Here at Pod Academy we are convinced that podcasting is a great way to get research out to a wide audience, to make an impact.

If you'd like to try your hand at making a podcast, here are some tips to help you, they came out of a course we ran for our volunteer producers.  And take a listen to the podcast above  - it demonstrates a number of different approaches you might take.

Preparation

Preparation 1: Preparing around the CONTENT

What are you trying to achieve?

First of all decide, what are your objectives for the podcast.  Of course two of your principal objectives will be:

To make people care about the subject
To entertain

But you may have other objectives, such as: –

To get the audience to see the relevance for themselves of this research
To help your audience understand something complex
To inform them about something new in the field
To introduce them to something quirky they may not know about

It may be that your objectives span all or none of these, but whatever you are aiming to achieve, be clear about it from the outset as this will help in your preparation and will inevitably influence the questions you ask, the tone, the writing and the editing.

What is the story? Why should we care?

This American Life’s Alex Blumberg says you should be able to pitch a story in this way:

I want to make a podcast about…..
It’s important because…..

According to Alex this simple formula will give you the story.  Other people talk about this as ‘the angle’ of your podcast.   It is certainly an essential stage to go through in the preparation for your podcast.

To decide what is the angle, have a preparatory conversation with the academic whose research you are covering and really pin him/her down on the following questions:

Why is your research/your work/your book important?
What is the significance of your research/this area of study/your work?
We hear a lot about……….these days – how does your research relate to that?
What is your big idea? What is the take-home message of your research/your work/your book? What is the story?
What is ground breaking about it?
Why should the audience care about your research?
If it were a newspaper article, what would the headline be?

Remember, one way of finding the angle is to see if there is an ‘est’ word associated with the research – the first, the best, the worst, the biggest, the smallest, the most, the last etc. Ask the academic.

After that conversation, think about it yourself.  Decide:  What is this podcast about?

The audience

Part of your preparation should be to think about your audience and what would interest them.  Pod Academy has a broad audience, but it is helpful to imagine just one listener, because then you are more likely to make an appealing podcast, that works as a communication from one person to another.  Try this listener:

A bright, engaged 28year old who is prepared to listen to and maybe even sign up with Charity street fundraisers, who probably plays or watches a bit of sport, has good friends who he/she values, has a favourite soap opera, and listens to an eclectic range of music. Importantly, has a 40 minute commute to work, during which time they listen to podcasts.

How can you engage/entertain/inform this listener?

 

Chunking the content

Think of your content in 4 chunks (note: they might not divide up as neatly as this suggests – for example, in the interview you might ask some of the more detailed questions in Chunk 4 when you are on chunk 3 about the significance of the research.)

Chunk 1:  Why did they undertake this research?

You are looking for 2 main things here – personal motivation, any important background/context about this field.

The sorts of questions to ask……

Why did you undertake this research; what attracted you to this area of research?
Is there any significant history to this area of research? What’s been happening in this field?

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