Podcast Pontifications

Reading a Wikipedia entry is oftentimes incredibly boring. And that’s by design. As a repository of knowledge, it’s important to Wikipedia that they maintain a neutral point of view. But few people read Wikipedia for entertainment purposes. 

Humanity has a huge impact on the podcast listening experience. Though it’s a bit of an oversimplification, shows that convey their humanity to their audience tend to be better. The converse is also true: remove the humanity from a show, and the listener experience is worsened.

Yes, even short-form, fact-based news programs need humanity. Podnews is an excellent illustration. Somehow, James finds a way to inject his own humanity in the narration, rather than just regurgitating headlines. It sounds human, just not long-winded.

Thankfully, we don’t hear as many reporters talking about themselves in the 3rd person any longer (“This reporter was on the scene to…” ????). Journalists who podcast find their podcast listeners want to hear how the reporter was affected by covering the story they’re conveying on their podcast. 

Narrative-driven stories are better when they show the humanity of the person/people behind them. Evidence of an architect should be subtle, yet obvious. Yeah, that’s a bit of an oxymoron.

We're already seeing new apps and services that encroach on our podcasting territory, finding ways to use the technical architecture of podcasting - audio files delivered to a player - with very little human interaction. And tons of scale.

If these apps can make a podcast episode with a more than passible human voice out of any text found on the web, is there a need to wait for a human to do the same thing, albeit slower and with a smaller consideration set?

As a podcaster, do you need to actually narrate your scripted show? Or should you leave that to software so you can get back to digging up new content for your audience and scale, scale, scale?

As a human who often doomscrolls through social feeds, will you instead “doom listen” while doing the dishes if the option is available?

This new “aural web” (which cannot be what we call it, please?) where the information we want is comfortably consumed via audio is going to see loads of innovation and disruption in the coming months. And it’s going to make things very difficult for podcasters who have sucked all the humanity out of their shows.

I’m bullish on tech’s ability to make a passable human voice, making it quite nice to listen to just about anything. But I’m bearish on that tech’s ability to out-humanize human creativity, passion, and sincerity. 

Human podcasters should embrace their humanity. Yes, even the messy parts. We need not be afraid of being vulnerable on our shows. We need to be willing to express our opinion. And we need to be willing to see our opinion proven wrong.

Your audience wants you to be human. Your audience listens to your show because of you. Get in there and put more “you” in your podcast. Because in the battle of which side can convey more neutral point of view facts, humanity will lose every time. And that’s a good thing.

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Podcast Pontifications is published by Evo Terra four times a week and is designed to make podcasting better, not just easier.

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Support For Abortion Rights

While Americans overwhelmingly support the right of an individual to make their own decisions about abortion, unfortunately, that right is no longer protected everywhere in the U.S. The Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade on June 24th. Abortion is a basic healthcare need for the millions of people who can become pregnant. Everyone should have the freedom to decide what’s best for themselves and their families, including when it comes to ending a pregnancy. This decision has dire consequences for individual health and safety, and could have harsh repercussions for other landmark decisions. Restricting access to comprehensive reproductive care, including abortion, threatens the health and independence of all Americans. Even if you live in a state where abortion rights are upheld, access to safe medical procedures shouldn’t be determined by location, and it shouldn't be the privilege of a small few. You can help by donating to local abortion funds. To find out where to donate for each state, visit donations4abortion.com. If you or someone you know needs help, or if you want to get more involved, here are 5 resources: 1. ShoutYourAbortion.com is a campaign to normalize abortion. 2. DontBanEquality.com is a campaign for companies to take a stand against abortion restrictions. 3. Abortion.cafe has information about where to find clinics. 4. PlanCPills.org provides early at-home abortion pills that you can keep in your medicine cabinet. 5. Choice.CRD.co has a collection of these resources and more. We encourage you to speak up! And spread the word.

This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:

OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy
Chartable - https://chartable.com/privacy
Podsights - https://podsights.com/privacy