PODCASTS WITH PEOPLE CHATTING

Without a doubt this is the most widespread podcast format because it’s easy and cheap to produce for professionals and amateurs alike. Except for a sporadic use of theme music, the number-one ingredient is the human voice. This is how the producer, the host, and other participants present their personal experiences, reactions, opinions, ideas, or thoughts – the content in most podcasts with people chatting. Even though people can talk about literally anything – from their own everyday life experiences to much more specialist topics – all podcasts with people chatting are grounded in reality and therefore nonfiction.

You can divide these podcasts into three distinct sub-formats based on how many people are chatting and how formal it sounds: dive into the topic by presenting and sharing psychological and sociological research with each other. The purpose is to enlighten the listeners on the inner workings of people and society.

The monologue is easy to recognize because there’s only one person talking – usually presenting either a topic or an idea to the listeners. The monologue can be scripted if, for example, the content is complex or relies on a strict structure or argumentation. It can also be adlibbed which makes it less formal and looser and more personal.

The conversation and the interview have two or more people talking together. In a conversation, the two participants are of equal importance – they share their experiences, ideas, opinions, or help each other build the overall argumentation. It usually creates a cosy and friendly atmosphere and invites us listeners into the conversation. Contrary to this, the participants in an interview are not of equal importance: An interview is a more formal conversation where the participants have specific roles. This also helps create a form of structure in the podcast: Person no. 1 asks questions, and person no. 2, the interviewee, answers them. Naturally, all our focus is directed towards the interviewee, and their experiences, ideas, opinions, etc.

The panel discussion consists of several people talking. Normally, there’s a host who has invited a number of people to participate, sharing their different experiences, ideas, opinions, etc. These differing points of view build into a discussion, which can be more or less formal – it depends on how strictly the host structures the discussion. It also depends on what the primary purpose of the podcast is: The topic discussed, or the friendly banter and jokes among the panellists, or a bit of both.

Podcasts with people chatting can easily span several sub-formats in one episode. It’s quite common that monologues are mixed with conversations, or separate interviews slip into a panel discussion. In fact, mapping out the various sub-formats at play is an important first step in your analysis.

Furthermore, since the audio design in podcasts with people chatting is not all that intricate, it’s a good idea to explore these podcasts through an argumentation analysis focusing on structure, rhetorical devices, purpose, etc. However, since the voice work is front and centre, we need to pay much more attention to the language: How do the participants speak about the subject? How do they express their ideas and thoughts? This leads us to discuss the purpose of the podcast: Are the producers merely entertaining us – or are they sharing ideas with us, teaching us something, or trying to convince us about something?

Podcasts can also tell stories through a sophisticated audio design, making use of various voices, sound effects, and music, intricately edited together. The producers focus on telling a captivating story to the listeners: They grip us emotionally, and we identify with the main characters who go through some sort of development, be it physical or psychological. Podcasts with people telling stories use the same narrative techniques that we know from films and TV series – e.g. plot points and suspense. To a certain extent, the audio design makes it sound like we’re watching a film with our eyes closed, putting us right into a dramatic scene and making us experience the events at first-hand.

As in other media, stories in podcasts can be both authentic and made-up. For clarity, we’ll explore both, one at a time:

Podcast documentaries are non-fiction. They’re grounded in reality, authentic people and events. They tell stories through speaks, delivered by the reporter or host, and unscripted interviews with the people involved. To underline their authenticity, many podcast documentaries also make use of segments that seem to be unedited or have been recorded live. Also, real­life sounds and music that were captured on location during a recording session make a documentary seem more authentic.

However, in order to make the story gripping, podcast documentaries also implement suspense, and sounds and music that trigger an emotional response in the listeners. That’s why many podcast documentaries are structured with the reporter as a first­person narrator, investigating the case and discovering new important facts along the way. This makes the real-life events much more personal: We feel like we are part of the investigation ourselves, primarily identifying with the reporter. However, a podcast documentary can also be shaped like a traditional news story presenting the facts and the people involved. Here, the reporter is a more authoritative third­person narrator making us focus on and empathise with the real-life participants and their problems. Although podcast documentaries usually trigger the listeners’ emotions and pull us into the authentic drama, most of them have more important purposes: First and foremost, to make us more conscious about the world and the people in it, creating awareness or joining an ongoing debate about issues in our society – violence, #metoo, climate change, etc. Other documentaries simply present facts – historical, scientific, etc.

File on 4’s episode “My Homeless Son” is a good example of a podcast documentary.

Podcast dramas are usually works of fiction with plots structured around conflict models and scenes revolving around characters who go through personal developments – both physical and psychological. Usually, a drama is carefully prepared as a script with lines of dialogue which are then recorded in a studio by voice actors. A sound engineer then adds background noises, music, etc. and even changes the audio quality by implementing various filters and effects. In other words, the editing is of utmost importance in a podcast drama.

Podcast dramas make us identify and empathise with the main character’s trials and tribulations. Many do so through internal monologues, where we listen to the character’s thoughts and ruminations. A more subtle way to bring us into the mind of the main character is by using subjective sounds and filters added to the audio design: Certain sounds can be edited to stand out, others may come off as somewhat distorted or even muted, because that’s the way the main character experiences them.

Most podcast dramas do have deeper messages and want to teach the listeners something about what it means to be human. However, the no. 1 purpose of a podcast drama is to trigger us emotionally, making us react to the personal drama, suspense, horror, or comedy.

Blackout is a good example of a serialised podcast drama.