Podcasts have become a mainstay for entertainment and information, powered by the democratisation of multimedia and self publication. They were in part an evolution of the blog, and exist in a domain where in the past for a moment the blog was king*. Both podcasts and blogs allow for creativity, editorial control and catering for any audience however big or small. Podcasts are easy and fun to access, and are an excellent tool for educators and pathway to impact, but creating a podcast that is engaging and high quality is harder than it looks. To help you get started, Royal Academy of Engineering Fellow, Dr Lewis Owen, shares his insight of making the educational and fun podcast Materials Unlocked.
The first thing you should know is that I am an avid podcast listener… If you ever see me walking anywhere you’ll probably see me with headphones and 99% of the time I’ll be listening to a podcast. So when, through a chance conversation with Rae Helm (the Communications Officer for Royce at the University of Sheffield), I found out that there was a plan to put together a Materials Science podcast - I jumped at the opportunity.
We acknowledged that Materials Science faces a challenge as a subject - we don’t often have much subject recognition, and wanted to address that with our podcast. Whilst many people have heard of Chemistry, Physics, Aerospace Engineering or Mechanical Engineering - not as many people have heard of Material Science. Choosing it as a subject as people move to university is therefore a bit of a leap of faith. For example I myself studied Chemistry at university and only moved into Material Science much later. People don’t necessarily know what the subject involves, how it is used across numerous industries, or the types of jobs/careers/professions that materials scientists work in.
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| Recording Episode 4 with Wunmi Olukoya, Dr Yunus Asakli and Dr Will Pulfrey |
But then the question came about how to actually go about it. What would we talk about? What would people want to listen to? What is actually involved in the making of an episode?
So we put our heads together - and out of it, came the “Materials Unlocked” podcast. The first season, eight episodes and a special, are out now - wherever you find your podcasts!
Disclaimer - I don’t by any means claim to be an expert in podcasting. My interest comes mainly from being a listener, and also from my years of outreach across a range of different fields (presentations, radio segments, youtube videos, articles etc.). However, if you’ll indulge me - I’ll share with you some of my experiences putting together this podcast, the choices we made, and things you might want to consider. If you want to check out “Materials Unlocked” you can find the various links at the end and see how you think we did!
So here goes - my advice on podcasting!
Think about the audience
Over the years I’ve done a lot of outreach - and the first thing to think about is your audience. Who are you trying to reach? What do they or don’t they know already? More specifically, in this instance, it is worth thinking about who is likely to be listening to a podcast. Different media will be better at communicating with different people, so it may be that your target audience does not overlap well with a podcast, in which case you might have to re-think…
Our target audience was people already interested in science, but might not know what Materials Science is. More specifically students coming to the end of school thinking about further study - who might be interested in what Materials Science has to offer.
What do you want to communicate?
We communicate for lots of different reasons: to inform people, to persuade them, to emotionally move them etc. Have a think about what your goal and message are. I often like to think of this like a one-line summary of a film or a book.
For us, the concept was raising awareness of what materials science is. More specifically for Season 1 we thought about explaining the various parts of the materials design cycle. This also shaped the introduction that I give:
“Hello! And welcome to “Materials: Unlocked” the podcast where we take a look at the lesser-known subject of materials science, and try to unlock its mysteries. My name is Dr Lewis Owen and I’m a lecturer at the University of Sheffield. In each episode, with the help of some students, friends and colleagues we are going to delve into a particular topic and hopefully unlock its potential!”
Planning the format
Once you have a good answer to these first two questions you can go about designing the content accordingly. Here are some things to think about and the various choices we made:
Episodes - have a think about how many episodes and the topics that you want to cover. We chose to use the first episode to give a broader overview, and then go into more detail in each of the following episodes. Have a look at the episode list and the topics we chose. We also included a special, specifically aimed at answering the question “what is materials science like at school and at university?”.
Tone - this is an important one for me. The podcasts I enjoy most are the ones that just feel like people having a chat! Therefore, anything you can do to encourage this I think is good. This is led by the host - so make sure you set the formality and atmosphere. We have tea and cake at our recordings to make sure that everyone is relaxed from the start. I don’t use a script but have a series of prompt questions to act as talking points - this helps to make sure the conversation is natural. Often guests can be really nervous and have occasionally asked for questions in advance - which I politely decline. Most people are actually best just having a chat! I try to make things as close to a normal conversation as possible!
People - some podcasts will just be a single person imparting information, some will be a discussion with a guest or amongst a panel. Have a think about the dynamic you want to create and which format would best serve your intention. We wanted the laid back natter feel - so needed several people. We thought it would be good to have an authority on each topic, but also have someone who the audience related to, asking the questions they might have, to help them access the episode. Therefore, on every episode we have at least one expert (normally a member of staff) and one student, and I try to lead a good chat between us all! Although we cap this at four people so that our audience don’t lose track of who’s speaking.
Structure - some of the podcasts I like the most (particularly educational ones) have a good structure to them that you can follow and know what to expect. This makes the audience feel safe, and that they are in good hands. We have a fairly loose structure – but at the beginning we have the intro, after which I introduce the student and then we have a chat, then I introduce the expert and have a quick chat – then we launch into the main discussion.
Length - have a think about how long you want the episodes to be. Podcasts don’t need to have a specific length, you don’t even need to have all your episodes the same length - but, depending on your target audience and when they are likely to listen, it’s worth having a good idea of a ballpark length. With our laid back format - we generally chat until a natural end point. Conversation on the topic seems to wrap up around the hour mark very naturally - which I think is also the limit to what most people may want to listen to in one go.
Music - if you’re thinking of having music at the start of the episode it will often set the tone. It is worth spending some time listening to some different things and thinking about what captures your mood best. I went through a stock music library to try and find something that captured the vibe and made a short intro. Later we then had some music composed specially for us!
Trailer - it’s worth putting together a trailer to help hook people in, but it also focuses your ideas about a lot of the things above. This will really help your promotion ahead of releasing your first episode, as well as giving you something snappy to point to when people ask what it’s about. You can have a listen to our trailer below! Materials Unlocked - Trailer
Editing and sound quality - getting this right is very important for professional finish, so think about where you will record, equipment, editing software etc. Just think how quickly you would ditch something that wasn’t clear, no matter how interested you are in the topic. We were very lucky to be able to employ a professional, James Marriott, to handle all these things. James has been brilliant with all of this side, which frees me up to focus on the content.
Episode release - have a think about how often you want episodes released. Are people going to listen every day, or are people more likely to binge lots of episodes at once. We release ours fortnightly to both allow us to get everything we needed recorded, and because we could get all our episodes out swiftly for bingeing!
Title and logo - very important to be eye-catching and meaningful! Avoid using images that are going to be cliche in the podcast realm, I’m talking microphones, speakers, soundwaves, as your logo will just get lost in a sea of generality. Also ensure that if you’re using text it’s going to be clear when displayed “in app” and on a phone screen, too many words and too small a font will literally become illegible. Here it was a combination of discussion with students, who said what we are trying to do is “unlock materials science as a subject”, and fantastic design skills by Rae Helm that gave us our title and logo! We steered away from anything too stereotypical in the world of engineering - not a cog in sight!
That is quite a list of things… but hopefully gives you an idea of some of the questions you might want to think about!
Above all, I’d say the best advice is - make sure you’re having fun! If you have fun then your audience will have fun and want to listen! Happy podcasting!!
* Who reads blogs anymore...? Apparently you do.