Know when to fold’em: Handing off the podcast mic

[00:00:00] Tom Breen: There was not a riot, sadly, but after we recorded and released the episode where we announced we were going on a hiatus, we heard from a lot of listeners, including people we had never heard from before and didn't realize were listening. We were actually quite surprised leadership in our office was not on board with us discontinuing the podcast.
[00:00:21] Neil McPhedran: Welcome to Continuing Studies, a podcast for higher education podcasters to learn and get inspired. I'm Neil McPhedran.
[00:00:27] Jennifer Lee: And I'm Jennifer Lee. We want you to know you're not [00:00:30] alone. In fact, there are many of you higher Ed podcasters out there and we can all learn from each other.
[00:00:35] Neil McPhedran: We sure can, Jen. Okay, before we jump in, please follow our Continuing Studies page on LinkedIn.
Today, our guests are co-hosts, Julie and Tom from the UConn 360 podcast. UConn 360 is a bi-weekly podcast using a radio magazine format that brings listeners stories and information from one of the world's top [00:01:00] public research universities, the University of Connecticut. UConn 360 provides current news and produces stories covering faculty research, student life, innovative classes, arts and cultural events, and interesting alumni.
So Jen, when we originally reached out to this podcast, we thought, hey, this is a great podcast, like let's get them on our show. And funnily enough, the email back we got was, well, we're discontinuing the podcast. Do you still really want to talk to us?
[00:01:28] Jennifer Lee: And we were like, [00:01:30] yes, please. Because this is a normal discussion, when to end your podcast. Which we actually haven't talked about, but funny enough, you will learn too that it's probably not over. So let's get started.
I'm really excited today because we always talk about, you know, podcasts that are current and everyone's working on them and that there are a lot of work, but there are a lot of fun and a lot of reward. But today we're talking to two amazing people that have a [00:02:00] successful podcast and they might or may not be calling it quits at the podcast. So we're going to talk more about that today, but let's start. You both introduce yourselves.
[00:02:10] Julie Bartucca: Hi, I'm Julie Bartucca. I am Associate Director for Marketing, Project Management and University Communications at the University of Connecticut.
[00:02:17] Tom Breen: I'm Tom Breen. I'm the News Director in University Communications at the University of Connecticut.
[00:02:23] Neil McPhedran: We're talking to you at a really interesting moment in your podcast journey. And perhaps before we get [00:02:30] into, um, where you're at right now, let's take a step back and how did you get the podcast started? And maybe just sort of tell us a little bit about UConn 360, the podcast.
[00:02:41] Julie Bartucca: We started, uh, back in 2017 with this idea. I, at the time, was, I had been working in university communications for about three years and I had come from a news background, print journalism, and Tom had as well. And I just was listening to a ton of podcasts. I commuted over an hour each way for a while and [00:03:00] was really into, obviously, serial at the time, podcasts called Gilmore Guys, which is two kind of comedians talking about the show Gilmore Girls, Criminal, 99% Invisible. And I was like, it would be really fun to be able to do a podcast about UConn.
And I was talking to, she's now the head of the journalism department at UConn, and thinking through some ideas about it, she was really encouraging about trying to pitch something, and I was thinking about Tom, and how he's a really great, even still, Twitter follow, and somebody who's really into UConn history, and really quirky, offbeat [00:03:30] UConn history. And I was like, that could be a cool idea.
So, uh, it just so happened that around that time, we had an opportunity in our department to apply for sort of an internal grant program that our VP put out there and we put together a proposal. We joined up with another colleague who was one of the news writers at the time, who has since retired, and he had sort of a similar idea. He had a radio background. And so we ended up proposing this podcast that was sort of an audio news magazine, um, sort of, as the name implies, UConn 360. Looking at the university from every [00:04:00] angle we could think of, just bringing people in to UConn stories in a different way than we had been doing more traditionally.
[00:04:05] Tom Breen: Yeah, we listened to a lot of higher education podcasts at the time, so this is about seven years ago now, or six and a half years ago. And we didn't hear anything quite like what we wanted to do, which was actually sort of more encouraging than discouraging. Because we thought we had a good idea and it was kind of fresh and it wasn't copying something directly. So, the leadership in our office gave us a lot of freedom. They bought in early [00:04:30] and gave us a little budget to kind of buy some recording equipment. Eventually put a little studio together. And from then on, it just sort of grew.
[00:04:37] Jennifer Lee: You guys have such great radio voices too. So I'm not surprised that you guys have some radio background or the people you worked with had radio background. So I was like, these are my people. I love it.
I was listening to your podcast and I liked the fact that at the beginning, you kind of update what's going on at the university. But then you go in and you actually then interview somebody for a longer topic [00:05:00] when you were looking back and you were doing your research was there one particular higher Ed podcast. Because I would assume that there was probably not a lot of choice because even now there's quite a bit out there, but it's still very, you know, early days of podcasting.
[00:05:14] Julie Bartucca: I wanted to shout out when I was thinking today about our conversation, Jackie Vetrano, who is now down at, uh, I think UNC. She was at Skidmore College and she did a presentation at the Higher Ed Web Association Conference in, I believe, 2017. That was super inspiring for me. She was somebody that just [00:05:30] kind of gave me the idea that I could actually do something like this from this little germ of an idea. I think it was called This is Skidmore and it was just different kind of interviews with different people on their campus.
I'm trying to think, Tom, do you remember any of the other ones at universities that we were looking to?
[00:05:43] Tom Breen: None that really, I mean, Jackie's was the one that kind of inspired us. There were a lot that were like recordings of lectures. And there was one that was like a recording of all the commencement speeches every year. Which, I mean, it's good, I guess, for archival purposes, but as a podcast, it really wasn't all that compelling. So we were more [00:06:00] looking to general news podcasts than anything that we saw in higher ed at the time.
[00:06:04] Neil McPhedran: So who is the audience for UConn 360? Who is the podcast for?
[00:06:09] Julie Bartucca: We always laugh because at a public university all the time, your audience is just everyone who could possibly be interested at all. But Over the years, we have honed that a little. We always wanted it to be for just people who love UConn or are interested in UConn. But have found, in probably the first few years, found pretty quickly that young alumni were pretty drawn to it. Um, people who wanted to stay connected to [00:06:30] their alma mater, we were kind of meeting them where they were.
Like, they might not be the people who are going to our news website to see what's going on at UConn, but they might listen to a podcast on their way to work. There are some older alumni, some faculty that we know listen to us. We don't know, obviously, who all the people are that are checking us out, but, or were checking us out, but we really did try to keep it kind of broad. We both are UConn alums, we bleed blue as we say, that's one of our kind of catchphrases, and just people who really care about what's going on at the university.
[00:06:58] Tom Breen: I would say it was people in their [00:07:00] twenties, thirties, maybe early forties, that was probably the bulk of our audience.
[00:07:02] Neil McPhedran: Can we just circle back on the Publicly funded part. Maybe you can peel back the onion a bit on that one. That was an interesting point you were making.
[00:07:10] Tom Breen: As a public university, we have a sort of a very broad mission. And, you know, one of the things about that is one of our audiences that we talk about is state lawmakers in Connecticut. Because they are people who vote on our funding every year. And any way we can to tell our story to as broad an audience as possible, including state lawmakers or people who will then talk to their lawmakers. That was [00:07:30] something that was in the back of our mind, at least every time we do something. We kind of think about that because we want to show off all the things that are happening at UConn, not just that are sort of interesting in and of themselves. But things that have community impact, things that actually benefit people in Connecticut.
And so the podcast was one way we found to kind of highlight some of those stories and maybe get them to people in a different format than they had been expecting. I think a lot of people get marketing material or they see our news website and their eyes can kind of glaze over because they've seen a million things like it. But the podcast was something very different to reach people in a new [00:08:00] way.
[00:08:00] Jennifer Lee: I know you guys mentioned that a lot of your demographic is alums or current students as well. Are you worried that it's going to lose the younger audience if you're not on TikTok or do you have a TikTok component to your podcast for promotion?
[00:08:13] Tom Breen: Well, it's funny you mentioned that. We actually had a meeting with a couple of our colleagues who are maybe interested in kind of taking the torch from us. And two of them are very young, I will say, and much more fluent in that world than we are, and that's something that they would [00:08:30] definitely be doing.
[00:08:30] Julie Bartucca: It is kind of funny because the podcast demographic I think was, you know, sort of twenty-five to thirty-five for a while, and I don't know really what now. I know so many people put their podcasts on YouTube and that was just something we didn't have time to really explore. The one thing we do for promotion that does kind of help get to that current student and prospective student audience is we just put a promo on the university's Instagram stories.
They'll put one out, so it'll send a little clip and they can click right to it. So, you know, we've dabbled, but we haven't gone too far, but maybe this next [00:09:00] generation of our employees who are looking to take this on, we'll venture there.
[00:09:03] Neil McPhedran: Okay. That's great. Thank you for sharing about the background of the podcast. But let's dig into where you're at now. You're about to take a step back from the mic. Can you just sort of tell us a little bit about that journey to get to this decision?
[00:09:18] Julie Bartucca: Okay. So we've been doing this for six years, uh, pretty much nonstop. We were a bi-weekly podcast for the first few years. I don't think we missed a single, whatever we call it, [00:09:30] fortnight release in the first, maybe three years. And then I was going on maternity leave. Our other colleague, co host was retiring so we decided to take a hiatus back in 2021. So we did go off the air for maybe three or four or five months and then decided to come back and we pared it down a little bit because both Tom and I had received promotions. We had completely different responsibilities than we did when we started it and this was still, as I was saying, kind of off mic when we were talking before. This was sort of in other duties as assigned [00:10:00] but something we really just carried as a passion project. It was not something that anybody told us we had to do or had to figure out how to do. It was just something that we really loved and wanted to do and had, thankfully, the support of our leadership to continue doing as part of our jobs.
As our jobs evolved and got very, uh, different and we were spread a little more thin, we did find it harder to keep the momentum going. We went down to once a month. We changed the format slightly so that, um, we were able to record the whole thing in just about a half hour. We would [00:10:30] bring whoever we were interviewing in with us, record the whole thing right there with them sitting there and took out a little bit of the more production based elements that we had been doing previously in the first incarnation. And we've been doing that since probably beginning of 2022. And recently just noticed that we had a really hard time keeping up with booking people and making sure it happened on a very regular schedule and kind of took a look at ourselves and said, you know, maybe it's time to kind of go out while we're still a little bit in the [00:11:00] game and leave it with some dignity.
[00:11:02] Jennifer Lee: Do you guys edit the podcast and write all your own descriptions? And do you do all your marketing push or does the university help you with that at all?
[00:11:11] Julie Bartucca: We do pretty much all of it. We are helped by some social media folks in our department to push out a little bit of the promotion but everything else is really us. The editing, the booking guests, the researching the guests, writing the questions, writing any scripts for introductions, all of that was us.
[00:11:28] Jennifer Lee: That's a lot of work.
[00:11:29] Julie Bartucca: Yeah, and that's, [00:11:30] and it's not either of our job.
[00:11:32] Tom Breen: It got harder and harder after a while to try to find time to do all the things to make the podcast good, and we never wanted to do something that felt half-hearted or half baked. We always wanted to be as good as possible, and you know, we had a standard to live up to, and after a while, we realized, you know, maybe we could do it if we cut it way down to five minutes a month or something, and then it just didn't seem worth it at that point.
[00:11:53] Jennifer Lee: When you mentioned to the school that, hey, you know, we don't want to do this anymore, we're going to leave it, were they like, oh, [00:12:00] no, but you're such a big part of this? Because sometimes we don't realize, like, the impact that we're having, and we're just like, oh, this is something that's like piling up on my plate and whatever. Did you mention in your episode that you might be leaving or not in one of your last ones? So did you have people reach out to you? That listen to the podcast? Was there like an upheaval, like a riot? Oh.
[00:12:22] Tom Breen: There was not a riot, sadly, but after we recorded and released the episode where we announced we were going on a hiatus, we heard from a lot of listeners, which [00:12:30] was really nice. Including people we had never heard from before and didn't realize we're listening. I'll let Julie elaborate on this, but we were actually quite surprised. Uh, leadership in our office was not on board with us and we had always kind of operated with a sort of benign neglect. Like we had a total editorial control over the podcast. And so I think maybe we told ourselves that nobody was paying attention. And now we've learned, uh, actually, no, a lot of people were paying attention, which was nice, but also kind of put us in a bit of a pickle.
[00:12:55] Julie Bartucca: Yeah, they valued us more than we knew they did. Leadership did tell us, you know, we think this is a really [00:13:00] important thing to keep doing. We don't know that they've ever actually listened to it, but we do know that they like us. We've brought in a couple awards. We did some conference presentations in the past few years. So, you know, they saw the value in it. And despite us thinking, you know, it might be time to hang it up. They want to keep it going if we can.
[00:13:15] Neil McPhedran: That's, that's good to know that even if it's after the fact. I think as podcaster and Jen, you've talked about this before, even as a radio personality. It's a lonely world sometimes and you don't hear that feedback. And I think that's a big challenge for us to how do we get [00:13:30] that audience feedback? I'm sure that felt good to hear from people you hadn't even heard from, but it would have been nice to have gotten some of that sooner.
[00:13:36] Julie Bartucca: We had, and we had people who would reach out. We have a running joke that we have an alum who is, he's kind of involved in improv comedy and we tell ourselves that he's just trolling us by saying like how much he loves our podcast. But he really has, he's been really sweet and we've actually met him on campus a few times when he's come back home and he's been really nice. He'll email us and say, oh, this [00:14:00] episode was awesome. I didn't know about this thing. And so I think he's being genuine. But I can't help but think in the back of my mind that like, this is all a long con. But he sent us a really nice email when we hung it up too.
[00:14:10] Neil McPhedran: Should have called his bluff and asked him to come and guest host.
[00:14:12] Julie Bartucca: He's been on the podcast. We had him on for our one-hundredth episode, I think.
[00:14:17] Neil McPhedran: Oh, that's amazing. That's super smart. That's good. The perfect milestone. Okay, so let's talk about moving forward. So the powers that be have gone, hey, wait a second. So what's the future of UConn 360?
[00:14:29] Julie Bartucca: Yeah, [00:14:30] we met with a few colleagues that are interested in trying it out. One of whom is on our multimedia video team, one who's a data analytics person. So totally different for her. And one who's a longtime news writer who used to work in UConn athletics. And they all are interested in trying it out, so right now they're putting their heads together to come up with how they want to do this, see if it's going to kind of maintain the format that we created, or kind of evolve into their own thing, and we'll see where it goes from there.
[00:14:58] Tom Breen: One thing that we wanted to be [00:15:00] very careful about when we started our podcast was that it wouldn't sound like institutional voice. We didn't want people to think they were being marketed to. And so Julie and I were very concerned if people were going to take over the podcast that there had to be this sort of easy banter, give and take. Like, listening to, you know, people who you want to be friends with in real life, having a conversation. And after our meeting, I came away convinced that if that's what they want to do, they can do it. They have a very good rapport, um, they're funny people, so, uh, you know, the podcast would be in good hands if they decide to pick it up and run with it.
[00:15:27] Neil McPhedran: Did you think that's what was going to happen? When the two of you [00:15:30] finally decided together, we're going to hang it up, you know, it was like know when to fold, um, did you know....
[00:15:36] Julie Bartucca: No.
[00:15:36] Neil McPhedran: That wasn't part of your master plan?
[00:15:39] Julie Bartucca: It wasn't, we said that in that last episode, because we, you know, we thought maybe there'll be something that'll come back. Maybe we'll be able to find a way to come back as like a, you know, some different series or something like that, like a special episodes. But we didn't think that this was going to be the way we didn't think they'd say, oh, no, how dare you? But we're happy. We're pleasantly surprised that's the case.
[00:15:58] Jennifer Lee: Do you think you're going to [00:16:00] miss it? Because I feel like...
[00:16:01] Julie Bartucca: Absolutely. I've told Tom, including you guys, I've told Tom for like four different times, like, oh, this feels like a sign that this is a really bad idea. We shouldn't do it. But it's the right thing to do at this point in where we're both at in our careers.
[00:16:15] Tom Breen: It's going to be very strange hearing that first episode where, you know, someone says, welcome to UConn 360. And it's not either one of us.
[00:16:20] Neil McPhedran: Do you think you'll have a role moving forward then? Like an advisory role or something like that?
[00:16:25] Julie Bartucca: I know that we're at least going to have to kind of get them up to speed on at least the technical aspects. [00:16:30] But hoping that they can kind of take it and run because, you know, there's a reason we're trying to walk away.
[00:16:37] Jennifer Lee: The thing is though, this is where it's tricky when you're handing off podcasts because people were tuning into it because it's related to the stories of the alumni. So if they take it in a totally different direction, kind of don't have some of the similar format that you have, it might not be successful. Are you guys worried about that? Or are you just like, you guys go.
[00:16:56] Julie Bartucca: I don't know how honest I want to be right now.
[00:16:58] Jennifer Lee: Okay, have you given them [00:17:00] a guide or anything?
[00:17:01] Julie Bartucca: Yeah, no, we've gave them a ton, probably too much of what we've done. But we totally support if they do want to continue it the same way that we've done it, but I also think it could be really exciting if they come up with sort of a new spin on it. Um, it's been a couple years that we've done it this way and six years that we've done it close to this way. So it would be neat to see what, especially given that they are kind of a younger generation plus someone from an older generation, which is a funny juxtaposition and funny for us because our co host, Ken, [00:17:30] who retired is a bit older than both of us. And we used to kind of use that to our advantage in our banter and our fun. So I think that'll be a good angle for them to play too. But I'm excited. I'm, obviously anytime you make something and it's kind of your baby, it's going to be a little scary to have somebody else just take it over. But I want to be able to let other people try and see what they can do with it.
[00:17:52] Tom Breen: Julie and I joked about starting, you know, burner accounts and leaving reviews, saying bring back the original hosts. But we probably won't do that. [00:18:00] The most important thing we told them is that like, they have to have a vision for it. And they have to pursue it because that's what we did and that's the way to make it successful. So if it's dutifully copying something, but their heart isn't in it, I don't think it'll work. If it's something they're passionate about, it's going to be successful no matter what.
[00:18:13] Neil McPhedran: I'm curious if either of you have any advice for any of our audience members that are in a similar boat. They've been doing it for a while and they're waffling, they're maybe struggling a bit with workload and whatnot. Sort of anything along [00:18:30] your last couple of months of sort of coming to this decision that you could impart.
[00:18:35] Julie Bartucca: Well, I do think they should talk to their supervisors before they decide to hang it up.
[00:18:39] Neil McPhedran: Okay, that's a good one. That's a good one.
[00:18:40] Julie Bartucca: In my defense, I had, and she was like, okay. So, it was someone a little higher up then that was like, no, wait a minute, let's backpedal.
Yeah, I mean, we did a lot, as I said, we did a lot to streamline it and to make it as minimal as possible. And we, I joked with Tom actually the other day that we spent a lot of time the [00:19:00] past several years telling our bosses that it didn't take very much time because we wanted to be able to keep doing it. And it kind of did. So, um, you know, that was kind of funny, but we did all we could to kind of pare it down. And in our presentations that we did a few years back too, we did one at American Marketing Association, higher Ed, and we did one at the high ed web conference. And we gave a lot of pointers on kind of how to make this fit into your workflow. And so that is something that we really tried hard to do to make sure that it wasn't, you know, taking up way too much time when we had other [00:19:30] responsibilities that had to take priority. So I don't really know that I have advice of like how to keep it going when it's hard. But I do think, you know, having a succession plan is a good idea. We tried to get people in the fold and it just hadn't worked out. So, it kind of took this to light the fire and get it to that point.
[00:19:46] Tom Breen: The only thing I would add to that is don't be afraid to change up the format a little bit. We did, and I think that gave us an extra couple of years on the podcast when we decided instead of doing the reported pieces and making it more of a news radio thing, just to do one interview with an interesting person [00:20:00] per episode. That was really helpful. And we worried about that. We thought like, well, are we going to lose our audience because that's not what they're used to, but we didn't. So I think, you know, if inspiration starts to flag a little bit, maybe just change up the format and that can be a big help.
[00:20:13] Jennifer Lee: I think it's so cool. Like, again, because podcasting is still new is that a lot of these podcasts are getting big and they're kind of becoming businesses in themselves. You should have a podcast succession plan because a lot of people just end them and they've got like all this audience hanging on. So maybe we're on to something.
[00:20:29] Neil McPhedran: Podcast [00:20:30] succession planning. And it's such a personal, intimate thing with the hosts, as you were talking about before, Jen, right? We form these relationships with the hosts and you kind of think like, the show can't go on because you know, we're leaving. So the show has to stop.
[00:20:46] Jennifer Lee: But you're going to love me saying this. They do it in radio all the time.
[00:20:52] Neil McPhedran: True.
[00:20:53] Jennifer Lee: Before we go, can you each tell us what is your favorite episode you've ever done?
[00:20:58] Tom Breen: Feels almost unfair that I'm picking this [00:21:00] one because it involves a member of your family, Julie. But um, it was our second episode and I did a little history piece about the time in the seventies that a couple of student pranksters came up with a fictional student presidential candidate and that the fictional character won the election and it sort of brought down student government. And I was telling that story, found some, you know, archives, and I mentioned the names of the students. And Julie said, wait a minute, that's my uncle.
And sure enough, it was her Uncle Barry, and we had Uncle Barry in for an interview to talk about it the following episode. So, the name of the fictional student was Bill X Carlson. [00:21:30] And that had been a part of my family lore since I was a little kid, because my dad told me about it. Uh, so finding out the man behind Bill X Carlson, it was such a fun thing and Barry was such a great and funny guy to have on the podcast that really stands out for me as my favorite.
[00:21:43] Julie Bartucca: That's awesome. Tom was telling this and you're talking about RadioGen. Like it was one of those sort of like this can only happen quote unquote live moments because Tom would never tell us what he was going to do for his history segment because we wanted to react to the oddities that he was talking about in real time. And I [00:22:00] was literally sitting there Googling, like, when did my Uncle Barry graduate? Like, could this possibly be a different Barry Berman? That would be really strange. And obviously it was him, uh, and we brought him in and yeah, that was super fun. That was a great moment. It was our really bad audio days though, back in the early days. So if you do go back and listen, just be warned.
My favorite episode we just did recently was with Professor Jeffrey Ogbar, who is an expert in history of hip hop and rap. And we did like a fiftieth anniversary of hip hop in depth interview. I [00:22:30] think we sat with him for over an hour. We let that one go a little bit long and it was just so much fun to talk to him and pick his brain on that. So that was one of the really fun opportunities to kind of do something that had really broad appeal.
And as you asked in the beginning, who's our audience? In the very beginning, we were like, we want anyone who's anyone who's interested in any of these topics to listen to this. Obviously, we realized, like, it wasn't going to be Joe Schmo, who didn't go to UConn, um, who's going to check us out. But this one was one that, like, no matter who you were, you might find this cool and interesting that UConn has this guy. [00:23:00] Who can talk at length about this, this really broad pop culture topic.
[00:23:03] Neil McPhedran: I got to check out that episode myself and we'll link to both in our show notes with the sound quality caveat for the older one with Uncle Barry. It's like bad hair, right? Back in the day, it's like when your early days of podcasting.
[00:23:17] Julie Bartucca: Yep.
[00:23:18] Jennifer Lee: There's no excuse for bad sound. I'm sorry.
[00:23:22] Julie Bartucca: We had no idea what we were doing. We were, in the beginning, we were recording in this cavernous conference room in [00:23:30] our art museum on campus because we didn't have a studio yet. And so we had some equipment. We had a mixing board and mics. But yeah, it wasn't anywhere near like what it ended up being with the actual purpose built studio.
[00:23:41] Neil McPhedran: Well, that was amazing. Thank you so much for being so candid. And I know when we first reached out to you said, well, funnily enough, you know, we're actually shutting down the podcast and we're moving on. And we talked amongst ourselves and we said, ah, that'd actually be perfect to talk about because this is something that happens, people move [00:24:00] on, faculty move on, students graduate. And so I think for the higher education podcasters out there, uh, this was a great conversation and we really appreciate, um, your, uh, transparency and be willing to chat all about it.
[00:24:14] Julie Bartucca: Thank you. This was so much fun.
[00:24:16] Tom Breen: This was great. Yeah, we had a lot of fun. Thank you so much.
[00:24:20] Jennifer Lee: I think they're going to miss. their podcast. It was such a lovely chat with them. But I totally felt that, I feel like even though they have a [00:24:30] lot of work on their plates and they've gone up in their careers, which is amazing, I feel like they're gonna like find ways to like sneak back into the studio and have a little bit of a hand in the podcast because it is, it's hard to let go once you've been on the mic, I know that. It's why I'm in podcasting I can never hang up the radio headphones and microphones. So I know they'll have a bit of a hard time. But I enjoyed that conversation because like I said, at the beginning, we haven't really talked to people about ending their podcast and [00:25:00] knowing when to stop. And not only that, is sometimes when we end, we don't necessarily realize the impact that we're making out there. And I thought that was a really cool takeaway that when they ended the university was like, whoa, whoa, wait a second. You're leaving? Like, why? Like, why are you stopping this? Wait, what can we do to like, make it continue? So I really enjoyed that.
[00:25:23] Neil McPhedran: Yeah, me too. It was really nice for them to hear feedback from the audience. But also from their higher ups and other people in there [00:25:30] on their team. So, you know, I think that's one of the learnings for the audience. If you are thinking about moving on from your podcast, put up your hand and have that conversation with folks on your team versus kind of coming to a conclusion that you're just going to end things because there was, and there is a transition process for them now.
[00:25:48] Jennifer Lee: And I think as they get going, I would love to have them back on the show. And talk to them about how they feel about the new podcast and I'd like to bring the new hosts on and see how [00:26:00] they like doing it and what has changed since when Julie and Tom were part of it. I think it'd be a cool conversation.
[00:26:06] Neil McPhedran: I love that idea, Jen. That is really good. We have to do that for sure. So yeah, that's great. Okay, excellent. Well, uh, another awesome episode, this time about knowing when to fold them. And, uh, anything else there, jen?
[00:26:20] Jennifer Lee: I just love how you said that knowing when to fold them.
[00:26:23] Neil McPhedran: I just got Kenny Rogers going in my head right now. I just can't, I can't shake it. Okay.
[00:26:29] Jennifer Lee: [00:26:30] Okay, on that note.
[00:26:30] Neil McPhedran: Let's call it another good podcast.
[00:26:34] Jennifer Lee: Another podcast. Bye!
[00:26:35] Neil McPhedran: See ya!
Thank you for tuning in to the Continuing Studies podcast, a podcast for higher education podcasters. We hope you found this episode informative and inspiring. If you enjoyed the show, we encourage you to follow and subscribe to our podcast on your preferred platform so you'll never miss an episode.
And if you've found this episode particularly valuable, please consider sharing it with your friends and [00:27:00] colleagues who also might be interested in higher education podcasts. We also invite you to join the University Podcasters Network group on LinkedIn. Just search for University Podcasters Network. Where you can connect with other podcasters in higher education and learn from others in the field.
Thank you for being part of our community. We look forward to continuing to bring you valuable insights and conversations around higher education podcasts. See you in the next [00:27:30] episode.

Creators and Guests

Jennifer-Lee
Host
Jennifer-Lee
Co-host and editor of HAVAN's podcast Measure Twice Cut Once/ Traffic Helicopter Reporter/Social Media & Marketing Manager for Euro Canadian
Know when to fold’em: Handing off the podcast mic
Broadcast by