Matt co-hosts the WB40 podcast with Chris Weston. Matt has always loved radio, as a kid and at university (back in the day when we spliced tape!). Matt set up the podcast to “see what happened”, to try it out. Six and a half years later, they’re still at it!
WB40 is led by a guiding principle, the show is about what you need to know in order to manage technology in 2022 and beyond. They’ve had people talk about the changing nature of works, autonomous vehicles, defence analysis.
The format has evolved and now consists mainly of a guest interview with them, but they record it almost as live, with minimal edits. (And the name, WB40 comes from West-Ballantine, and the aspiration for the show to be 40 minutes.) They’ve experimented with book clubs, audio from listeners about books, and other features.
A community has evolved around the show, meeting in Signal to support each other and it feels like on the back of the podcast, they’ve created something of value to others. The group has even involved its own language and culture. Some of the community members have stepped in as co-hosts, they have Ask WB40 shows to answer questions from them and obtain feedback and ideas from them.
Matt has also had three pieces of work from the podcast, and they even piloted podcasting as a research method in an organisation.
The project didn’t evolve, but Matt is still interested in experimenting with it. In terms of production costs, it’s quite easy to produce decent quality audio, so producing something that’s polished enough to be consumable, but still feel rough enough that it doesn’t feel definite, makes it attractive as a research tool.
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Matt finds that his training in research methodologies and coaching helps him to drive the interviews with the guests. You also need to be able to be spontaneous and have split focus, to stay in the conversation while looking at the clock etc.
The only times they haven’t published interviews is when they’ve had problems with the audio. There was another time when the comms department of the company a guest worked in asked for some edits once the episode had been published. Matt came close to un publishing the episode because they were being asked to change the tone and content significantly, but they came to a compromise that worked.
Matt edits the conversation as soon as they’re done with the recording, using Audacity and Descript. This helps the production process to be sustainable and get the episodes out on time. Aside from the arranging of guests, producing a whole episode takes him about 3 hours.
Sometimes guests have an impact on our thinking, and this was the case with episode 197 on Kinetic Defence, with guest Alex Woolfson. As well as these moments, Matt continue podcasting because it allows him to follow his curiosity and invite people to come and talk to him and his co-host about things they’re interested in.
Finally, thinking about someone setting up a new podcast, Matt suggests starting with an open question that the show aims to answer, in the case of WB40 it’s “What do you need to manage technology in 2022 and beyond?”
As well as thinking about who your audience is, consider what you want them to do as a result of listening - in their case help expand the knowledge of listeners by taking the show in unexpected directions, or places adjacent to their world, but related to it.
Some of the shows Matt enjoys are the 9-10 year old episodes from Radio Lab, which have great audio design, and an episode of This American Life on the month in the life of the car dealership. James O’Brien long form interviews, and Richard Herring’ s conversations.
