The Waveform Issue 25—New Starts
The Waveform is a newsletter from Red Cup Agency about the next edge in podcasting. In each issue, I’ll stay on top of things for you. When we launch a new show or post an episode that stands out, I’ll drop that into the newsletter.
I’m Lee Schneider, founder and lead producer at Red Cup Agency. Did someone forward this to you, or are you reading it on the web? You can subscribe for free.
Planet v. Profit
Red Cup is producing a podcast with the climate watch and human rights organization Global Witness. It’s called Planet v. Profit. The first episode is a revealing interview with Disha Ravi, a young climate activist in India who was arrested for posting instructions online about how to lead a climate protest. The Indian authorities called Disha’s activism an act of sedition and arrested her. Find out what happened next.
Glo Podcast Cruising Past 46 Episodes
The Glo Podcast is a conversation about resilience and self-care. In more than 40 episodes, we’ve spoken with neurologists, yogis, religious scholars, business coaches, and many bestselling authors who have good ideas about how to improve your life. One of my favorite episodes is one with author and educator Orly Wahba speaking about kindness. We've published a conversation about freedom and sex (lots of swearing; will use the “E for explicit” rating), and this weekend, we'll post a conversation about building social communities with celebrated yoga teacher Elena Brower. For this weekend's episode, the co-founder of Summit, Jeff Rosenthal, joins Elena to discuss his new book, Make No Small Plans. Listen to The Glo Podcast.
Your Performance Review
Your Performance Review is a new 10-episode fiction podcast that I’ve written and will direct. It’s casting now. Many of the actors are human. Others are not. I’m building the nonhuman actor voices from various AI sources. Amazon’s AWS has a platform called Polly that works well. I needed a voice with a Czech accent and went to another platform called Narakeet. Descript is a transcription platform that can make an AI voice modeled on your own. You type out what you want it to say, and it speaks using the patterns of your voice. Sounds terrifying, doesn’t it? I would never do that with my voice. But one of our podcast hosts did, and it made for a memorable podcast about deepfakes.
Start Transcribing Everything
Often, I provide a transcript for podcasts that I publish. But “often” is about to become always. Podcasts need to be accessible to all, and that means to people who are deaf or hard of hearing. Platforms like Simplecast.fm and Transistor.fm make it easy to upload a transcript with each episode. The cost of transcription is dropping. You can use AI services to get it done fast and cheaply. Rev.com, for example, charges .25 per minute for a transcript that can be ready faster than you can make a cup of tea while waiting for it. (I’ve tested this.)
You already know that advertisers like growing audiences. Making your podcast more accessible to more people is the very definition of growing your audience. The National Association of the Deaf, along with another disabilities-rights organization, sued Sirius FM because the network didn’t provide transcripts for all the podcasts that it distributed on its networks. Pandora and Stitcher are Sirius subsidiaries.
It’s time to get a transcription on every podcast episode you publish. I’m posting a transcript for every new episode that I produce.
Until next time, Lee Schneider
Red Cup Agency. Podcast Production and Marketing.
Working with teams large and small, I take podcasts from the glimmer of an idea into production and distribution. We make trailers, ad spots and promos for your podcast, and we find new audiences for you work with cross promotion.