Natan Ruman - Podcasting

Leading up to this semester I had no idea what I was getting myself into, this was my second time going into Propel, so I had a general idea as to what assignments would be coming up. However, Propel isn’t about the assignments, it’s about the project. When I finally decided I wanted to make a podcast I still had no idea what that really meant. I mean, how hard can it be to just set up a microphone and talk for an hour, right? Well apparently, it’s pretty hard. However, just like any other skills I knew that through repetition I would improve. For reference, you could check out the difference between my first and eighth podcasts:

The areas I believe I have made the most improvement in were in my abilities to carry a conversation and draw out interesting perspectives. In the first episode I basically just read off of a list of points I had written beforehand, which I believe made the conversation feel a lot less natural. However by the final episode I would only have 2 or 3 questions written before hand just in case I couldn’t come up with anything to say, and most of the time I wouldn’t even use them.

Something I did not expect when I came up with the idea to host a podcast is just how much fun it would be. Throughout the semester I was nearly constantly in a state of panic, however I learned to enjoy that panic because that means what I was about to do would be worth doing. I also found the enjoyment and fulfillment I would get from getting to talk to my guests amazing and totally worth the worry.

The main goal of the podcast was to get better at hosting a show, and - without a doubt - I improved. However, improvement is not just a “one and done” kind of thing. I will continue making podcasts and continue improving. I believe that is the most important thing I have learned this semester.

When it came to creating a podcast I didn’t really know where to start, so most of my early work this semester involved me throwing ideas at the wall and seeing what would stick. The most obvious example would be in deciding the identity of my podcast, and my first thought was to have a show where I talk about current global events much like a news show, but from trying it out I found that I couldn’t possibly put out episodes fast enough to keep my information up to date if I was going to be the entire journalistic team. After a few more iterations, I chose to interview artists in my city and eventually find out what drives them to create what they do, and this is what my podcast has become. I chose to make the podcast more of a conversation rather than an interview. This came with its own problems, such as the fact that it is hard to build a following when your shows idea is so broad, but I wasn’t too concerned as at that point in time as I just wanted to get better at podcasting.

The next problem I encountered was fear. Every single episode I recorded was driven by fear, and at first this deterred me - I didn’t want to reach out to people to be guests on the show out of fear of embarrassing myself. I had planned to make 12 episodes, but by the time the semester was over I only had 8 uploaded, and I believe that is because I let the fear of embarrassing myself and releasing bad content stop me from getting better. I believe this all changed when I recorded episode 4. I was going to be interviewing Ian Bawa, a filmmaker who has been in the industry for a long time. Leading up to the recording of this episode, I was terrified. Whether it was because I was intimidated of interviewing someone with so much knowledge, or I didn’t think I had enough preparation done, I can’t remember. But after recording that episode, I learned a valuable lesson. Fear was not a bad thing. What’s that cliché saying? “If your dreams doing scare you, they aren’t big enough?” Well, as cliché as it is, it was what ended up driving me. I was scared of recording every single episode, but if I was scared of not having enough preparation done, I would prepare more until all I was scared of was forgetting to hit the record button.

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