On Three Years of Podcasting

Since December 2019, I have released just over 100 episodes of my podcast.

The first episode was done from a park in Playa Del Carmen, Mexico using nothing but my smartphone and the built-in recording app.

Zero editing was done to that episode. Cars can be heard in the background. People talking.  A simple outline was made with bullet points in the note app on my phone. No money was spent.

And no one listened to it.

First Episodes Sucked

My plan was simply to document my travels in weekly installments.

It wasn’t until the third or fourth episode that I told anyone I was doing it. Even then, it was only a small handful of friends and family. I was self-conscious recording each episode and hitting publish. I didn’t want to waste anyone’s time. Despite that desire, these episodes were terrible. Long pauses, lots of filler words, inarticulate stories, and bad audio quality.

Podcasting as a Low-feedback Medium

Podcasting is a strange medium. There is little to no feedback. Unlike with a YouTube video or a Tweet, I don’t know what people think about my content. I don’t have analytics to know if they are listening to the whole episode or hearing the first word out of my mouth and deleting it. I don’t know if people are sharing it. I don’t know if people are finding the episodes valuable.

Evolution of the Show

What I do know is that over time, the podcast has evolved. Each episode, I try to make it a little better, a little more valuable to anyone listening to it. I have experimented with different formats: adding music, doing interviews, doing long episodes, doing short episodes, editing, not editing.

I dialed in a method of turning my notes into a script. I started editing it using free software like Garageband and have since upgraded to AI editing software Descript. I transitioned from using the smartphone microphone to using a decent USB mic. I’ve switched podcast hosts. I bring attention to my filler words and try to eliminate those (that’s an ongoing battle). I record in quieter environments. Slowly, with tiny, usually imperceptible iterations, the podcast has gotten better. Still not good, but better.

39 Hours of Practice

The podcast is still an amateur production. Spotify tells me that I published 130 minutes of content this year. That is probably lower than my first two years but let’s conservatively say I’ve published a total of 390 minutes of content in aggregate. And let’s say for each minute of recorded content there is 5 minutes of discarded content, editing, uploading, and other production work. That is 1,950 minutes. Put this together, 1,950 plus 390, I have spent roughly 2,340 minutes podcasting, or 39 hours.

If it takes 10,000 hours to become a master at a skill, I am at the very earliest stage of this process.

Going Forward

The average life expectancy for a male born when and where I was, is 79 years. If I’m fortunate enough to live that long, I have 48 years of podcasting ahead of me. I don’t know what directions the show will take or how it will evolve but I intend to keep making it. I have no particular goals for the podcast in terms of listeners or reach. It is, and will remain, something I do because it’s fun.

Parasocial Relationships

One final thought, there is a phenomenon in the modern era known as parasocial relationships. These are one-sided relationships in which a person feels as though they have an intimate bond with another person whom they have never met before. This is why you know everything about your favorite podcaster’s family, preferences, philosophies, and hobbies yet you’ve never met him or her before.

If you’re someone I don’t personally know, and you’ve somehow found the show, please reach out. I’d love to hear from you.

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Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/rosszeiger/support