Pitch your own show

I used to listen to Planet Money, so I’m already familiar with many fo their episodes. I listened to “Frame Canada,” an episode about how statistics and specific images can frame something that’s really good into something that’s not so good. It goes through the story of how a man campaigned against Bill Clinton and the Democrats’ health care plan by portraying it as “Canadian,” and then they had to portray the Canadian health care system as bad. To do this, they presented misleading information, such as about so little room that patients are dying in gurneys outside of waiting rooms, or how the number of doctors per capita in Canada was shrinking. To help make amends, he started to try to correct people’s perception of Canadian healthcare.

The Wikipedia list seems to encompass most of the podcasts I can listen to, perhaps with the exception of something like This American Life, since it’s technically a documentary podcast, but it can also be thought of as an educational podcast or an interview podcast. The most popular genres are probably relate to pop culture, such as music, comedy, tv or movies. My podcast preferences don’t really line up. I always like to learn things as I’m listening (unless if I’m listening to Conan Needs a Friend). My favorites are Criminal, Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History, 99% Invisible, and Conan Needs a Friend. It’s largely about society and culture, with some true crime mixed in there, so I donwouldn’t be a mainstream listener. Also, since I my podcast topics are kind of broad, I wouldn’t consider myself an avid fan of most topics, either. The only exception would be True Crime, where I really like listening to murder mysteries/supernatural stuff/unsolved stuff.

To summarize her advice, I’d say she mostly talks about patience. First, you need patience to stake out a place in pursuit of a story, or patience in finding leads on something interesting to report. Second, you need patience to get a good interview or conversation with a person. This can involve several meetings so they can get more comfortable with you, or just lots of interview time so if there’s anything there that might be good for a story, you catch it. Third, if something goes very badly, have the patience to try to work around it, as not everything will always go right.

I’m not in a place where I can get to a very different neighborhood quickly. My entire town is pretty uniform in terms of cultures, since it is a pretty standard suburb of Boston, so I decided to go to the trail behind my house. I live on a hill called Woodchuck Hill, and it appeared on maps as old as 1830, back when my town was still a part of another town. Then, in 1934, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts purchased the land, and now volunteers maintain its trails. The area where I record is an intersection between two trails, a smaller one and Woodchuk Trail.