Adventures with delayed audio, listener habits and creating reflection space for others through podcasting

Pilar is back with her own adventures, recording when broadband is glitchy, and discovering the power of podcasting to give people much needed reflection space. 

Due to some maintenance in her broadband, there were a couple of times when there was about a 1.5 seconds delay in the conversation between Pilar and the other person recording. For one of the shows it wasn’t an issue (and you’ll hear that conversation next week), but it did get some adjusting to. The conversation with guest Michelle Ong was structured, so they made it work. 

However, when the same issue arose in My Pocket Psych, where the conversation is more fluid and requires more spontaneity, we couldn’t work with it and had to start again. It’s only when something like this happens when you realise how amazing the technology is now, and also how much harder it is to keep a conversation going when the speech from the other person arrives after it has left their mouth. 

If we understand the nature of the conversations we have on our show we can decide how to deal with technical issues. 

As she has mentioned before, Pilar struggles to record interviews with guests with the camera on. Even though she’s fully present for the guest most of the times, there are times when her attention needs to go to her notes, or the screen to check everything is still recording, the clock… and she doesn’t like the fact that the guest can see this and might distract them. 

She was glad to read in the book You’re Not Listening, that there was a journalist who also prefers to talk to his interviewees over the phone for two reasons 1) like Pilar, they can  be making notes etc without distracting the guest, but more importantly 2) they can prevent influencing the other person with their own body language. Pilar has noticed how much she communicates with the guest when the camera is on through nodding, etc.

Unfortunately, some guests struggle to record with the camera off, so Pilar now always asks guests what they prefer. 

Recently, someone that Pilar went to school with guested on Gastronostalgia and told her and co-host Tomas how to make crispy tofu! 

It’s always surprising to find out about listeners’ habits. One listener from Gastronostalgia got in touch to say that she never listens to the weekly episodes and instead, waits for the 1-hour bumper edition of the show, the “full menu”. 

Some news for Management Café, Pilar is joined by Tim Burgess as co-host! The idea is to keep the episodes down to 20 minutes long, and guide managers’ thinking as they reflect on their own practice. They’ve come up with a new intro for the show, welcoming the listener into their conversation as the listener steps into the café.

Guest for episode 31, Michelle Ong, prompted a thought during the recording, that podcasts which invite in guests provide a space for guests to talk about things that are important for them, without a different agenda. For some people, this is really valuable, as they might never get the chance to take some time to formulate their thoughts. And the same happens when we get behind the microphone as hosts… Following this conversation, Pilar recorded with Myriam Hadnes for Facilitation Stories. During the episode, Myriam shared what she’d learned from a recent experience organising a festival and after the conversation, she thanked Pilar for the space to reflect on the experience, as she hadn’t got around to that yet. 

Similarly, previous guest Marisa Eikenberry shared on LinkedIn how much the conversation for Adventures in Podcasting had brought up many things she hadn’t thought of before, and that she was still reflecting on.