Become a better storyteller, in audio and beyond.
Sound Judgment takes listeners into the studios — and the minds — of your favorite audio storytellers. In each episode, lifelong journalist Elaine Appleton Grant and a top host, producer or editor dive into their creative choices. It’s a revealing conversation about the storytelling craft, and it’s show and tell: Elaine plays back clips from her guest’s podcast. Tune up your storytelling by learning from today's best creators!
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Behind The 13th Step, Part 2: The best defense is the truth
Season 4 · Episode 7
Wednesday, May 8, 2024 • Duration 41:13
On May 6, 2024, The 13th Step team was honored with a Pulitzer Prize nomination for audio reporting "for their gripping and extensively reported investigation of corruption and sexual abuse within the lucrative recovery industry that sought accountability despite legal pressure.”
Today, we go behind the scenes, once again, with New Hampshire Public Radio Reporter Lauren Chooljian and Story Editor Alison MacAdam to learn their techniques for ensuring journalistic accuracy and fairness as they faced attempts at intimidation. And this close team learned how to create a "trauma-informed workplace" -- and how emotional support techniques helped them to keep going.
This is Part 2 of "Behind the blockbuster investigative series The 13th Step: The best defense is the truth."
1. In today's journalistic and political environment, the best defense is the truth. That means using every reporting strategy you can to make sure all of your reporting is factual, precise, backed up with evidence and well organized.
2. Corroborate, corroborate, corroborate. In your story or series, explain that you corroborated your facts and how you did.
3. Transparency is key. Paint thorough, fair portraits of your subjects. Human beings are complex and contradictory. This tension makes for fascinating stories and builds credibility.
4. Newsroom or network leadership needs to be as committed to your journalism as you are. Depending on the circumstances, they may need to pay legal fees, tap insurance and even fund security.
5. Chooljian had two huge reasons to continue reporting, even after she, her family, and her newsroom were targeted in a rash of criminal threats. The first: Her sources had bravely stepped forward to share their stories with her. Doing so put them at risk — as she says, a risk they took without the kinds of organizational, financial and legal resources available to her. Second: Backing down would have sent a signal to others that retaliation works. That's unacceptable.
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Follow Sound Judgment on your favorite podcast app or subscribe to our channel @SoundJudgmentPod on Youtube.
For more takeaways from this episode on crafting an investigative series and why accountability journalism is so important, visit Current.
Listen to the series deconstructed on today's show: The 13th Step.
Improve your storytelling Check out our popular workshops on interviewing, story editing, story structure, longform narrative, audience engagement, guesting, scriptwriting and more.
Hire Elaine to speak at your conference or company. Subjects include: Effective Storytelling; Communicating for Leaders; Communicating about Change; Mastering the Art of the Interview; Success in Guesting, and much more.
Discover our strategic communication services and coaching for thought leaders using storytelling tools to make the world a better place. Serving writers, podcasters, public speakers, and others in journalism & public media, climate change, health care, policy, and higher education. Visit us at www.podcastallies.com.
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Help us find and celebrate today’s best hosts Who’s your Sound Judgment dream guest? Email me: allies@podcastallies.com. Because of you, that host may appear on Sound Judgment.
This is part 3 of our new Sound Judgment quick-hit series on six storytelling strategies for hooking your audience and keeping them with you. Today, we’re talking about scenes. They’re obviously a staple in longform narrative storytelling, like true crime and documentaries. Don’t ignore them, though, for interview shows; you just have to interview well to elicit good, sensory anecdotes from your guests. Between the lines, you’ll hear how useful they are on the page and the stage as well. As a reminder, all six strategies come from today’s best audio storytellers. But these are storytelling strategies that don’t care what media is yours, so stick around, writers, public speakers, screenwriters and video producers — and of course, podcasters. With examples featuring Rich Roll, author Charles Duhigg, and Crime Show's Emma Courtland.
Apply the six storytelling strategies for creating unforgettable content to your own work! Sign up for our interactive, virtual Hook Your Audience & Keep Them Coming Back workshop Thursday, March 14, 2024 By developing skills from story structure to scene-making, suspense to specifics, you'll learn to create or improve the show, story, article or speech that expresses what you want to express, captivates the people you want to reach, and achieves quality and depth you can be proud of. You'll move from likes and follows to building trusted, engaged relationships with your audience.
These practices work separately and together to ratchet up both the substance and the "wow factor" of your content, no matter the platform.
Be sure to follow Sound Judgment so you don't miss the next bite-sized episodes on: Part 3: Scenes Part 4: Surprise Part 5: Suspense Part 6: Specifics
All of these segments — each around 10 minutes or less — will come together soon for a full episode on How to Hook Your Audience and Keep Them Coming Back. You won't miss a thing if you which includes the popular hands-on segment "Try This in Your Studio," kudos to creators who are lifting up the art and business of audio storytelling, news about the show, and useful resources. Shows and storytellers mentioned in this series:
Storytelling Strategies to Grow Your Audience: Part 2, Structure
Season 4
Sunday, March 10, 2024 • Duration 05:35
In this series you'll learn how to use sound vision, structure, scenes, surprise, suspense, and specifics to make content that audiences love and share. Each of these bonus episodes is bite-sized and features examples from today's best audio storytellers. Growing your audience depends on more than marketing: It depends on creating compelling content that hooks your audience and keeps them with you.
Apply the six storytelling strategies for creating unforgettable content to your own work! Sign up for our interactive, virtual Hook Your Audience & Keep Them Coming Back workshop Thursday, March 14, 2024 By developing skills from story structure to scene-making, suspense to specifics, you'll learn to create or improve the show, story, article or speech that expresses what you want to express, captivates the people you want to reach, and achieves quality and depth you can be proud of. You'll move from likes and follows to building trusted, engaged relationships with your audience.
These practices work separately and together to ratchet up both the substance and the "wow factor" of your content, no matter the platform.
Be sure to follow Sound Judgment so you don't miss the next bite-sized episodes on: Part 3: Scenes Part 4: Surprise Part 5: Suspense Part 6: Specifics
All of these segments — each around 10 minutes or less — will come together soon for a full episode on How to Hook Your Audience and Keep Them Coming Back.
You won't miss a thing if you sign up for my Sound Judgment newsletter, which includes the popular hands-on segment "Try This in Your Studio," kudos to creators who are lifting up the art and business of audio storytelling, news about the show, and useful resources.
"Six S" Storytelling Resources Shows and storytellers mentioned in this series:
New Series: Storytelling Strategies to Hook & Keep Your Audience, Part 1
Season 4
Saturday, March 9, 2024 • Duration 12:35
This is Part 1: Sound Vision. Be sure to follow the show so you don't miss the next bite-sized episodes on: Part 2: Structure Part 3: Scenes Part 4: Surprise Part 5: Suspense Part 6: Specifics
All of these segments — each around 10 minutes or less — will come together soon for a full episode on How to Hook Your Audience and Keep Them Coming Back.
Apply these six storytelling strategies for creating unforgettable content to your own work! Sign up for our interactive, virtual Hook Your Audience & Keep Them Coming Back workshop Thursday, March 14, 2024 By developing skills from story structure to scene-making, suspense to specifics, you'll learn to create or improve the show, story, article or speech that expresses what you want to express, captivates the people you want to reach, and achieves quality and depth you can be proud of. You'll move from likes and follows to building trusted, engaged relationships with your audience.
These practices work separately and together to ratchet up both the substance and the "wow factor" of your content, no matter the platform.
The 13th Step, an award-winning documentary series on sexual misconduct in the addiction treatment
Reporter: Lauren ChooljianStory Editor: Alison MacadamNew Hampshire Public Radio
How Storytelling Can Heal Your Life
Season 4 · Episode 3
Wednesday, February 28, 2024 • Duration 43:39
Improve your storytelling, interviewing, writing, producing, hosting and guesting skills! Sign up for new Sound Judgment workshops today at www.podcastallies.com/workshops.
On this episode, Emily Silverman and host Elaine Appleton Grant discuss:
— Why she thought starting a live storytelling event for physicians should be her next step as she was coming to terms with being in the wrong career while also searching for her biological parents and considering becoming a mother.
— How leaving the full-time practice of medicine felt like an "identity death" to Emily — and how journalists and podcasters navigating media in 2024 are also experiencing identity death, and
— How Emily found her way to a new career through her love of theater and storytelling, and how bringing the arts to medicine is serving the Nocturnists' goal of shattering the myth of the physician God and humanizing medicine.
"Pass/Fail," Episode 4 of the 10-part documentary series Shame in Medicine: The Lost Forest, takes listeners into the stressful world of medical students taking an exam that has the power to dictate the rest of their lives. Put yourself in the shoes of students wondering if this one test will prevent them from becoming a doctor — or if it will bar them from pursuing their passion for their specialty? Emily gives us some lessons on getting listeners to contribute personal stories — and how her team weaves them together in heart-stopping fashion.
We also examine the the power of novels to help us deeply understand the harmful consequences of medicine practiced for the wrong reasons, and how art can help us empathize in a way that journalistic accounts of history do not. In "Conversations: Dolen Perkins-Valdez" Emily learns more about the 1973 case of the Relf sisters, who were forcibly sterilized at a Montgomery, Alabama health clinic. We discuss strategies for how to hold intimate, revealing interviews — and when you should break the rules. Plus: Emily shares the single most important key to producing sound-rich, highly produced longform audio stories.
Drama! Characters! Conflict! History podcasts have them all, with American History Tellers' Lindsay Graham
Season 4 · Episode 2
Wednesday, February 14, 2024 • Duration 35:04
Don’t miss today’s takeaways! Scroll down for lessons from this episode.
Lindsay Graham (no, not that Lindsey Graham) is a podcast creator, producer and host known for compelling narratives and in-depth exploration of pivotal moments in American and world history. His chart-topping shows American Scandal, American History Tellers and History Daily reach millions every month, using immersive sound design, a rich original score, and meticulous research to bring moving, character-driven stories that demonstrate “history is human.” His newest podcast is American Criminal, a “true crime podcast that tells the stories of the most infamous criminals in the history of the United States, revealing the men and women who cheated, lied, and murdered in their own twisted pursuit of the American dream.” Graham is the CEO and founder of Airship, a podcast publishing company. He is a podcast producer, sound designer and composer who has worked on Dirty John, Dr. Death, Bad Batch and others, reaching hundreds of millions of listeners.
In several of its shows, including American History Tellers, American Scandal, History Daily and Business Wars, Wondery employs a format that’s always been controversial. They call it “immersive storytelling.” It relies on a single narrator to voice all or most of the characters in an episode. It also employs fictionalized reenactments. As Lindsay says – some people hate this. “I can’t do anything about it,” he says, “cause that’s the show.” He also says, “I can’t help those people who want it to be different than it is.” And that’s the lesson: Choose what your show IS and lean into it. YOUR people will love it. If you do your job well, some people may, in fact, hate it. That’s OK. It’s not for them.
Should you tell your own story? Navigating the tricky art of memoir
Season 4 · Episode 1
Wednesday, January 31, 2024 • Duration 36:35
Sharing a personal experience, especially a traumatic one, is a particularly popular scripted podcast form. Memoir done well often shoots to the top of the podcast charts or the bestseller list. It moves us, leaves us breathless, inspires standing ovations and prompts us into conversations and confessions of our own. Sometimes memoir creates change.
But memoir produced without first grappling with why your experience matters to others can sound cheap, sensation-grabbing, and empty. As listeners, readers, and viewers, we are bombarded with confessions.
There is a fine line between transformative and indulgent. Moreover, stories of heartbreak are hard to choose to listen to these days, because the world is showering us with trauma.
Given the circumstances, why make memoir?
The decision to make the private public isn’t easy. Nor should it be. In the first episode of Sound Judgment, Season 4, I explore this question with producer Maribel Quezada Smith, who shares her extraordinary experience with life and death in The Pulso Podcast piece, “The Latino Experience of Fertility: A Story of Pregnancy Loss.”
It took Maribel two years to write and produce this remarkable story about the birth of her son — and the death of her daughter. Her story succeeds, in part, because she identified something fresh: Miscarriage and other forms of pregnancy loss are particularly common in the Latino community, Pulso’s audience. And so is the incredible societal pressure to bear children, setting up an impossible, often hidden, conflict.
That her story succeeds in transforming, not indulging, is evident in the piles of grateful responses she received from listeners who shared her experience, but who had never heard their story reflected out loud. Shame and secrecy had dogged their lives. Maribel’s story brought in the light.
Along the way, Maribel had to answer several questions for herself about motivation, format, theme, mood, and point of view. Which private moments should she capture on tape? How much could she bear? To whom did she owe privacy? Which scenes and reflections would create momentum — and which pieces would she have to leave out?Maribel Quezada Smith is a bilingual video and podcast producer and the founder of Her video credits include producing TV shows for Discovery Networks, Netflix, TLC and A&E, and digital content for brands like AARP, NBC GolfNow and SquadCast FM. Her podcasting credits include Sacred Scandal (iHeart), Birdies Not BS and Pulso Podcast, to name a few. In 2021, Maribel co-founded , an organization devoted to amplifying the voices and stories of people of color.
The Art of True Curiosity with Kelly Corrigan of Kelly Corrigan Wonders
Season 3 · Episode 7
Thursday, December 14, 2023 • Duration 46:33
This episode was sponsored by Signal Hill Insights.
Want to know how your podcast is affecting listeners? Need to plan to share outcomes with a branded client?
Visit measureyourpodcast.com for a free 4-part email series that will tell you how and why to measure the unique impact of branded podcasts. Go beyond counting downloads. Instead, obtain real responses from real listeners to demonstrate the ROI of branded podcasts. You’ll learn how research generates practical insights to optimize your production and drive renewals.
Kelly Corrigan is a four-time New York Times bestselling author, the host of PBS’ long-form interview show Tell Me More, and the podcast Kelly Corrigan Wonders, which just crossed 13 million downloads. O Magazine calls her "the voice of a generation" and Huffington Post says Kelly is “our Poet Laureate of the Ordinary.”
We love hearing from you and getting your support! Please give Sound Judgment a five-star rating and a review. Visit our website to easily give us a 5-star rating and a review that’ll go to Apple or Spotify instantly. We’re grateful. And please share Sound Judgment with a friend.
The Sound Judgment team is: Host & Producer: Elaine Appleton Grant Production Assistant: Audrey Nelson Audio engineer/sound designer: Kevin Kline Podcast manager: Tina Bassir
Sound Judgment is a production of Podcast Allies, LLC, a boutique production and consulting company serving chief creative officers and content directors in the media and at nonprofits, higher ed, and social impact businesses.
Contact Us To contact us with collaborations, media interviews, speaking engagements, or sponsorships, email allies@podcastallies.com. We encourage your voice memos! Click the microphone icon at soundjudgmentpodcast.com.
Secrets of Hosting In-Studio and Live from the Queen of Book Podcasts, Anne Bogel (Best-of Show)
Season 3 · Episode 6
Thursday, November 30, 2023 • Duration 42:17
This episode was sponsored by Signal Hill Insights.
Want to know how your podcast is affecting listeners? Need to plan to share outcomes with a branded client?
Visit measureyourpodcast.com for a free 4-part email series that will tell you how and why to measure the unique impact of branded podcasts. Go beyond counting downloads. Instead, obtain real responses from real listeners to demonstrate the ROI of branded podcasts. You’ll learn how research generates practical insights to optimize your production and drive renewals.
More on today's episode: When Anne Bogel was offered the plum gig of moderating a panel discussion with four famous authors at the Bookmarks NC Festival of Books and Authors, she knew it would be fun. But she had no idea of the turn it would take when her guests — authors TJ Klune, Andrew Sean Greer, Brendan Slocumb, and Tia Williams — began one-upping each other with wild tales from book club experiences like no other. Anne Bogel's been hosting her literary matchmaking show since 2016. This show is always at the top of the charts, in great company with shows like Fresh Air, NPR’s Book of the Day, and The New York Times Book Review.
There's a reason for that. Anne is purposeful about how she hosts, whether that's holding a deep conversation about a guest's reading life in-studio, or fielding unexpected stories, and a ton of laughs, on stage in front of hundreds.
Anne has spent the last seven years of her life doing something uncanny: Every week on her hit show, What Should I Read Next, she excavates a guest’s reading life in fine detail. Then she recommends books that always seem to be the perfect choices for that guest, no matter who they are.
It’s not just her unusual ability to pair book with reader that keeps her show at the top of the charts. It’s also the way Anne approaches hosting – as the art of practicing deep hospitality. That keeps her in listeners’ hearts, year after year.
Improve your storytelling Check out our popular workshops on interviewing, story editing, story structure, longform narrative, audience engagement, guesting, scriptwriting and more.
Hire Elaine to speak at your conference or company. Subjects include: Effective Storytelling; Communicating for Leaders; Communicating about Change; Mastering the Art of the Interview; Success in Guesting, and much more.
Discover our strategic communication services and coaching for thought leaders using storytelling tools to make the world a better place. Serving writers, podcasters, public speakers, and others in journalism & public media, climate change, health care, policy, and higher education. Visit us at www.podcastallies.com.
🗣️ Share the show by word of mouth and on your socials
Help us find and celebrate today’s best hosts Who’s your Sound Judgment dream guest? Email me: allies@podcastallies.com. Because of you, that host may appear on Sound Judgment.
Improve your storytelling Check out our popular workshops on interviewing, story editing, story structure, longform narrative, audience engagement, guesting, scriptwriting and more.
Hire Elaine to speak at your conference or company. Subjects include: Effective Storytelling; Communicating for Leaders; Communicating about Change; Mastering the Art of the Interview; Success in Guesting, and much more.
Discover our strategic communication services and coaching for thought leaders using storytelling tools to make the world a better place. Serving writers, podcasters, public speakers, and others in journalism & public media, climate change, health care, policy, and higher education. Visit us at www.podcastallies.com.
🗣️ Share the show by word of mouth and on your socials
Help us find and celebrate today’s best hosts Who’s your Sound Judgment dream guest? Email me: allies@podcastallies.com. Because of you, that host may appear on Sound Judgment.
Improve your storytelling Check out our popular workshops on interviewing, story editing, story structure, longform narrative, audience engagement, guesting, scriptwriting and more.
Hire Elaine to speak at your conference or company. Subjects include: Effective Storytelling; Communicating for Leaders; Communicating about Change; Mastering the Art of the Interview; Success in Guesting, and much more.
Discover our strategic communication services and coaching for thought leaders using storytelling tools to make the world a better place. Serving writers, podcasters, public speakers, and others in journalism & public media, climate change, health care, policy, and higher education. Visit us at www.podcastallies.com.
🗣️ Share the show by word of mouth and on your socials
Help us find and celebrate today’s best hosts Who’s your Sound Judgment dream guest? Email me: allies@podcastallies.com. Because of you, that host may appear on Sound Judgment.
Emily Silverman, MD is an internal medicine physician at UCSF, writer, and creator/host of The Nocturnists, an award-winning medical storytelling organization that has uplifted the voices of 450+ healthcare workers since 2016 through its podcast and sold-out live performances.
The Nocturnists' work has been presented on CBS This Morning and NPR's Morning Edition, and at Pop Up Magazine and South By Southwest (SXSW). In 2020, its "Stories from a Pandemic" documentary podcast series was acquired by the U.S. Library of Congress for historic preservation. The Nocturnists has been honored by the Webby Awards, Anthem Awards, Ambie Awards, and more.
Dr. Silverman's writing has been supported by MacDowell and published in The New York Times, Virginia Quarterly Review, JAMA, CHEST, and McSweeneys. She lives in San Francisco with her husband and daughter.
Follow the show on Instagram @Thenocturnists and on Facebook and LinkedIn at The Nocturnists
Improve your storytelling Check out our popular workshops on interviewing, story editing, story structure, longform narrative, audience engagement, guesting, scriptwriting and more.
Hire Elaine to speak at your conference or company. Subjects include: Effective Storytelling; Communicating for Leaders; Communicating about Change; Mastering the Art of the Interview; Success in Guesting, and much more.
Discover our strategic communication services and coaching for thought leaders using storytelling tools to make the world a better place. Serving writers, podcasters, public speakers, and others in journalism & public media, climate change, health care, policy, and higher education. Visit us at www.podcastallies.com.
🗣️ Share the show by word of mouth and on your socials
Help us find and celebrate today’s best hosts Who’s your Sound Judgment dream guest? Email me: allies@podcastallies.com. Because of you, that host may appear on Sound Judgment.
When they conduct historical research, Lindsay and his writers aren’t just cataloging facts. They’re on a treasure hunt to learn how the characters felt and how people in their lives felt about them. Those emotions make the historical world feel real, increase the stakes, and keep listeners glued to their headphones. This isn’t your father’s history class.
Here’s a tip for anyone leading a team: Create editorial guidelines and share them with everyone – writers, producers, sound designers, and engineers. Guidelines are great for onboarding newcomers. They also help make sure everyone is on the same page. Originally, Lindsay made a narrative podcast out of the American History Tellers guidelines; that’s a memorable way to get this information across. Whatever you do, remember that editorial guidelines are living documents – keep them up to date.
Lindsay calls himself a champion thinker, but an “apprentice do-er.” Self-doubt and perfectionism gets in his way, as they did with his long-delayed introduction of the subscription serviceInto History. Once he stopped overthinking and started taking one step after another, introducing this new product turned out to be easier than he thought. Taking action brings confidence, and confidence, as Lindsay says, breeds more confidence.
Improve your storytelling Check out our popular workshops on interviewing, story editing, story structure, longform narrative, audience engagement, guesting, scriptwriting and more.
Hire Elaine to speak at your conference or company. Subjects include: Effective Storytelling; Communicating for Leaders; Communicating about Change; Mastering the Art of the Interview; Success in Guesting, and much more.
Discover our strategic communication services and coaching for thought leaders using storytelling tools to make the world a better place. Serving writers, podcasters, public speakers, and others in journalism & public media, climate change, health care, policy, and higher education. Visit us at www.podcastallies.com.
🗣️ Share the show by word of mouth and on your socials
Help us find and celebrate today’s best hosts Who’s your Sound Judgment dream guest? Email me: allies@podcastallies.com. Because of you, that host may appear on Sound Judgment.
Maribel’s passion is creating meaningful, standout content.
Improve your storytelling Check out our popular workshops on interviewing, story editing, story structure, longform narrative, audience engagement, guesting, scriptwriting and more.
Hire Elaine to speak at your conference or company. Subjects include: Effective Storytelling; Communicating for Leaders; Communicating about Change; Mastering the Art of the Interview; Success in Guesting, and much more.
Discover our strategic communication services and coaching for thought leaders using storytelling tools to make the world a better place. Serving writers, podcasters, public speakers, and others in journalism & public media, climate change, health care, policy, and higher education. Visit us at www.podcastallies.com.
🗣️ Share the show by word of mouth and on your socials
Help us find and celebrate today’s best hosts Who’s your Sound Judgment dream guest? Email me: allies@podcastallies.com. Because of you, that host may appear on Sound Judgment.
1. The thing we are asking for when we put our podcast, our book, or our speech out there is attention. And there is no more exquisite currency than attention. So how can we reveal something, or elicit something from our guest, that will make the listener feel like the time they spent with us was worth it? That’s Kelly’s guiding principle.
2. Carefully time the three questions you’re a little afraid to ask. Don’t ask your toughest ones first – and feel for the opening, like Kelly did with Samantha Power.
3. The purest motivation to start a podcast is to follow your curiosity. When it’s there, it’s evident to the listener. And it’s evident when it’s not there.
4: Kelly knows when an interview is going great when she’s saying something she hasn’t said before or when she knows that her guest is saying something they haven't said before.
Improve your storytelling Check out our popular workshops on interviewing, story editing, story structure, longform narrative, audience engagement, guesting, scriptwriting and more.
Hire Elaine to speak at your conference or company. Subjects include: Effective Storytelling; Communicating for Leaders; Communicating about Change; Mastering the Art of the Interview; Success in Guesting, and much more.
Discover our strategic communication services and coaching for thought leaders using storytelling tools to make the world a better place. Serving writers, podcasters, public speakers, and others in journalism & public media, climate change, health care, policy, and higher education. Visit us at www.podcastallies.com.
🗣️ Share the show by word of mouth and on your socials
Help us find and celebrate today’s best hosts Who’s your Sound Judgment dream guest? Email me: allies@podcastallies.com. Because of you, that host may appear on Sound Judgment.
Improve your storytelling Check out our popular workshops on interviewing, story editing, story structure, longform narrative, audience engagement, guesting, scriptwriting and more.
Hire Elaine to speak at your conference or company. Subjects include: Effective Storytelling; Communicating for Leaders; Communicating about Change; Mastering the Art of the Interview; Success in Guesting, and much more.
Discover our strategic communication services and coaching for thought leaders using storytelling tools to make the world a better place. Serving writers, podcasters, public speakers, and others in journalism & public media, climate change, health care, policy, and higher education. Visit us at www.podcastallies.com.
🗣️ Share the show by word of mouth and on your socials
Help us find and celebrate today’s best hosts Who’s your Sound Judgment dream guest? Email me: allies@podcastallies.com. Because of you, that host may appear on Sound Judgment.
It also makes Anne in demand as a public speaker. As intimate as she is with her podcast guests, you might never guess how raucously fun she is in front of a live audience!
If you dream of moving effortlessly between studio and stage, you’ll love this episode.
Anne Bogel is an author, the creator of the blog Modern Mrs Darcy, and host of What Should I Read Next? podcast and Modern Mrs Darcy Book Club. Anne loves talking to readers about their favorite books, reading struggles, and of course what they should read next. Anne lives in Louisville, Kentucky, with her husband, four children, and a yellow lab named Daisy. Follow Anne on Instagram.
🗣️ Share the show by word of mouth and on your socials
Anne Bogel's Takeaways for Podcasters and Public Speakers
1. Offer radical hospitality. We may not think of it this way, but the word “host” comes from the word “hospitality.” Anne takes that literally – she and her team practice hospitality consciously. They do everything they can to make their guests feel welcome and at ease. That hospitality starts with the way they invite guests, to how they prepare them, to the ways in which Anne calms their nerves at the start of an interview. The result of such care shows in the relationships she builds with her guests – and, as a consequence, with devoted listeners.
2. State your purpose. Anne practices hospitality in the manner that Priya Parker describes in her book The Art of Gathering. That means understanding and explaining the purpose of that gathering or interview at the very beginning. “It can feel silly at first to name your purpose,” she said. But it helps you and your guests immensely to say: "What is our purpose in being here today, in having this conversation? What do we hope you take away from this?" Don’t let these important guideposts remain unspoken.
3. Set the emotional stage. You’re not the same host in a quiet studio as you are in front of a live audience. Or at least you shouldn’t be. Before you host an episode or a live event, visualize how you want the audience to feel. As Anne says, the visual for a conversation with a single guest might be two people at a table leaning over their lattes. But the visual for a panel discussion in a room of hundreds of readers is big! As she put it, “Come on in. The water is warm! Big Momma’s shepherding! There’s room here for all of us, and we’re gonna have a ball.” They’re both positive kinds of energy, but they differ dramatically.
4. Public speaking skills are complementary, not identical. Hosting a great roundtable takes a different kind of expertise than hosting an intimate conversation. It requires deft moderation, an ability to think like an orchestra conductor and sometimes a tightrope walker – along with the diplomacy to manage several egos. Anne plans ahead to give guests equal time and to ensure a lively flow of conversation. And she also thinks about how to inspire guests to tell stories that they haven’t told before by artfully asking for specifics, like she does in this episode by inquiring about a memorable book club experience. And remember – sometimes that first story sets the tone for all the rest.
Help us find and celebrate today’s best hosts Who’s your Sound Judgment dream guest? Email me: allies@podcastallies.com. Because of you, that host may appear on Sound Judgment.
For more information on Sound Judgment and Podcast Allies, our production and training company, visit us at www.podcastallies.com.
Credits
Sound Judgment is a production of Podcast Allies, LLC.
Host: Elaine Appleton Grant
Podcast Manager: Tina Bassir
Production Manager: Andrew Parella
Audio Engineer: Kevin Kline
Production Assistant: Audrey Nelson
Improve your storytelling Check out our popular workshops on interviewing, story editing, story structure, longform narrative, audience engagement, guesting, scriptwriting and more.
Hire Elaine to speak at your conference or company. Subjects include: Effective Storytelling; Communicating for Leaders; Communicating about Change; Mastering the Art of the Interview; Success in Guesting, and much more.
Discover our strategic communication services and coaching for thought leaders using storytelling tools to make the world a better place. Serving writers, podcasters, public speakers, and others in journalism & public media, climate change, health care, policy, and higher education. Visit us at www.podcastallies.com.
🗣️ Share the show by word of mouth and on your socials
Help us find and celebrate today’s best hosts Who’s your Sound Judgment dream guest? Email me: allies@podcastallies.com. Because of you, that host may appear on Sound Judgment.
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