August 26, 2024 • 29 mins
In this podtastic episode, Jonathan and Chris explore how podcasting works. Tune in as they touch on everything from how TechStuff got its start to tips for listeners who want to become podcasters themselves.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and how the
tech are you Well. I'm still working on some really
big and complicated tech Stuff episodes, and as a result,
(00:28):
I thought that it'd be fun to take a listen
to a really, really really old episode of tech Stuff.
This one came out way back on November two, two
thousand and nine, and the title of the episode is
called how Podcasting Works, But I honestly think that title
is not really that accurate. I think it would be
(00:49):
more like history of tech Stuff slash podcasting Tips. Now.
At this time, this was when Chris Palette was co
host of the show, and we talk a little bit
about the fact that Chris was also the original co
host with Josh of stuff. You should know, which is
just kind of a fun little bit of trivia, is that,
(01:11):
you know, Chris had been one of the first people
on The House Stuff Work's staff to podcast. He recorded
several episodes with Josh before Chuck ended up taking over
that spot and then the rest, as they say, is history,
and Chris got saddled with me. We recorded quite a
few episodes together before Chris moved on. He decided he
(01:35):
wanted a career change and he went to pursue a
career in library science, which is pretty awesome. And meanwhile,
I've been back here helming the Tech Stuff Ship ever since.
So listen to this classic episode How Podcasting Works, published
November second, two thousand and nine, and enjoy today going
(02:00):
to talk about some podcasting tips. We actually get a
lot of requests to do an episode about podcasting, and.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
We keep coming up with the reasons why we shouldn't
do it today. Right today, we decided to do it today.
We're like, you know what, We're going to get this
out of the way.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
You know why, because if we weren't doing How Podcasting Works,
you know what we would be doing cantennis or tech
conspiracy theories. Oh yeah, two other ones that we keep
putting off.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Actually, just between you and us, we're not supposed to
talk about the tech conspiracy.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
Oh that's right. They don't want you to know, So
let's talk about podcasting instead. Now, we've had a lot
of people ask us things, everything ranging from what kind
of equipment do we use? What kind of software do
we use, and just general tips on podcasting, So people
who want to get into podcasting, what should they do,
what should they avoid doing? And a lot of the
(02:51):
stuff that we have learned over the course of our
what year and a half of podcasting, mainly we've learned
through trial and error. Wow half. Yeah, sorry, Yeah, and
it's pretty much been a year and a half. And yeah,
and he's he's right.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
Actually, we were one of the very first podcasts at
how Stuff.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
Works Yeah com and we followed Stuff you Should Know
and stuff you missed in history class. Yeah, so we
were the third one. Yeah, Marshall Brains. Marshall Brain has
been doing one for a while.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Right, He was doing a podcast in a blog sort
of independently from the group for a long time. And
then and then we jumped on board. And actually when
when I was the first Josh's first co host on
Stuff you Should Know.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
Right, So you've been doing this longer than just about
anyone else besides Josh. True.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
True, But it's funny because we tried a bunch of
different stuff. We've actually had uh, we got we've gotten
some comments over the course of the last year and
a half, like you know.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
Who writes this stuff? Right?
Speaker 3 (03:50):
And the answer is nobody.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
We actually, Josh and I tried a little bit writing
some of the stuff out and that just totally we
tried to test with that and that totally didn't work.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
Just tech stuffs. We we outlined the heck out of
those early early shows.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
Yeah, all right, so.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
Let's let's talk Let's talk about the genesis of tech
stuff in general, and then we'll talk about some of
the equipment we use, and then we'll give some podcasting tips.
How about that?
Speaker 3 (04:13):
That sounds great?
Speaker 1 (04:14):
See, you know, this is the sort of stuff that
we used to talk about before the show, and we
would outline it and we would go point by point.
We don't do that anymore, which is why we kind
of go through things in a haphazard way.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Although I do feel compelled to point out that not
all the podcasters here at how Stuffworks dot Com go
buy that theory. Now, Yeah, in general, we do try
to be conversational.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
I mean, that's there.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Nobody's I don't know of anybody that scripts out what
they're going to say when they come on to the podcast.
But I think everybody pretty much, you know, just has
a good rapport with his or her co host, and
it's sort of a Okay, we're going to talk about
these ten things. Make sure we cover this or that.
Jonathan and I are just sort of looser about it, don't.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
We don't meet beforehand like some of the other podcasters do.
So yeah, everyone as their own style. We'll get to
we'll get to style in a little bit. So let's
let's do the history of tech stuff Sour our editor
in chief, came to us. Connell Byrn, He came to
us and said, guys, we want you to do a
podcast about technology. Think you would blow it out of
(05:16):
the park. You'll be super rock stars, that kind of thing.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
And I had looked around and said, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
What are you talking right?
Speaker 3 (05:23):
And I was like, let me go.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
I want to do it, Let's do it now. And
uh so we were told at that time that we
were trying you know, this, this was brand new for us.
It was not something that house Stuffworks dot com had
been doing before. Besides Marshall's podcast and the this is
before even Stuff you Should Know had started to publish.
This was just before it started to publish. So at
(05:48):
that time, since we were all kind of new to this,
we decided to put some limitations and some parameters up
to kind of give us a framework so that we
wouldn't just flail around the way we do.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
Now, let's speak for yourself. I flail pretty handily, thank you, Mitchell.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
Okay, So the very the very first rules were that
the episodes had to be around five minutes in length,
and they were supposed to relate back to a specific
article on the site.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
Wow, that just makes me want to laugh.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
Yeah, we don't do that anymore.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
We don't.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
We don't do either of those things anymore. Now. Now
other podcasts they do, they'll they'll still cover specific articles,
which is fine. We just that we don't have to do. Yeah,
we're no longer required to do that, but we can
do that if we want to. And we've done a
couple of episodes where we've talked about specific articles, but
fortunately we're no longer restricted to just that. So back then,
(06:46):
we discovered very quickly that it was hard to get
into a topic and cover it in five minutes. Most
of our episodes were pushing seven or eight minutes easily,
because by the time we were telling me the introductions,
we had about two and a half minutes left to
explain whatever it was we were talking about. Yep. But
we also got feedback from our listeners that and the
(07:06):
most of the feedback said, you know, I like the podcast,
but it needs to be longer because you're not really
getting into the topic. So with that, we extended the
time to about ten minutes, right, We went from five
to ten. Yeah, And so if you look at those
early Tech Stuff episodes, you'll see the first few or
five minutes long, and then the next group is about
ten minutes, and then after that kind of explodes because
(07:26):
we were told one day we came in and that
was when Jerry was producing our show, Yeah, and she
told us one day like, oh, don't worry about the time,
just don't go over you know, twenty five minutes. That's
probably that's probably about the upper length of what we
want to hit. But other than that, you know, go
as long as you need to go to explain the topic.
And that's when our episodes really started to change. At
(07:48):
the same time that we had the five and ten
minute rule, we were outlining our episodes pretty heavily. Yeah, yeah,
because we had to make sure we hit that time limit, right.
We couldn't go over it, so we wanted to make
sure we knew what we needed to hit. We couldn't
just talk our way through it.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
Yeah, And we also when we had that was very
helpful when we had specific ideas that we wanted to
hit in the podcast too, which we don't always get
to In some cases. I've gone back and looked at
my notes on a couple podcasts and gone, oh, man,
I didn't talk about that.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
Yeah, that's happened to me too.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
So you know that it can be useful to have
an outline, especially if you want to do that. But
then again, most of the time when we do that,
it's because we get so excited about whatever it is
that we're talking about, and then we have so much we
want to say about it that we just keep going.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
Yeah. So once those uh, once, once the format changed,
we we started to change our own methods, and we
began to realize that the more we try too short
well not yeah sometimes so we went to the German
opera range. But no, the we began to realize that
the more we would prepare together for a show that
(09:00):
we were about to do, the less conversational it was
and the more like lectury it sounded. You know. Yeah,
it didn't sound like we had two guys trying to
explain and talk about a topic and give it context.
It sounded like the pre recorded notes for some sort
of you know, technology lecture. And so we started to
(09:22):
do our own studying at that point, and then we
would just meet for the podcast and we'd each have
our own notes. We would sometimes share links if we
saw something that was really useful, so that the other
person would also have access to it and not just
you know, come out of nowhere. But then we would
just we sit down at the microphones and hit record,
(09:43):
and then we would torture whoever it was that was
producing our show at the time with horrible puns as
we talked about whatever the topic was.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Yes, that's a helpful tip that I would give you
if you're considering doing your own podcast. Make sure to
use plenty of puns.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Right, yeah, because Lord knows everyone loves puns. Oh yeah,
Josh and Chuck are incredibly fond of puns. Yes, they
like puns the way I like pie.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
You must hate pie a lot more than I thought
you did.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
Hey, it's Jonathan from twenty twenty four. So when we
recorded this episode back in two thousand and nine. It
was before we had monetized podcasting, so there were no
ad breaks built into the episode. That's why I'm here
to let you know. We're gonna listen to a couple
of ads and we'll be right back. So let's talk
(10:38):
a little bit about the equipment and software that we use.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
Okay, all right, So what do you want to start with? Microphones?
Speaker 1 (10:44):
Yeah, we'll talk about the mic So we were asking
our producers about the microphones. Because you may find this
hard to believe, but even though we are the tech
writer and editor of howstuffarce dot com, we do not
have a database filled with every single piece of equipment
that is in our office.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Yeah, that's that's true, and you know, sort of bridging
the gap between this history of tech stuff and the equipment.
Speaker 3 (11:12):
There are.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
One of the nice things about us getting into podcasting
in the first place was we already had a studio
available to us because there were other projects that we
used a lot of this equipment for. We already had,
you know, high end video equipment and audio equipment and
people who knew how to use it. So you know,
you don't necessarily this is not necessarily the setup we
(11:34):
already had some of the stuff.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
Yeah, we we repurposed a lot of stuff that we
had for other projects, specifically for podcasting. We are not
saying that you need to go out and purchase similar
equipment because for one thing, it's probably out of a
lot of people's price range, none of my price range. Yeah,
it's definitely on a mind if I were to do
this on my own. But this is people have asked
us what we used, so I thought we would go
(11:57):
ahead and explain. So for our microphones, we use akgs
and they are C two thousand B microphones. We were
told by mister Matt Frederick that they are not omnidirectional,
despite the fact that they totally look like omnidirectional microphones.
But they're not. They're directional. They just have a wide
angle or wide cone that you can speak into, which
(12:18):
is a good thing because occasionally we'll, you know, lounge
in a weird way and just talk toward the microphone
and it still seems to pick us up pretty well.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
Yeah, we also have a nice pop filter in front
of itself.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
Yes, we do use pop filters because we don't want
to pump our pes. Nice. Yeah, we also have as
our pre amp. You don't necessarily have to have a
preamp if you've got a microphone that plugs directly into
say a USB port, but we aren't using that. We're
using a pre amp, the Applied Research and Technology pre amp,
(12:50):
and we have one of those per input. We have
got three of the preamps because we do have three inputs,
although we have not actually used the third one yet. Yeah,
Stuff you should know has used it for their healthcare series.
They had Molly in and she got to she set
in and joined Josh and Chuckers as we like to
(13:11):
call him, or sometimes listeners like to call me Chuckers
when they forget that my name's Jonathan.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
Well you know Jonathan sounds like Chuck.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
Yeah. We haven't figured out, by the way, which one
of us should be more offended, Chuck should be more offended,
or if I should. Neither of us are really offended,
because you know, Chuck's a cool guy and yeah, and
I'm not on his radar. So now, as for as
for the software we use, we're using uh Final Cut, right, Yeah,
so that's the that's the audio software we're using. We
(13:44):
record with soundtrack, which is part of that suite, and
then for all of our sound effects whenever we do soundscaping.
Liz pulls that from the suite as well.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
Yeah, we are using a Macintosh computer to do this,
but you there are software programs for Windows and Linux
both that can can do the same kinds of things,
specially so and.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
Matt Frederick also wanted to me to point out that
his favorite piece of equipment that we have. We're not
using it right now, but his favorite piece of equipment
is called the Blue Icicle and you can plug and
excel our microphone into this. It converts it to USB
and it actually has a volume control on the device itself,
so you can help control that the levels before it
(14:27):
ever reaches your computer. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
Yeah, then the name of the company is Blue and
it is in Icicle.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
Yes, so, but he wanted specifically for us to point
that out. So that's that's our setup. But here's the thing. Now,
we're going to get into some podcasting tips, and one
of the tips I would give people is don't sweat
the equipment and software that much. Yes, that's absolutely not
(14:53):
necessarily the that that should not be your number one
concern because if you're concerned with having the most technologically
advanced equipment and the most the software with the most features.
You might have a podcast that sounds really good, but
that that's not enough for listeners to tune into you
week after week.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Yeah, I mean it's it's uh, as long as you
have a quiet room, you know, something preferably without hard floors,
and yeah, something.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
Where you're not echo.
Speaker 3 (15:25):
Yeah, I mean you might.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
You might even try out a couple of different settings,
especially if you have a laptop computer and something that
you know, something that simply plugs into your your machine
should be fairly easy for you to test a couple
different environments and see what sounds good to you.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
Yeah, you can. I would suggest testing up several different
kinds of microphones maybe, Like there's some headsets that actually
aren't that bad. They actually provide a very decent sound.
At home, I use a snowball mic which works really
well for me. It's no omnidirectional mic, and it actually
I like it a lot. But I use that with
my mat Yeah, and then a lot of you know,
(16:02):
I would probably recommend against using a native microphone on
a computer. I mean, some of them can pick up
some pretty well, but most of them you're not going
to get the best sound quality out of those. And
that's one thing I would say is getting an independent
microphone is probably a good purchase, a good investment.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
Yeah, I think that that's sort of a very basic necessity. Yeah, unfortunately. Yeah,
but you don't have to fork over, you know, hundreds
of dollars to do that. In fact, you can even
get a good XLR for less than a hundred dollars
really or maybe just over right.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
You would just need to have the equipment to plug
it into exactly, so perhaps an icicle or a pre app.
Speaker 3 (16:48):
Or a a you know, an expensive board.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
It depends on how many inputs you're going to want
to use, too, because if you are, if you're going
to want to have, say, get your your friends together
and do a podcast with a bunch of people, you're
gonna need something to handle the different channels. Assuming you're
not all going to speak into one mic. Uh, it
could be a little cozy quarters there.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about some other
stuff like uh, post production. OK, I just said, oh
right there, that was an uh, yes, I heard the uh. Now,
some podcasters would want to go in and take out
all the uzz ums, pauses, things like that, in order
to make a podcast sound more smooth and professional.
Speaker 3 (17:29):
That would be really time consuming.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
It takes so much time that that can take. Okay,
imagine a thirty minute long podcast and then you go
with yes and now you're going to you're gonna take
I keep doing. It will take you hours to get
the sounds of Palette screaming out of your podcast because
you're strangling him repeatedly throughout the Yeah. So, concerning yourself
(17:55):
with this, I think taking out really really bad stuff,
like stuff where it just it bringing the recording to
us halt, that's fine. But I wouldn't worry about any
of the small things because it gives you your podcast
a little character. People really talk like that. It's not
something to be ashamed of. Yeah, and unless you're like
(18:15):
some sort of professional voiceover actor or radio personality, you
probably haven't trained yourself to take that that stuff out
of your speech. I haven't, and I'm doing this as
part of my job. So that's all well and good.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
However, nice radio now, Yeah, I think one of the
problems with that is, I mean, you sort of have
to think about what you're going to do here. But
I think that also makes it sound really flat.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
I mean, if you were reading off a script, you
don't have any ums or us it just it comes off.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
As really really flat. Yeah, it doesn't. It's not very
inviting to the listener necessarily. Uh So, let's talk a
little bit more about some other tips. One of the
big tips I would I would give anyone who's getting
into podcasts is really, what's the purpose of your podcast?
To find that, figure out why you want you know,
why do you want a podcast? What is it that
(19:07):
you want to say? Is there a specific topic or
a category of information that you really want to talk about.
Is there a specific game that you want to do
a podcast about, or a specific television show or genre.
Don't you know? Doing a podcast about practically anything sounds
like it's very liberating, but it actually ends up being
(19:29):
really frustrating and difficult to pull off. Well. It also
is hard to get an audience because someone may have
a real interest in one topic, but your next topic
doesn't interest them at all because it's not at all
related to the first one. It's hard to build an
audience that way.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
And one thing you.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
Can consider too is limiting yourself more at the beginning,
because you can you can always change. You think back
to the early days of tech stuff, we had to
we had to talk about a specific article. So we
would look on the site for something that we wanted
to talk about and then okay, we got a topic,
a specific topic, and we you know, would riff on
(20:09):
that for five or ten minutes. Well, now, one of
the things that Jonathan and I like and I like
to try to do, I mean, other than answering listener mailes.
That's kind of been where we've been the last few weeks.
But you know, we've we want to try to come
up with something that's not on the website. But you know,
we still are working within the confines of computers and electronics, right.
(20:32):
But you know, it did give us a platform from
which to start, because we already had something to talk about.
I mean, you could say, well, I want to talk
about everything, but maybe start with something you know, well,
like video games. And then maybe you say, well, I
like talking about video games, but what if I want
to talk about board games too, so you could have
a games podcast or.
Speaker 1 (20:51):
Even like or yeah, exactly, I've been talking about role
playing games. Now maybe I should talk about this fantasy
movie that I really like and that'd be fine too.
I mean, having it grow organically is probably a good
tip as well, you know, don't you don't necessarily have
to force it into any kind of any specific Hey,
it's Jonathan from twenty twenty four. Again. We're gonna take
(21:12):
another quick break, but we'll be back to wrap up
this classic episode of tech Stuff that originally published back
in two thousand and nine. So an easy way to
build an audience, A good dependable way pay them no
(21:36):
is to have a regular and dependable production schedule. Yes,
if you publish your podcast, you know, whenever you have time,
and that's it. And so it may be that you
push one out one week and then the next week
you have a second episode, and then it maybe three
or four weeks before you have a third episode. It's
(21:56):
very difficult to build an audience that way. People will
tend to to lose interest and start to leave. So
it's good to set up a schedule of publication and
stick to it as best you can. And part of
that that can be really challenging if you just you know,
some weeks you just don't have the time to do recording, right,
I mean, or you're sick with the swine flu. Yeah,
(22:20):
so what what what we do is Chris and I
will sit down, we record two podcasts at a time,
sometimes three uh in one recording session. Uh, and then
we do enough of these so that we've built up
a backlog of episodes so we can when when we
started publishing, we had actually recorded I don't know, maybe
six or seven episodes total before the first one ever
(22:44):
was released.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
I think there may have been more of that. More
than that, It could have been as many as like
ten or twelve. Yeah, so they plus they wanted to
evaluate them.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
We wanted to.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
They had other people listening to them too to see
what they thought. And you know, they change, so, you.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
Know, because it was a thing we were lucky they
didn't have to. They didn't want us to change too much.
I mean, they they gave us the go ahead to
make them longer, and that was about it. But the yeah,
you know, if you if you record them ahead of time,
if you do, if you do several episodes so that
you have a backlog, then you don't have to worry
so much on those times where you know you just
don't have the time to record, You've got episodes to
(23:21):
fall back on and you can keep publishing them even
if you had to take a break on recording. Now granted,
of course that's only gonna work for so long. You can't,
you can't. We found that out. Yeah, Yeah, we've we've
run Yeah, we ran out of the backlog a couple
of times and then had to go into some intense
recording sessions to build it back up. We're currently I
(23:41):
guess maybe a week and a half ahead something like that,
something like that. So at any rate, the the best
advice there is just make sure you've got a few
episodes recorded, uh, and and publish them, like I said,
on a regular basis, whether that's once a week or
every day. I mean, if you're doing a daily podcast,
(24:03):
you're probably recording every day. Anyway, that might be a
little bit different.
Speaker 3 (24:07):
That's like challenging.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
Our episode is not necessarily timely. We aren't always tackling
something that's in the news, although we have done that before,
and we do a little of that on Tech Stuff Live. Yeah,
we've got a live streaming show that we handle most
of the timely stuff. We don't. We don't worry about
that so much in this podcast, although we have, like
I said, tackled some some fairly timely topics. Yeah. Yeah,
(24:28):
so if you're if you're not handling, if you're not
talking about something that is time sensitive, then you have
the luxury of being able to record as many as
you like before you start going live if it is
something that's time since, of course that does change things.
If you're doing something where you're you're discussing, say a show,
a television show, and you want the episode to go
(24:48):
up live the day after the television show airs, you
don't have that kind of flexibility. So, I mean, it
all will depend on your situation, but I do think
that if you can, if you can established that reliable
publication schedule, you will build an audience much faster than otherwise.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
And just just as a comment, I sort of envy,
uh stuff you missed in history class, because you know
that's history for us. We have actually recorded stuff and
have it have had it go out of date before
it actually goes live because we're doing publication.
Speaker 3 (25:22):
Yeah, and then you know we go oh.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
Man, yeah, nothing like saying something like you know, android
phone is never going to go to any other carrier,
It's just going to stay on T Mobile. And then
the next week you're like whoa, it's unsprint. Well all right,
well you know that. Haha. We'll just have people, Oh
it's on Verizon. Now we've some of them.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
We've had to uh have our engineers re edit a
couple of the podcasts, like go back in the studio
for five minutes and sort of record a patch to
uh rip out the old one.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
You may have actually noticed a couple of yeah, because
there's some of those just in. Yeah, we've done a
PostScript where you could tell that we had to go
in afterward. Sometimes our our editors are just very good
at cutting out the offending bit and inserting a new
bit and you can't even tell thank you, Lizzy, Thank
you Lizzie. So, do we have any other tips that
(26:13):
we want to give, like any other like just general
tips about podcasting.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
Just want to reiterate, don't get hung up on the
whole podcasting biz thing, because you can honestly do this
with a computer and a microphone. Just make an MP
three of your yourself talking and making a podcast. Yeah,
it's not it's not rocket surgery. I can't yeah, I
can't imagine.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
I can't imagine what it would be like to do
this on my own.
Speaker 3 (26:40):
Yeah, I think it would be harder.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
I mean, we have people who record this for us,
we have people who edit the podcast, we have people
that publish them to iTunes for us, which is for
which we're all extremely grateful. Speaking for everyone there, well
even I'm pretty sure.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
I mean, even just thinking about doing it without a
co host. Then when it's just you and a microphone,
that changes the dynamic quite a bit. O whither. Yeah,
I don't know if he meant that he was gonna
ditch me or that he was going to, uh, you know,
he wanted to take the show over himself. Yeah, I was.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
I was totally gonna start a new podcast called Stuff
on my Desk, And because that never changes, I don't
have to worry about it.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
Seven episodes and then just rerun them. Yeah, exactly. It's
sort of a mini series. Those are our our tips
and just you know, general information of what we do. Uh.
If you you're curious about our process, we pick our
topics usually the week before we record, and then the
day of the recording is when we've end up doing research.
(27:49):
Despite the fact of having an entire week to have
looked into it, but we researched the topics independently, we
come together, we have our conversation, and then we sit
there and notice that we've been recording for like thirty
minutes and then realize that we need to stop.
Speaker 3 (28:04):
I notice the timers off.
Speaker 1 (28:05):
Well, that's because my phone started vibrating because of.
Speaker 3 (28:07):
The Oh yeah, there's a kick. Leave your phone out
of the studio.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
Okay, I have my phone set on airplane mode. It's
just because the damn schedule thing went off.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
I'm I'm telling you. I'm saying, don't forget to turn
off that stuff. Actually, uh, we're not. We're generally not
supposed to have phones in here because they actually cause
interference with our equipment. Yeah, including phones that are because
our studio is actually in the middle of the office
and people whose phones are the people who sit just
around there.
Speaker 3 (28:33):
It can the equipment can actually pick that up.
Speaker 1 (28:35):
Well, that's that's why I have it on airplane mode,
so it doesn't I know, it doesn't say I'm stop
a tip, stop persecuting me. I hope you enjoyed that
classic episode of tech stuff. It's always fun to go
back and listen to those. I was actually really enjoying
that listen because I got to hear some names of
folks that I haven't seen in years, like Liz, I
(28:56):
haven't seen her in years. She was such a joy
to work with, and also names of people that I
still work with to this day, which is amazing you
think about how much time has gone by, but you know,
Matt Frederick, he's still a coworker. Jerry, She's still a coworker.
So pretty cool to go back. I mean, I think
it says a lot about a company, even though the
(29:17):
company has changed around us a couple of times. But
it says a lot about a group of people when
you have a core of those folks who just stick together.
That I think is a really positive aspect of any group.
I hope you enjoyed this classic episode, and I'll talk
to you again really soon. Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production.
(29:43):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and how the
tech are you Well. I'm still working on some really
big and complicated tech Stuff episodes, and as a result,
(00:28):
I thought that it'd be fun to take a listen
to a really, really really old episode of tech Stuff.
This one came out way back on November two, two
thousand and nine, and the title of the episode is
called how Podcasting Works, But I honestly think that title
is not really that accurate. I think it would be
(00:49):
more like history of tech Stuff slash podcasting Tips. Now.
At this time, this was when Chris Palette was co
host of the show, and we talk a little bit
about the fact that Chris was also the original co
host with Josh of stuff. You should know, which is
just kind of a fun little bit of trivia, is that,
(01:11):
you know, Chris had been one of the first people
on The House Stuff Work's staff to podcast. He recorded
several episodes with Josh before Chuck ended up taking over
that spot and then the rest, as they say, is history,
and Chris got saddled with me. We recorded quite a
few episodes together before Chris moved on. He decided he
(01:35):
wanted a career change and he went to pursue a
career in library science, which is pretty awesome. And meanwhile,
I've been back here helming the Tech Stuff Ship ever since.
So listen to this classic episode How Podcasting Works, published
November second, two thousand and nine, and enjoy today going
(02:00):
to talk about some podcasting tips. We actually get a
lot of requests to do an episode about podcasting, and.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
We keep coming up with the reasons why we shouldn't
do it today. Right today, we decided to do it today.
We're like, you know what, We're going to get this
out of the way.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
You know why, because if we weren't doing How Podcasting Works,
you know what we would be doing cantennis or tech
conspiracy theories. Oh yeah, two other ones that we keep
putting off.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Actually, just between you and us, we're not supposed to
talk about the tech conspiracy.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
Oh that's right. They don't want you to know, So
let's talk about podcasting instead. Now, we've had a lot
of people ask us things, everything ranging from what kind
of equipment do we use? What kind of software do
we use, and just general tips on podcasting, So people
who want to get into podcasting, what should they do,
what should they avoid doing? And a lot of the
(02:51):
stuff that we have learned over the course of our
what year and a half of podcasting, mainly we've learned
through trial and error. Wow half. Yeah, sorry, Yeah, and
it's pretty much been a year and a half. And yeah,
and he's he's right.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
Actually, we were one of the very first podcasts at
how Stuff.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
Works Yeah com and we followed Stuff you Should Know
and stuff you missed in history class. Yeah, so we
were the third one. Yeah, Marshall Brains. Marshall Brain has
been doing one for a while.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Right, He was doing a podcast in a blog sort
of independently from the group for a long time. And
then and then we jumped on board. And actually when
when I was the first Josh's first co host on
Stuff you Should Know.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
Right, So you've been doing this longer than just about
anyone else besides Josh. True.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
True, But it's funny because we tried a bunch of
different stuff. We've actually had uh, we got we've gotten
some comments over the course of the last year and
a half, like you know.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
Who writes this stuff? Right?
Speaker 3 (03:50):
And the answer is nobody.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
We actually, Josh and I tried a little bit writing
some of the stuff out and that just totally we
tried to test with that and that totally didn't work.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
Just tech stuffs. We we outlined the heck out of
those early early shows.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
Yeah, all right, so.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
Let's let's talk Let's talk about the genesis of tech
stuff in general, and then we'll talk about some of
the equipment we use, and then we'll give some podcasting tips.
How about that?
Speaker 3 (04:13):
That sounds great?
Speaker 1 (04:14):
See, you know, this is the sort of stuff that
we used to talk about before the show, and we
would outline it and we would go point by point.
We don't do that anymore, which is why we kind
of go through things in a haphazard way.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Although I do feel compelled to point out that not
all the podcasters here at how Stuffworks dot Com go
buy that theory. Now, Yeah, in general, we do try
to be conversational.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
I mean, that's there.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Nobody's I don't know of anybody that scripts out what
they're going to say when they come on to the podcast.
But I think everybody pretty much, you know, just has
a good rapport with his or her co host, and
it's sort of a Okay, we're going to talk about
these ten things. Make sure we cover this or that.
Jonathan and I are just sort of looser about it, don't.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
We don't meet beforehand like some of the other podcasters do.
So yeah, everyone as their own style. We'll get to
we'll get to style in a little bit. So let's
let's do the history of tech stuff Sour our editor
in chief, came to us. Connell Byrn, He came to
us and said, guys, we want you to do a
podcast about technology. Think you would blow it out of
(05:16):
the park. You'll be super rock stars, that kind of thing.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
And I had looked around and said, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
What are you talking right?
Speaker 3 (05:23):
And I was like, let me go.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
I want to do it, Let's do it now. And
uh so we were told at that time that we
were trying you know, this, this was brand new for us.
It was not something that house Stuffworks dot com had
been doing before. Besides Marshall's podcast and the this is
before even Stuff you Should Know had started to publish.
This was just before it started to publish. So at
(05:48):
that time, since we were all kind of new to this,
we decided to put some limitations and some parameters up
to kind of give us a framework so that we
wouldn't just flail around the way we do.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
Now, let's speak for yourself. I flail pretty handily, thank you, Mitchell.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
Okay, So the very the very first rules were that
the episodes had to be around five minutes in length,
and they were supposed to relate back to a specific
article on the site.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
Wow, that just makes me want to laugh.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
Yeah, we don't do that anymore.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
We don't.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
We don't do either of those things anymore. Now. Now
other podcasts they do, they'll they'll still cover specific articles,
which is fine. We just that we don't have to do. Yeah,
we're no longer required to do that, but we can
do that if we want to. And we've done a
couple of episodes where we've talked about specific articles, but
fortunately we're no longer restricted to just that. So back then,
(06:46):
we discovered very quickly that it was hard to get
into a topic and cover it in five minutes. Most
of our episodes were pushing seven or eight minutes easily,
because by the time we were telling me the introductions,
we had about two and a half minutes left to
explain whatever it was we were talking about. Yep. But
we also got feedback from our listeners that and the
(07:06):
most of the feedback said, you know, I like the podcast,
but it needs to be longer because you're not really
getting into the topic. So with that, we extended the
time to about ten minutes, right, We went from five
to ten. Yeah, And so if you look at those
early Tech Stuff episodes, you'll see the first few or
five minutes long, and then the next group is about
ten minutes, and then after that kind of explodes because
(07:26):
we were told one day we came in and that
was when Jerry was producing our show, Yeah, and she
told us one day like, oh, don't worry about the time,
just don't go over you know, twenty five minutes. That's
probably that's probably about the upper length of what we
want to hit. But other than that, you know, go
as long as you need to go to explain the topic.
And that's when our episodes really started to change. At
(07:48):
the same time that we had the five and ten
minute rule, we were outlining our episodes pretty heavily. Yeah, yeah,
because we had to make sure we hit that time limit, right.
We couldn't go over it, so we wanted to make
sure we knew what we needed to hit. We couldn't
just talk our way through it.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
Yeah, And we also when we had that was very
helpful when we had specific ideas that we wanted to
hit in the podcast too, which we don't always get
to In some cases. I've gone back and looked at
my notes on a couple podcasts and gone, oh, man,
I didn't talk about that.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
Yeah, that's happened to me too.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
So you know that it can be useful to have
an outline, especially if you want to do that. But
then again, most of the time when we do that,
it's because we get so excited about whatever it is
that we're talking about, and then we have so much we
want to say about it that we just keep going.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
Yeah. So once those uh, once, once the format changed,
we we started to change our own methods, and we
began to realize that the more we try too short
well not yeah sometimes so we went to the German
opera range. But no, the we began to realize that
the more we would prepare together for a show that
(09:00):
we were about to do, the less conversational it was
and the more like lectury it sounded. You know. Yeah,
it didn't sound like we had two guys trying to
explain and talk about a topic and give it context.
It sounded like the pre recorded notes for some sort
of you know, technology lecture. And so we started to
(09:22):
do our own studying at that point, and then we
would just meet for the podcast and we'd each have
our own notes. We would sometimes share links if we
saw something that was really useful, so that the other
person would also have access to it and not just
you know, come out of nowhere. But then we would
just we sit down at the microphones and hit record,
(09:43):
and then we would torture whoever it was that was
producing our show at the time with horrible puns as
we talked about whatever the topic was.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Yes, that's a helpful tip that I would give you
if you're considering doing your own podcast. Make sure to
use plenty of puns.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Right, yeah, because Lord knows everyone loves puns. Oh yeah,
Josh and Chuck are incredibly fond of puns. Yes, they
like puns the way I like pie.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
You must hate pie a lot more than I thought
you did.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
Hey, it's Jonathan from twenty twenty four. So when we
recorded this episode back in two thousand and nine. It
was before we had monetized podcasting, so there were no
ad breaks built into the episode. That's why I'm here
to let you know. We're gonna listen to a couple
of ads and we'll be right back. So let's talk
(10:38):
a little bit about the equipment and software that we use.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
Okay, all right, So what do you want to start with? Microphones?
Speaker 1 (10:44):
Yeah, we'll talk about the mic So we were asking
our producers about the microphones. Because you may find this
hard to believe, but even though we are the tech
writer and editor of howstuffarce dot com, we do not
have a database filled with every single piece of equipment
that is in our office.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Yeah, that's that's true, and you know, sort of bridging
the gap between this history of tech stuff and the equipment.
Speaker 3 (11:12):
There are.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
One of the nice things about us getting into podcasting
in the first place was we already had a studio
available to us because there were other projects that we
used a lot of this equipment for. We already had,
you know, high end video equipment and audio equipment and
people who knew how to use it. So you know,
you don't necessarily this is not necessarily the setup we
(11:34):
already had some of the stuff.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
Yeah, we we repurposed a lot of stuff that we
had for other projects, specifically for podcasting. We are not
saying that you need to go out and purchase similar
equipment because for one thing, it's probably out of a
lot of people's price range, none of my price range. Yeah,
it's definitely on a mind if I were to do
this on my own. But this is people have asked
us what we used, so I thought we would go
(11:57):
ahead and explain. So for our microphones, we use akgs
and they are C two thousand B microphones. We were
told by mister Matt Frederick that they are not omnidirectional,
despite the fact that they totally look like omnidirectional microphones.
But they're not. They're directional. They just have a wide
angle or wide cone that you can speak into, which
(12:18):
is a good thing because occasionally we'll, you know, lounge
in a weird way and just talk toward the microphone
and it still seems to pick us up pretty well.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
Yeah, we also have a nice pop filter in front
of itself.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
Yes, we do use pop filters because we don't want
to pump our pes. Nice. Yeah, we also have as
our pre amp. You don't necessarily have to have a
preamp if you've got a microphone that plugs directly into
say a USB port, but we aren't using that. We're
using a pre amp, the Applied Research and Technology pre amp,
(12:50):
and we have one of those per input. We have
got three of the preamps because we do have three inputs,
although we have not actually used the third one yet. Yeah,
Stuff you should know has used it for their healthcare series.
They had Molly in and she got to she set
in and joined Josh and Chuckers as we like to
(13:11):
call him, or sometimes listeners like to call me Chuckers
when they forget that my name's Jonathan.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
Well you know Jonathan sounds like Chuck.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
Yeah. We haven't figured out, by the way, which one
of us should be more offended, Chuck should be more offended,
or if I should. Neither of us are really offended,
because you know, Chuck's a cool guy and yeah, and
I'm not on his radar. So now, as for as
for the software we use, we're using uh Final Cut, right, Yeah,
so that's the that's the audio software we're using. We
(13:44):
record with soundtrack, which is part of that suite, and
then for all of our sound effects whenever we do soundscaping.
Liz pulls that from the suite as well.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
Yeah, we are using a Macintosh computer to do this,
but you there are software programs for Windows and Linux
both that can can do the same kinds of things,
specially so and.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
Matt Frederick also wanted to me to point out that
his favorite piece of equipment that we have. We're not
using it right now, but his favorite piece of equipment
is called the Blue Icicle and you can plug and
excel our microphone into this. It converts it to USB
and it actually has a volume control on the device itself,
so you can help control that the levels before it
(14:27):
ever reaches your computer. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
Yeah, then the name of the company is Blue and
it is in Icicle.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
Yes, so, but he wanted specifically for us to point
that out. So that's that's our setup. But here's the thing. Now,
we're going to get into some podcasting tips, and one
of the tips I would give people is don't sweat
the equipment and software that much. Yes, that's absolutely not
(14:53):
necessarily the that that should not be your number one
concern because if you're concerned with having the most technologically
advanced equipment and the most the software with the most features.
You might have a podcast that sounds really good, but
that that's not enough for listeners to tune into you
week after week.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Yeah, I mean it's it's uh, as long as you
have a quiet room, you know, something preferably without hard floors,
and yeah, something.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
Where you're not echo.
Speaker 3 (15:25):
Yeah, I mean you might.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
You might even try out a couple of different settings,
especially if you have a laptop computer and something that
you know, something that simply plugs into your your machine
should be fairly easy for you to test a couple
different environments and see what sounds good to you.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
Yeah, you can. I would suggest testing up several different
kinds of microphones maybe, Like there's some headsets that actually
aren't that bad. They actually provide a very decent sound.
At home, I use a snowball mic which works really
well for me. It's no omnidirectional mic, and it actually
I like it a lot. But I use that with
my mat Yeah, and then a lot of you know,
(16:02):
I would probably recommend against using a native microphone on
a computer. I mean, some of them can pick up
some pretty well, but most of them you're not going
to get the best sound quality out of those. And
that's one thing I would say is getting an independent
microphone is probably a good purchase, a good investment.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
Yeah, I think that that's sort of a very basic necessity. Yeah, unfortunately. Yeah,
but you don't have to fork over, you know, hundreds
of dollars to do that. In fact, you can even
get a good XLR for less than a hundred dollars
really or maybe just over right.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
You would just need to have the equipment to plug
it into exactly, so perhaps an icicle or a pre app.
Speaker 3 (16:48):
Or a a you know, an expensive board.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
It depends on how many inputs you're going to want
to use, too, because if you are, if you're going
to want to have, say, get your your friends together
and do a podcast with a bunch of people, you're
gonna need something to handle the different channels. Assuming you're
not all going to speak into one mic. Uh, it
could be a little cozy quarters there.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about some other
stuff like uh, post production. OK, I just said, oh
right there, that was an uh, yes, I heard the uh. Now,
some podcasters would want to go in and take out
all the uzz ums, pauses, things like that, in order
to make a podcast sound more smooth and professional.
Speaker 3 (17:29):
That would be really time consuming.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
It takes so much time that that can take. Okay,
imagine a thirty minute long podcast and then you go
with yes and now you're going to you're gonna take
I keep doing. It will take you hours to get
the sounds of Palette screaming out of your podcast because
you're strangling him repeatedly throughout the Yeah. So, concerning yourself
(17:55):
with this, I think taking out really really bad stuff,
like stuff where it just it bringing the recording to
us halt, that's fine. But I wouldn't worry about any
of the small things because it gives you your podcast
a little character. People really talk like that. It's not
something to be ashamed of. Yeah, and unless you're like
(18:15):
some sort of professional voiceover actor or radio personality, you
probably haven't trained yourself to take that that stuff out
of your speech. I haven't, and I'm doing this as
part of my job. So that's all well and good.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
However, nice radio now, Yeah, I think one of the
problems with that is, I mean, you sort of have
to think about what you're going to do here. But
I think that also makes it sound really flat.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
I mean, if you were reading off a script, you
don't have any ums or us it just it comes off.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
As really really flat. Yeah, it doesn't. It's not very
inviting to the listener necessarily. Uh So, let's talk a
little bit more about some other tips. One of the
big tips I would I would give anyone who's getting
into podcasts is really, what's the purpose of your podcast?
To find that, figure out why you want you know,
why do you want a podcast? What is it that
(19:07):
you want to say? Is there a specific topic or
a category of information that you really want to talk about.
Is there a specific game that you want to do
a podcast about, or a specific television show or genre.
Don't you know? Doing a podcast about practically anything sounds
like it's very liberating, but it actually ends up being
(19:29):
really frustrating and difficult to pull off. Well. It also
is hard to get an audience because someone may have
a real interest in one topic, but your next topic
doesn't interest them at all because it's not at all
related to the first one. It's hard to build an
audience that way.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
And one thing you.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
Can consider too is limiting yourself more at the beginning,
because you can you can always change. You think back
to the early days of tech stuff, we had to
we had to talk about a specific article. So we
would look on the site for something that we wanted
to talk about and then okay, we got a topic,
a specific topic, and we you know, would riff on
(20:09):
that for five or ten minutes. Well, now, one of
the things that Jonathan and I like and I like
to try to do, I mean, other than answering listener mailes.
That's kind of been where we've been the last few weeks.
But you know, we've we want to try to come
up with something that's not on the website. But you know,
we still are working within the confines of computers and electronics, right.
(20:32):
But you know, it did give us a platform from
which to start, because we already had something to talk about.
I mean, you could say, well, I want to talk
about everything, but maybe start with something you know, well,
like video games. And then maybe you say, well, I
like talking about video games, but what if I want
to talk about board games too, so you could have
a games podcast or.
Speaker 1 (20:51):
Even like or yeah, exactly, I've been talking about role
playing games. Now maybe I should talk about this fantasy
movie that I really like and that'd be fine too.
I mean, having it grow organically is probably a good
tip as well, you know, don't you don't necessarily have
to force it into any kind of any specific Hey,
it's Jonathan from twenty twenty four. Again. We're gonna take
(21:12):
another quick break, but we'll be back to wrap up
this classic episode of tech Stuff that originally published back
in two thousand and nine. So an easy way to
build an audience, A good dependable way pay them no
(21:36):
is to have a regular and dependable production schedule. Yes,
if you publish your podcast, you know, whenever you have time,
and that's it. And so it may be that you
push one out one week and then the next week
you have a second episode, and then it maybe three
or four weeks before you have a third episode. It's
(21:56):
very difficult to build an audience that way. People will
tend to to lose interest and start to leave. So
it's good to set up a schedule of publication and
stick to it as best you can. And part of
that that can be really challenging if you just you know,
some weeks you just don't have the time to do recording, right,
I mean, or you're sick with the swine flu. Yeah,
(22:20):
so what what what we do is Chris and I
will sit down, we record two podcasts at a time,
sometimes three uh in one recording session. Uh, and then
we do enough of these so that we've built up
a backlog of episodes so we can when when we
started publishing, we had actually recorded I don't know, maybe
six or seven episodes total before the first one ever
(22:44):
was released.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
I think there may have been more of that. More
than that, It could have been as many as like
ten or twelve. Yeah, so they plus they wanted to
evaluate them.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
We wanted to.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
They had other people listening to them too to see
what they thought. And you know, they change, so, you.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
Know, because it was a thing we were lucky they
didn't have to. They didn't want us to change too much.
I mean, they they gave us the go ahead to
make them longer, and that was about it. But the yeah,
you know, if you if you record them ahead of time,
if you do, if you do several episodes so that
you have a backlog, then you don't have to worry
so much on those times where you know you just
don't have the time to record, You've got episodes to
(23:21):
fall back on and you can keep publishing them even
if you had to take a break on recording. Now granted,
of course that's only gonna work for so long. You can't,
you can't. We found that out. Yeah, Yeah, we've we've
run Yeah, we ran out of the backlog a couple
of times and then had to go into some intense
recording sessions to build it back up. We're currently I
(23:41):
guess maybe a week and a half ahead something like that,
something like that. So at any rate, the the best
advice there is just make sure you've got a few
episodes recorded, uh, and and publish them, like I said,
on a regular basis, whether that's once a week or
every day. I mean, if you're doing a daily podcast,
(24:03):
you're probably recording every day. Anyway, that might be a
little bit different.
Speaker 3 (24:07):
That's like challenging.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
Our episode is not necessarily timely. We aren't always tackling
something that's in the news, although we have done that before,
and we do a little of that on Tech Stuff Live. Yeah,
we've got a live streaming show that we handle most
of the timely stuff. We don't. We don't worry about
that so much in this podcast, although we have, like
I said, tackled some some fairly timely topics. Yeah. Yeah,
(24:28):
so if you're if you're not handling, if you're not
talking about something that is time sensitive, then you have
the luxury of being able to record as many as
you like before you start going live if it is
something that's time since, of course that does change things.
If you're doing something where you're you're discussing, say a show,
a television show, and you want the episode to go
(24:48):
up live the day after the television show airs, you
don't have that kind of flexibility. So, I mean, it
all will depend on your situation, but I do think
that if you can, if you can established that reliable
publication schedule, you will build an audience much faster than otherwise.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
And just just as a comment, I sort of envy,
uh stuff you missed in history class, because you know
that's history for us. We have actually recorded stuff and
have it have had it go out of date before
it actually goes live because we're doing publication.
Speaker 3 (25:22):
Yeah, and then you know we go oh.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
Man, yeah, nothing like saying something like you know, android
phone is never going to go to any other carrier,
It's just going to stay on T Mobile. And then
the next week you're like whoa, it's unsprint. Well all right,
well you know that. Haha. We'll just have people, Oh
it's on Verizon. Now we've some of them.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
We've had to uh have our engineers re edit a
couple of the podcasts, like go back in the studio
for five minutes and sort of record a patch to
uh rip out the old one.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
You may have actually noticed a couple of yeah, because
there's some of those just in. Yeah, we've done a
PostScript where you could tell that we had to go
in afterward. Sometimes our our editors are just very good
at cutting out the offending bit and inserting a new
bit and you can't even tell thank you, Lizzy, Thank
you Lizzie. So, do we have any other tips that
(26:13):
we want to give, like any other like just general
tips about podcasting.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
Just want to reiterate, don't get hung up on the
whole podcasting biz thing, because you can honestly do this
with a computer and a microphone. Just make an MP
three of your yourself talking and making a podcast. Yeah,
it's not it's not rocket surgery. I can't yeah, I
can't imagine.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
I can't imagine what it would be like to do
this on my own.
Speaker 3 (26:40):
Yeah, I think it would be harder.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
I mean, we have people who record this for us,
we have people who edit the podcast, we have people
that publish them to iTunes for us, which is for
which we're all extremely grateful. Speaking for everyone there, well
even I'm pretty sure.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
I mean, even just thinking about doing it without a
co host. Then when it's just you and a microphone,
that changes the dynamic quite a bit. O whither. Yeah,
I don't know if he meant that he was gonna
ditch me or that he was going to, uh, you know,
he wanted to take the show over himself. Yeah, I was.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
I was totally gonna start a new podcast called Stuff
on my Desk, And because that never changes, I don't
have to worry about it.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
Seven episodes and then just rerun them. Yeah, exactly. It's
sort of a mini series. Those are our our tips
and just you know, general information of what we do. Uh.
If you you're curious about our process, we pick our
topics usually the week before we record, and then the
day of the recording is when we've end up doing research.
(27:49):
Despite the fact of having an entire week to have
looked into it, but we researched the topics independently, we
come together, we have our conversation, and then we sit
there and notice that we've been recording for like thirty
minutes and then realize that we need to stop.
Speaker 3 (28:04):
I notice the timers off.
Speaker 1 (28:05):
Well, that's because my phone started vibrating because of.
Speaker 3 (28:07):
The Oh yeah, there's a kick. Leave your phone out
of the studio.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
Okay, I have my phone set on airplane mode. It's
just because the damn schedule thing went off.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
I'm I'm telling you. I'm saying, don't forget to turn
off that stuff. Actually, uh, we're not. We're generally not
supposed to have phones in here because they actually cause
interference with our equipment. Yeah, including phones that are because
our studio is actually in the middle of the office
and people whose phones are the people who sit just
around there.
Speaker 3 (28:33):
It can the equipment can actually pick that up.
Speaker 1 (28:35):
Well, that's that's why I have it on airplane mode,
so it doesn't I know, it doesn't say I'm stop
a tip, stop persecuting me. I hope you enjoyed that
classic episode of tech stuff. It's always fun to go
back and listen to those. I was actually really enjoying
that listen because I got to hear some names of
folks that I haven't seen in years, like Liz, I
(28:56):
haven't seen her in years. She was such a joy
to work with, and also names of people that I
still work with to this day, which is amazing you
think about how much time has gone by, but you know,
Matt Frederick, he's still a coworker. Jerry, She's still a coworker.
So pretty cool to go back. I mean, I think
it says a lot about a company, even though the
(29:17):
company has changed around us a couple of times. But
it says a lot about a group of people when
you have a core of those folks who just stick together.
That I think is a really positive aspect of any group.
I hope you enjoyed this classic episode, and I'll talk
to you again really soon. Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production.
(29:43):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
TechStuff News
Host
Jonathan Strickland
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