Podcasting

For more information about my podcasting work, see https://craigconstantine.com/. For the Podcaster Community, see https://forum.podcaster.community/.

Extraction

Published 14 Days Ago  ·  All posts on Jan 2  ·  

This is a rich conversation around validation vs. reassurance, which I recently revisited. Go listen. (Seth Godin and Brian Koppelman, 7/7/2015, from The Moment podcast—from over 10 years ago, back catalog for the win!)

I recently re-listened. Then I took the audio file, had a transcript generated (from otter.ai), passed it to Claude.ai who wrote me a magnificent list of takeaways. I’ve been reading over them, thinking about them, and weaving the ideas into my thinking.

But I’m not publishing those takeaways because that would be devaluing Koppelman’s and Godin’s work. AI is a power tool which I use for various things. (For example, I use it to help me write show notes for my podcast episodes, which I do publish in full.) But I blog here to help my thinking (and in this case to encourage others to listen to a great podcast episode.)

I’m not trying to give you all the gems all polished up from something someone else created. If you want the gems, go listen; Find your way to get the gems. Because the gems are only valuable if you dig them out and polish them yourself.

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The Backwards Productivity Hack

Published 16 Days Ago  ·  All posts on Dec 31  ·  

Here’s what sounds wrong but turns out to be true: writing more actually creates less work.

When you feel overwhelmed, the last thing you want to do is add another task. Writing things down feels like more work piled on top of everything else you’re already not getting done.

But here’s what actually happens when you don’t write things down: You think about the same problem multiple times. You have the same realization three different times and forget it twice. You start working on something, realize you don’t know the next step, stop, and come back to it later only to re-figure out where you were.

That’s exhausting. And it’s way more work than writing things down.

Writing is slower than thinking. That’s actually the point. When you write, you can only hold one thought at a time. You have to finish the sentence before you start the next one. This forced slowness makes you think more clearly about what you’re actually trying to say.

And once it’s written down, you don’t have to hold it in your head anymore.

More writing = clearer thinking = less total effort.

It sounds backwards until you try it.

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This is the first in a series of posts about Hand-Write. Think Better.—a method for people who feel overwhelmed to start simply writing more on paper. Get the book →

Not ready for the book? Grab the free one-page quick reference—it covers the entire method on a single sheet. Download the PDF →

Podcasting anniversary

Published December 12  ·  All posts on Dec 12  ·  

I hope you have some way of sitting down and looking back on what you’ve actually accomplished. If you don’t, you’ll never notice what you’ve done; Instead you’ll only be able to stare at your imagined yet-to-do list.

I have a habit of looking back through my old journals to see what I’d written on the same date, years past. That’s the only way I can actually notice how much I’ve done, and how far I’ve come.

December 9, 2016 was the first time I recorded something, which led me directly into podcasting. It was a Skype call—yikes, dated memory—which I recorded for the purpose of getting a transcript.

At the time, I was trying to build a website where I was asking people to answer questions from a set list. But of course, writing is hard and it was a real struggle to get people to engage with doing it. So my friend Nick (who eventually appeared on the Movers Mindset podcast in, Play with Nick Anastasia, in 2022) said, let’s just record a Skype call and I’ll try writing something [answers to my movement related questions] from that. At the time, I tried to do some transcribing, gave up and sent it to rev.com for (I think it was) a $1/minute for human transcription. Yow, time and technology fly. And the rest is history.

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Stay in the tension

Stay in the tension

Published October 31  ·  All posts on Oct 31  ·  

I’m a little behind :) this episode of The Creatively Engaging is from 4 years ago, but is worth listening to.

About halfway through Anna and Monika start talking about what it was like to play the specific piece of music. There’s an interesting discussion about staying in the tension of being out of perfect timing… which all struck me as related to doing work as a creative in general.

@brucedevereux was also on Podtalk back at, https://forum.podcaster.community/t/persistence-with-bruce-devereux/540

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The do-not list

The do-not list

Published September 22  ·  All posts on Sep 22  ·  

If you’ve not heard of Burkeman’s book (Four Thousand Weeks, I’ve not yet read it) the seed is simple: Your life will be about 4,000 weeks in duration.

In this podcast episode, Burkeman talks about the common advice to prioritize your work and to do the important things first—an echo of Stephen Covey’s metaphor of rocks, pebbles and sand to be put into a jar representing your limited time. Burkeman zooms in on the implication—missed by most people—within Covey’s advice.

You only have finite time. If you have a prioritized list of what’s important to you, it’s the stuff in the middle that will do you in.

Your top 5 items are clearly those big things you should work on. But, your number 6 item—that one feels almost as important as number 5. You need to actively avoid the danger of getting sucked into that number 6 (and the other almost as important items right behind it.)

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This will give you hope

Published August 10  ·  All posts on Aug 10  ·  

Ira Glass is a champion for the Many Voices that public radio’s mission says it values. This American Life is not the voice of record, but a record of the voices around us. The stories are as fully strange and hopeful and funny and harsh and romantic as America itself…and occasionally all at the same time. They sprawl outside the usual standard-issue broadcast confines, telling about the way it actually was, what it felt like, what really happened. Ira is their shepherd, their piper. But it was not always that way. Ira’s Transom Manifesto, which will appear in serialized form over the course of his time with us, begins with his utter lack of talent at this work. We think Ira’s failures will give you hope. — Jay Allison

~ from Ira Glass – Transom

slip:4utaia1.

This is a sprawling, multi-part piece by Glass. It’s part manifesto and part autobiography. It’s well worth the read. I know my may seem odd—it’s just the opening paragraph that’s written by Allison.

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New medium, same challenge

Published August 6  ·  All posts on Aug 6  ·  

The need for such a contest more than 100 years ago is revealing enough, but the reaction of the judges to the prize-winning plan turned out to be even more so — and it says a lot about why business models for audio production and broadcast remain a struggle.

~ Julia Barton from, In 1924, a magazine ran a contest…

slip:4uniia1.

If one squints slightly, it’s all just the same issue: Things consume resources—radio, TV, podcasts, web sites for blogs, social media platforms—and take people’s time to create. It’s not possible for everyone to listen (read, web surf, etc) to everything for free, because reality is real.

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Nope. No more of that!

Published July 28  ·  All posts on Jul 28  ·  

The next day NBC’s president decided to make an exception to the network’s ban on recorded sound in order to interview Morrison and play a portion of the recordings. (Yes, both NBC and CBS banned recorded sound over their air, and would continue to do so for another decade. […] ).

It’s telling that the lesson America’s big radio networks took from this incredible eye-witness recording was simply, “Nope, no more of that!” As sound scholar Michael Biel pointed out, “This is…the first time that a recording was allowed to be broadcast on NBC, and I can count on my fingers the other times that NBC broadcast recordings — knowingly and unknowingly — until the middle of WWII.”

~ Julia Barton from, Hell Yeah: Airships!

slip:4ubepe1.

Barton’s Continuous Wave is a must read for anyone interested in audio, radio or podcasting— this article in particular.

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Which tools you pay for

Published May 24  ·  All posts on May 24  ·  

In the most-recent Podcaster Community campfire we got to talking about what tools and services are we currently paying for as part of podcasting. So today I put up a simple post in a few places to ask just that.

It’s one thing to talk about what we prefer, it’s another for us to have voted with our dollars. Me?

  • Hindenburg Pro
  • Zencastr (for recording podcasts)
  • Zoom (for everything except recording podcasts)
  • Vimeo (for hosting streaming video for the Podcaster Community)
  • Discourse (for the Podcaster Community forum)
  • Calendly (for scheduling, integrated with all the complexity of my personal calendar)
  • Otter.ai (for all the various audio I need to transcribe— pod recordings via Zencastr come with a transcript)
  • Podmatch.com

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Automatic, clickable time-references in our show notes?!

Published May 7  ·  All posts on May 7  ·  

Well this is interesting! I’ve been adding time-references to quotes when I include them in show notes. I simply put the <minute>:<seconds> after the quote.

Today I realized that Overcast auto-magically makes those time codes clickable — touching the time code jumps play right to that point!

This is amazingly great for the listener.

For years there’s been discussion about chapters in podcast episodes. They are supported, yes. But there’s complicated to actually set up. The original way, is to embed the information within the mp3 audio file—that requires either special software which does just that, or your DAW has to support marking the chapters as you’re editing. Either way, a bit tedious.

But if this little feature of link-up-time-references in the notes works across more players… this is HUGE.

So: Take a look at your favorite player. Find an episode (any episode of Podtalk, for example) that has time-references in the show notes… and tell me if it works in your player.

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Consider: How do you handle the tension between quality and consistency?

Published April 20  ·  All posts on Apr 20  ·  

We’re told to “just ship it,” but also to “make it great.” Where do you draw the line? When do you prioritize polish, and when do you hit publish?

I had to learn—the way you learn to ride a bicycle: do it over and over, the “principle” of the thing doesn’t help you do the thing—that the tension is a good sign. Now when I feel the tension between quality and consistency I know I’m in the correct place.

This morning, I’m thinking about a rowing metaphor: One oar is quality and the other is consistency. Pull evenly and the boat goes straight-ish. Also, if you try to row too hard, you get exhausted. The best way to make long-term progress is to row these two things, in balance, at a sustainable pace.

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Consider: What does a sustainable podcasting routine look like for you?

Published April 13  ·  All posts on Apr 13  ·  

This is a perennial struggle for me. My ability to imagine things that I’d like to create, vastly and consistently exceeds my ability to actually create.

The standard advice is to narrow one’s focus. Choose one thing to focus on— especially if we’re talking about charging for a product. But even more generally, in podcasting, the standard advice is to choose one thing… one show… one format…

I’ve come to the conclusion that I am not that sort of creative. A while back I stood up a new “home” for myself on the Web at craigconstantine.com and as I was deciding what to put there, this occurred to me:

I create a ton of free, public stuff. Each of my current projects is its own rabbit hole to explore.

After decades of struggle against my own nature, I’ve given up trying to focus on just one thing. Instead, I’ve learned to relax—or at least, to be slightly more relaxed. When the creative energy is flowing, I channel it. And sometimes I simply pause.

That’s how I keep my podcasting sustainable. I create processes and move things along when I feel engaged and motivated. And sometimes I pause.

Many podcasters burn out. What’s a pace that actually works for you? How would your show change if you prioritized sustainability over growth?

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What would make podcasting easier and more enjoyable for you?

Published April 7  ·  All posts on Apr 7  ·  

In the last year or so, it’s been making the time to just listen to podcasts.

When I started, I went through phases where I was consuming podcasts for particular reasons. Learning about how interviews are done. Learning about narrative structure. Learning what it takes to create highly-produced shows. (And probably more reasons that don’t occur to me now.)

Now, I make the time to listen just for the enjoyment. There are certainly many ways I can improve my podcasting, but I no longer need to be vigorously honing my craft. It can simply evolve at a leisurely pace, freeing me to simply enjoy the audio medium. That seems to feed back into my enjoyment of creating audio.

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What’s something podcasters tend to overcomplicate?

Published March 30  ·  All posts on Mar 30  ·  

I’m in a continuous over-analysis loop. Some aspects of podcasting are harder than I feel they need to be. I try to imagine ways to make whatever-it-is easier. But it will never be that all of it is easy. Why would I do it, if it was all easy?

I think that’s my over-complication: I spend too much time trying to make things easier.

Do the work. Do more of the work. Do still more of the work.

It’s great to assess one’s work. But I need to not get lost in over-thinking. It’s vanishingly rare (for me, these days) that anything is actually “wrong” with the work. Don’t over think it.

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