Uncaring Universe: Down to Earth Thoughts on Starting a New Podcast

Lessons from The First 10 Episodes of the fortnightly show with & on interesting geeks, for interested geeks.

I started Uncaring Universe because I love finding out the human stories behind the things we geeks enjoy consuming, by talking to the actual people. It was also heavily inspired by the professional, digest-nature of podcasts/radio shows by the likes of Qz.com and Monocle 24. Much as I love (and I do) giggling away to the excitable, tangential ramblings of most gaming podcasts or the proper criticism of Mark Kermode etc, I wanted to start something digestible, topical and diverse around games/films/books.

Our branding/banner art by the fabulous Sam Garcia aka SamCube.

I knew my co-host Yashoda Sampath from our time writing together for The 405, and since she moved back to the US we’d tossed ideas around for collaborations, ranging from a feminist culture blog to marketing industry takedowns. I knew she was more of an expert/geek on TV and film than me, while I had the drop on gaming. Add the trans-Atlantic flavour the pairing would bring and it made perfect sense.

Neither of us had any experience hosting a podcast or the technicalities involved in starting and distributing one, so as we just published our tenth episode I wanted to share a few reflections and predictions for fans of UU or anyone interested in podcasting in general.

1. No-one writes about the boring, frustrating technical nitty-gritty in their ‘How to Podcast’ articles!
   It’s not the hardest thing in the world to figure out but it was frustrating and often unclear how to actually host the thing. Blogs often just throw around terms like ‘host it on wordpress, generate the RSS or XML feed or whatever from there and boom’ — but for someone not very technical like me, it gave me cold sweats.
   The option we went down in the end was , lucky timing, applying to the Soundcloud podcast beta, which then allows you to generate the necessary RSS link that iTunes needs and obviously host and manage the whole thing from Soundcloud itself too. So my advice is basically use Soundcloud unless you are or know a technical web wiz who you can throw money/favours at to set it all up for you.
2. Define your USP/raison dêtre asap
   We knew what we wanted the podcast to be like but we probably didn’t set up enough ground rules early enough. This led to the first few episodes feeling a little fragmented, not being snappy enough and not offering enough value, quickly enough, to our listeners. That said it’s always good to iterate and ‘fail fast’ so I don’t feel too bad. Now we’ve reworked our tagline, we’re stricter with our timings and starting to think about introducing a more clearly segmented structure.
3. Listeners ≠Fans
   Easy mistake to make, and hard to figure out the conversion process. We would get a surge of listeners by featuring a higher profile guest but the likelihood is that those listeners are fans of the guest, and aren’t going to magically start following the podcast and listening to every one. Still, the strategy is known as ‘tent-poling’, and the idea is some of those new ears will at least remain cognisant of future episodes. Our 5th episode for example featured a well loved gaming journalist and podcaster known as Laura K. Buzz and it still has pretty much double the plays of our next most popular. So, who are the hardcore fans? Well, it’s hard to say exactly, they don’t talk to us much..!
4. The harsh truth is that until you’re v. well known, your guests are doing you a favour.
   This is pretty self-explanatory, but it must be said that as UU pretty much relies on guests, most people are really great and obliging, and we know it’s important to make it easy for them to say ‘yes’ by recording remotely, around their schedules, keeping it snappy and asking them meaningful, interesting questions about their works and life.
5. Future Episodes
   We’ve got plenty of ideas. Announcing guests ahead of time so you can get a little hyped and suggest any questions you’d like answering etc, have more defined segments as we said (quick news digest, their story, leave a little room for fun stuff that comes up, then the pay it forward question etc.) and we’ll also have bigger guests, but a big part of my philosophy is not restricting the slot to increasingly visible people — I always want to mix it up with up and comers, younger creators and friends that I know have amazing knowledge and perspectives on the stuff we all know and love.
6. Inclusivity/Diversity
   Inclusivity and diversity is hugely important to us. So far only 3/10 of our guests have been women but please let us assure you, keeping it balanced is always on our minds, and we have about 4 female guests lined up but that we’re just struggling to get involved due to scheduling issues.
   While the race/sex/sexuality etc of our guests is not something we strive to discuss, unless of course they are very comfortable doing so or specifically decide to, we will always strive to seek a balance of guests in those regards too. Without naming names, (and indeed without it actually coming up in the episodes) I feel happy that we actually have already.

There are plenty more but in the interests of keeping the article as snappy as the ‘Cast, I’ll stop here until the 20-episode retrospective. Figure it’s a good habit to get into, transparency and accountability.

So, thank you for reading, for listening (or being about to) and really, we would love any feedback or comments on any aspect of this project.
Holler at ya boy and/or ya girl or leave a comment here, or even on the Soundcloud page itself.