What I Wish I’d Known About Podcasting

Bethany Atkinson-Quinton – co-founder of Broadwave, audio journalist, podcast producer of The Palestine Laboratory, Bad Taste and more

I think, at its best, audio storytelling is a collective pursuit—a weaving together of many art forms, voices and textures. I largely make narrative non-fiction and documentary-style shows, and within this genre it’s vital to remember that recording in this country has a complicated past, often rooted in colonial practices of extraction. I’m constantly questioning my motives, my positionality, my relationship to people and place. Recording someone’s voice always raises questions of power and responsibility—what happens to the recording once it’s made? What are the stakes for the person recorded, and how can you honour them? Who does it serve?

People are not products; they never owe you their story. It’s a privilege when someone chooses to share theirs, and our responsibility is to tend to it with consideration, care and dignity. I believe the best makers are deep listeners attuned not just to what people say but to what they don’t: how they say it and what’s suggested through body language—eye contact, posture, pace, tone, breath, silence. That attunement always translates into the story you tell and how you represent someone. Every story is necessarily incomplete and can never capture the vastness and complexity of a person, but the producer’s task, I think, is to listen closely enough to gesture towards some small truth.

People are not products; they never owe you their story.

Eilish Gilligan – writer, musician, senior podcast producer at Shameless Media

Maybe this isn’t so much what I wish I’d known but more what I’m working on right now. When I think about what I love most about the podcasts I listen to regularly—the ones I’ll tap into immediately when they land in my feed—I always come back to the same general idea: informative, engaging, candid conversation between hosts I admire and genuinely like as people. Understanding my own listening habits has absolutely helped me get better at my job as a producer and, not to mention, help unclench my fists a touch when it comes to my eternal foe: perfectionism!

Madison Griffiths – host of Tender: Roia Atmar, author of Sweet Nothings

Podcasting is as much an art form as film and literature if taken seriously enough. There are many podcasts out there, and it is important to consider how yours sets itself apart from the rest. I appreciated the sensory style of storytelling that podcasts offered as a medium. I could master an atmosphere and pair it with words. I wanted the audio documentary to feel cinematic but still maintain its journalistic integrity.

What podcasts can offer depends on the style of podcast one hopes to produce. In the instance of Tender: Roia Atmar, Bethany Atkinson-Quinton (my co-producer) and I were meticulous in the formation of the story’s script, sound design and style. Podcasting provided us with greater, more comprehensive tools when it came to harnessing a listener’s empathy.

My advice for anyone who wants to start a podcast is to take your time and look outside of podcasting for inspiration (film, literature, audiobooks, comedy).

Miles Martignoni – podcast producer, head of audio at the Guardian 2019–2025

One thing that surprised me was how successful we were when we launched Guardian Australia’s daily news podcast. Making a podcast seemed like a crazy gamble when I pitched it, but it turned out to be a very interesting format to play with and also worked financially because of the large amount of downloads you could get when putting out so many episodes each week. It meant we could concentrate on telling stories, and the commercial part of the Guardian was happy to be selling ads at great volume.

But I think it’s much harder to launch new things now—there are a lot of podcasts and most people already have their set favourites, so one of the main challenges if you want to grow is that you have to work a lot harder than you may have five years ago. This is the reason so many podcasts are turning to video; everyone is desperate to find new ways to get people to listen to them or prove themselves popular in new formats. Podcasts will continue to grow, but it will be hard to stand out. People are going to spend a lot of resources on video, and I think some will thrive in that medium and others won’t find many measurable outcomes there. I suspect in a couple of years someone will put out another worldwide smash-hit audio-only documentary, and there will be a lot of think pieces published about audio ‘being back’—but it’s never gone anywhere.

So many podcasts are turning to video; everyone is desperate to find new ways to get people to listen.

Audio is such a lovely medium—the intimacy of the voice really cuts through for me. I love that it happens partially in your head, like when you read a book. I had a love of the classics like Radiolab and This American Life, but I didn’t intend to work mostly in podcasts. In fact, after a stint producing regional radio, I was preparing myself to become a multiplatform journalist who could write, shoot video and photos and do a bit of everything. But instead Serial came out in 2014 and all of a sudden all anyone wanted to make was a podcast, so I got to make big doco-style ones like my favourites but also had a lot fun making all kinds of things.

Michelle Macklem – sound designer and mix engineer, founder of Constellations art sounds collective, mix engineer of the KYD Queer Critics series

I started out wanting to make radio. Growing up in Canada, listening to CBC in particular, I was drawn to being able to tell meaningful stories. I think there’s something powerful about the human voice.

When I started working in this space there was a strong community, and I think there still is. There are talented, thoughtful people that really care about the stories that are told and are inclusive and willing to be generous with knowledge—it’s been a nice surprise to meet those people. But with the huge boom that happened in podcasting around 2014, things shifted from more community radio and podcasting to the commercialisation of the space. There was a lot of initial money and investment—perhaps less so in Australia than overseas where I started—and what we’re seeing now with the economic downturn is de-investment in the space and a lot of people leaving. It’s very competitive for work at the moment. In Australia, the market is quite small, with a handful of companies that monopolise and do the big podcasts. There are also smaller fragments of shows with their communities, and that is really beautiful. But I think you just have to accept that you’re not going to be able to make a hit podcast and make that your full-time gig—that feels less and less possible these days.

If you want to start a podcast, I still think you should go for it. I don’t think the market is necessarily oversaturated. It’s just about finding why you want to start a show. Choose a subject that is under-explored or under-represented. Be thoughtful about how you’re spending your time, and smart and strategic if you are going to buy things. With microphones, you can spend thousands of dollars, but I suggest starting with a simple and reliable set-up and get to know the tools really well. Seek out other people who have been through the process and reach out for practical advice, but there’s also a lot to learn online. There are still opportunities for small makers with a focus on craft and a really supportive community around the arts. Hopefully the future will offer brighter days.

Amy McQuire – journalist, academic, co-host of Curtain The Podcast, author of Black Witness

I got involved in podcasts during the post-Serial boom. I was working at 98.9 FM/Triple A in Brisbane—the local Aboriginal community station—and started investigating a long-running story about the wrongful conviction of Kevin Henry, an Aboriginal man in my hometown, along with Martin Hodgson, a Yuin lawyer. At the time, we realised that this story was very complicated and we needed to provide a lot of context to understand it. We needed to explain wrongful convictions because there is a lack of understanding in Australia. We had to explain racism. We had to explain racist and gendered violence. We had to explain police brutality. We had to give an understanding of what it was like being Black in a regional Queensland town in 1991. We couldn’t do that in a news story, or even a feature piece. It was just too big. So we decided to do a podcast, because at the time this format was new and evolving and you could decide the best way to tell the story.

We began in Aboriginal community radio, and our podcast was syndicated throughout Aboriginal community radio networks throughout the country. After I left the station, we were able to keep the podcast going independently. One of the benefits of this format was our reach. Our audience was and has always been bigger overseas. The interesting thing is: I am not a huge fan of podcasts—I would rather read news stories. For example, if a media outlet releases a true crime podcast, I’ll often read the stories published alongside it rather than listen to the podcast. If I need more context, I’ll listen to the podcast. This is where I think podcasting is important—it provides an opportunity to disseminate information in different formats which reach beyond the actual podcast. The investigations that run through Curtain The Podcast, for example, informed a lot of my other outputs. It formed the basis of my PhD research topic—media representations of violence against Aboriginal women—and has informed most of my scholarly work going forward. It also has been the basis of several stories published over a variety of formats. For me, podcasting is not entertainment, it is part of a process of investigation in which you can ethically show your work and the trajectory of your thinking. It is more transparent and it also can be independent. You can use the podcast to inform your other work and as a dissemination strategy.

For me, podcasting is not entertainment, it is part of a process of investigation in which you can ethically show your work and the trajectory of your thinking.

Lynda Ng – academic and host on Fully Lit

I was invited to host two episodes of the Fully Lit podcast by James Jiang from the Sydney Review of Books and Sarah Gilbert from UTS’s Impact Studios. I’d never done anything like this before, and it was great to have the chance to engage in a serious discussion about Australian literature knowing that there would be a wider audience listening in. There’s a wonderful simplicity with podcasting—you just need a microphone and someone interesting to talk to. In a visually saturated world, it really feels like getting back to basics with the focus on language and ideas. That said, the producers (Regina Botros, Sarah Gilbert and James Jiang) had a clear vision for Fully Lit. They knew from the start they wanted to expand on the interviews by including readings by authors and archival material. I think they take you on a sonic journey that is quite remarkable. There’s a little jolt when you hear the voice of an author reading out their own work. Podcasts, along with audiobooks, are certainly growing in popularity. Because the podcast is such a pared-back medium, what we say about writers is just as applicable here: the best ones have something important to say.

Seth Robinson – writer, academic and host of Unfolded

My first job out of uni was driving the prize truck for the local radio station, giving out soft drinks and loaves of Wonder White. I learned how to push all the buttons in the studio and graduated to 3am starts producing the breakfast show. Writing and podcasting require a lot of the same skillset—research, creative thinking, producing, interviewing—but more than that, they’re both practices centred on finding meaning and human connection through storytelling. And they both have their advantages. When I worked at the radio station, we talked a lot about the ‘intimacy’ of audio, and the settings people listen in: driving their cars, doing the housework, walking the dog, all these personal moments where they’re opening themselves up to someone else’s voice.

I had the idea for Unfolded years ago. It’s a pretty simple idea: record short stories as audio fictions, then do a deep dive with the authors and find out how they came to be. Most other podcasts give you one or the other, an interview, or a story, but this is, to my knowledge, the first time I’ve come across them brought together like this. I think it was that intimacy of audio that made the idea work.

The thing about podcasts is that there are no real rules, whatever the topic, theme or format. The barriers to produce and publish them are low. This is probably podcasting’s greatest strength and its greatest weakness. That easy access means there’s so much room for creativity and new voices, but it also means there’s a lot of noise (both figurative and literal). That’s the thing I wish I knew about podcasting: having a great, unique idea is just the beginning.

People don’t just ‘find’ a podcast. It’s recommended to them or advertised. This doesn’t mean you need a crazy marketing budget, but it does mean you have to think about the channels your work is being communicated through, who’s going to hear it and who they might tell about it. You have to think about how you build that community and connect with listeners in the first instance. The podcasts that do the best tend to do this: they find their weird and wonderful niche, they know exactly who they’re speaking to and they know how to reach them. Once you make that connection, the story you tell and the way it’s produced are what will keep people coming back.

The barriers to produce and publish them are low. This is probably podcasting’s greatest strength and its greatest weakness.

Jon Tjhia – writer, editor, digital producer, radio and podcast maker

I started getting involved with making podcasts because I liked the idea of them as a distribution method for sounds. I’ve always been excited about the scope of things that are possible with distributed audio—whether that’s radio or tapes and records or podcasts or USB thumb drives cemented into walls or something else—the breadth of what can be reproduced, the time a recording can hold open and what minds and bodies can do with all of that. So what’s not to be excited by a new mode of sending and receiving?

Around the time when podcasts became a thing, there was a weirdly entrepreneurial stage. It happened around the time of StartUp, a meta-ass podcast about starting a podcast business. As a deregistered musician, this felt eerily similar to the late aughts in platform capitalism, and also indie music, when ‘killer app’ get-rich-quick logic infected many surprising (then, not so much in hindsight) corners of the arts. Confident people were starting companies and banking huge sums in speculative capital. Even if others resented them, many still wanted what they had. I have looked at more than one dejected radio artist and pictured the holdout rustic cottage wedged between skyscrapers or stranded in the middle of a car park (I can blame a podcast for that too). A staggering number of astonishingly valuable, sound-rich podcasts, once held aloft as trophies of artistic credibility, have been killed off. Their spirit flickers tentatively in fragile spaces largely fuelled by passion, family money or kinetic energy captured from the eye-rolls of a forgotten generation of radio artists preceding them.

Worse: the only places really capable of funding complex productions (not that complex is always good, or good is necessarily complex) are public media, and any actual avid user of public media can tell you that as soon as public media thinks in the lexicon of corporate media something fundamental is in the process of getting fucked over for at least a decade and more often two.

This period of rapid expansion birthed a prevailing personality trait: superfandom. Bearing a dangerous resemblance to sycophancy, this uplifted a generation (management tier) of ‘experts’ whose core skill was pattern recognition and mimicry. Podcasting once heralded a pretty open space where people could decide for themselves what to say, how to say it and when to shut up completely. Instead, we ended up with a bunch of people insisting on saying pretty much the same things in the same ways—and reading mattress ads. And then programmatic ads came along, and the host-read suddenly felt quaint, artisanal and nostalgic.

With thanks perhaps to the maturation of an over-engineered industry or the diverse absurdities of the contemporary internet, the unexpected lurks around the corner. It’s still possible to be completely charmed by a podcast, especially one that attempts to take a novel approach that doesn’t seem to lead with its expectations. You could say I value contrariness, but I think it’s mostly about being true to your materials and not being quarter-arsed in how you render a subject but working hard to honour it with earnest and patient work. I think anyone looking to make podcasts should think of how else they most commonly listen. Netflix shows, even? Perhaps Instagram or TikTok? Albums? Be interdisciplinary and as open as you can in your approach to sound, and how it puts flesh on the bones of time.

And for the gold star overthinkers, consider how you can muddy the delineations of podcast, album, audiobook, radio broadcast, publication and on and on. Think about how you most uncommonly listen. Consider the intersensory. Don’t patronise your listener. They’ll survive a little confusion and enjoy having a real quest for once. Be wary of anyone holding too tightly to a rule. And try to do at least one unexpected thing each time you make something. Then do a few more? You can’t please everyone, but if you don’t please yourself, you might not please anyone at all. Give pause. Deploy meaningless seconds. The culture needs this. The social imaginary needs this. What I wish I’d known about podcasting is that above everything else, I need this too.

Stephanie Van Schilt – senior producer of Sex Therapy: Sessions with Chantelle Otten, writer and producer of The Younger Man, co-creator of Food Crime

Over the years I’ve worked across so many different projects that it’s hard to distill the how, what and where when it comes to podcasting. But the why never changes: it’s variety and balance, it’s curiosity and skill, and above all, it’s storytelling. Even though it’s a business and you’ll often be working within industry parameters, the audio format remains intimate; it speaks to people, literally and figuratively. And to me that’s key.

I wish I’d known that there’s no tried-and-true formula or perfectly curated skillset that will get you a specific job. I’ve been lucky enough to weave my way across genres and styles of podcasting. Since starting out with my independent interview podcast, I’ve gone on to write entire scripted series for networks and watch actors perform the lines. I’ve edited together cuts and worked long hours in studios with engineers, making sure we have the exact right effect, landing at the exact moment so it inspires a particular, visceral response for listeners. I’ve cry-laughed in studios while creating comedy shows and bawled while working on reality therapy podcasts. I’ve worked with incredible teams and talent, attended countless meetings and stuck to schedules and budgets. It’s all a balancing act that requires equal parts creativity and organisation. The industry is fickle and forever changing; right now it may seem oversaturated with big names and loud voices. It can feel overwhelming and uninspiring, so it’s hard to suggest finding a lane and sticking to it. I’d advise otherwise anyway, because each project is different and you’ll learn as much as you bring to it, if not more. And variety and creativity are the energy podcasting needs.

READ MORE

• ‘15 literary podcasts to make you laugh, learn and join conversations about books’ by Amber Gwynne, Conversation
• ‘How Podcasts Became a Seductive—and Sometimes Slippery—Mode of Storytelling’ by Rebecca Mead, New Yorker
• ‘Tune in To These 13 Epic Indigenous Podcasts in 2025’ by Jessica Best, Urban List
• ‘Australian media is in shambles, and the ABC’s audience is geriatric. Could this new venture be Media Watch for the youth?’ by Daanyal Saeed, Crikey
• ‘Subjectivity, hugs and craft: Podcasting as extreme narrative journalism’ by Siobhan McHugh, Nieman Storyboard
• ‘2024 Australian Podcast Report’, Commercial Radio and Audio