Tag Archives: podcasts

BE PREPARED: Lessons Learned from First Podcast Interview Attempt

Posted on by John

So, remember the idea I had of getting episode 2 of my podcast up by today? Well… not so fast. I guess one might say I had to eat a big piece of humble pie, in at least trying to fully grasp the challenges that would come with actually interviewing someone. I’ve sat on it for a little over a week though, and have learned a few things that one might think I’d have recognized from all of my years of listening to NPR and the like.

I’ll begin by saying that the issues I faced were by no means a result of my interviewee, a person whom I’ve known for many years from my time as a UNC student and considered a mentor throughout that rocky period. In fact, she tried to take my shakiness and do the most she could with it, clearly having experience in the area of participating in interviewing. (And just to give her the plug I still hope to in a future podcast but can’t at the moment for reasons you’ll see later, she is Dr. Brenda Mitchell, author of a wonderful hildren’s book called Anthony’s Adventures, Already A Winner!)

I suppose the first lesson learned is that listening does not equal doing? Man, I have a much higher respect for those who can carry on complex conversations, following different lines of thought and coming up with great questions to bolster or deepen the audience’s understanding of a given subject. Do they teach that kind of stuff in journalism school? Or is it something you just have to have.

One thing I’m sure they cannot teach is awareness of the need for time flexibility. Whenever you’re asking someone to speak with you and they’re willing to give of their time, you must be prepared for that time to shift due to changing circumstances. The interview had been scheduled for 2 PM on Saturday, but as I settled on the couch with my coffee at 1, she texted asking if I could go ahead with it. This meant I no longer had the 30 minutes prior to meditate and try to get myself into the right headspace, as well as working out exactly how I would record it. But well now I know that I had better do those things well ahead of time and not depend on things to stay the way they had been planned.

After coming up with a nominal solution, she would record the Zoom call and send it back to me as I discovered that one cannot record Zoom from the phone, we began. And therein lay my second lesson: it’s probably best to give the author heads up on what the topic will be. I’d vaguely told her that it was a podcast focused on disability issues, but hadn’t explained that I would talk about her children’s book which addresses dealing with bullying as a result of visible difference. Worse, I just launched right into the body of questions saying “and in this book” with no indication that the title would be given later, meaning she covered for me and told the audience what it was indeed called. Next time I’ll just make sure that the author knows I will give the book blurb prior to playing the recording, or I will go ahead and do it in the introductions.

I would have liked to learn whatever other lessons that recording held, though I could guess that some were to speak more slowly and give myself time to thing so that I’m not “um, ah, ur-ing” all the time, but unfortunately the file was too large to share easily. That was fine though, as I was already pretty sure it wouldn’t meet basic posting standards. So, I need also to make sure that I have already worked out how I will record things and whether I can get everything to fit together in the end.

This is a big mountain to climb indeed, but I think it’s still an idea worth pursuing. I’m trying to be really careful before attempting to get another guest to make sure that I at least have a good enough understanding of what I’m trying to do to experience success. I want after all to promote myself and to elevate others’ work who have taken the time to highlight an experience, the experience of disability within the world, that is important to me and so many others I know. I hope you will still give it a listen whenever I can iron out all of the kinks, and as always, I hope my sharing helps someone else who is considering podcasting.

On Creating My New Podcast, and Joining Clubhouse

Posted on by John

While I am loving the technological changes we are experiencing of late, they also make me feel like we are speeding ever more inevitably to a “Ready Player One” world. In this book by Ernest Cline, society basically lives behind computer screens and does all of its transacting from bedrooms and other places at home, because a disaster has struck. With the pandemic possibly having no discernible end, it is not hard for one to imagine this kind of world taking hold for real, but even so I guess I’m embracing the possibilities it might create. It’s especially promising, hopefully not taken to extremes but existing in whatever form it does, for persons with disabilities.

I’ll talk more about the part that really makes one feel we are headed in that direction towards the end, but first I have created a podcast! Well sort of. At this point, only the trailer exists. But the idea, as you can hear in said trailer, is that I will interview different authors who have written works concerning disability in whatever way it is portrayed. I certainly want more than just blind and even deaf people to be represented, since I believe that we can actually be a more powerful block of “people with disabilities” if we work together. I think book portrayals are an important element of our ability to fit into society, because people make strong associations with the characters they read about and what they expect to see when encountering someone who seems to fit that description. I’ve not tried to land interviews yet, but I have composed an initial list of eight authors with whom I would love to speak. The tricky part will be coming up with a proposal that succinctly communicates the goal of this podcast and hopefully makes them want to do it.

Creating the podcast has been something of a challenge as well. I dithered on which platform to use, but when I went to re-evaluate Anchor I discovered that it has come a long way from what it was even a couple of years ago. I guess this is because they were acquired? I’m not aware of the exact relationship) by Spotify. They walk you through the whole process of setting it up, and even seem to provide the auto-transcript which I can then go in and edit, a much faster process than trying to write one up myself. So I’m going to continue developing the show, and I’ll let you know when it officially launches.

And speaking of things launching, I suppose, I’ve finally been invited to Clubhouse. By now, I suspect you’ve heard of this invite-only app that I’ve been told is, unfortunately, only available on iOS. I certainly hope they can change that soon. Anyhow, I was invited by two different friends within a couple of hours, so I signed up and started exploring. So far it looks neat, and I learned a lot by attending a presentation specifically about using Clubhouse with a screen-reader (I suppose the only screen-reader is VoiceOver at this point). I did find one book club of interest, and I think they’ll notify me if the club has another meeting some time soon. That’s one thing I’ve noticed, you can end up getting a lot of notifications about various rooms you might be interested in entering. I’ll have to go and look at settings to see if I can adjust what I want to hear about.

So those are some of the exciting happenings in my corner of the world. I’ll have my annual Job Days post coming soon, in which I will look at how things are shaping up at my employer and with my side hustle of book reviewing. In the meantime, I hope you are keeping well and staying safe.