Continuing Studies: for Higher Ed Podcasters

[00:00:00] Jennifer - Lee Gunson: Welcome to Continuing Studies, a podcast for higher education podcasters. In each episode, we talk to a university podcaster to ask some questions, get answers, and share tips and ideas about higher education podcasting. Hi, I'm Jennifer Lee. I'm a radio broadcaster and a podcaster.
[00:00:21] Neil McPhedran: And I'm Neil McPhedran. I've come to podcasting after 25 years in the digital agency world. Together, we've hosted, executive produced, and launched [00:00:30] seven, and counting, higher education podcasts. Please remember to follow Continuing Studies in your listening app of choice and drop us a rating and or review. We love to hear your feedback. While you're at it, also join the University Podcaster Network on LinkedIn.
[00:00:46] Okay, welcome to another episode of the Continuing Studies Podcast. In this episode, we're chatting with Laura Davis from the Stanford Storytelling Project. So, this one is a little bit different, it is a little bit [00:01:00] like previous episode where we talked with Craig about how he's using podcasting as part of his curriculum, Laura goes even further. Her curriculum is podcasting, is building a podcast, and she does it from a storyteller perspective. So, I think there's some really cool stuff that we can all learn from here.
[00:01:20] Jennifer - Lee Gunson: Yeah, I'm really excited to talk to her. We met Laura at Podcast Movement, and I tracked her down right after she did a talk on the whole Stanford Storytelling [00:01:30] Project and so we were really excited to sit her down and learn more about it because she just had a different perspective that we could learn on, and she is like a master at this craft and now she teaches a whole course on it.
[00:01:41] So, I think this is a really good episode for anyone in post secondary education because it really teaches you how to communicate and how to become a better storyteller. Storytelling is such an important skill and it's really how we do communicate with each other in our daily lives. So, it's a great listen, let's get into it.
[00:02:01] Neil McPhedran: Laura Joyce Davis teaches podcasting at Stanford University, where she helps students turn climate change research into stories to save our planet and manages podcast production for the award winning State of the Human. Laura is CEO and co founder of Narrative Podcasts, the executive producer of Shelter in Place, and a podcast magazine top influencer in podcasting.
[00:02:24] Her work has been recognized with a Social Impact Award for mentoring and DEI Initiatives, a Fulbright Scholarship, a W3 Podcasting Silver Medal, a Golden Crane Honorable Mention, and the International Women's Podcasting Awards. She brings a novelist's sense of character development and story arc to podcast training. From interview editing to script writing and sound design. Welcome, Laura.
[00:02:50] Laura Davis: Thank you. Glad to be here.
[00:02:52] Jennifer - Lee Gunson: I'm so excited to interview you, Laura. Because like you're so accomplished and you're like an OG of podcasting. But of course, everybody starts from the beginning. So how did you get into podcasting?
[00:03:04] Laura Davis: Yeah, it was a little bit by accident. Before the pandemic, my degrees in fiction writing, I have my MFA in fiction, and so for 20 years, I was writing short stories and novels and magazine articles. And at the same time, parenting three young children for a chunk of time there. And I had just started learning about podcasting, not for Shelter in Place, because that wasn't even in my mind pre pandemic of course. [00:03:30] But I had actually applied for another Fulbright. It was going to be a podcast project, and it was going to be in the U. S. and Mexico. I was doing 50 interviews on each side of the border. And so, I'd been working on this project and had just gotten to the point in the fall of 2019 where I had a pilot episode of that and a trailer. And I was fortunate enough to be a finalist for WNYC's Podcast Accelerator with that.
[00:03:59] But I paid somebody else to edit. I didn't know how to edit audio. I barely knew how to use my microphone. I knew how to write. You know, that was the thing that I really brought to that. But when March 17th of 2020 came along, I suddenly found myself with my three young children home with me. And just to give a little important context here, I had for eight years been primarily like the one who was home with my kids [00:04:30] and I would squeeze my writing time into, you know, the 5am before they woke up or the nap times. And just finally in February of 2020, my youngest was three. And she was finally in preschool for the first time. So, it was the first time in eight years that I had all three kids in some sort of childcare.
[00:04:52] And when the pandemic happened, I just, I kind of lost it a little bit. Initially I was like, I can't do this for two weeks. Like I can't have my kids home with me for two weeks. And so, it was really out of that moment of panic that the idea for Shelter in Place came. Seemed simple in the beginning, I would do a daily podcast, it would be just for me, it would be my creative lifeline to help me survive two weeks of pandemic time at home, because that's all I thought it was going to be.
[00:05:20] And I didn't care if anybody listened, but I thought, you know what, I'm going to just write and a daily essay every day about what's going on in my life, what I'm thinking about, and I will write one draft, record in one take, and push publish. And I knew just enough about podcasting and, you know, because of this other Fulbright project to be able to do those things, but barely enough.
[00:05:43] And of course, you know, the story, as it continues, is that I did not do that podcast for two weeks. I did it for more like over two years and 200 episodes and the first hundred were daily. It was six days a week and it very quickly became my life's [00:06:00] work. And I learned by doing those episodes every single day, six days a week, very quickly how to edit my own audio, how to do sound design. I was just learning and making all kinds of mistakes but learning how to fix them. And the behind-the-scenes reality that was going on around me, was the pandemic was continuing, my husband got laid off from his job about three weeks into the pandemic, and so, Shelter in Place became not just my creative project, but really the way that our family was navigating life in those very, very difficult years.
[00:06:34] Jennifer - Lee Gunson: Well, I want to know, how do you do a daily podcast with young children at home?
[00:06:39] Laura Davis: Oh, man. Well, if you listen to Shelter in Place, you'll hear me be very honest about that.
[00:06:46] There were a lot of not-so-great parenting moments. I mean, I just had no idea what I was getting into and none of us did, right? Even if you weren't doing a daily podcast, um, it was an extremely challenging time and I'm not sure that we would have [00:07:00] quite gotten as far as fast if I hadn't been having that daily work to say like, what am I going to talk about today? What's going on in the world today? And it really prompted us to engage some pretty intense, hard questions as they were coming up. And, you know, in one of the episodes I talk about going to a Black Lives Matter protest with my children. And, you know, what that was like to have those conversations while at the same time, [00:07:30] we're having these massive parenting struggles and my three-year-old is peeing in the front yard of my next-door neighbor. And you know, like this is real, like this is actually something that happened, and you can hear it in this episode. So yeah, I'm very honest about just my own personal failures and parenting failures in that. But also, I think one of the big lessons of Shelter in Place and for me in life is, you know, we learn more through our mistakes than our successes.
[00:07:58] Neil McPhedran: Well, thanks for sharing that, uh, with us. So, as we mentioned off the top, you teach podcasting at Stanford. And so, uh, kind of before we jump into that, I'd love to sort of hear from you, um, how your personal experience of podcasting and building podcasts have shaped the way you teach podcasting.
[00:08:18] Laura Davis: Yeah, that's a great question. I think that there's a lot of ways I could answer that question, but one that is maybe the deepest for me and kind of the most meaningful, is that podcasting really helped me to find my voice. And I do mean my speaking voice, but I also mean my voice as a writer. You know, in fiction writing, there's a lot of talk, there's a lot of talk about finding your voice, what does it mean to find your voice as a writer?
[00:08:45] And I really think for 20 years, I thought I knew what that meant, but I actually didn't. And I think what podcasting taught me that I try to pass on to every student I have, is finding your voice on and off the page means sounding exactly like you. And, there might be things about your voice both in speaking and in writing that maybe you don't even like, but you can turn those things into something that actually gives your voice some personality and flavor and is authentically you in a way that people are going to respond to because they can feel that it's real and that it's coming from a deeper place and you're not trying to be something you're not. And I think podcasting gave me the gift of, for once, not overthinking everything that I wrote on the page.
[00:09:34] Neil McPhedran: Hmm.
[00:09:34] Laura Davis: Partly because I was working so fast. You know that first season, those first hundred episodes, I went to weekly for the second hundred. But, um, you know, the first hundred, I didn't have time to be a perfectionist. I really had to trust my gut in a way that I had never, ever given myself permission to do before. And so, a lot of the way I teach is actually directly from the lessons that I learned in those first hundred episodes. I have students do a lot of very fast work on purpose. It's kind of the bread and butter of everything that I do in teaching is trying to teach people to trust their gut, to find their voice, and to learn how to work quickly. Because as both of you know, every single part of podcast production will expand to fill the time that you have. So, if you have 40 hours to work on editing audio, it's going to take you 40 hours to edit audio.
[00:10:29] And if you have 40 minutes, then you're going to figure out how to get it done in that time. And there's so much of navigating this very, you know, often complicated work that comes down to, how can you manage your time in these different stages of production so that it doesn't just eat up your whole life.
[00:10:46] Jennifer - Lee Gunson: I love this because it's like podcasting is helping people explore different parts of their life too. Podcasting helped a lot of people during COVID figure out what they wanted to do with their life too. For me, I created my podcast [00:11:00] business, like, and Laura, you found what you need. Podcasting, like you said, is a great tool, not just to have a show and listens, sometimes it just really gives you that time to think. Even if you have one listener, it's more about the act of doing it, which I know leads into our next thing is how did you end up getting into the Stanford Storytelling Project?
[00:11:21] Laura Davis: Jonah Willihnganz, who's my boss, he created it way before anybody was talking about podcasts, which is amazing to me.
[00:11:29] Jennifer - Lee Gunson: He's the OG.
[00:11:30] Laura Davis: He is the OG. He is seriously the OG. He's amazing. And he, you know, was thinking about this way before anybody was talking about podcasts. They were talking about radio and shows like This American Life and Radiolab. And so, you can see that in the DNA of our program, that it started with those shows, but I'm sort of amazed and in awe at what Jonah created because it's a beautiful program and it's very special. But how I found it is also pretty cool.
[00:12:02] I've joked with my boss that I feel like I have the DNA of the Stanford Storytelling Project long before I found them. Part of the story with Shelter in place that I didn't mention before is that about a year in, about nine months in, I was getting very connected in the podcast community, meeting people online, attending all these workshops as I was learning. And I started hearing from quite a few people and specifically, women and non [00:12:30] binary podcast creators, who wanted to know how I had learned to do shelter in place so fast and to really understand not just podcasting, but narrative podcasting, which people aren't familiar with that term. You know, we think of shows as like this American Life, Radiolab, Snap Judgment, like those would all be examples that most people are familiar with. But in story driven podcasts, oftentimes it includes interviews, but those interviews are kind of like put within a narrative context. It has a story arc. There's a beginning, middle, and an end.
[00:13:02] And without knowing that term, that's what Shelter in Place was, just because I think I came to it with a fiction sensibility. I just kind of naturally went to that. So, I ended up doing a hundred interviews in those 200 episodes. And these women and folks reaching out to me, asking me how I did it, eventually led to my husband and I starting a training program that, um, in the beginning it was like very scrappy and, you know, not official, but we basically started building a curriculum. And we were aware that's what we were doing, but we thought like, well, we'll do this for a little bit, and we'll help these people who've reached out to us and that'll be that.
[00:13:38] And that ended up turning into, you know, a more official online training program and then an online course to put all of that live stuff so that people could do it self-paced. And that self paced course still exists today. It's at narrativepodcast.com, we still do workshops. About every month I'm doing one of those on a Saturday or something.
[00:13:57] When I saw my Stanford job description posted, the job I have now, It was like they had written a job for me. I mean, I just can't describe to you how uncanny it was. I wasn't looking for a job. Like I was not planning on applying for a job at a university that wasn't even in my mind, but I kept seeing this job posting come across my desk. And when I looked at it and read it, I was like, I should probably apply for this at least, right? Like, this seems a little too perfect for my particular skill set. [00:14:30] And the fact that I had built this narrative podcast curriculum and was teaching it and training people in how to do this, that was the job.
[00:14:37] And so, you know, here I am a little over a year later, and it has been ever a bit as perfect of a fit as my hunch was that it would be. Yeah, I mean, I'm just, I'm so grateful to have found a job that really, really fits my experience, and that life just brought me to this point. You know, it wasn't an easy three years to get to this point, but I'm so grateful that had I not done Shelter in Place, had I not done that training program, had I not mentored these women, like I wouldn't be fit to even apply for the job.
[00:15:06] But because of these very specific, intense experiences during the pandemic, it set me up to be really prepared for it. And, um, it's been a pure delight.
[00:15:16] Neil McPhedran: That's amazing. Curious, uh, what you would say students are getting out of this experience. I know when we spoke previously, you mentioned some of them are even getting jobs out of the, uh, their storytelling project work. But what would you sort of say are sort of some of the key things that students are getting out of this coursework and their experience building their podcasts?
[00:15:38] Laura Davis: This question is probably my favorite thing about the storytelling project because, the focus is very much on, like, yes, we're going to help you create a beautiful story driven podcast. But way more important than that is the student's experience of this process and their personal transformation. And so, there's a lot of emphasis, like [00:16:00] you see that in everything at the Stanford Storytelling Project. And so, there's a lot of focus on, yes, we'll teach you the nuts and bolts of podcasting but even more importantly, is what is that experience like for you to witness somebody else's story when you're sitting down to interview them. What is it like for you to have to ask these challenging questions about the world or about yourself? And what's the gift that you get as a storyteller? What's the gift that the listener gets?
[00:16:27] And so, what often ends up happening, you know almost always, is that students come in thinking, I'm going to do a project. This is what I'm going to do. I'll go through the steps, and I'll be done, and I'll have this cool thing. And they do get that they, you know, oftentimes it ends up being way better than they thought it was going to be.
[00:16:44] But even more importantly, they change, like they change in this process because I think there's something about the creative process that forces us to confront life's messiness because the creative process is a really messy process. Like it's not linear. [00:17:00] Often your kind of like in a messy middle at some point where you feel a little lost. And that's a lot like life, right? I mean, all of us have those moments in life. And so, we're very intentional about saying to students, hey, when you find yourself in that place where you're lost, like that's actually okay. That's exactly where you're supposed to be. And actually, you're going to be at that point again, maybe not in this project, but in some other project. And so, when you get to that place, if you can embrace that and say, this is a moment where I get to learn something new, I get to have a beginner's mindset. I get to just give myself permission to not let it be perfect. Like, that's a really transformative shift for students.
[00:17:38] Um, but then to speak to just what you said about jobs. I mean, yeah, I've definitely seen that happen too. I think there, it's not every student who comes through who wants to keep doing this, but I've had both at Narrative Podcasts and at Stanford now I've seen a lot of students come through here where they didn't know that they loved audio, they'd never done anything before. And [00:18:00] because they're learning so quickly, they gain the skills that they need to do pretty fast to go into an internship or into a, you know, a job. And in some cases, they're kind of even jumping levels to go to like an associate producer job, you know, as, as somebody who just kind of didn't know anything about it a year ago.
[00:18:18] So it's, I love that stuff. Like I am constantly telling my students, if you want to go into this, talk to me. I'll introduce you to people that I know in the industry who, you know, might be a good fit for you. And I love connecting people who have a passion for this.
[00:18:34] Jennifer - Lee Gunson: Well, not even podcasting. I think this opens doors into a more future friendly medium with resumes because even if it's a kid that comes in and has to do all the production stuff, but if their topic is really relatable to the type of job that they want to eventually go through. We always have to have different sets of material on us now because resumes, let's just face it, a lot of people don't read them, they don't cut it just because it says certain things on your resume. A lot of them get denied, even though the [00:19:00] talent is super great. And so again, when you are opening up about a subject that you're passionate about, you're being vulnerable, you can tell a lot from somebody's audio. And as we know, podcasts are hard to put together, it's a lot of work. So, I think, again, it shows how dedicated somebody is for a job. So, I think sometimes we've got to stop thinking about like a podcast is just to get listens because they could be used as a tool for many things. And this is what makes me excited.
[00:19:26] Laura Davis: I love that you said that. I completely agree. And I think there's something that you hear, you know, and this comes back to what we were talking about earlier with finding your voice, right? I think there's something that you get a sense of who somebody is when you hear their voice in an episode. It's so intimate, it's so personal and you know, that their voice is in our ears if you're wearing earbuds, it's kind of magical.
[00:19:50] And I think you're absolutely right that it's a thing that can set people apart, even if they're not going into audio, even if they're going into some, you know. I'm, you [00:20:00] mentioned in my bio, the class that I teach. Stories to Save Our Planet is a new class that I started teaching last spring. And a lot of those students, they're really interested in climate change stuff, but they're not necessarily interested long term in audio. A few of them are, but, you know, by and large, most of them who take that class, they want to go on to have careers that are doing something to make a difference in the world when it comes to climate change. And so, for them, that's a perfect example of like, their resume having that link to that 15-minute episode that they created, which is like, really good and out in the world and anybody can listen to it.
[00:20:37] I think gives them just an edge that they wouldn't have just from a resume and cover letter. So, I hope more and more students will use it that way because I completely agree.
[00:20:47] Jennifer - Lee Gunson: Like you're showing the real you. I think it's better than, and I'm not putting anyone under the bus, when I was looking for jobs before I started my company. And they ask you the dumbest questions to show your personality. Like, what type of unicorn are [00:21:00] you? That was one for real, but I was like, I don't know one of a pointy horn. Like, I guess I'm not creative enough and I'm not going to qualify. No wonder I didn't get an interview.
[00:21:08] Laura Davis: What type of unicorn?
[00:21:09] Neil McPhedran: I didn't even know there was multiple types of unicorns. That's hilarious. One of the things that, um, is key within what you teach, and I know your background is crafting a story, and you've talked a little bit about that, crafting a story for podcasting. You mentioned the difference between narrative and interview style podcasting, but [00:21:30] I'd love to hear crafting a story for interview style podcasting as well too. If you could sort of dig into that a little bit for us?
[00:21:36] Laura Davis: Yeah, absolutely. So, I think maybe the simplest way to think about this, one that I think I've found really helpful for myself and for students, is thinking in terms of action and reflection, or another way to think about that is like scenes, and then meaning making of that scene.
[00:21:54] So why are we hearing those scenes? Why are they significant? So, if you think about the basic structure of a story, it's like this happened, this inciting incident to set us off and drop us hopefully right into the action of the story and get us interested, and then this happened. And here's why this is important.
[00:22:10] Speaking to somebody, and you know you have your list of interview questions. You could just ask them those questions, that's fine. But an even more interesting way to do that interview is to prompt them to speak in scenes. So, if you ask me, Laura, how did you start Shelter in Place? And I say, well, I started it in the beginning of the podcast or in the beginning of the pandemic.
[00:22:32] That's true. It's pretty boring. If I tell you I was in a moment on the day that I found out we were going into lockdown and I was panicking because I'd been, you know, basically a stay-at-home mom for eight years dying to spend time writing. And finally, I had gotten my moment and then the pandemic happened, and I was suffocated by life, and I needed a way out. And so, I saw this podcast as a way to give myself that creative lifeline. I had no idea what I was getting myself into or that it would completely change my life, but that was the moment that it all began. You know, that's way more interesting than me just saying, I started it during the pandemic.
[00:23:09] So prompting your interviewee to speak in scenes and even asking them like, what was that like? What did it feel like to be there? Can you describe to me what that place looked like? Who was there? You know, really thinking about the five senses that can help your interviewee to maybe without them even realizing it, describe whatever they're going, they're saying that happened in a scene. That makes for really great storytelling.
[00:23:34] And then at that point, sometimes you can even get them to do the meaning making too and say, well, what did you learn in that moment? Sometimes they have enough distance from the scene to be able to go ahead and do that. But if they don't, you as an interview host, you can say, I wonder if like, did you take this from it?
[00:23:50] You know, it seems to me like you kind of saw that moment and then you learned this thing from it. And then they can say, Oh, yeah. And you know, and I also learned this. So, there's this kind of back and forth that you can do even in the moment of an interview, even if you're not doing audio editing and all of that, you know, which we do a lot of audio editing, but not every interview show does. And so even learning to be an interview who prompts your interviewee to speak in scenes. can get you really, really far in getting that story structure.
[00:24:18] I think the other thing to think about is remembering that in any good story, you have conflict. So, like, there's got to be some reason that we should care about this. It can't just be like, this is interesting to me, and so I'm going to talk. I mean, you could do that, but you might not have very many people interested. But if you can ask a specific question or try to solve a problem or explore some conflict. That is really, I think, like maybe the most important element of a story. So, identifying that, again, in an interview, in a story, whatever you're doing.
[00:24:50] Second is characters. You're a character. The people you're interviewing are characters. And so, thinking about what makes those characters special and themselves. Um, a lot of times I'll see this with students where they might cut out a moment that like the person laugh or they do something kind of funny or just say some funny slang. And I'm like, no, no, no, keep that in because that is a moment where you get to see what this character is like. We don't want to make them, you know, bloodless. We want to make them alive and vivid and interesting. And if they. Say some crazy thing that's really funny or just kind of charming because it's just the way they talk. That's a great thing to keep in.
[00:25:32] Um, so you have conflict, character, setting, um, and then finally resolution. You know, it's like where does the piece end? How does the conflict resolve? It's almost never neat and tidy. Often, it's like an opening up or a complication of some understanding of the world. Maybe our world gets a little bit bigger, a little more nuanced because of this story. But there's some sort of resolution. You know, there's some gift of the piece. We talk a lot at SSP about what's the gift of the piece. What are listeners going to take from this that feels like, oh, I'm so glad I listened to this.
[00:26:03] Jennifer - Lee Gunson: Something that I've learned in radio and I'm glad that you're kind of bringing it in is the 30 second hook because I think it is so important. Something that I've used all throughout my career and even now in podcasting. Can you tell us a little bit about your version of the 30 second hook?
[00:26:17] Laura Davis: Yeah, absolutely. I'd love to talk about this because I think it's so essential to any good episode. Like, it doesn't matter if 10 minutes in, your story is brilliant. If it's boring in the first 30 seconds, they will never get to 10 minutes. And so, one of the things, in fact, next week, this will be all of my classes, they will be doing this exercise. I have them make a trailer, which often ends up being the beginning of the episode that they will make. And the reason I do that is because in those 30 seconds to two minutes, if you can entice people to want to know more about your story in that amount of time, then they will probably keep listening.
[00:26:54] And so that question, I mean, I think of that 30 second to two minute start or hook, as the place where you as a storyteller really have to figure out what your story's about. And you don't have to say it all in that first 30 seconds. Like, it might be that all that we hear in the first 30 seconds is some little nibble of it, that we get a hint of it, that's like, ooh, what's happening? I want to know more. But if you don't know what your story is about, that's going to come through immediately, like in the first 30 seconds to two minutes. If you do know what it's about, then it's much easier to say, and if I can give them enough of a hint that they're [00:27:30] interested and they want to keep listening, then I've done my job in the opening. And there's all kinds of ways to do that, but I try to really start with that with students because, and then we actually come back to it at the end of the quarter usually, so they start with a trailer and then they go back and they make a trailer again in like week 10 at the end of the quarter. And the reason I do that is they learn so much in that, you know, in the interim between those, the beginning and the end of the class, [00:28:00] that they start to understand what their story really is and what's interesting about it, what's at stake. You know, all of those things should be coming through in some way in the opening.
[00:28:09] Neil McPhedran: I think that's super helpful. Thanks for sharing that. I'm still feeling, I'm still going back a couple of questions and feeling self conscious about my interview style here.
[00:28:17] Laura Davis: No, no, no, no. You guys are doing great.
[00:28:20] Neil McPhedran: Yeah. Maybe just sort of digging in a little bit further into some of the minutiae of podcasting and curious as part of your teaching, I'm assuming you're also digging into show titles and episode titles, descriptions, and show notes and best practices. What are some of the key things on this topic that you teach? And just for the listening audience, what are some things we could learn as well too?
[00:28:45] Laura Davis: So, kind of the end process, once you're done, what do you do with it?
[00:28:48] Neil McPhedran: Yeah.
[00:28:48] Laura Davis: When you put it out in the world, what do you need to think about?
[00:28:50] Neil McPhedran: That's a better way to ask the question, thank you.
[00:28:51] Laura Davis: Yeah, that's a great question. Well, this is something that I played with a lot with Shelter in Place, like we tried wildly different things season to season to see what worked, because it is on some level like a marketing game, right? And like so many things in marketing, you don't really know whether something works until you try it. And I think titles and episode descriptions are a great example of that where, um, I know something we tried and that I've seen other podcasts try is, every title is a question, and you're going to explore that question in the episode. We tried for a while, it was like our own little private joke, that [00:29:30] I looked at viral titles and what viral titles had in common, and we actually very consciously crafted episode titles to follow that formula just to see, like, would it actually make a difference? And it actually did, it was really kind of funny. I mean, we were just sort of laughing about it because, you know, I think the clickbait titles are I roll my eyes at them a little bit. But I was very, you know, sort of tongue in cheek, like maybe ironically using the viral titles.
[00:30:00] So I think there's different ways you can approach it, but being aware that what your title is does matter. I think that's the point, however you come about it, that it's worth spending a minute to think about, if somebody doesn't know anything about my show, cause they're not going to if they've never listened before, they'll draw all kinds of assumptions based on your title. So, your title should be interesting.
[00:30:20] Your episode description, I think, is also important. But you also have to remember, like, people may or may not get that far. And depending on whether or not they're looking [00:30:30] on their phone or a browser or which app they're using, they might not see the description at all. You know, there might be almost nothing there. So, trying to put the most important information up front, without giving away what the episode is about completely. You know, you want, again, it's kind of like that thirty second tease at the beginning, that thirty second hook, you want to make sure you have just enough in there to make people keep listening.
[00:30:55] I think personally, I think having good episode artwork is really important. Our artwork was created by my husband's aunt, who's a fabulous graphic designer. And I would completely recommend to people, like spend some time on the logo or get somebody who knows what they're doing to make that episode art look really great because, people are going to see it like teeny tiny and you're going to lose a lot if there's like a ton of detail. So that might be the thing that like makes them click.
[00:31:25] And then I think just beyond that, show notes. You know, like including, including stuff so people can find you, transcripts, all that stuff, I think is, you can't include all of that in the episode description all the time, depending on the app, but it's worth it in my book to spend the time to do that, not just for people to know about your episode, but for SEO purposes as well. If you have transcripts, that is a great gift to you in terms of searchability.
[00:31:49] Neil McPhedran: That's a really good point. I wanted to sort of double back on your comment about episode artwork with the new...
[00:31:54] Laura Davis: Ya.
[00:31:54] Neil McPhedran: ...iOS 17 that's rolling out this week for most of us on our Apple phones. Apple is [00:32:00] leaning into episode artwork and they're revamping the Apple app to a certain extent, or upgrading it, and um, so it's a huge opportunity that episode level artwork actually.
[00:32:12] Laura Davis: Ya.
[00:32:12] Neil McPhedran: I think you make a good point. It's the combination of the title and the artwork that's probably going to be the big listen or not listen for someone, but that episode artwork is a really big opportunity.
[00:32:24] Jennifer - Lee Gunson: There's such a debate on it too. And I want to know your opinion. A lot of people are talking about what's better to [00:32:30] have just cover art or have a podcast cover with someone's picture on it. And right now, a lot of people are in the picture camp.
[00:32:36] Laura Davis: I know they are. I, and I understand why, like, if all you care about is downloads and you have a celebrity in your podcast, I understand. And there's also the thing of like the host, you know, we want to feel like we know our host. And I'm a little bit of a purist in this and that I'm always going to go with the beautiful artwork over the photo.
[00:32:57] Jennifer - Lee Gunson: Well, Neil and I aren't on ours. So, either that's a good thing.
[00:33:01] Laura Davis: And I'm not on mine. I'm not on mine. I love our shelter in place logo, you know, our narrative podcast logo I love, and I suppose it could be my picture on there instead, but I don't know. There's actually something that feels a little inauthentic to me about having my photo on there. Like, that's just not, that's not me. Like I'm the host and yes, I'm your guide through this journey. But very early on, I knew that even though I was telling my story, really what I was doing is trying to be a guide for the listener's story, but again, I'm not speaking from a downloads perspective. Some of the stuff I'm like, well, I don't care, this is how I want to do it.
[00:33:43] Neil McPhedran: This has been fantastic and in the final couple minutes here, I'd love to sort of hear any sort of thoughts you have for us about where this is going, how to use podcasting more from a higher education perspective, or how podcasting is going to continue to evolve higher education?
[00:33:59] Laura Davis: Well, first of all, I mean, I wish I had a crystal ball. Well, I don't know. Maybe I don't wish I had a crystal ball, actually. That might not be that interesting. Let's live this story. Um, I will say that I do hope that more and more people realize what an opportunity there is in higher education podcasting. And I think that's true, you know, from like an institutional standpoint, but the part that gets me even more excited is for people who are in higher education, in the classroom, working with students, working with student groups, [00:34:30] whatever it is. I think there's a real opportunity here to engage our students in a way that is way more inclusive and accessible than our traditional teaching has often been.
[00:34:45] And, um, you know, an example that comes to mind for me that I think I shared at Podcast Movement when I was speaking there is I, you know, in this class, Stories to Save Our Planet, I had a student who, I often ask [00:35:00] students this question to open up a class, not every class, but we do it usually a few times a quarter we'll ask them, hey, what's life giving and what's draining about what you're doing right now? And the student said, when it came to him, he said, nothing is life giving and everything is draining.
So, I was like, hey, thanks for being real about it. Like that's real, sometimes that happens, but I pulled him aside after class and I asked him, I was like, hey, what's going on? You know, I want to know what's going on with you and support you. And he was like, well, you know, I have dyslexia and it's really hard for me to write. And I just hate writing. Like, I just, I can't get my script written. This is so difficult. And so, one of the things we ended up doing, which I love giving people the suggestion when they, you know, don't think of themselves as writers is, I was like, hey, go for a walk with your phone, record yourself talking about your story. Like you have a sense of what your story is, you kind of know what you want it to be, we've talked a lot about it. Tell that story into your phone. Just talk. [00:36:00] It doesn't have to be great audio quality. All we care about is the transcript. So, he did that, he uploaded his audio to Descript, we use that in my class, and then copied and pasted that text into a Google Doc, and that was his first draft.
[00:36:15] Neil McPhedran: Hmm.
[00:36:16] Laura Davis: And I have to tell you, his story ended up being stunningly beautiful. Like, he is actually a fantastic writer, but he wouldn't have known that without going through that process. And he's now one of these students who is, you know, deeply involved with a storytelling project even beyond the class, wants to do more audio. He's like, I want to do this all the time. And I think that, you know, that one example is a great, it's a great illustration of how our students sometimes need something a little different ...
[00:36:46] Neil McPhedran: hmm.
[00:36:46] Laura Davis: ...than the traditional approach to be unlocked and be excited and be, um, to really understand that they actually can be really good at something.
[00:36:55] Neil McPhedran: Right.
[00:36:55] Laura Davis: And, so anyway, I just love that for, I mean, I maybe didn't [00:37:00] answer your future, uh, fortune telling podcast question,
[00:37:04] Neil McPhedran: I like it.
[00:37:04] Laura Davis: But I answered it with a question that I wanted to answer. How's that?
[00:37:08] Neil McPhedran: I like it.
[00:37:09] Laura Davis: Very, very sneaky interview tactic.
[00:37:12] Neil McPhedran: That was great.
[00:37:12] Jennifer - Lee Gunson: We can tell you're an interviewer. I feel like I could just listen to you tell stories of your students all day long. There are probably some amazing stories that we didn't have time for today.
[00:37:25] Neil McPhedran: It's been great. Thank you so much.
[00:37:27] Laura Davis: Awesome.
[00:37:27] Jennifer - Lee Gunson: Thank you so much.
[00:37:28] Laura Davis: Oh, thank you. This was really fun. This is great. This will be the best part of my day today; I love doing this.
[00:37:34] Neil McPhedran: Okay, Jen, that was amazing. I'm still just gobsmacked with podcasting daily for 200 straight days or something like that. That is just, I couldn't imagine that. That just seems, I mean, you know, what we go through to do it every two weeks here. So anyway, that's quite amazing.
[00:37:50] Jennifer - Lee Gunson: Yeah, that's a lot. A lot of people complain to me about doing a podcast every two weeks. I wouldn't even think about doing one every single day. So that's huge. I [00:38:00] always talk to you about this, that podcasting is more, it's beyond the listens, beyond the celebrities, you can use podcasting now to tell your story, it is a more authentic story. And like Laura was saying in the interview, it showcases your skills too. So, you know, it kind of shows an employer already that you're ready to go the extra mile because putting together a piece of audio is no small feat.
[00:38:23] Neil McPhedran: Similar to what we learned from Craig from Louisiana Tech, um, using podcasting as another channel for people to learn. I love that story of her student struggling with writing using audio and for that student it was just a game changer. I think it's this notion of using, podcasting as another channel to learn is just super powerful and just giving students a wide breadth of ways to learn.
[00:38:51] Jennifer - Lee Gunson: Yeah, I love that story as well, because we're all different types of learners. Even myself, I prefer to listen to more audio than write. So, you know, there's a podcast out there for everybody. And, uh, I like to end on a positive note, Neil, you know me. Anyways, that that's us again. And join us next time for another episode of Continuing Studies.
[00:39:12] Neil McPhedran: See ya.
[00:39:13] Jennifer - Lee Gunson: See ya.
[00:39:16] Neil McPhedran: Thank you for tuning into 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 [00:39:30] 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 colleagues who also might be interested in higher education podcasts.
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