Re-Humanize Your Podcast Before It's Too Late

PPS3E24 Re-Humanize Your Podcast Before It's Too Late - Transcript

Has the pendulum swung too far away from podcasting as an intimate medium in our haste to resist that cliche, we might be editing out the humanity from our podcasts.

[00:00:17] Hello, and welcome to another podcast. Pontifications with me, Evo, Tara plastics. That's exactly how I felt. It felt like I was listening to a piece of plastic. Talk on the phone podcasts recently, the conversation we're going to have today, we want to oftentimes push some knowledge down our podcast, feed to our listeners, some sort of information.

[00:00:48] And we want to make sure that information is received by our, the people that are listening to us. And sometimes when we find some information, we want to share it. We're not really experts, but oftentimes we are, but let's let's address the non-expert thing. I remember a few years ago, I was at an event and this event featured several speakers throughout the evening.

[00:01:13] Each giving short talks, variety of topics, very fun, entertaining. Uh, typically tip entertaining evenings when we, when we do these things, but one of the presenters got up there and began giving his talk about a concept, which I've already forgotten what it was. And it was just a minute, maybe two minutes into the talk.

[00:01:33] And it was very clear that this person didn't really know what they were talking about. I mean, they had some knowledge and they probably pulled some knowledge out of. Well, as we'd later figured out a single book that they had read like a month before and said, this is such great stuff. I want to give information.

[00:01:52] And so they got up there and just dumped out the information from the book. They were so excited to share the information in the book. I'm fine doing them. And that's how knowledge gets passed around is we share the knowledge that we have with, with other people. The problem was there was no. Humanity in it.

[00:02:11] I mean, sure. We got his excitement from learning this new information, but he wasn't able to really communicate the value of having the information. It was really only his excitement of having the information rather than other than it came down. And that fought back to that presentation. When I felt like I was having a piece of plastic, talk to me about a topic on a podcast recently, because in both cases, The humanity was missing in the, in the presenter on stage.

[00:02:41] I got his humanity of being excited, but he was unable to convey the information to me when I was listening to the podcaster, pretend like they were a piece of plastic talking back to me. They too were just regurgitating information without any real humanity that they lack. The excitement and enthusiasm was more like a reading, a standard Wikipedia article.

[00:03:06] To me, that is not what people want to listen to them. At least not on podcasts. I think we've got this wave of people out there right now that are trying to, as I said, in the introduction to the show goes so far away from podcasting is an intimate medium, because that's a bit of an overused cliche that we're going too far on the other side.

[00:03:29] You know, every show I think every podcast I think can be made better. And with, and a lot worse without humanity. Take a fact based news program, short format news program. And we'll we'll use pod pod news as an example of what about that is short couple of minutes long, just reading out the facts, right?

[00:03:51] What is a human being, reading at the facts? There's not a lot of room for commentary. Yeah, there's a way. And James does a good job of that. There's a way of bringing there. The person who's curating that list, their personality to Ru small things here and there subtle, not a lot of room for large expo, but you can certainly insert yourself into the reading of the news.

[00:04:14] If in fact that's what your show is doing, reading off the news, or just providing some sort of a, a fact based thing. Be funny, be interesting. Do something with it. More journalistic styles. The more journalistic story, not necessarily storytelling, but actually truly reporting on a story. A story itself, definitely plenty of room in the podcasting space for journalists to insert themselves to the story, which has been a bad thing in regular journalism.

[00:04:43] We don't hear often any longer, thankfully. The reporter on the street saying this reporter visited here, talking about themselves in a third person, says it's a dumb, right? And we're not doing it on podcasting podcasting. We are encouraging the journalist to explore them selves, but themselves, if not necessarily in the story, talk to us about how they were affected by covering the story they want to.

[00:05:05] We want them to make it personal for us more in narrative driven show. Clearly need some humanity, but even, even non that narrator narrative stories, where you go interview a bunch of people and cut out yourself as the interviewer, I've talked about that on the program previously, you can still keep the humanity in there of yourself.

[00:05:26] It's you? You're the humanity where you want, not just your guests, not just the people you're interviewing on the street, but that really comes through and how you select the people to be on the program. And then maybe even how you possibly wrap it up at the end with putting in your voice. Lots of ideas of how you can do that.

[00:05:43] And then that no narrator style of doing a narrative program is a little, it's a lot, it's a challenge, right? But I think there's still a way to do it subtly with you as the architect in control that shall be able to come through. Now, the worst thing for me is when the person is really a human, but they've really taken out the humanity like that piece of plastic talking to me.

[00:06:10] I am. I began this with, so yeah, that's just, you know, if you're a PR, you're a person be a person, a little you in your podcast goes a long way, put more you in the podcast of it all. Cause that'll let, give him go a longer way. And the reason I bring all this up, the reason this is so important right now is we're already seeing some new applications and services.

[00:06:35] It being introduced into our podcasting industry. That will do a lot of what we do specifically. It will narrate articles for you. Do I need someone reading me, the headlines, someone sitting down behind their microphone and reading the headlines and making that as a podcast. When I now have a new service, which allows me to pick and choose my own news sources, and it will automatically narrate in a much better voice than we've ever heard of before.

[00:07:06] Right. We have these new, highly, well, they sound great. These new voices that are reading and that news article that I can tweak that algorithm to me the way I want it to be. And if it's going to make a podcast for me, do I need someone just sitting and reading? We headlines. I'm just going to be reading the tweets.

[00:07:24] It's going to be reading articles. Anything that I want we're on the edge of this. I don't know what we call it. An oral web, maybe. We're not just consuming things, textually, weeding with our eyes. We can not read with our ears and even in such a way to where it's compelling and interesting, it's going to be very difficult for those podcasters who have sucked all the humanity out of their show to compete.

[00:07:48] When I've got a robot reading to me in a human voice. Well, I'm probably going to pick the robot because I can tweak what I want it to be. So my message. If I have one today is podcasters. Don't forget about your humanity, right? Be vulnerable. Be willing to have an opinion and be willing for that opinion to be proven wrong.

[00:08:11] Maybe you just a few episodes later of your program. So you have to be, be willing also to change your mind through all of this. These are the things that your audience wants your audiences listening to your show, largely because of you. So definitely get in there and put more you in your program before somebody can just, you know, use a program to have words similar to yours, read out to them.

[00:08:36] You'll lose in that battle. I asked you before, but I'll ask you again, find one person who's a podcast or in your life that needs to hear about podcast pontifications and share either this episode or another of your favorite episodes with them. That really helps me grow the show. And if you'd like to support me and the efforts that I do every day, when I bring you this program, go to buy me a coffee.com/evo, Tara.

[00:09:02] That's it enjoy the rest of your day. I shall be back tomorrow with yet another podcast. Pontifications cheers. .

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