I’ve just finished editing the conversations for the first episode of the new podcast:
En clave de podcast. Uncovering Spanish Podcasting.
Like Craig Wealand, my co-host, I’ve been podcasting for a while, but have stuck to the same podcast and format for 80 episodes.
I either podcast with myself, or bring on a guest to discuss their own work or specialist topic, or I work with Lisette, as co-host on the 21st Century Work Life podcast. I’ve pretty much got into the groove of that podcast – I can imagine my audience and I have my own ways (even if I couldn’t necessarily tell you what they are) of running the episodes with a guest.
So starting a new podcast, with a co-host I’ve never worked with before is really fun. For a start, the podcast is bilingual – and even though I did have a couple of bilingual episodes in Spain Uncovered, I’m much more comfortable speaking into the microphone in English. So having to hold a conversation in front of the microphone in English – with someone with whom I usually speak to in English – takes some getting used to.
The other thing I’ve never done before of course, is interviewing someone on the podcast with a co-host. Lisette and I have been on an episode with other people, but it’s always taken the form of a conversation, or a round-table. Bringing a guest into a show with two people, where he or she has the focus, requires a different dynamic. From little, practical things like knowing who gets to ask a question next or move onto the next topic, to finding out if the time is right to go off on a tangent.
As a podcast evolves, you find ways of starting a show, of ending it, or holding a thread throughout the episode. You find the right tone, a rhythm for the episode, sometimes even a structure. Starting a new show requires finding a new way, which can benefit from everything you’ve learned before but which has the space to find its own style. Working with someone else is of course the perfect way of allowing something new to emerge.
Launching a new podcast is exciting – and also very exposing, as you’re, in effect, sharing your process with an audience. And listeners don’t really know that, or care about that – they’re in essence listening to a finished product. But you can’t find your voice and your rhythm until you just DO IT (there’s no rehearsing here, only editing…) and that goes double for when you’re working with someone else.
For some of us, podcasting is addictive. And the more you think about creating new shows, the more shows you want to create. So watch this space if you have any interest in the world of podcasting, in particular in what’s going on in Spain with this medium – and how this medium reflects what’s going on in Spain.
(To subscribe to the En clave de podcast blog, look out for the sidebar on that site.)
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