Ira Glass
is the creator and producer of ‘This America Life’. This American Life is a radio show and podcast that’s been running for 25 years. It’s pretty big, over 2 million radio listeners and 3 million podcast downloads weekly.
However, for some reason, Ira Glass is most popular for an interview he gave a couple of years ago. In the interview, he talked about the gap new creatives experience when they first get started.
“For the first couple of years that you are making stuff, the stuff you make isn’t that good. But your taste, your taste is still killer. ” — Ira Glass
I am at the point where my taste is killer, but my work, it’s just not there yet. It’s trying to be good but there is something it’s just not doing right. And I know this because when I listen to my work from a few months ago, I cringe.
The Cringe Stage
I started making podcasts in 2019. This is the break down of the first 5 minutes of that episode
0 to 1.30: Subject talks about music she listens to when she needs to concentrate
1.30 to 2.15: Host intros the podcast, it’s premise and intros first voice note
2.15 to 2.35: Voice note about someone who struggles with productivity
2:35 to 3.15: Host breaks down shows format and more exposition on productivity being the episode’s topic
3.15 to 4.00: Idea switch, “this episode, we tried to figure out how we would be productive and to do that we talked to people about their own productivity”
4.00 to 5:00: Voice note. A subject talking about their relationship with productivity.
I think the cringe stage is inevitable for anyone who is trying to create. When you start making stuff, whatever you make is going to be bad. Very bad. Really bad. Awful.
What’s worse about this beginning is that you will know that what you are making is bad. Maybe you won’t notice it immediately but you will notice it two months later, after you have created more things. Your good taste will become a burden because it will point out so glaringly to you that you suck at making stuff.
But, and this is what I have noticed, your good taste will only point this out if you keep making more stuff. If you make one podcast and only one podcast episode for a year. For that entire year you will think it’s good. If you make one podcast episode this week, and then another next week, and another the week after. The first episode will start sounding really bad after two weeks. And one of the reasons it will sound bad is your good taste, the other reason it will sound bad is because you would have gotten better.
That’s been my life for the past year. This continuous unending cringe because I keep making more podcast episodes. Sometimes, It doens’t take me a few months to cringe. Sometimes I cringe while making the episode.
In making any of my 30 minute episodes, I spend about 10 hours just listening to audio. Listening to interviews, listening to the episode as I put it together. Lots and lots of listening. And at some point I will hear mistakes or hear how bad the audio quality is and I will say to myself “perfect is the enemy of good” and just keep pushing till I put out the podcast. And with each episode, I have gotten better.
When I got better between the first episode and the third episode, it was really just an intuitive thing. Between the third episode and the sixth, I got better because I had learnt what to do to be better.
Getting Better
One of my favourite articles (ever) is Ó dè quality! by F.Merry. It’s an article about quality, and about making good quality stuff. Opemipo says four things need to be present for high quality work to be made.
- Exposure to high quality work.
- An understanding of the details of what you are doing.
- Ability (or affordance) to spend resources (e.g. time, money) on it.
- Incentive to spend the resources.
Right from when I started, I had no 1 checked. I have been listening to podcasts since 2012. I listen to 2–3 hours a day. Many of the podcasts I listen to are considered the best in the market. This American Life, which I listen to every week, is the only podcast with a Pulitzer prize.
1. I am exposed to high quality work.
When I first started, I did not understand the details of what I was doing. I knew that the episodes I listened to had a certain sound and they did certain things but I definitely did not understand the reason behind why they did those things. My first two episodes started simply with a subject talking about something related to the episode’s theme. It was intuitive that I needed to start with a primer. Since then, I have learnt actively about the details of podcast making. I have learnt enough to create my own elements to the craft.
2. I understand the details of what I am doing
For resources, there are many different resources that go into making anything. But when you qualify resources in their most basic form, you will have only two items: time and money. And I didn’t have a lot of either this year. What I had, to make up for what I lacked, was dedication. So what if I did not have the capital to buy the microphones and the headphones people needed to make podcasts? I created a guide for my hosts and my subjects to use when recording on their phones in their homes. Bisi, eventually started recording inside a car and Seyi inside a store. When I had call interviews or had to record myself, I set up a pillow forte. After getting audio, I spend a lot of time trying to improve the sound quality. Another note, the job I worked this year was very very time consuming. So almost all my podcasting work happened at night. Many times I stayed up till 4/5 am to finish episodes in time to upload. I invested about half of my salary every month into the podcast (paying for notion, adobe audition, hosting on Soundcloud and internet subscription)
3. I can afford to invest the resource I have into doing the work (sort of)
I think the main incentive I had was wanting to get better and wanting to make a good podcast with good stories that affected people. There were mornings after uploading new episodes where i’d see people, strangers, tweeting at us talking about how they connected with the subjects. One early listener (who has now deleted her twitter account) said the only reason she even tweeted was to talk about the podcast. So yea, I had the incentive to be better.
4. I have an incentive to want to make good work.
Here’s a breakdown of the first five minutes of our last episode of the season.
0.40 to 0.50: Recording: Subjects struggles to say they don’t remember their first panic attack
0.50 to 1:21: Host defines panic attacks (sound design: emphasize break out phrases like intense fear, real danger and end section with voice saying ‘intense fear’ in a panic)
1.22 to 1.35: Host sets up subject 1's panic attack
1.35 to 1.50: Recording: Subject talks about the breakup that preceded the panic attack
1.50 to 2.10: Host sets up subject 2’s panic attack
2.10 to 2.30: Recording: Subject talks about the argument that preceded the panic attack
2.30 to 4.30: Non-narrated storytelling. Story switches back and forth between both subjects (sound design: effects for drowning and breathing, build music in with climax)
Details of a good podcast
I know enough about the details of making a narrative podcast that I can teach someone else about it. And I have. Late this year, some friends joined the team to help me out (because I was having less and less time to invest.) And the first thing I needed to do with them was teach them the details of creating good podcasts. So I created a two week program.
Week 1. Good taste. I got them to listen to two podcast episodes that I really liked. Then they listened to a crash course on podcast making and finally had assignments to listen to a section of an episode of our podcast and identify the elements that made it good.
Week 2. The details of making a good podcast episode. They went through a course (that I paid for) and had an assignment to make an episode.
I don’t think I would be able to teach anyone if I didn’t know enough of it myself. And the only reason I know what I know is the cringe stage. I just kept cringing.
What Next?
I mentioned earlier on that having the resources of time and money were difficult for me this year.
I recently quit my job. In the current age of social media, people usually announce that they are leaving their current jobs and follow it with what they will be doing next. I have mentioned to a few people that I was quitting and a question that kept coming up was “what next?”
My answer: I don’t know.
That’s not entirely true. I know that in this new section of my life, I want to do a lot more creating and writing and making audio stories. But the question they were asking really is what next for money and time. What will I do with my time and where will money come from? And I don’t actually know. Especially for the second part. I really don’t know.
In an ideal perfect world, I guess I would like to get money and invest time in doing the creative work I have talked about for this entire article. Which is a small part of my motivation for writing it (to get noticed). But I also know to be sceptical. With creative work, you need luck but you also need to be sceptical that you will not get lucky. If not, it can be a very heartbreaking and depressing journey.
One thing I do intend to do a lot of in the coming year is cringe. I intend to cringe a lot, to close the gap between my taste and my work.
Mo Isu. Writer, Research, Producer. I do creative stuff and make narrative podcasts. I like to describe myself as an empathy-driven storyteller. I tell stories to make people care about someone or something.
