Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology with
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. You've heard
Speaker 1: the rumors before, perhaps and whispers written between the lines
Speaker 1: of the textbooks. Conspiracies, paranormal events, all those things that
Speaker 1: disappear from the official explanations. Tune in and learn more
Speaker 1: of the stuff they don't want you to know in
Speaker 1: this video podcast from how stuff works dot com. Hello there, everybody,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Poette,
Speaker 1: and I'm the tech editor here at how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com. Sitting across from me as usual, that would
Speaker 1: be senior writer Johnathan Stripline. Let's turn this mother out, y'all. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: hey there all alright, So today we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about some podcasting tips. We actually get a lot of
Speaker 1: requests to do an episode about podcasting, and we keep
Speaker 1: coming up with the reasons why we shouldn't do it today. Right,
Speaker 1: we today, we decided to do it today. We're like,
Speaker 1: you know what, We're gonna get this all the way.
Speaker 1: You know why, because if we weren't doing our podcasting works,
Speaker 1: you know what we would be doing cantennis or tech
Speaker 1: conspiracy theories to other ones that we keep putting off. Actually,
Speaker 1: just between you and us, we're not supposed to talk
Speaker 1: about the tech conspiracy that's right. They don't want you
Speaker 1: to know, So let's talk about podcasting instead. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: we've had a lot of people ask us things, everything
Speaker 1: ranging from what kind of equipment do we use? What
Speaker 1: kind of software do we use? Uh, and just general
Speaker 1: tips on podcasting. So people who want to get into podcasting,
Speaker 1: what should they do? What should they avoid doing? And uh,
Speaker 1: A lot of the stuff that we have learned over
Speaker 1: the course of our what year and a half of podcasting, Uh,
Speaker 1: mainly we've learned through trial and error. Wow, a year
Speaker 1: and a half. Yeah, sorry, yeah, it's pretty much been
Speaker 1: a year and a half. And um yeah, and and
Speaker 1: he's he's right. Actually, Um, we were one of the
Speaker 1: very first podcasts at how Stuff Works com and um
Speaker 1: we followed stuff you should Know and stuff you missed
Speaker 1: in history class. So we were the third one. Actually,
Speaker 1: Marshall Brains Marshall Brain has been doing one for a while, right.
Speaker 1: He was doing a podcast in a blog sort of
Speaker 1: independently from the group for a long time. And then
Speaker 1: and then we jumped on board. And um, actually when
Speaker 1: when I was the first Josh's first co host on stuff,
Speaker 1: you should know, right, So you've been doing this longer
Speaker 1: than just about anyone else besides Josh. Um. But it's
Speaker 1: funny because we tried a bunch of different stuff. We've
Speaker 1: actually had uh, we got We've gotten some comments over
Speaker 1: the course of the last year and a half, like,
Speaker 1: you know who writes this stuff, right, and the answer
Speaker 1: is nobody. We actually, Josh and I tried a little
Speaker 1: bit writing some of this stuff out and that just
Speaker 1: totally we tried to hasket with that and that totally
Speaker 1: didn't work. The earliest tech stuffs we we outlined the
Speaker 1: heck out of those early early shows. Um, all right,
Speaker 1: so let's let's talk Let's talk about the genesis of
Speaker 1: tech stuff in general, and then we'll talk about some
Speaker 1: of the equipment we use, and then we'll give some
Speaker 1: podcasting tips. How about that? That sounds great? So, you know,
Speaker 1: this is the sort of stuff that we used to
Speaker 1: talk about before the show, and we would outline it
Speaker 1: and we would go point by point. We don't do
Speaker 1: that anymore, which is why we kind of go through
Speaker 1: things in a haphazard way, although I do feel compelled
Speaker 1: to point out that not all the podcasters here at
Speaker 1: how stuff Works dot Com go by that theory. Now,
Speaker 1: in general, we do try to be conversational. I mean
Speaker 1: that's there's nobody's I don't know if anybody that scripts
Speaker 1: out what they're going to say when they come onto
Speaker 1: the podcast. But um, I think everybody pretty much, you know,
Speaker 1: just has a good rapport with his or her co
Speaker 1: host and it's sort of okay, we're gonna talk about
Speaker 1: these ten things, make sure we cover this or that.
Speaker 1: Jonathan and I are just sort of looser about it.
Speaker 1: We don't we don't meet beforehand like some of the
Speaker 1: other podcasters too. So yeah, everyone has their own style.
Speaker 1: We'll get to we'll get to style in a little bit.
Speaker 1: So let's do the history of tech stuff. So um
Speaker 1: our editor in chief came to us conal Burne. He
Speaker 1: came to us and said, guys, we want you to
Speaker 1: do a podcast about technology. Think you would blow it
Speaker 1: out of the park. You'll be super rock stars, uh,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. And I looked around and said,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, what are you talking right? And I was like,
Speaker 1: let me go. I want to do it, let's do
Speaker 1: it now. And uh so we were told at that
Speaker 1: time that we were trying you know, this, this was
Speaker 1: brand new for us. It was not something that how
Speaker 1: Stuff works dot com had been doing before besides Marshall's
Speaker 1: podcasts and the the this is before even Stuff you
Speaker 1: Should Know had started to publish. This is uh just
Speaker 1: before it started to publish. So at that time, since
Speaker 1: we were all kind of new to this, we decided
Speaker 1: to put some limitations and some parameters up to kind
Speaker 1: of give us a framework so that we wouldn't just
Speaker 1: flail around the way we do now. Um speak for yourself,
Speaker 1: I flail pretty handily, thank you man. Okay, So the
Speaker 1: very the very first rules were that the episodes had
Speaker 1: to be around five minutes in length, and they were
Speaker 1: supposed to relate back to a specific article on the site. Wow,
Speaker 1: that just makes me want to laugh. Yeah, we don't
Speaker 1: do that anymore. We don't. We don't do either of
Speaker 1: those things anymore now. Now other podcasts they do, they'll
Speaker 1: they'll still cover specific articles, which is fine. We just
Speaker 1: that we don't have to do We're no longer required
Speaker 1: to do that, but we can do that if we
Speaker 1: want to. And we've done a couple of episodes where
Speaker 1: we've talked about specific articles, but fortunately we're no longer uh,
Speaker 1: restricted to just that. So back then, we discovered very
Speaker 1: quickly that it was hard to get into a topic
Speaker 1: and cover it in five minutes. Most of our episodes
Speaker 1: were pushing seven or eight minutes easily because by the
Speaker 1: time we were telling me the introducts, we had about
Speaker 1: two and a half minutes left to explain whatever it
Speaker 1: was we were talking about. But we also got feedback
Speaker 1: from our listeners that and the most of the feedback said,
Speaker 1: you know, I like the podcast, but it needs to
Speaker 1: be longer because you're not really getting into the topic.
Speaker 1: So with that, we extended the time to about ten minutes, right,
Speaker 1: we went from five to ten, And so if you
Speaker 1: look at those early Tech Stuff episodes, you'll see the
Speaker 1: first few or five minutes long, and then the next
Speaker 1: group is about ten minutes, and after that kind of
Speaker 1: explodes because we were told one day we came in
Speaker 1: and that was when Jerry was producing our show, uh,
Speaker 1: and she told us one day like, oh, don't worry
Speaker 1: about the time, just don't go over you know, twenty
Speaker 1: five minutes. That's probably that's probably about the upper length
Speaker 1: of what we want to hit. But other than that,
Speaker 1: you know, go as long as you need to go
Speaker 1: to explain the topic. And that's when our episodes really
Speaker 1: started to change. At the same time that we had
Speaker 1: the five and ten minute rule, we were outlining our
Speaker 1: episodes pretty heavily. Yeah, because we had to make sure
Speaker 1: we hit that time limit. We couldn't go over it,
Speaker 1: so we wanted to make sure we knew what we
Speaker 1: needed to hit. We couldn't just talk our way through it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And we also when we had that was very helpful
Speaker 1: when we had specific ideas that we wanted to hit
Speaker 1: in the podcast, to which um uh, we don't always
Speaker 1: get to in some cases. I've gone back and looked
Speaker 1: at my notes on a couple of podcasts and gone, oh, man,
Speaker 1: I didn't talk about that. Yeah, it's happened to me too,
Speaker 1: So you know that it can be useful to have
Speaker 1: an outline, especially if you want to do that. But
Speaker 1: then again, uh, most of the time when we do that,
Speaker 1: it's because we get so excited about whatever it is
Speaker 1: that we're talking about, and then we have so much
Speaker 1: we want to say about it that we just keep
Speaker 1: going yeah. So once those uh once once beforemat changed.
Speaker 1: We we started to change our own methods and we
Speaker 1: we began to realize that well, not yeah, sometimes so
Speaker 1: we went to the German opera range um, but no.
Speaker 1: The we began to realize that the more we would
Speaker 1: a pair together for a show that we were about
Speaker 1: to do, the less conversational it was, and the more
Speaker 1: like a lectur e it sounded. You know, it didn't
Speaker 1: sound like we have two guys trying to explain and
Speaker 1: talk about a a topic and give it context. It
Speaker 1: sounded like the prerecorded notes for some sort of you know,
Speaker 1: technology lecture. And so we started to do our own
Speaker 1: studying at that point, and then we would just meet
Speaker 1: for the podcast and we need to have our own notes.
Speaker 1: We would sometimes share links if we saw saw something
Speaker 1: that was really useful, so that the other person would
Speaker 1: also have access to it and not just you know,
Speaker 1: come out of nowhere and um. But then we would
Speaker 1: just we sit down at the microphones and hit record,
Speaker 1: and then we would torture whoever it was that was
Speaker 1: producing our show at the time with horrible puns as
Speaker 1: we talked about whatever the topic was. Yes, that's a
Speaker 1: that's a helpful tip that I would give you if
Speaker 1: you're considering doing your own podcast, make sure to use
Speaker 1: plenty of puns. Yeah, because lord knows everyone loves puns.
Speaker 1: Josh and Chuck are incredibly fond of puns. Yes, they
Speaker 1: like puns the way I like pie. You must hate
Speaker 1: pie a lot more than I thought you did. So
Speaker 1: let's talk a little bit about the equipment and software
Speaker 1: that we use. All right, So what do you want
Speaker 1: to start with? Microphones? Yeah, we'll talk about the mic
Speaker 1: So we were asking our producers about the microphones. Because
Speaker 1: you may find this hard to believe, but even though
Speaker 1: we are the tech writer and editor of how Stuff
Speaker 1: Wars dot com, we do not have a database filled
Speaker 1: with every single piece of equipment that is in our office. Yeah.
Speaker 1: That's that's true, and uh, you know, sort of bridging
Speaker 1: the gap between this history of tech stuff and the equipment.
Speaker 1: UM there are. One of the nice things about us
Speaker 1: getting into podcasting in the first place was we already
Speaker 1: had a studio available to us because there were other
Speaker 1: projects that we used a lot of this equipment for.
Speaker 1: We already had um, you know, high end video equipment,
Speaker 1: UM and audio equipment, and people who knew how to
Speaker 1: use it. Um, So you know, you don't necessarily this
Speaker 1: is not necessarily set up. You know, we already had
Speaker 1: some of this stuff. Yeah, we repurposed a lot of
Speaker 1: stuff that we had for other projects, specifically for podcasting. Um.
Speaker 1: We are not saying that you need to go out
Speaker 1: and purchase similar equipment because for one thing, it's probably
Speaker 1: out of a lot of people's price range. Um range. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's definitely on the mind if I were to do
Speaker 1: this on my own. But this is people have asked
Speaker 1: us what we used, so I thought we would go
Speaker 1: ahead and explain. So for our microphones, we use a
Speaker 1: kg S and they are C two thousand B microphones.
Speaker 1: We were told by Mr Matt Frederick that they are
Speaker 1: not omnidirectional, despite the fact that they totally look like
Speaker 1: omnidirectional microphones. But they're not. They're directional. They just have
Speaker 1: a wide angle or a wide cone that you can
Speaker 1: speak into, which is a good thing because occasionally, well
Speaker 1: you know, lounge in a weird way and just talk
Speaker 1: toward the microphone and it still seems to pick us
Speaker 1: up pretty well. Yeah, we also have a nice pop
Speaker 1: filter in front of itself. Yes, we do. Use pop
Speaker 1: filters because we don't want to pop our peas. Yeah.
Speaker 1: We also have as our pre amp UM. You don't
Speaker 1: necessarily have to have a pre amp if you've got
Speaker 1: a microphone. The plugs directly into say a USB port,
Speaker 1: but we aren't using that. We're using a pre amp,
Speaker 1: the the Applied Research and Technology pre amp UM, and
Speaker 1: we have one of those per input. We have got
Speaker 1: three of the pre amps because we do have three inputs,
Speaker 1: although we have not actually used the third one yet.
Speaker 1: UM Stuff you should know has used it for their
Speaker 1: healthcare series. They had Molly in and she got to
Speaker 1: she set in and joined Josh and Chuckers as we
Speaker 1: like to call him for sometimes listeners like to call
Speaker 1: me Chuckers when they forget that my name is Jonathan. Um, well,
Speaker 1: you know Jonathan sounds like Chuck. Yeah, we haven't figured out,
Speaker 1: by the way, which one of us should be more offended,
Speaker 1: Chuck should be more offended, or if I should. Neither
Speaker 1: of us are really offended, because you know, Chuck's a
Speaker 1: cool guy and and I'm not on his radar. So
Speaker 1: um now, as for as for the software we use,
Speaker 1: we're using uh final cut right, Yeah, so that's the
Speaker 1: that's the audio software we're using. We record with Soundtrack,
Speaker 1: which is part of that suite, and then um for
Speaker 1: all of our sound effects whenever we do soundscaping, Liz
Speaker 1: pulls that from the suite as well. Yeah, we're we
Speaker 1: are using a Macintosh computer to do this, but you
Speaker 1: there are software programs for Windows and Linux both that
Speaker 1: can can do the same kinds of things. And and
Speaker 1: Matt Frederick also wanted to me to point out that
Speaker 1: his favorite piece of equipment that we have, We're not
Speaker 1: using it right now, but his favorite piece of equipment
Speaker 1: is called the Blue Icicle, and you can plug an
Speaker 1: xcel Our microphone into this. It converts it to USB
Speaker 1: and it actually has a volume control on the device itself,
Speaker 1: so you can help control that the levels before it
Speaker 1: ever reaches your computer. Yeah. Yeah, then the name of
Speaker 1: the company is Blue and it is the article. So
Speaker 1: but he he wanted specifically for us to point that out.
Speaker 1: So that's that's our setup. But here's the thing. Now,
Speaker 1: we're gonna get into some podcasting tips. And one of
Speaker 1: the tips I would give people is don't sweat the
Speaker 1: the equipment and software that much. Yes, that's not necessarily
Speaker 1: that that that should not be your number one concern,
Speaker 1: because if you're concerned with having the most technologically advanced
Speaker 1: equipment and the most the software with the most features,
Speaker 1: you might have a podcast that sounds really good, but
Speaker 1: that that's not enough for listeners to tune into you
Speaker 1: week after week. Yeah, I mean it's it's uh, as
Speaker 1: long as you have a quiet room, um, you know,
Speaker 1: something preferably without hard floors and some where you're not
Speaker 1: gonna be Yeah, I mean you might. You might even
Speaker 1: try out a couple of different settings, especially if you
Speaker 1: have a laptop computer and something that you know, something
Speaker 1: that simply plugs into your your machine should be fairly
Speaker 1: easy for you to test a couple of different environments
Speaker 1: and see what sounds good to you. You can, I
Speaker 1: would suggest testing up several different kinds of microphones. Maybe,
Speaker 1: like there's some headsets that actually aren't that bad. They
Speaker 1: actually provide a very decent sound. Um. At home, I
Speaker 1: use a snowball mic which works really well for me.
Speaker 1: It's a nomnidirectional mic and it actually I like it
Speaker 1: a lot. But I use that with my mac um
Speaker 1: and then a lot of you know, I would probably
Speaker 1: recommend against using a a native microphone on a computer.
Speaker 1: I mean, some of them can pick up sound pretty well,
Speaker 1: but most of them you're not going to get the
Speaker 1: best sound quality out of those. And that's one thing
Speaker 1: I would say is getting an independent microphone is probably
Speaker 1: a good purchase, a good investment. I I think that, Uh,
Speaker 1: that's sort of a very basic necessity unfortunately, but you
Speaker 1: don't have to to fork over, you know, hundreds of
Speaker 1: dollars to to do that. In fact, you can even
Speaker 1: get a good XLR for less than hundred dollars really
Speaker 1: or maybe just over right. You would just need to
Speaker 1: have the equipment to plug it into exactly, so perhaps
Speaker 1: a nicicle or or a pre app or uh, you know,
Speaker 1: in an expensive board. It depends on how many inputs
Speaker 1: you're gonna want to use, too, because if you are,
Speaker 1: if you're gonna want to have, say, get your your
Speaker 1: friends together and do a podcast with a bunch of people,
Speaker 1: you're gonna need something to handle the different channels, assuming
Speaker 1: you're not all going to speak into one mic. Uh,
Speaker 1: you could be a little cozy quarters there. So let's
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about some other stuff like uh,
Speaker 1: post production. I just said right there, that was yes,
Speaker 1: I heard the now. Some podcasters would want to go
Speaker 1: in and take out all the uz um pauses things
Speaker 1: like that in order to make a podcast sound more
Speaker 1: smooth and professional. That would be really time consuming. It
Speaker 1: takes so much time that that can take. Okay, you
Speaker 1: imagine a thirty minute long podcast and then you and
Speaker 1: now you're going to interruptions you're gonna take keep doing.
Speaker 1: It will take you hours to get the sounds of
Speaker 1: Plette screaming out of your podcast because you're strangling him repeatedly.
Speaker 1: So concerning yourself with this, I think taking out really
Speaker 1: really bad stuff, like stuff where it just it brings
Speaker 1: the recording to us halt. That's fine, But I wouldn't
Speaker 1: worry about any of the small things because it gives
Speaker 1: your your podcast little character. People really talk like that.
Speaker 1: It's not something to be ashamed of. Unless you're like
Speaker 1: some sort of professional voice over actor or radio personality.
Speaker 1: You probably haven't trained yourself to take that that stuff
Speaker 1: out of your speech. I haven't, and I'm doing this
Speaker 1: as part of my job. So that's all well and good. However,
Speaker 1: you know, um yeah, I think one of the problems
Speaker 1: with that is, I mean, you sort of have to
Speaker 1: think about what you're gonna do here. But I think
Speaker 1: that also makes it sound really flat. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you were, you know, reading off a script, you
Speaker 1: don't have any ums or us it just it comes
Speaker 1: off as really really flat. Yeah, it doesn't. It's not
Speaker 1: very inviting to the listener necessarily. Uh So let's talk
Speaker 1: a little bit more about some other tips. The one
Speaker 1: of the big tips I would I would give anyone
Speaker 1: who's getting into podcast is really, what's the purpose of
Speaker 1: your podcast? Define that figure out why you want you know,
Speaker 1: why do you want a podcast? What is it that
Speaker 1: you want to say? Is there a specific topic or
Speaker 1: uh category of information that you really want to talk about.
Speaker 1: Is there a specific game that you want to do
Speaker 1: a podcast about, or a specific television show or genre? Um,
Speaker 1: don't you know? Doing a podcast about practically anything sounds
Speaker 1: like it's very liberating, but it actually ends up being
Speaker 1: really frustrating and difficult to to pull off well. It
Speaker 1: also is hard to get an audience because someone may
Speaker 1: have a real interest in one topic, but your next
Speaker 1: topic doesn't interest them at all because it's not at
Speaker 1: all related to the first one. It's hard to build
Speaker 1: an audience that way. And one thing you can consider too,
Speaker 1: is um limiting yourself more at the beginning, because you
Speaker 1: can you can always change. You think back to the
Speaker 1: early days of tech stuff. We had to uh, we
Speaker 1: had to talk about a specific article. So we would
Speaker 1: look on the site for something that we wanted to
Speaker 1: talk about and then okay, we got a topic, a
Speaker 1: specific topic, and we you know, would riff on that
Speaker 1: for five or ten minutes. Well, now, um, one of
Speaker 1: the things that Jonathan and I and I like to
Speaker 1: try to do, I mean, other than answering listener meals.
Speaker 1: That's kind of been where we've been the last few weeks.
Speaker 1: But um, you know, we've want to try to come
Speaker 1: up with something that's not on the website. But you know,
Speaker 1: we still are working within the confines of computers and electronics. Um.
Speaker 1: But you know, it did give us a platform from
Speaker 1: which to start, because we already had something to talk about.
Speaker 1: I mean, you could say, well, I want to talk
Speaker 1: about everything, but maybe start with something you know, well,
Speaker 1: like video games. And then maybe you say, well, I
Speaker 1: like talking about video games, but what if I want
Speaker 1: to talk about board games too, so you could have
Speaker 1: a games podcast or even like you yeah, exactly, I've
Speaker 1: been talking about role playing games. Now, maybe I should
Speaker 1: talk about this fantasy movie that I really like, and
Speaker 1: that that'd be fine too. I mean, having it grow
Speaker 1: organically is probably a good tip as well, you know,
Speaker 1: don't You don't necessarily have to force it into any
Speaker 1: kind of um any specific model. Another thing I would
Speaker 1: recommend an easy way to build an audience, a good
Speaker 1: dependable way pay them no, is to have a regular
Speaker 1: and dependable production schedule. If you if you publish your podcast,
Speaker 1: you know, whenever you have time, and that's it. And
Speaker 1: so it may be that you push one out one
Speaker 1: week and then the next week you have a second episode,
Speaker 1: and then it maybe three or four weeks before you
Speaker 1: have a third episode. It's very difficult to build an
Speaker 1: audience that way. People will tend to um, to lose
Speaker 1: interest and start to leave. So it's good to set
Speaker 1: up a schedule of publication and stick to it as
Speaker 1: best you can. And part of that um that can
Speaker 1: be really challenging if you just you know, some weeks
Speaker 1: you just don't have the time to to do recording, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, and have or you're sick with the swine flu.
Speaker 1: So what what what what we do is Chris and
Speaker 1: I will sit down. We record two podcasts at a time,
Speaker 1: sometimes three uh in one recording session. Uh. And then
Speaker 1: we do enough of these so that we've built up
Speaker 1: a backlog of episodes so we can when when we
Speaker 1: started publishing, we had actually recorded and I don't know,
Speaker 1: maybe six or seven episodes it's total before the first
Speaker 1: one ever was released. I think there may have been
Speaker 1: more of that. More than that. It could have been
Speaker 1: as may as like ten or twelve. Yeah, so they
Speaker 1: plus they wanted to evaluate them. We wanted to um.
Speaker 1: They had other people listening to them too to see
Speaker 1: what they thought. And you know, so, you know, because
Speaker 1: it was a thing we were lucky they didn't have
Speaker 1: to They didn't want us to change too much. I mean,
Speaker 1: they gave us the go ahead to make them longer,
Speaker 1: and that was about it. But the yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: if you if you record them ahead of time, if
Speaker 1: you do, if you do several episodes so that you
Speaker 1: have a backlog, then you don't have to worry so
Speaker 1: much on those times where you know you just don't
Speaker 1: have the time to to record, You've got episodes to
Speaker 1: fall back on, and you can keep publishing them even
Speaker 1: if you had to take a break on recording now. Granted,
Speaker 1: of course that's only gonna work for so long. You can't,
Speaker 1: you can't. We found that out. Yeah, Yeah, we've we've
Speaker 1: ran Yeah, we ran out of the backlog a couple
Speaker 1: of times and then had to go into some intense
Speaker 1: recording sessions to build it back up. Um, we're currently
Speaker 1: I guess maybe a week and a half ahead something
Speaker 1: like that. So um, at any rate, the the best
Speaker 1: advice there is just make sure you've got a few
Speaker 1: episodes recorded, uh, and and publish them, like I said,
Speaker 1: on a regular basis, whether that's once a week or
Speaker 1: every day. I mean, if you're doing a daily podcast,
Speaker 1: you're probably recording every day. Anyway, that might be a
Speaker 1: little bit different. That's challenging. Our episode is not necessarily timely.
Speaker 1: We aren't always tackling something that's in the news, although
Speaker 1: we have done that before because and we do a
Speaker 1: little of that on Tech Stuff live. Yeah, we've got
Speaker 1: a live streaming show that we handle most of the
Speaker 1: timely stuff. We don't. We don't worry about that so
Speaker 1: much in this podcast, although we have, like I said,
Speaker 1: tackled some some fairly timely topics. So if you're if
Speaker 1: you're not handling, if you're not talking about something that
Speaker 1: is time sensitive, then you have the luxury of being
Speaker 1: able to record as many as you like before you
Speaker 1: start going live. Um, if it is something that's time since,
Speaker 1: of course that does change things. If you're doing something
Speaker 1: where you're you're discussing, say a show, a television show,
Speaker 1: and you want the episode to go up live the
Speaker 1: day after the television show airs, you don't have that
Speaker 1: kind of flexibility. So, I mean, it all will depend
Speaker 1: on your situation. But I do think that if you can,
Speaker 1: if you can establish that reliable publication schedule, you will
Speaker 1: build an audience much faster than otherwise. Yeah, just just
Speaker 1: as a comment, I sort of envy stuff you missed
Speaker 1: in history class, because um, you know that's history for us.
Speaker 1: We have actually recorded stuff and have it, have had
Speaker 1: it go out of date before it actually goes live
Speaker 1: because we're doing and then you know, we go oh
Speaker 1: yeah yeah. Nothing like saying something like you know, Android
Speaker 1: phone is never going to go to any other carrier,
Speaker 1: It's just gonna stay on Team Mobile and then the
Speaker 1: next week like, well it's on Sprint. Well all right,
Speaker 1: well you know that, ha ha. We'll just have people.
Speaker 1: Oh it's on Verizon now we've some of them. We've
Speaker 1: had to uh have our engineers re edit a couple
Speaker 1: of the podcasts, like go back into the studio for
Speaker 1: five minutes and sort of for cord a patch to
Speaker 1: uh rip out the older Actually, you may have actually
Speaker 1: noticed a couple of ye, because there's some of those
Speaker 1: this just in. Yeah, we've done a PostScript where you
Speaker 1: could tell that we had to go in afterward. Uh.
Speaker 1: Sometimes our our editors are just very good at at
Speaker 1: cutting out the offending bit and inserting a new bit
Speaker 1: and you can't even tell thank you, Lizzie, Thank you Lizzie.
Speaker 1: Um so, do we have any other tips that we
Speaker 1: want to give, like any other like just general tips
Speaker 1: about podcasting. Um, I just want to reiterate, don't get
Speaker 1: hung up on the whole podcasting biz thing, because you
Speaker 1: can honestly do this with a computer and a microphone.
Speaker 1: Just make an MP three of your yourself talking and
Speaker 1: making a podcast. Yeah, it's not it's not rocket surgery.
Speaker 1: I can't yeah, I can't imagine. I can't imagine what
Speaker 1: it would be like to do this on my own,
Speaker 1: you know, I think it to be harder I mean,
Speaker 1: we have people who record this for us, we have
Speaker 1: people who edit the podcast, where you have people that
Speaker 1: publish them two iTunes for us, which is for which
Speaker 1: we're all extremely grateful. Uh speaking for everyone there, well,
Speaker 1: even I'm pretty sure, I mean even just thinking about
Speaker 1: doing it, like without a co host. I then when
Speaker 1: it's just you and a microphone, that changes the dynamic
Speaker 1: quite a bit. I would plan. Yeah, I don't know
Speaker 1: if he meant that he was gonna ditch me or
Speaker 1: that he was going to uh you know, he wanted
Speaker 1: to take the show over himself. Yeah, I was. I
Speaker 1: was totally gonna start a new podcast called Stuff on
Speaker 1: my Desk, And because that never changes, I don't need
Speaker 1: to worry about it, like seven episodes and then just
Speaker 1: rerun them. Yeah, exactly. It's sort of a mini series.
Speaker 1: Those are our our tips and just you know, general
Speaker 1: information of what we do. Uh, if you you're curious
Speaker 1: about our our process. We pick our topics usually the
Speaker 1: week before we record, and then the day of the
Speaker 1: recording is when I've end up doing research. Despite the
Speaker 1: fact of having an entire week to have looked into it. Um,
Speaker 1: but we've researched the topics independently, we come together, we
Speaker 1: have our conversation, and then we sit there and notice
Speaker 1: that we've been recording for like thirty minutes and then
Speaker 1: realize that we need to stop and the timer is off. Well,
Speaker 1: that's because my phone started vibrating because of the Yeah
Speaker 1: there's there's a kid. Leave your phone out of the studio. Okay,
Speaker 1: I have my phone set on airplane mode. It's just
Speaker 1: because the damn schedule thing went off. I'm not telling you.
Speaker 1: I'm saying, don't forget to turn off that stuff. Actually, uh,
Speaker 1: we're not. We're generally not supposed to have phones in
Speaker 1: here because they actually cause interference with our equipment, and
Speaker 1: including phones that are because our studio is actually in
Speaker 1: the middle of the office, and people whose phones are
Speaker 1: the people who sit just around there. It can the
Speaker 1: equipment can actually pick them. Well, that's that's why I
Speaker 1: have it on airplane mode, so it doesn't I know,
Speaker 1: it doesn't say I'm stops a tip, stop person cuting me.
Speaker 1: I pop my p just then. All right, so let's
Speaker 1: let's wrap this up with a little listener me. We
Speaker 1: were talking about the old time so much, and I
Speaker 1: just thought i'd go back to it. This comes from
Speaker 1: Miles and Miles says in your podcast about the different
Speaker 1: types of keyboards, you mentioned how you wouldn't want to
Speaker 1: switch to a divorate keyboard because of the major change
Speaker 1: from the Quarty standard. This is an example of negative
Speaker 1: transfer because you're so used to the quirty style. It
Speaker 1: would actually be harder for you to learn how to
Speaker 1: type on another type of keyboard than someone just learning
Speaker 1: how to type uh for the first time. I assume
Speaker 1: I can't take all the credit for this knowledge. I
Speaker 1: must give credit to my girlfriend who's studying human factors
Speaker 1: and ergonomics in graduate school and has knowledge about such things. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I wanted to say that I love the show. Keep
Speaker 1: up the good jobs, sincerely, Miles. You know I've experienced
Speaker 1: negative transfer a few times, like when I went to
Speaker 1: the University of Georgia. They and accept all my credits
Speaker 1: and I had to take classes again, did I. But
Speaker 1: it's a shame that they can't see the look I'm
Speaker 1: giving you, right, Yeah, it's pretty much the look of disgusted.
Speaker 1: Think think Thank you for the info, Miles. Thank your
Speaker 1: girlfriend for us as well. We we have given her credit.
Speaker 1: She should see that on the transcript. Next time. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just look for that in the place where we never
Speaker 1: put it. Yeah, if you would like to learn more
Speaker 1: about podcasting, we actually have in the article on how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com about podcasting. And of course we
Speaker 1: have tons of amazing podcasts available. I know that we're
Speaker 1: the best, but we also have some other good ones.
Speaker 1: There's stuff you should know, stuff in this and history class,
Speaker 1: stuff from the b sides, high speed stuff, stuff of genius.
Speaker 1: Uh was the stuff on her coolest stuff on her?
Speaker 1: If that's the one that I was about to forget?
Speaker 1: Um and more so check them out. They're great. They're
Speaker 1: great podcast If you ever want to kind of listen
Speaker 1: to the different styles, you'll hear how not everyone prepared
Speaker 1: as for their podcasts the same way. You can actually
Speaker 1: kind of pick that up by listening. And uh, if
Speaker 1: you want to see what we look like when we
Speaker 1: are trying to talk about technology, tune in one o'clock
Speaker 1: pm Eastern time Tuesdays. That's when we do tech stuff Live.
Speaker 1: And you can find the link to that on the
Speaker 1: house stuff works dot com blogs. Just go to house
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com look on the right side. You'll
Speaker 1: see the links there and Chris and I will talk
Speaker 1: to you again really soon For more on this and
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics, does it how stuff works dot
Speaker 1: com and be sure to check out the new tech
Speaker 1: stuff blog now on the House Stuff Works homepage, brought
Speaker 1: to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready,
Speaker 1: are you