Old-Time Radio Reborn: Why Podcasts Work
Narrative is the backbone of any successful podcast, although there's a whole lot more to great audio entertainment than just the stories.
Alex Goldman: What makes a good podcast is a real attention to narrative and writing and trying to tell stories that haven't already been told. A lot of shows are actually doing just radio play essentially. There are shows like The Truth that are actually doing radio fiction. It's like The Shadow or Welcome to Night Vale. It's like '30s radio. It's like '30s serialized radio. And honestly, and I don't remember who coined the phrase, but radio is the theater of the mind. It's like you can – you know how they say a picture is worth a thousand words? Well, a word is worth a million pictures. If I say tree, you can visualize millions of different trees. So we give you these stories; we give you sound, but you create the world in your head and there's something immensely satisfying about that. I mean you know roughly what we're talking about, but much like reading a book, it's like you decide what the characters look like; you decide what the host's look like; you decide what environment they're in; where it's being recorded; what the subject look like; what the world that the subjects are describing looks like. There's something really — there's a certain level of imagination inspiring and control that you get with radio that you don't get with movies or 3D or any other modern technology.
Narrative is the backbone of any successful podcast, though there's a whole lot more to great audio entertainment than just the stories. According to Reply All's Alex Goldman, podcasts and radio are "the theater of the mind." If a picture is worth a thousand words, Goldman says, a word is worth a million pictures. Thus, the most important aspect of a good podcast is the ability of its hosts and producers to spark visual storytelling in the listener's mind using only the power of sound.
Why women make businesses more profitable
When it comes to the workplace, more diversity means more money.
- While the workplace is slowly diversifying, some industries have been slow to change.
- A growing body of research is uncovering that workplaces with greater diversity actual perform better. One of the clearest examples of this effect is in venture capitalism, where nearly all venture capitalists are white, male, Harvard graduates.
- When VC firms hire more women, their effectiveness and profitability explodes.
An end to suffering: 10 quotes on Buddhist philosophy
It's not what you have, it's what you do with it.
- Buddhism has been applied differently across the planet as it enters new cultures.
- The underlying philosophical foundation is applicable to diverse situations, whether religious or secular.
- But it is a practice, not a belief, and must be treated as a discipline for retraining consciousness.
The Geminid meteor peaks Thursday night. Here’s how to view it best.
The Geminid meteor shower grows more intense with every year, and it's expected to be particularly bright in 2018.
- Look up at the skies from 2 to 7:30 a.m. on December 14 to see the most meteors.
- To get the best view, travel away from city lights, avoid looking at your phone and let your eyes adjust to the dark.
- Stargazers might also be able to catch a glimpse of a comet making a rare appearance, NASA astronomers say.
SMARTER FASTER trademarks owned by The Big Think, Inc. All rights reserved.