Last week I checked another bucket list item off of my list: I started a podcast! Well, kind of a bare bones version of a podcast, the entirety of the program is just me calling up a friend from my fantasy baseball league (of USC Law Class of 2011 graduates) and having a conversation for an hour, and me recording it. Not really even edited, haven't even put in musical jingles or fancy intros, just me and another person talking, one cut, and not uploaded onto SoundCloud or Apple Podcasts or Spotify. So not really an official podcast, but the meat of it is there: it's essentially what my favorite podcasts do: 2 people having interesting conversations and often going off topic and random tangents, hugely reliant on the podcast participants being funny and/or having good stories to tell and/or keeping it fresh and interesting. Hopefully I'm doing a good job!
Especially in this digital era of 10-second clips and "shorts" on social media, it's a bit surprising that the No.1 podcast in America (probably the world) is the Joe Rogan podcast, a daily show where Joe just has guests on and talks to them for 2-4 hours, nonstop, very few videos, no musical acts, it's just having a conversation (and sometimes some alcohol intake, marijuana use, etc.) My best guess is despite the short attention spans, people still crave conversation and feeling like you're in a room with someone and participating in that conversation (even though you're not) and relating to the guests' points of views, and the guests throwing jokes and/or funny tidbits every few minutes or so is a nice dopamine hit to incentive the listener to keep listening. That's sort of why I started the podcast: I crave for conversations where I don't feel the social pressure of moving on to a different person at a party so as not to be too clingy, or having to schedule a big thing to meet someone and scheduling around other people's schedules. Personally, I can talk to anyone for an hour and likely not have the conversation dry up, I have enough anecdotes and fun facts (especially armed with trivia and Jeopardy knowledge) nowadays that I can keep the conversation and piggyback off of what the other person says on almost any topic. I managed to throw in a fun fact about what a "piloerection" was yesterday- it's another name for goosebumps. I've always prided myself on being a decent conversationalist: I'm able to talk to people at parties, and the banter of a conversation is where I get to know someone but especially how I ingratiate myself to other people who might get a certain impression of me upon first meeting that's not necessarily who I am (looks like computer guy/engineer, has loud voice, looks uninteresting) whereas I can at least get a couple laughs in as an icebreaker.
Doing a podcast takes some preparation, but it's important to relax and settle into it. Even for a casual conversation, I did do some mental preparation like inserting certain jokes here and there, stretching out an hour-long show, but also needing to stay with the conversation and listening to the interviewee to hear their take and adjust....think on the fly for what to say next. I'm sure most podcasters develop a routine and settle into it after awhile. I also had to adjust how I sounded on the podcast: hard to change my voice (kind of surprising to hear a recorded version of your own voice for the first time) but also taking out the throat-clearing fillers like "um," "uh," "like..." and the dreaded "you know." I get distracted when I'm on a work call if someone talks with too many fillers like that, and as a listener I cringe at all those filler words, they add nothing and makes one sound unprofessional. So it's important to figure out my thoughts, not over-think and pull back on a thought too much, and clearly express what I'm trying to say without having to stop and change directions too much. Often I use "um's" because I'm thinking TOO much, and worrying about how I might sound, or offending other people, or I have 3 different choices of what to say and just can't choose one. Podcasting may be a good one to work on those bad speaking habits and edit out the fillers as much as possible. Oh, also I try to keep any swearing to a minimum, or insensitive topics, and especially politics.
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