What Makes Podcasting So Hard?

 There's a belief that if everyone can accomplish a task, then it must be relatively easy. Depending on the tracking system you employ, there are about 600,000 active podcasts in the U.S. today. By contrast, there are about 180 moves released in a year. There are about 500 scripted TV shows, and there are abut 15,000 radio stations. 

If I were you, I'd take that prop bet on podcasting success. 

Podcasting doesn't have to cost a lot to begin and sustain. Equipment and hosting fees can be reasonable and affordable for middle class people. I don't see my neighbors, Andy and Mary Ann, financing a superhero movie for the tune of about $175 million. But they could start a podcast.

So is podcasting easy?

After all, hundreds of thousands of podcasts are born every year. 

It must be easy. Right?

Podcast consultant George Witt weighs in: "Podcasting is hard. Startup costs create the illusion that podcasting can be a gold mine, or at least an avenue to celebrity."

 

What Witt knows, and new podcasters find out eventually, is that podcasting is hard. If you're creating a podcast for the family and friends about your He Man toy collection or your latest conspiracy theory about ferrets being sex trafficked, enjoy your small listener base. But if you want to reach such a wide audience that Joe Rogan would be jealous, you better be in possession of the one tool you need for podcasting success -- your voice.

You don't believe me? Check out the audiobooks industry. Ask anyone who listen to audiobooks regularly, and they will espouse this one piece of wisdom: "It's all about the book narrator. If that person sucks, so will the book, no matter how good the book actually is."

Here's my example. I read this fabulous self-help book about emotional intelligence, an ingredient I seem to lack, like Vitamin B.

It was so good that several months later, I purchased the audiobook version, thinking that a "deep listen" would help me even more. The book's narrator was the author, some pointy-headed professor with a voice that was completely devoid of emotion. By comparison, Mr. Spock, the logical Vulcan on Star Trek, would be considered a regular "Jerry Seinfeld" compared to this author. It got so that I couldn't listen to the book while driving because a few words and I would fade into this ASMR fugue state. I was afraid my car would cross the double yellow line and smash into an Amazon vehicle that was probably carrying my latest Prime deliveries.

In podcasting, voice is all-important. Human beings are primarily visual creatures. We digest much of external reality through the eyes. In fact, any corporate communications workshop always contains the same nugget: humans derive only seven percent of meaning from the words that are spoken. The remaining 93 percent of our communications methodology emanates from our body language and tone.  

So on a podcast, you've completed lost the visual feature. Body language is non-existent. So the podcast hosts or hosts are left with their voice and inflection. A majority of podcast listeners stick to successful, well-known, and professional podcasts. These hosts are polished, practiced, and prescriptive. If you take a stroll around the podcast universe and listen to indie podcasts by enthusiastic amateurs, you'll quickly discover that infusing meaning into a podcast host's narrative has a high degree of difficulty.

Not everyone can be an effective podcast host. As large podcast networks sign celebrities to host podcasts, they are discovering that being a celebrity does not mean that you can host a podcast.

 One key difference between podcasting and the visual media is summarized by Adam Carolla, whose eponymous podcast began in 2009. In a recent Entertainment Weekly magazine article about celebrity podcasts, Carolla hit the mark with "It's hard to get by on your looks when you're in podcasting."

Carolla's words have rung true for some social media influencers who have tried podcasting only to discover that posing and smiling are their strong suits, not talking in a compelling way for a few hours a week.

So what makes a podcast host "listen-able?"

First, let's consider that listening is an exceedingly difficult skill. After all, we go to school for  several years to learn how to write. It takes years to learn how to read at an acceptable level to make it through life. Listening classes? There are none. It is an assumed skill.

That is a very bad assumption.

According to multiple studies on listening, about 90 percent of us are bad listeners. Did you just hear that? 90 percent!

How could that be? It turns out that people's perceptions of their listening skills mirrors that of their driving skills. Most people think they are above-average drivers -- and listeners. 

They are not. 

Why are people bad listeners? Put simply, most people hear the words spoken but do not make the effort to actively think about what is being said by other people. What did they mean? 

Effective listening goes hand in hand with gaining understanding, not just information. 

As Stephen Covey once said, "Most people don't listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply."

To summarize, an effective podcast host has to overcome the inherent weakness of human sense of hearing. Even though a person may hear the words you speak, they may not understand what you are saying. 

It's a tall order for a podcast host to be a good communicator. How do they do it? Let's look at some of their best practices.

First, contrary to popular belief, great podcast hosts do not have a unique voice. Not everyone can be David Attenborough, Morgan Freeman, or James Earl Jones. But effective podcast hosts do not have to sound like Darth Vader.

"Luke, I am your father."

Podcast hosts do have to speak clearly. Simple, right? Not so much. Listen to people talk. They slur their words or jam them together so that the listener must work hard to figure out where a word ends and another begins.  In everyday life, that's no problem. On a podcast, huge problem.

"Listeners are not going to work that hard to understand a podcast host," notes podcast consultant George Witt. "A good podcast host breathes life into words, so comprehension by the listener is enhanced and the listener is fully engaged in the narrative."

Here's a secret. Effective podcast hosts talk slower than average. They have a cadence to their voice. They emphasize certain words and phrases. For example, the average speech maker will spit out at a rate of 125-150 words a minute. By contrast, radio DJs, car salespeople on TV commercials, and average people blow through that speed limit and talk at between 175-200 words per minute.

Too fast and you impede comprehension by your audience. Too slow and people are drifting into the netherworld between napping and consciousness. Hey, we've all done it at a meeting. We're listening to Justin talk about price per rental square footage, and then suddenly his slide deck is complete. 

You know your eyes didn't close. But everything's a bit fuzzy.

So podcast hosts don't rush. Their timing is perfect. They don't rush through words because they need to emphasize some words more than others. When you blaze through a sentence at light speed, you've given yourself zero chance to inject meaning into your words.

Consider Dallas Taylor on the popular podcast about sound, Twenty Thousand Hertz. 

Taylor's intro:  "You're listening to Twenty Thousand Hertz." If you haven't listened to that podcast (and I recommend you do), just check out the six-word intro. 

Let's break down those six words. First, Taylor doesn't rush. It's the name of the podcast. It's natural to emphasize it. Second, Taylor injects a deliberate cadence into the words. Listen to it again. He says: "twen-ty thouz-and hertzzz. " Taylor elongates the words and then ensures that they are no abrupt stops in the words, hence the z sound for the second part of "thousand" and they slight echoing effect of "Z" again at the end of hertz.

Inject meanings into your words. Most people do not do that. Why? Because they can't. They wouldn't make it through the day. Ask someone about the energy it takes to do a TED Talk. They'll tell you it's energizing but exhausting. All your physical effort, psychological focus, and sensual interoception is on high alert. 

I used to work in public relations and usually wrote press releases and stayed in the background because my public persona was about as likable as Joe Rogan at an epidemiology conference. This one time, I had to do a live news broadcast spotlighting our company's new business initiative. I was literally shaking. When the newswoman who was interviewing me got the 60 seconds warning  from the cameraman, she turned to me and said, "Ready to fire up the engines." What she meant was to sound enthused, energized, electric, and exude confidence. Somehow I managed to publicize the company's new service, so I sounded excited, and the service sounded exciting. That 60 seconds drained me.

My public relations manager always made us stand up when taking a phone call from a member of the media. Why? Because sitting in your chair made you too comfortable. Too suspectible to make a Jane Campion-type gaffe at the Critics Choice Awards. Stand up. Get your body primed and your mind will follow.

Imagine how podcasts hosts have to maintain that level for 20 to 60 minutes or more. 

So good podcast hosts develop an acute sense of timing. How fast to speak. When to speak. When to ask for clarification. When to slow down a guest who's so jazzed up to be on the podcast that they are speaking at NASCAR speeds. A good podcast host acts as an editor for a podcast guest, who tend to blurt out their narrative in massive word dumps. The podcast host wants to build a narrative. Release facts and insights logically and so that interest is juiced up. It's like being the director on a movie set.

Podcast hosts -- and people who excel at speeches -- also employ techniques that in writing would be a serious violation. The use of the word AND to start a sentence on a podcast is a smart technique for emphasis. As the podcast host ends a sentence and begins another with a strong, "AND" everything that comes after that is highlighted as important.

Moreover, podcast hosts ensure that the scripts they use (either word-for-word or bullet point) have short sentences. Again, speechwriters will tell you that sentences that are longer than 11 words force podcast hosts to lose volume, timbre, and fullness in their voice. Why? Because long sentences do not allow for a speaker, or, in this case, podcast host to take a breath. As a speaker, without that breath, a speaker tends to unconsciously talk faster to finish a setence to catch that breath or lose vocal momentum. 

I think Kara Swisher on the Recode Decode podcast was espeially good at crafting short, hard-hitting sentences. She's just as effective on Vox's Sway. Amy Westervelt on the Drilled and Rigged podcasts can deliver short, punchy sentences like Mike Tyson. On the Gastropod podcast, co-hosts Cynthia Graber and Nicola Twilley turn conciseness into a superpower.

Finally, David Brown of Wondery's Business Wars podcast and Shankar Vedantam of the Hidden Brain podcast both excel at infusing their narrative with meaning, drama, and insight. Brown has this resonate quality about his voice. He's that person you meet who can make a question like, "excuse me, where are the restrooms?" sound weighty and impactful. Vedantam's voice exists at a higher vocal pitch but he manages to inject rhetorical flourishes to his podcast. For example, Vedantam makes statements and then immediately questions the accuracy of those statements. It's clear that he isn't willing to dispense answers but travel with listeners on a 30-minute road to psychic exploration. In effect, he battles listeners' confirmation basis by leading them rhetorically to discover insight on their own.

So we began this process disputing any pre-conceived notions that podcast hosting is as easy as hating the smugness of Tucker Carlson. It's not. Podcast hosts learn their craft by employing successful rhetorical tools that infuse meaning into their narrative and invite the listeners into the collective search for new insights. 

The great podcast hosts do not treat their audience as 'listeners." Instead, they want them to use their ears to connect to their brain and become a participant in the podcast narrative. 

For example, Twenty Thousand Hertz released a February 2022 episode, "Being Dallas Taylor," in which the host, Dallas Taylor, looked up and interviewed five other people with the same name. I listened to that 45-minute episode and then immediately when it was over, looked up people with my name.

Unfortunately for me, the six other people with my name are all much more successful and talented than me. The point is -- beyond my underachieving -- is that Taylor got me to do more than listen.

That's powerful.