My Opinion on Podcasts

Podcasts have become very popular in the last few years. Although I do not consume this type of content on a regular basis, I understand why so many people listen to them. An audio-only format is appealing since it does not require a person’s full attention, and there are podcasts for all audiences, whether it is for self-development, learning, or even entertainment, this type of content can have high value. The reason why I’m not a big fan of podcasts is their format. I feel like I need to pay full attention to a podcast in order to absorb all of its value and take the most out of it. The problem is that I don’t have the time or the attention span to listen to hour-long podcasts, and not listening them in their entirety makes no sense to me. Well, that is when only one theme is addressed throughout a podcast, because I recently found out that the only podcasts that I can stand watching are those in which various topics are discussed. I like these podcasts because they can be listened to in sections without having to listen to the entire thing for it to make sense. These podcasts are usually uploaded as a series of clips on social media along with a video in which the podcasters are shown, and this, to me, is way more entertaining. One of the few podcasts that I’ve watched and liked is The Wild Project, in which many topics, mostly news about mysterious or controversial events worldwide, are discussed. This podcast is in Spanish, however, the full episodes can be watched on YouTube with English subtitles. I highly recommend it.

Creating a Podcast

I started by brainstorming a theme for my podcast. I decided to make it about Ecuador, the country where I’m from. More than the country itself, I wanted to share facts about its culture. For this, I divided the structure of my podcast in four sections: introduction, food, music, and sports as relating to Ecuadorian culture. In the introduction, I provided some general information about Ecuador, I introduced myself, and I introduced my guest. I invited my brother Julian to join me on the podcast so it would be more of a conversation rather than an exposition. I believe that this dynamic made the podcast more entertaining. As regarding to food, I intended to share the typical dishes of Ecuador and explain how they vary depending on the region. In the next section, about music, I intended to introduce some of the most prominent Ecuadorian musicians and the genres of music that are the most popular across the country. Finally, for the last section on sports, I intended to share the most popular sports in Ecuador and some of the athletes that stand out the most representing the country internationally. Below you will find the Pilot episode of my podcast which I titled “Our World”. If it were to become a podcast series, the idea would be to share the culture of a different country in every episode.

The Tools I Used

To create this podcast I used Apple’s Logic Pro X. This is a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) software which is used for music recording, production, mixing, and mastering. However, since I was already familiar with how it works, I decided to use it to record and edit my podcast. Since many audio tracks can be mixed, adding background music was very easy. For the recording I used a Blue Snow Ball microphone, which records audio clearly with very good quality. Finally, I created a video using CapCut to later upload it to YouTube and embed it here, on this blog post. YouTube also provides the option of automatic captioning, which makes this content more accessible. Overall, I enjoyed the experience of creating my first podcast, although there is a lot of room for improvement, I believe that, as with everything, it is a matter of practice. I have always struggled with public speaking and English is not my first language which made it more of a challenge, but I learned a lot from the process and am open to create more content in this format in the future.