500 podcast terms, defined
It's my take on a podcast glossary. Plus: A lower price for our bootcamp.
New Resource: My take on a podcast glossary
Last week, Sounds Profitable released their Podcast Industry Glossary. My first thought: “Wow. This is fantastic.” My second thought: “I think it’s finally time to start tackling that Google Sheet with 500 hundred podcast terms!” Guess I’m deadline- and FOMO-driven.
I started my spreadsheet at the beginning of the Spring semester at AJO this year. For years, I’ve watched my students and mentees work through new words they didn’t know.
“What’s an ax?”
“It’s short for actuality.”
“What’s that?”
Very good questions! Class by class, meeting by meeting, I started logging common terms and phrases, slang, acronyms, industry-speak, and more. I went broad with terms like piece or story. I included corporate jargon like deliverable and stakeholder. And I kept track of everything in between, from DAW to day rate.
Eventually, it became my version of a podcast glossary.
This isn’t the first podcast glossary. Of course, Sounds Profitable dropped theirs last week. NPR Training has a great one from 2015 that I’ve been recommending for years. My hope with this glossary is that it can be a cheat code for producers at all levels. Where you can learn about plosives, portfolios, and P&L’s all in one easy scroll. So when your your boss or professor says that a line in your piece is a chicken bomb, instead of just smiling and nodding… well, you can still smile and nod, but then come to this glossary to learn what the hell they’re talking about.
One quick disclaimer: This is just Part 1 of my glossary. It includes 75 out of my 500-ish terms. Defining these things from scratch is hard! I’ll be adding the rest in the coming weeks. I’m hoping to have it all done by the end of the summer.
This is the sort of thing I’ll be doing with this newsletter moving forward: providing resources to help producers continue to grow. I have tons of notes and training resources from my years of teaching, producing, editing, and EP’ing. I’m excited to share it all with you. (And illustrating this journey with amateurish Canva artwork!) If you have any specific thoughts, requests, or questions, just reply to this email.
In the meantime, enjoy the glossary!
Jobs: You can be paid to make podcasts about people pretending to live in the 18th Century
Every week, I’ll curate a bunch of podcast jobs posted within the past seven days. The full list is on my website. In the newsletter, I’ll share my Olympic podium of this week’s job listings that I encountered. Let’s do it:
🥇 Audio Producer at Colonial Williamsburg, Colonial Willamsburg (via AIR)
How can you say no to Colonial freaking Williamsburg? Those pointy hats are so charming. Tap into your inner history nerd and apply.
🥈 Utah Jazz Radio Broadcast Assistant, The Utah Jazz
Maybe you can find a way to get Trader Danny to give up his basketball operations master plan? (That one’s for my NBA fans.)
🥉 WUNC Director of Digital Content, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Not strictly audio, but seems like a cool opportunity for a jack-of-all-trades mid-career journo who misses the glory days of Michael Jordan’s youth. (I’m sorry, I just love basketball.)
My updates: Cheaper bootcamp, an evening course, and Hindenburg!
Our Bootcamp, now less expensive
We lowered the price of our bootcamp! We're still providing up to five full scholarships via our buy-one-give-one model. Each paying students' tuition also pays for a peer experiencing financial hardship to attend for free. The cost of the buy-one-give-one tuition for the full-time, 7-week, fully online course is now $6,750 (or $3,375 per student).
To do this, we will no longer provide free gear. Instead, we'll help each student select a kit at your budget level, or source one for you to borrow. Students will still get 100+ hours of classroom instruction/workshopping, 25+ hours of one-on-one coaching, 10 guest Q+A's, and lifetime access to Podcast Love's community resources.
The bootcamp runs from October 2 - November 17. Applications are due on Tuesday, August 1. You can apply here as a paying student or as a scholar. (Scholars attend for free.)
We’re planning to offer an evening course
I’ve gotten a bunch of interest from people who want to take one of our training courses, but aren’t able to commit to a full-time bootcamp because of work, cost, and/or family obligations. So I’m strongly considering offering a night class.
I’m still working through logistics and costs, but it would be a fully remote course running for 14 weeks this Fall/Winter, from 4 pm - 7 pm PST, most likely on Thursdays. The cost would be on a sliding scale, probably from $2,500-$3,500. (Don’t quote me on this!) We aren’t currently able to offer scholarships, but reach out if these costs are prohibitive and we can try to work something out.
If you’re interested in taking this course, please reply to this email, and we’ll prioritize your application if/when we launch.
Free Hindy for our students!
Finally, we’re stoked to announce that Hindenburg will provide a two-month free trial for all of our students. I’m an unabashed Hindy lover and will die on the hill that it makes sense to learn before Pro Tools.
News roundup
Edison’s Kids Podcast Listener report.
The uncertainy of celebrity-powered podcasts during the SAG-AFTRA strike.
Ezra Klein coming to public radio.
Variety released their Talking Audio report this month. ($)
Samantha Hodder and Julie Shapiro on how to keep track of your listening.
Good interview with Jonathan Menjivar in Starting Out.
Alice Wilder shares tips on pre-interviewing.
A massive academic report on the feasibility of an audio training program in Appalachia.
That’s all for this newsletter. Listen to something this week that will make you happy.