BONUS: “Like Your New Best Friend” Production Call
Release Date: 08/05/2022
Video Killed The Radio Star
How Does Tomorrow Sound?
To video or not to video? Coupling your audio with a visual element can provide a more immersive experience for viewers, letting them experience facial expressions, gestures, and visual cues that can deepen understanding and connection. Video also boosts discoverability, because it makes TikTok sharing possible. However, audio by itself fosters a unique intimacy. When listeners focus on the content without distractions, they can use their imaginations and multitask, giving podcasts a strategic advantage of visual media when it comes to fitting into busy lifestyles. And what will happen when we...
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BONUS: "Like Guess What? Chicken Butt!" Production Call
How Does Tomorrow Sound?
In our largest production call yet, seven audio makers share takeaways on our Episode 3 findings: 1) How audio memes work in the brain (and what we can steal from them), and 2) spatial audio as a stepping stone toward interactive storytelling. We talk about audio memes (ie. pieces of sound listeners already know the contextual meaning of) that already exist inside of podcasts (e.g. the chime for the news, the creaky door in a horror story, the way the conventions of This American Life have trickled through the ecosystem as best practices). And we brainstorm what else we can borrow or steal...
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Like Guess What? Chicken Butt!
How Does Tomorrow Sound?
This podcast explores the future of digital audio and asks what podcasts might become in ten years. Do podcasts stand a chance against Tik Tok supremacy? Viral audio borrows cool from pop music and pop culture. Charlotte Shane calls this “brainfeel” in her recent Times Magazine article. Our brains are happiest when something we already like is the vector for new learning. Similarly, pop music borrows cool from licensing old hits, according to Switched on Pop co-host Charlie Harding, after recent precedent ended from the kind of liberal sampling that enabled hip hop and rock to flourish. So...
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BONUS: “Like… It’s Alive!” Production Call
How Does Tomorrow Sound?
We imagined a second audio future! Then we asked some smart podcasters how we did. In this bonus track, we air back-to-back conversations with podcast experts. In the first, we spoke with Demetrius Bagley, Nikki Thomas, and Jonas Litton. In our second conversation, we spoke with Jackie Huntington and Diana Opong. These experts share their reactions to E02 (“Like… It’s Alive!”). We are grateful for their feedback. In E02, we suggested that podcast audiences will mature in similar ways that audiences for film and television have, including wanting more interactivity and more immersive...
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Like … It’s Alive!
How Does Tomorrow Sound?
What will podcasts become in 10 years? Join us as we explore the future of digital audio. How will listenership mature in the future? Will we outgrow our evolutionary need for story? Child psychiatrist, author, and horror enthusiast Dr. Steven Schlozman, Dr. Martin Spinelli, Dr. Sorcha Ni Fhlainn, Dr. Sylvia Chan Olmsted, and Podfly’s own Corey Coates offer insights. Story audiences mature and trends shift. Plus, with more diverse groups of light podcast listeners tuning in, there’s more opportunity to reach new niches. But what kinds of stories will these new audiences want today and 10...
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BONUS: “Like Your New Best Friend” Production Call
How Does Tomorrow Sound?
We imagined one audio future! Then we asked some smart podcasters how we did. In E01 (“Like Your New Best Friend”), we suggest that developments in AI might turn podcasts into very compelling chatbots. In this bonus track, podcasters Stacey Copeland, Clif Mark, Naomi Mellor, and Andrea Muraskin share their reactions. We are grateful for their feedback. Note: Though the track is presented like one large convo, we spliced two longer chats (one with Stacey and Andrea and one with Clif), held at separate times, with a voicemail from Naomi. We didn’t include here the editorial suggestions we...
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Like Your New Best Friend, An AI Chatbot
How Does Tomorrow Sound?
Let’s imagine some audio futures! This podcast explores the future of digital audio and asks what podcasts might become in ten years. Podcasts flourished out of the tech of the early 2000s. Now, artificial intelligence is poised to change everything. We speak with Natural Language Processing (NLP) researcher Philippe Laban; science writer Matthew Hutson; professor, programmer, and composer David Cope; and creator of Late Night with Robot, Ana-Marija Stojic. Every day, NLP and speech synthesis more closely imitate human language: Now, imagine AI-generated pods offering a key feature no live...
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How Does Tomorrow Sound?
How Does Tomorrow Sound?
How Does Tomorrow Sound is a six episode series on the future of podcasts. Hosts Kate, Josh, and Neleigh endeavor to predict what podcasts might look like — or evolve into — in 10 years’ time. Expert interviews are braided with funny, experimental, blue sky brainstorming sessions and audio experiments by the hosts. This show will challenge your assumptions, will make you wonder, and will spark new ideas about the road from here to the future of audio narrative.
info_outlineWe imagined one audio future! Then we asked some smart podcasters how we did.
In E01 (“Like Your New Best Friend”), we suggest that developments in AI might turn podcasts into very compelling chatbots. In this bonus track, podcasters Stacey Copeland, Clif Mark, Naomi Mellor, and Andrea Muraskin share their reactions. We are grateful for their feedback.
Note: Though the track is presented like one large convo, we spliced two longer chats (one with Stacey and Andrea and one with Clif), held at separate times, with a voicemail from Naomi. We didn’t include here the editorial suggestions we responded to in revision (since these wouldn’t make sense to someone hearing the finished product). Instead, we focus on the podcasters’ reactions to our episode’s main ideas.
Many thanks to:
- Stacey Copeland, audio producer and Ph.D. Candidate, Simon Fraser University
- Clif Mark, creator and host of the Good in Theory podcast
- Naomi Mellor, producer, founder of The Skylark Collective, a global community for women in podcasting, and the International Women’s Podcast Awards
- Andrea Muraskin, producer, writer, host
Contact us:
We don’t know the future, but we hope this bonus track gets people talking. Tell us what we got right (or wrong!) by emailing [email protected] or leaving us a voicemail at 440-290-6796.
Or check us out online:
Who knows? Maybe the future of podcasts will be a thing we build together.