I'm going to use episode #733 of This American Life: Warriors in the Garden published on 5 March 2021 to explore what makes a great episode that uses an episodic structure. Namely


1. A good overarching question


2. Focus on people. 


3. Bring out the journey of change. 


Episode link: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/733/warriors-in-the-garden




PRODUCTION NOTES


Recording Mic: Zoom LMF-2 Lavalier mic (I didn't secure this properly hence the scratching sounds. Arrrrrgh!!!!!! Sorry. )


Recording device : Zoom F2 32 bit float Field Recorder


Recording location: Dining table, seated, no pillow-fort.


Recording format: WAV (32 bit float mono)


Editing app (and EQ) : Adobe Audition


Sound Treatment: Auphonic Productions at Auphonic.com


Auphonic.com settings [to output as a 16bit mono WAV file]: Adaptive Leveler (on), Loudness Normalization (Loudness Target -19 LUFS ), Filtering (on), Noise and Hum Reduction (Reduction Amount: Auto), Sample rate: 44.1kHz


I uploaded the resulting WAV file to Anchor.fm to host the file and added the music from their free music stock.


Episode art: Canva


Anchor automatically converts the WAV file into a 128kbps, stereo, .m4a file