Lesson 1 - How To Open Your Ears To The World Of Podcasts

Hi, and welcome to the First Lesson of A+ Podcast Projects. I should say a bit about the course: this is the first of 10 video lessons. 

Each lesson is also available in audio format, and written text, if that works better for you.

The format for this program is that each lesson has a short lecture. 

And then, there are practical hands-on exercises for each lesson. 

And you can find those below here in this section. 

A lot of what you will do in this course is listen. Maybe you know the adage: if you want to learn how to write, all you need to do is read. 

Likewise, if you want to learn how to make audio, then you have to listen. And in this course, I will share many things to listen to, but I will also teach you how to listen to them; and what I mean by that is how to open your ears, so to speak, which is actually about opening your mind, and that will help you to “see” the sound, the stories, that you’re listening to.

And this is because audio is a visual medium that works in reverse: The producer paints an image for the listener, by how they write the narration, the questions they ask in an interview, the music and sound that’s part of the story.

What you will learn here is that a piece of audio, which feels like it’s just one thing, is actually many layers of sound, music and effects.

The first thing that I want you to see is just how many different kinds of podcasts there are.

So, If you open up the worksheets for Lesson 1 you’ll notice that I have a list of 10 shows of shows there. I’ve chosen these to show you a range of work that has been popular, or critically acclaimed, in the last 5 years.

I don’t expect that you have heard of them already, and I won’t be surprised, or disappointed, to learn if you’ve not listened to any of them. I also don’t expect you to go and fully listen to all of them (this would take a long, long time).

If you’re curious about what these shows are all about, and you want to listen to a bit about them, I’ve made a Spotify Playlist with just the trailers, which is the very first episode put out that’s meant to announce the show. Generally they are between 2-3 minutes long. There’s one show that I could not find a trailer for, so I substituted a link to a fan YouTube link…you can find that on Lesson 1 Worksheet.

The task for Lesson 1 is actually to do some Googling about them….later we will get into the listening part, but for now, I just want you to become aware of the body of work in the podcast industry, in case you are completely new to it.

If you already know these shows, great. This will be a quick exercise for you. And if you know nothing about them, all you need to do is some quick Internet searches will help you to discover some of their key attributes of these shows.

On this sheet [LINK HERE], you will notice that I’ve partially filled it out. That was on purpose. I want to demonstrate the kind of information I’m look for, and also give you a head start, so that it’s not too overwhelming. 

The idea here is not to get lost for an entire day on this sheet. Although, I recognize that would definitely be possible. The trick here is to stay focused on the task, and fill out the descriptors, based on your surface level Google searches.

QUESTION 1:

What is the format of the show? 

• Is it a chat cast, where one or two people chat and gossip and sometimes interview another person? 
• A News format?
• Personal Biographical format? 
• An interview format
• A narrative essay or documentary format?

QUESTION 2:

What is the genre of the show? 

• Comedy
• True Crime
• History
• Narrative and personal?

HINT: sometimes there are multiple genres that apply here

QUESTION 3:

Type of Host?

• Is it one person, or two people
• Is the show narrated, or told through interviews? 

QUESTION 4:

The last colum asks you to describe the show in under 50 words. 

Please use your own words for this, not a cut and paste exercise.

If you’re having trouble finding the answers in Google, another tip is to open your podcast listening app (so this would be Spotify Apple, Overcast, Google, etc), search the show title, read the show descriptions, and quite often, they have links to a website from the show notes, which should be able to provide any of the missing information that you need.

PLAYLIST FOR TRAILERS OF 10 SHOWS FROM LESSON 1

GO HERE