One of my co-workers is started a podcast and had some questions. Here’s my answers. As with most “how do I do this?” sessions, it focuses a lot on gear which I scoot away from in my answers, you know, following the cliche that the tools matter less than what you do with them. Also, the tools are tedious, but easy to learn.

What podcasting software do you use?

This is all for recording remotely, over the Internet. For recording in person, there’s a different set of gear and practices.

For SoftwareDefinedTalk.com we use Restream. When I’m recording an interview, I use SquadCast which is now bundled in Descript subscriptions.

I suggest using one of those services so that you can record separate audio tracks and get video (whether you want the video or not). You don’t need to livestream your recordings.

Before those services existed, I’d use Audio Hijack Pro to record the incoming audio and outgoing (my) audio. But that’s a lot of work compared to just using one of the above. You can also use Zoom. I think it’s pretty good, actually, but I haven’t checked it out recently.

What are the features of that software?

Recording.

The main thing each does is get a video chat going and record separate audio tracks. Most of them, now, will record the audio locally (on your and your guests laptop) as well. So, if the connection is bad, you’ll get good audio in the final recording. These services usually will give you recordings of each participant and a recording with them all together.

Editing

For Software Defined Talk used Hindenburg for many years (ten?!). It’s at the sweet spot between lots of functionality and easy to learn and use. It’s built around editing voice, has good, basic audio filters and effects (leveling, noise reduction, etc.), and good setting for exporting podcast MP3s (setting cover art, putting in chapters, etc.) It looks like it had editing by transcript.

Now-a-days when I edit podcasts I do it in Descript. You can edit the video (or just audio) and export an audio only MP3. It has all of the export things that Hindenburg does.

If you want a free option, Audacity is probably pretty good. That’s what I used long ago in the 2000s and it was just fine.

Distributing

Here, I assume you mean hosting a podcast: uploading it somewhere so that it makes an RSS feed that people can subscribe to.

In addition to hosting the MP3 and creating the RSS feed, the service should create a basic podcast website for you. You want an index page that lists each episode and then each episode should have its own page, the show notes. You want to be able to edit those show notes to put whatever you want in there. The service should allow you to automate all of this each time you upload an episode.

Each episode should have a URL you can go to. The better services will automatically create a URL based on the episode number, for example: https://www.softwaredefinedtalk.com/480.

These services should also have metrics too for episode downloads. You can’t tell much from podcast downloads: just number of downloads and geography. Some of the nicer services will pull in more detailed metrics from Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

I’d also look for a platform that manages your podcast listing in Spotify and Apple Podcasts. You can actually do that on your own, but many of the services will do that for you.

We use fireside.fm. My co-workers use podbean.com and transistor.fm. I haven’t used it in a long time, but libsyn.com is one of the original hosters and probably good.

A lot of big name, highly professional podcasts (the NPR style below) have terrible show notes. It can be hard to even find where the show notes are. This is baffling. Have show notes and good ones. Check out the example podcasts I cite below, they all have good show note sites…except the most professional one! Here is the test: if a person wanted to link to an episode, is it easy for them to find the web page (does it even exist?!) and get a URL that they can share?

Do you edit your podcasts? If so, any advice?

I don’t edit the Software Defined Talk ones anymore, one of my co-hosts (Brandon) does. But I used to for 10+ years. Plus, I edit the Tanzu ones and one-off ones I do. Brandon is a much better editor than I am.

Learning the basics of editing take a little bit of time, but it’s basically chopping up your audio file into chunks, arranging the chunks in the order you want, and deleting the chunks you don’t. For most podcasts that are interviews, you won’t be re-ordering the chunks. Instead, you’ll delete parts you don’t want. Most podcast editing is that: deleting parts you don’t want.

You’ll know you’ve gotten good at podcasting editing when you start to use the keyboard short cuts, and when you can imagine the edits you’d make as your talking in the podcast. As you listen to other podcasts, you’ll also be able to detect when they’ve done edits.

You can put music and standard bumpers in the intro and outro. I’m not a huge fan this as a listener or maker. If you do have music, make it brief and use the same music each time. This will help listeners slide into the comfortable sameness of each episode.

Do you have any general podcasting advice?

I would decide on the style of show you want and then edit accordingly.

Do you want (1) the full This American Life/NPR style podcast with summing up intro and hook, music in the background (“ducked”), narrator spliced in with interviewee comments, edited segments, and music? Or do you want (2) the cold open, we just recorded two people talking style? There’s an in-between that most people do where (3) they have some intro music that fades out, and maybe they do some editing of segments.

I do the second type because as a listener I don’t like the others and it’s the quickest and easiest to make.

Deciding the format and style you want is important. Once you have that you can use it to guide what you do like editing and even selecting guests. The style you choose will determine how you structure and run the podcast, and also what you’ll do during it.

If you’re doing the NPR-style, your goal is to get other people to do all the talking and edit together a story. NPR-style podcasts aren’t really podcasts at all: they’re professional radio shows that are distributed as podcasts.

If you’re doing the other two (“real podcasts”), you have to remember that listeners are as interested in you as they are in the guests and topics.

The success of “real” podcasts relies on establishing a parasocial relationships with listeners, often lasting many years. Listners want to hear the topics, learn abut things, but they also establish a friendship with the hosts. Listeners look forward to hearing what their friends are up to each week - hanging out with them each week.

This means that if you’re doing this style, if you’re interviewing someone you should interject what you think instead of just asking the guest questions. And if you’re discussing some topic, you should offer lots of opinions and “thinking outloud,” not just covering “the facts.”

Also, this means you should be consistent in your release period (weekly, every two weeks, monthly) and post it on the same day. For example, we post Software Defined Talk episode every Friday at 7:30am Amsterdam time. I know the release days for all of my favorite podcasts and look forward to them.

Here’s another distinction in types of podcasts: guests and no guests.

Having guests is having (mostly) different people on each episode to interview them about whatever - in tech, usually something they’re an expert, or at least knowledgeable on.

In these cases, you want to get the guest talking most of the time, but you should also think of yourself as a proxy for the audience to ask and clarify things that the guest is saying. It’s also good to rephrase things from time-to-time, and then, as always, offer up your own thoughts.

People have a lot of opinions about length. You should ignore that advice and figure out what you like and what works for your style. I like long podcasts, some other people like short ones. If someone tells you to target ten minutes because “people don’t listen to long podcasts,” chances are this person doesn’t listen to podcasts. This comes up a lot when you’re doing an official company podcast. Only take advice about podcast length from people who actually listen to a lot of podcasts.

There is no magic number for length. Start with having it be slightly longer than it needs to be, and back up from there if you want to.

Keep in mind that people won’t always listen to a podcast beginning to end in one sitting. They might pause it and come back to it. Sometimes it takes me two or more days to fully listen to a podcast.

Again, your listeners are there to hang-out with you each week - they’ll appreciate you spending more time with them rather than less. And, if it takes them several days to listen to it, they will because they’re interested in hanging out with you.

(4 hours might be too long, but I’ve listened to many enjoyable 3 hour podcasts over the past ₂₀ years, and hundreds of good 2 hour ones.)

As with writing, the other thing you should do is listen to a lot of other podcasts in the style you like. They can be in your topic area or a completely different one. For example, even if you’re doing a tech podcast, you can learn a lot about podcasting from The Flop House and Blank Check.

Once you’ve made three or so podcasts and edited them, you’ll be able to pick apart how good podcasters operate and start learning from them. And, also, you’ll just learn the format, and what you like. With this you can figure out the podcasting style you like and start to build - and refine/evolve - your style from that.

Here’s some more podcast example:

The Political Gabfest - this is a very professionally done “the same people three people talk about the news of the week” podcast. You can see that they stick to a format - there’s usually three topics, the host intros/summarizes the topic and then asks the other two hosts what they think; the host will say what they think to. Also, at the end of each episode each host recommends something. I stole that idea for Software Defined Talk when we started our podcast. This is the podcast that has terrible show notes - see how frustrating it is the look at their page?
Software Defined Talk - this my podcast, so it’s obviously the best in the world. We patterned it off The Political Gabfest, but after 10 years it’s developed its own style. I would call this style “the mess that works.” It’s the same three people each week discussing a selection of tech news and any side topics. Here, the format is: (1) Coté’s inane cold open, (2) one to two tech topics we discuss, (3) listener feedback and interesting conferences, (4) recommendations from each host, (5) usually an after show with some goofy outtakes or an extended, off-topic conversation. A more professional version of this is Sharp Tech, and the Cloudcast News of the Month.
Oxide and Friends - this is another “mess that works” example. It is very much a personality-based podcast, based on Bryan Cantrill. The format here is the classic: his co-host Adam is the straight man and Bryan is the goofball. This is also an interesting podcast to study if you’re making tech podcasts and you’re making an official company podcast. Oxide is on an impossible mission: making on-premises hardware! So, part of their marketing is embracing the absurdity of that business scheme and somehow converting it to tech-cult energy, to hope and belief that on-premises hardware is cool and interesting. It’s like the early days of Kubernetes where Kelsey would run around doing demos. This podcast does a lot more than that, of course, but part of it is feeding that tech-cult energy.
The Changelog - I don’t listen to this podcast much (it’s usually too technical for me), but it’s very popular. Compared to other podcasts it’s high-production.

Finally, with most of my advice about content, my number one recommendation is to just do it and publish. The moment you hesitate because you think you should edit more, polish it up, or (worst) re-do it, you should instantly click publish.

If you’re doing this right, you’ll always think the episode could be better, you might even think the episode is bad. You might even regret questions you asked, that it’s boring. Just keep publishing. It’ll take time to discover your style. Eventually, the audience will find you. But if you engineer it too much you get the equivalent of “data sheet” PDFs and shallow enterprise software web pages. Something that looks perfect, but says nothing.

Publishing the imperfect is how you get around that. As I keep emphasizing, a “real” podcast is about establishing a very intimate relationship between the hosts and listeners.

By doing it weekly and publishing it you start learning how to choreograph that all.

We plan on having guests on our show… what do you do to help guests have the best possible audio quality, especially if they’re not likely to have professional equipment?

Getting good audio from guests can be tough. The first thing is to get the to use headphones. Then having them use something other than a laptop mic. If they have a headset with a mic, that’s good. And iPhone headphones with a mic are actually pretty good; you just have to ask them to hold the mic away from their beard if they have a beard.

Very importantly: make sure they check their audio settings to make sure they’re using the good mic. If their audio sounds off, ask them to double check. I’ve been doing podcasts for about 20 years, and I mess this up as a host and guest at least once a year.

Also, experiment with using the Continuity Camera with a iPhones. The mic can be pretty good, and the placement of the phone mic on the top of their laptop screen will position the mic well, pointed at their face.

And beyond audio quality, you need to learn how to steer your guests. This is one of the things you’ll learn from listening to other podcasts. The best steerer is Tyler Cowan, though, I could see how some people would find his style insulting and cringe-y: too controlling.

And while not a guest, if you’re doing the multi-host thing, you need to learn how to be the host that runs the show and moderates it (let’s call it the active-host) but also how to be the other hosts (the passive hosts).

For the active host, on our podcast, Brandon is good at this (which happens in the episodes I’m not on), and Plotz is good at this in The Political Gabfest.

The important thing about being a passive host is that you have to stop talking when the host changes the topic. You’ll get tuned to each other, and even pick up on the natural rhythms of each other. You’ll know about ten seconds ahead of time when a person is wrapping up so you can prepare to go next.

A lot of the convention about how to be a “good listener” in life doesn’t apply to podcasting. You have unlearn polite conversation topics, and almost do all those things that people tell you are offensive and rude in meatspace talk. Interrupt each other, talk over each other, say what you think. Or not: it depends on the style you’re doing. But don’t bring all the “how to be a good listeners” and nonviolent communication stuff to the table right away: evolve to that if that ends up being your style.

In summary, what I’m saying is: finding and tuning your style of podcasting is more important than gear. Part of that is creating the your podcasting character and being conscious of playing that character. It might be a lot different than the character you are in other parts of your life. You listeners want to hear that character, they’ll become friends with it. Your listeners won’t show up just for that character: they want the actual interesting content and guests! But, that character is what will make your listeners keep listening, subscribe, and fill in the gaps between impossible awesome and what you actually published. So, you have to cultivate that character.

Relative to your interests

Why Every Java Developer Should Attend SpringOne - the online version is free to watch on August 26th to 28th.
Travel Spending On Track To Return To Pre-Pandemic Levels By End Of 2024 - ”Global travel spending is roaring back and will fully recover to pre-pandemic levels by the end of 2024, surpassing $2 trillion.”
Walmart used AI to crunch 850M product data points and improve CX - “The primary in-store improvement is that associates’ can use in-store technology like mobile tools to quickly locate inventory and get items on shelves or to waiting customers — a significant upgrade from the ‘treasure hunt’ of finding items in years past” A few more details here.
Apax to take consultancy firm Thoughtworks private in $1.75 bln deal - Summary from Justin Warren: “Software consulting company Thoughtworks is getting bought by private equity firm Apax Partners for about $1.75 billion. Thoughtworks has been struggling a bit lately, with revenue down 12.4% YoY to $251.7 million and the stock down 87% since 2022. It’s already done a bunch of cost-reduction restructuring, and it looks like more is on the way with 630+ staff to go” out of ₁₀,500 staff.

Wastebook

“billboards festooned with three-dimensional meat bearing messages such as ‘You never sausage a place!’” Here.
It’s hard to forget a bad idea, and you have to work hard to remember good ones.

Conferences, Events, etc.

Talks I’m giving, places I’ll be, and other plans.

This year, SpringOne is free to attend and watch online. Check out Josh’s pitch for the event. There’s an on-site conference as well at Explore if you’re interested. But, for those who can’t, now you can watch all the fun!

SpringOne/VMware Explore US, August 26–29. DevOpsDays Antwerp, 15th anniversary, speaking, September 4th-5th. SREday London 2024, speaking, September 19th to 20th. Cloud Foundry Day EU, Karlsruhe, Oct 9th. VMware Explore Barcelona, speaking, Nov 4th to 7th.

Discounts! SREDay London: 20% off with the code SRE20DAY. Cloud Foundry Day 20% off with the code CFEU24VMW20.

Logoff

I’ve spent a lot of time “researching” and learning this week, not much producing content. It’s like input versus output. This is difficult, mentally for me. I only value publishing, so if I’m not doing it, I don’t think I’ve done much work. This is not healthy!

To get around that by thinking about what other creators do. How often do they publish? How much time do they spend “puttering around” building up to the ideas they eventually publish. How much stuff do they work on that never gets published.

When I’m in this learning mode, I’m creating lots of content: I’m taking notes, trying to rewrite things. I’m also talking with other people a lot, testing out my understanding of the “input,” getting them to explain it to me, thinking about things we could do as output. It’s sort of like a podcast that never gets published.

Part of that “input mode” is listening to lots of videos. I can’t watch videos at my desk. I’ll get distracted with other work and then I’m no longer paying attention. This a good opportunity to walk the dog on long dog walks. So, this week, I’ve found several new Garbage Chairs of Amsterdam.