Landlord to prospective tenant: “ I’ll be honest: this suite’s pretty bare-bones. Just the necessities: sink, hotplate, bathroom with a shower, and of course a podcasting studio.”

Studio apartment

October 16, 2019

I had the idea for this one this morning — but forced myself to wait to draw it until I’d hit my client deadlines, and then to wait to post it until I had edited and queued up the latest episode of my podcast.

It’s amazing to me just how explosively podcasting has grown in the past few years since Serial first aired. (In much the same way that Twitter snobs divided users according to where they’d joined “Before Oprah” and “After Oprah,” I believe podcasts can be divided into “Before Serial” and “After Serial.” My current podcast is waaaay After Serial.) Don’t take my word for it; trust Tom Webster and the good folks at Edison Research. Their annual Infinite Dial survey shows that, for the first time, more than half of Americans 12 years old and over have listened to a podcast… with one-third saying they’d tuned in sometime in the past month.

In my home city of Vancouver, Canada, there’s an entire firm devoted to producing great branded podcasts: the mighty Pacific Content, recently acquired by Rogers Media. Another local company, Cortado Productions, recently launched Call the Question, a terrific political podcast (it’s hosted by two of my favourite women in politics, Lesli Boldt and Maria Dobrinskaya). And a third company, Cited Media, is purely in the business of producing podcasts for scholars and academic organizations about their research.

These are just the three I know of because friends or clients are involved. I’m sure there are many more.

The podcasting sector is for real. More people are making a living at it than ever before. (I have some familiarity with that from a little cartooning I did a few years ago.)

I couldn’t be happier to see things taking off so widely. I’m delighted folks are making a go of it financially, but I’m just as happy that there’s a good, healthy contingent of folks still producing podcasts for the sake of pure self-expression. I don’t ever expect the Leadership Communications Podcast to land me a seven-figure book deal (or even a two-figure sponsorship — by the way, have you checked out Squarespace?)… but I enjoy the hell out of making it.

Even if, or especially if, I’m recording it in my bedroom closet.

(CIA agent to assassin) We were going to give this job to Rabinovitch. But then we heard your podcast about untraceable fast-acting neurotoxins...

The Business of Podcasting 8: Killer episode

October 13, 2015 No Comments

Here’s the last in a series of eight cartoons from the fab new podcasting book, The Business of Podcasting by Donna Papacosta and Steve Lubetkin.

This is the final cartoon from The Business of Podcasting, and it’s a day past the usual Monday cycle. That’s because 1) Monday was Thanksgiving in Canada and while I normally wouldn’t not let that stop me, I thought it important to give Donna (a fellow Canuck) her day of rest; and 2) I really didn’t want it to end.

I loved drawing these, I loved sharing them with you — and I love podcasting.

Again, check out the book. Donna and Steve won’t claim it’ll launch you into an exciting (if brief) new career as a covert assassin, but I am 100% happy to guarantee it.

(Student in detention class, speaking into a microphone) Welcome to episode 67 of DetentionCast. I'm your host, Susie, and with me as always is Vice-Principal Weasel-Face.

The Business of Podcasting 7: After-school special

October 5, 2015 No Comments

Here’s the seventh in a series of eight cartoons from the fab new podcasting book, The Business of Podcasting by Donna Papacosta and Steve Lubetkin. Check back every Monday for the latest one!

There isn’t necessarily a great business model for speaking truth to power, Susie, but podcasting at least makes it a lot less expensive.

One of my favourite podcasts on that count is Women at Warp, “a twice-monthly podcast where four women talk about Star Trek, its representations of women, contributions of women behind the scenes, and other fun Trek topics.” If you’re on the geekier side of the fence (heck, you’re here, right?), and you’ve been looking for a podcast that’s great fun while treating issues like underrepresentation, exclusion and overt misogyny seriously, I hope you’ll give it a listen.

(And I’m not just saying because I have an outstanding debt of a Trek-themed cartoon to co-host Jarrah Hodge. That said, I do indeed have an outstanding debt of a Trek-themed cartoon to co-host Jarrah Hodge.)

👭⭐🚀

We’re getting down to the wire on this run of cartoons; I hope you’ve enjoyed reading them as much as I did drawing them. This was my second-favorite of the bunch. Next week: my personal fave!

(dog in front of a microphone, to another dog) You know how on the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog? Not the case with podcasting.

The Business of Podcasting #5: Subwoofer

September 21, 2015 No Comments

Here’s the fifth in a series of eight cartoons from the fab new podcasting book, The Business of Podcasting by Donna Papacosta and Steve Lubetkin. Check back every Monday for the latest one!

The biggest challenge with this cartoon was choosing from the many possible dogs-and-podcasting headlines. Dogcasting! Pood(le)casting! Hi-Fido! (Feel free to keep going in the comments.)

And it is, of course, a nod to Peter Steiner’s famous cartoon.

(large number of lawyers with binders and briefcases, to a single worried-looking podcaster) Our legal team has jusssst a few changes to suggest.

The Business of Podcasting #4: Oh, good. The lawyers are here.

September 14, 2015 No Comments

Here’s the fourth in a series of eight cartoons from the fab new podcasting book, The Business of Podcasting by Donna Papacosta and Steve Lubetkin. Check back every Monday for the latest one!

We have a funny relationship with lawyers, don’t we? They’re the profession everyone loves to hate… until you really need one. And then you’re all “Am I going to lose my house just because I posted this cartoon of Donald Trump doing [[ REDACTED ON ADVICE OF COUNSEL ]] with a manatee?” and they’re all “Not if we can prove he actually did it. Kalinda, could you step in here?” and you think, hey, this is going to be okay, but then it turns out Peter Florrick’s first campaign for State’s Attorney took some money from Trump’s PAC and Wendy Scott-Carr has the cancelled cheques, so Eli is on your case to take a dive so you can take some of the heat off Peter because this is a really tricky time what with them getting so much blowback from the gaming commission appointment but then, at the last minute, Grace’s ChumHum search unearths the critical piece of evidence you need and boom, you’re having celebratory cocktails with Alicia and damned if there isn’t a little chemistry there but, no, you can see in her eyes that there’s still some unfinished business with Peter, even after all that’s happened, and you have your own life to live and you are not going to spend it as the consolation prize, Alicia, good night—

Enough about me. How was your week?

There are so many pieces to weigh: Rashmi's phone call to Mark. Vince's missing keycard records. Dani's movements on that afternoon in April. After 29 episodes, I feel like I'm no closer to figuring out who's really been taking my yogurt from the staff lunchroom.

The Business of Podcasting #3: Yogurt and Serial

September 7, 2015 No Comments

Here’s the third in a series of eight cartoons from the fab new podcasting book, The Business of Podcasting by Donna Papacosta and Steve Lubetkin. Check back every Monday for the latest one!

When the history of podcasting is written twenty years from now, it may be that every date is described as BSP and ASP: Before the Serial Podcast, and After the Serial Podcast.

It’s hard to overstate the impact of Serial in the resurgence of podcasting over the last year — from bringing a whole new audience to the medium, to winning podcasting’s first-ever Peabody Award, to inspiring storytellers with its mix of smart reportage and beautiful sound design.

But podcasting was hardly on its way out before Serial came onto the scene. There was a thriving audience for all kinds of podcasts: storytelling, teaching, marketing, news, straight-up entertainment and much more.

One of the earliest podcasts I subscribed to was For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report. Week in and week out, Neville Hobson and Shel Holtz faithfully delivered news and insights about organizational communications in the digital era. FIR has since blossomed into a network of two dozen podcasts, serving communicators of all stripes.

Today, Neville steps away from the mic after recording the last episode of Hobson & Holtz. I can’t begin to say how grateful I am for the past decade of podcasts — from those early years when us communicators who thought blogs might have some legs were regarded as bat-spit crazy, to today when a healthy Facebook and Twitter presence are table stakes for most organizations.

Thanks, Neville. Today’s cartoon is for you. And Shel, I can’t wait for September 21 to hear the new For Immediate Release.

(dad with daughter playing cymbals and drums while mom records a podcast) Oh, riiiight. You're recording. But you can just fix that in Audacity, right?

The Business of Podcasting #2: Sheer Audacity

August 31, 2015 No Comments

Here’s the second in a series of eight cartoons from the fab new podcasting book, The Business of Podcasting by Donna Papacosta and Steve Lubetkin. Check back every Monday for the latest one!

And one of the tools that has been making podcasting so easy for so long is Audacity, the open-source audio editing software. True, it could be easier to use (case in point: for license-compliance reasons, you need to separately install a geeky program or two so you can import and export audio formats like MP3). But the sheer power of the thing is crazy.

Ditto The Levelator, a simple utility to optimize audio files. For thousands of podcast creators who didn’t have the technical chops to tweak their levels in something like Audacity, and more to the point, for their listeners, The Levelator was a lifesaver.

And now for a quick game of six degrees of separation.

The Levelator was created in part by Bruce and Malcolm Sharpe.
Bruce Sharpe oversaw the video recording and editing of keynotes at the 2009 Northern Voice blogging conference.
One of the keynotes he edited together was mine.
And in my keynote, I talked about… podcasting!

Yes, there is video. The podcasting stuff starts at the 5:00 mark.

The Business of Podcasting #1: Storytime

August 24, 2015 1 Comment

Here’s the first in a series of eight cartoons from the fab new podcasting book, The Business of Podcasting by Donna Papacosta and Steve Lubetkin. (You’ll find a new one here every Monday for the next eight weeks.)

Whether you’re a podcasting veteran hoping to channel your passion into an income, or a newbie to the mic who’s excited about the medium’s possibilities, this book could be your new best friend. The focus is on solid practical advice, grounded in the wealth of experience offered by its authors. And that’s a lot of experience: you just won’t find a broader, deeper background in podcasting.

I damn near jumped out of my chair when Donna asked if I’d like to cartoon for The Business of Podcasting, because a) I have tremendous respect for her and the work she’s done over the years, and b) I have a longstanding love of podcasting (and, you won’t be surprised, radio).

A few years ago, I created a limited-run series called The Social Speech Podcast (about using social media to extend the impact of your public speaking). And as much fun as it was to talk with smart folks like Nancy Duarte about public speaking, I enjoyed the audio work—the recording, the editing, the polishing—just as much. Storytelling with sound and speech is a joy, and I hope this book helps a lot of people couple that joy to their professional success.

The Business of Podcasting is available in paperback and for Kindle. Check out the book’s website here.

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