• Book guests, which usually requires some flexibility and rescheduling.
• Set up the recording space, both digital (we use Zencastr) and physical (lock the cats out of your office, etc).
• Confirm mic and headphones are working. Yes, you should do this every single time you record. Ask us how we know.

• Record the interview, which usually takes about one hour.
• Record the introductory essay, which usually takes about thirty minutes to nail down (it was a little longer this week because Brenna had to re-do it in a quieter location).

• This will vary widely depending on what you are trying to accomplish. For You Got This!, we use a very light editorial hand — we trim out excessively long pauses or a lot of ums and ahs, but we want people to sound like themselves, also.
• As an established podcast, You Got This! already has music and other production elements in place. For your first few episodes, building these components parts will take additional time.
• Interviews and essay-style podcasts will require less production time, while documentary-style podcasts will require substantially more (most documentary podcasts are not made and released on a week-to-week schedule).

• At You Got This!, we firmly believe that podcasts made to disseminate scholarly communication or support community must be day-one accessible, and as such we encourage you to build a transcription plan into your podcast. You’ll learn about lots of options in this course.
• We prefer to create our transcripts ourselves, using the automatic transcription function that comes with Zencastr Pro. Some weeks, when Brenna gets really in over her head — like this one — we send You Got This! episodes to Rev for automatic transcription, because the quality of grammar is better and requires less editing. This can take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours to process, so plan ahead whichever option you choose. Using a gig-labour-driven tool like Rev is not an ethically neutral choice, and we work to minimize our reliance on this service, even the automated option.
• Editing the automated transcript usually takes about 1-2 hours of focused time, depending on the episode length. This week it took an hour.

• These tasks are small: assemble show notes, choose a featured image, upload the audio file and fill in the metadata.
• We try to do this in advance so the post is scheduled and we can come back and make adjustments as needed.

What is a Podcast?

What… is this?

What do I need for this class?

• In particular, we hope you’ll check out our videos about collecting audio and editing podcasts.

To add a new Post

• Click the Posts menu option
• Click the Add New link underneath (or hover your cursor over the Posts menu option and click the Add new link in the fly-out menu).
• Follow the prompts to upload your content. If you’re brand-new to WordPress, you can review our instructions for posting content here.
• Important: make sure you choose “Journal” for the post category; this will aggregate your post alongside other participants on the Journal post page. Here’s a little more about how categories work.

Suggested Podcasts

Suggested Writing Prompts

1. What format was most compelling for you to listen to?
2. What kinds of production choices — music, effects, segments — do you like, and which turn you off?
3. What conventions seem to emerge in podcasts related to your discipline or that you want to emulate?
4. What podcast couldn’t you find to listen to — and do you want to make it? What might that look like?

• Have a clear sense of whether podcasting is the right medium for their project.
• Understand the different ways podcasting can be used for mobilizing scholarly knowledge.
• Have exposure to basic experiences of recording and editing audio.
• Have exposure to basic experiences using WordPress for podcast distribution.
• Have a scope for development of their own scholarly podcast.

Join Us!

1. What podcast format are you leaning towards, and why? What do you think that format will offer for what you hope to accomplish?
2. What “segments” will your show have? Listeners often appreciate an anchoring structure. For example, on You Got This!, we open with an essay or brief monologue, then share our feature interview, and close with a “Tiny Teaching Tip.” Having an established rhythm can also help you conceptualize your show.
3. Come up with a list of adjectives to describe the tone you hope to achieve for your show. Try to find five. For example, Brenna describes the tone she aspires to for You Got This! as encouraging, friendly, conversational, easygoing, and honest.
4. What do you want your theme song to sound like? Spend some time exploring Free Music Archive to find something that might be suitable, and share it with us.
5. Do you imagine including sound effects in your show? If so, what do you hope they will achieve? See if you can find something that fits your vibe by exploring the Wikimedia archive, or by recording something in your world for use to listen to. Share it by linking or upload to your post!

• Make cuts to the audio that sound seamless.
• Raise or lower the volume of the original audio.
• Fade some piece of free-use music in or out of the recorded audio.

1. Add music to your audio recording. (If you did this in task 2a, add a second music clip.) Practice playing with the levels to fade the music into and then out of your audio recording. You can read more about Fades in Audacity here, and you can find royalty-free music to use here.
2. Edit in a sound effect to your audio recording. You might try bleeping out some of your audio as though you are redacting content or covering a curse word or maybe you want to add an echo to your voice.
3. Do something to “clean up” your audio — this is subjective! Play with the equalizer function to do something like reduce popped sounds (those plosive ps and ds) or sibilance, bring up a quiet bit of your audio, or play with the noise reduction function (Video tutorial on noise reduction).

1. What will your podcast cover image be? This is how your podcast will be most known visually. The image must be a square, 1400 x 1400 to 3000 × 3000 pixels in size. And you must have rights to use the image. Consider starting with a resource like Unsplash to find an image, or if you know how to use a tool like Canva you can play around in there. And this guide offers some tips on things to think about as you design.
2. What do you want your podcast’s site to look like? Try to think of some colours and images that can act as inspiration for your design.
3. What will you include in your show notes each week, and how will you structure them? It’s useful here to think about what your shownotes should achieve: are they informational, or about building community, or what?
4. Where do you hope to index your podcast? Take a moment to find out the process for submitting podcasts wherever you intend to submit.
5. Finally, with a thought towards some kind of “marketing,” how will you plan to share your show? Does it need a social media presence, will you share with your scholarly community, or do you have another plan?

• Podcast Schedule Template
• Podcast Budget Template
• Podcast Project Checklist
• Episode Planning Worksheet

1a. The Parasocial Social Club

Since the start of the pandemic, I have delved deeply into online media spaces in a way that I just didn’t before. I knew podcasts existed, I listened to Welcome to Nightvale, but that was pretty much it. I used YouTube as a music discovery source. Now I use YouTube as a sort of extended… Continue reading 1a. The Parasocial Social Club

Ocean of sound

Stepping Towards First Steps

I am a huge fan of recorded music. One of the main features of my living space is several shelves of vinyl records. In my mid-twenties I hosted a weekly music show on my local university’s community radio station. When I am working at home there is almost always a record or CD playing in… Continue reading Stepping Towards First Steps

Radio KAOS

It was inevitable that my podcast listening would be done largely at night before bed. My Grandad had a habit of tuning in to the 11pm news each night, and would use a single earbud connected to the radio so as not to disturb Nana. On nights that I would sleep over, I would get… Continue reading Radio KAOS

Stale Playlists

Who would want to listen to me?

Who would want to listen to me? I have been helping people create podcasts and other audio recordings for many years, but I have never started my own podcast. Why would I? There are millions of terrific podcasts, so many that I can’t keep up with the ones I have found and like. Why would… Continue reading Who would want to listen to me?