Podcasts are great because of the freedom that comes with them. You can find so many kinds of podcasts to attend to any of your interests. It really is its own form of media that nobody talks about; it just gets forgotten when you mention television, radio, and print before it. But I love podcasts. I think it’s really interesting to give people another medium of communication outside of the traditional ones. It allows for the freedom and the variety, like I said. It’s not only freedom in the topics, but it’s also freedom in the actual content as well.

Something that stuck out to me right away with Alex Blumberg’s podcast, StartUp Podcast, is how he delivers his content. It’s not how I’ve heard most pods presented. In his first podcast, it’s like the main audio track in the podcast is his narration of a story, and he includes audio snippets of the story itself. He plays a lot of audio from what he is actually talking about, instead of just describing it all himself. He does this in a way that immediately engages the viewer.

Towards the beginning, there’s a ton of natural sound playing in the background as he introduces the podcast. That is so smart, because it makes the listening experience more than just hearing a guy talking in a microphone, and more of a well-rounded journey for the listener. He played the nat sound early on, and then he interjects his main narration with soundbites from what he’s talking about. As he mentions that his wife was critiquing his shoe choice when he left the house, he actually stops talking and plays a bite of his wife talking about that exact thing. He keeps it going with a back-and-forth dialogue to make you feel like you’re right there with him in the conversation. He does a great job of bringing you along for the story, and engaging the viewer this way just drives home his actual points even more.

I like how Blumberg has an upbeat, current vibe to him. You can tell that he was young, he made mistakes, and he had to change his mindset about a ton of different things. It’s relatable. I think it’s smart to make the first podcast about his failure, and how he responded from it follows in the next episodes. You can tell that he knows what he’s talking about because he’s been through all the awkward experiences and he’s learned how to navigate those, and he shows you that right away.