Podcast ’08

For a while now I’ve toyed with the idea of podcasting. Well, the time has come to either do something with the idea or drop it. So, starting on January 5 and running more or less once a week for the rest of the year (or at least a few months) I will be adding a podcast to the regular blogging output. To explain my half-baked reasoning for this project I’ve put together a brief TAQ, or theoretically asked questions (since I can’t claim many real questions, let alone frequently asked ones).

Why Do This? Well, people have often said I have a good face for radio. So, it made sense to explore a voice-based medium.

How will the podcast differ from the blog? Well, I hope it will be funnier. The focus will be similar, looking at religion, culture and globalisation. However, I will be discussing more content drawn from other podcasts, satire and mainstream news media.

Will you include interviews? Well, I’d love to! The main thing that has held me back from podcasting up till now has been a preference for an interview-based format. Single voice podcasts can be dull as dishwater and most of the podcasts I like include interviews, or banter, or multi-voice formats. Hopefully interviews will become a feature in time, but to start with, it will be a solo-voice format.

How will you overcome the limits of solo-voice? Well, the short answer is Рby keeping it short (6-8 minutes). The longer answer is that good podcasting rewards you either with fresh and inspiring content, which is hard to do; or with lots of links and places to visit, which is easier to manage. Initially, I’ll be aiming low and going for lots of linkage.

Will we have to listen to lots of political ranting? Well, I don’t like to think of myself as a ranter. Then again, I don’t like to think of myself as wordy and verbose Рbut, the length of my typical blogposts shames me on that front. Given the state of the world today (and the upcoming elections in the US) politics will surely feature. However, I will be limiting the time devoted explicitly to party politics and will clearly label any editions specifically focussed on politics.

Will you focus the podcasts on one topic like all the how to have a successful blog/podcast type books suggest? Well, I’m not that guy. In fact, most of my favourite podcasts are not narrowly focussed, but cover a wide range of topics.

Will you take questions and respond to listener comments? Well of course! It would be great if people could submit questions in mp3 format (wav, or oog), but I’ll take emails, or Morse code.

Will the podcast be available via iTunes? Well, there wouldn’t be much point otherwise?

What do you consider will be your podcasts biggest weakness? Well, my test recordings indicate I tend to start a lot of sentences by saying…