99: How to Make Your Podcast Hilarious and Entertaining, With Planet Money's Robert Smith

Hey Kevin here, so over the past two weeks we've been sharing a few greatest hits episodes of Grow the Show. Now, we initially did that because, well, I went on the cruise and I wanted to take a break, but to my surprise, they've been a huge hit. So I've decided to go ahead and republish two more must-hear episodes of Grow the Show. Today's episode features so far, the biggest guest that Grow the Show has landed to date. It's Robert Smith. He's been a voice of NPR's chart-topping podcast Planet Money for years. And last year, he visited us here at Grow the Show to share how that huge team of incredible writers and podcasters manages to take confusing, complex topics like economics and finance and make them fun, digestible and entertaining. He shares the secrets here with us today, which you're going to be able to steal in order to make your podcast more fun and entertaining as well. So let's dive into the episode. Oh, and if you are a Planet Money fan, you're going to notice that the intro of this episode of Grow the Show is going to sound pretty familiar. I was fanboying out, it was awesome, I hope you enjoy. If this were a Planet Money episode, the way we would probably start is we might want to start like in failure, maybe, you know? And so we would start with the story of this young man, Robert Smith, who really was a terrible, terrible, terrible radio reporter. That voice you hear is the man himself, Robert Smith. Today, Robert is not a terrible reporter. In fact, he is quite renowned and teaches business and audio journalism at Columbia University. But back when he first started out, he wasn't that good. I sounded horrible. I was so stressed out when I first started. I was tight. My voice was kind of high and sort of had an English accent a little bit to it. And I just made a mistake after mistake. I was not a good writer, I was not a good interviewer. And, you know, I don't know, you might tell a story like that. And you'd be like, well, you know, how did they eventually get to hear? Here is the present day, 2022. Here he's a podcast expert, he's an audio scholar, and he's unbelievably good at distilling complex topics and conversations into short entertaining podcast episodes. And here he is teaching me how to introduce an amazing episode. Hello and welcome to Grow the Show. I'm Robert Smith, longtime host of Planet Money, and now professor at Columbia University. And I'm Kevin Schmidland. Or is that what I'm saying? Yeah. Awesome. Wait, let me do it. And I'm Kevin Schmidland. And today, and I'll do the rest later. Well, just why do you go with today on the show? We often find ourselves with complex topics that we need to talk about on our podcast. And it can seem insurmountable. How can you possibly do something like this in 25 minutes? I mean, I think I'll just use that because I don't think I could say it any better because you guys are so good at explaining complex economic topics in 25 minutes. Like, it's so funny. When I listen to Planet Money, it makes economic seem so, so simple and understandable. Like, you make me feel like an economist in just 25 minutes. So like, how do you do that? We'll have the answer with Planet Money host Robert Smith after the break. This is Grow the Show. The podcast that helps you grow your podcast. My name is Kevin Schmidland and my mission is to help you the independent podcaster to get more listeners and make more money so that you could have a thriving podcast business. Today, you are going to learn how the folks at NPR's Planet Money managed to teach their listeners confusing topics like economics and finance all in the form of entertainment painting and funny 20-minute podcast episodes. And you're going to learn it from Robert Smith, who, like you, before hitting it big as a podcaster, figured out this whole audio thing by trial and error. So if you're ready to learn how to turn your complex and nuanced discussions into hilarious, binge-worthy podcast episodes, then stick around for this episode of Grow the Show. So, a few weeks ago, we released an episode of this podcast with the award-winning blogger and million-download podcaster Gary Art. In that episode, we explained a bunch of formulas for how Gary calculates how healthy his podcast business is and how much money he can afford to spend to get more listeners to that podcast. And we got some great feedback from our listeners on that episode, but as I was listening back on the day we released it, I was actually really frustrated. And that's because as someone who is lucky enough to be a six-figure podcaster, I knew the topic was so important for other podcasting entrepreneurs to understand. But the problem was, as a listener, as I listened to my own podcast episode with all of the numbers flying around, I could barely understand it myself. Here's what I sounded like. Let's say that your CPM is $25. Every download you get, you make $1,000 of $25 or $2.5. If you have two ads in each episode, you double that to $5 per download. That was pretty hard to follow, right? And the worst part about this experience is that before we released the episode, Grow the Show, Co-producer, Catherine Nails and I had spent so much time trying to make the episode easier to understand. In fact, we had been sitting on that interview for months trying to simplify and present it in an easier way. Here is an actual snippet from one of our production meetings. It's like, I am really struggling because we have all these numbers, Gary did such a great job explaining everything. But even with all that, math is so difficult to explain in an audio format. If I were listening to this episode and people started throwing numbers at me that I couldn't visualize, I would 100% turn it off. We were so worried about this that we actually asked Gary if we could interview him a second time. If you go back and listen to that episode, the audio that you hear from Gary actually comes from two different interviews, which were spaced six months apart. Now, what's even more puzzling about this challenge is that Gary is about as well spoken as you can possibly be. He was able to explain key podcast business concepts calmly and clearly, yet still listening back, Catherine and I really weren't able to make the episode not sound like a math class. And this is not the first time that I have encountered this problem because over the past four years, I've produced and published hundreds of podcast episodes for myself and for others. And many, if not all of them, were attempting to explain a complex topic or tell a complicated story. And there's a good chance that you've encountered this problem too while creating episodes of your podcast. You want to present a nuanced, deep discussion, but in this world of ever shrinking attention spans and on this medium audio, which has no visual component, it seems impossible. So what do you do when you want to accomplish something that seems impossible? Well, what I've learned is that the answer to that is pretty simple. You go talk to the people who are so good at that seemingly impossible thing that they actually make it seem easy. My name is Robert Smith. I am a longtime host and reporter for National Public Radio and PR most recently as the host of NPR's Planet Money. I am also a newly minted professor at Columbia University where I am teaching business reporting and audio and podcasting. Robert Smith has been in radio for decades, but he didn't always work as a reporter. Well, I started in radio as a DJ, you know, at community stations. I don't claim a knowledge of music or being any good at it, but I did it just for fun and I did it for fun in college. And then I had this idea that I was going to be interested in reporting. And I went to my community radio station at the time, KBOO in Portland, Oregon. And I said to them, I would love to volunteer here. And I didn't know if they would have me mopping floors or putting letters and envelopes or whatever, but they literally just gave me a microphone and said, there's a protest. Go cover it. With almost no training whatsoever, I don't think I screwed that one up, but I screwed up so many stories after that that I eventually picked it up, but I just loved it so much. I loved the people in radio. I loved the excitement of going out and meeting people and seeing events, historic events, live, and I loved the sort of art of putting it together. I was just like, this is fun. I want to do more of this. And then I got an actual paying job. And then I moved to a slightly larger station, a slightly larger station after that and then to the network. And there is this moment that happens. I am 53 years old. And this moment that happened in your 40s where you go, oh, wait, this is it. Like this is my career. That career led him to progressively bigger radio stations until he ended up in New York, covering stories for NPR. But as a guy who's claimed to fame is a podcast about the economy, Robert cared surprisingly little about things like the Dow and the NASDAQ. I was never interested in business and economics because I just didn't know anything about it and being a reporter. I felt like I was poor, so I wasn't really even investing. Like I didn't have any connection to this. That is until a major event forced Robert and a lot of other Americans to suddenly have a massive connection to economics. In 2008, when there started to be the great financial crisis, I was assigned as a general assignment reporter to go out to the streets and cover, you know, like Lehman Brothers shutting down. You know, my assignment was literally find anyone with a cardboard box because they've just been fired and try and talk to them. And so that's what I did. I stood on the streets and I tried to talk to people who had just been fired. And for me, at the time, that felt like a tiny little local story, right? A local investment firm goes under. But as I was doing more and more stories, I realized, no, this is like, this is a global event that just also happens to be on the streets of New York City. And so I started to see you can have these giant events that are just like huge forces that shape the world that are also just great stories where there are people who have their lives, you know, destroyed by these things. And the combination of the two of having like this, like, oh, I'm covering the biggest story in the world. And I'm just, I'm talking to real people. I'm on the streets. The thing that I loved from the very beginning, talking to people could fit into this. So all of a sudden, this business reporting, which I thought was like, you know, the dials up one percent today, you know, with an Aztec down point three, suddenly I was like, no, that's not business and economics reporting. Business economics reporting is stories and people. As Robert had this realization, several other of his colleagues at NPR did too. So I worked in the New York office of NPR as did Adam Davidson, who was a traditional business reporter there and a friend of his, Alex Bloomberg. And then the two of them worked together on this show for this American life called Giant Pool of Money, which just turned out to be one of the best podcasts ever made, probably, an hour long explanation of why we were all in this global recession. What had happened and told through the lens of real people and real forces. And it was so good that eventually NPR said, do more of this. Like could you do this every day because at the time, at the time, the news was changing so quickly during the Great Recession that, you know, companies were exploding. People thought that the very, you know, foundations of the economy were going to collapse. And so with a little funding from NPR and a little work, the Planet Money team started in New York. I was still a general assignment at the time. I wasn't working with them, but they were working in the New York office. And they started to do this podcast and it was hilarious because they would start each show with, well, it's 3.24 p.m. on December 2nd. And here's what we know right this moment. And then they'd cut the show together and put it straight out. And there was no feeling that podcasts were for the ages that you would listen later. It was like, oh, this is just a really bare bones. Here's what's happening today. Here's what we know. Here's what we don't know. Let's do it again tomorrow. Wow. So, you know, we ended up dropping the time and the date and ended up focusing on stories that were a little more evergreen as we say in the business that last for longer. But that came later at the very beginning and people still talk about this longtime listeners. You know, it was like having a live view into a disaster. It was almost like hurricane coverage. Robert joined the Planet Money team as they chased the big economic storm. I started as a younger reporter who didn't really understand business and economics. And so for me, it was the discovery of all these new principles that I loved. And then we started to do these bigger series like when we manufactured a t-shirt ourselves all around the globe. So, I was sitting on the tractor that harvested the cotton and then flew to Indonesia to watch the spinning of the thread. And then someone else saw the assembly of the t-shirt and someone else covered the shipping. And so, that was so much fun and so ambitious. And we did a bunch more of those projects that that kept me going. And then I was the editor for a while. So I was sort of behind the scenes, crafting the way the show sounded. Then I went back to being a reporter. And before he knew it, Robert had been at Planet Money for more than a decade. So I wanted to know, for someone who wasn't naturally into business and economics, what kept Robert at Planet Money for so long? So, the thing that's been good for me personally is there's enough new challenges in the show to keep me going. And just when you think, like, oh, we've done all the stories, then something like GameStop happens. And there's just this irrationality to certain meme stocks or crypto and NFTs or inflation. Like, we're dealing with inflation right now. We haven't dealt with inflation since the, in a serious way since the 1970s. So that's a whole new set of stories we can do. Supply chain, we had never paid attention to. And now there's more focus in supply chain. And so, yeah, the creative people, if you can say it this way, the creative people who throw the world economy for a loop, keep coming up with new stuff. And new things were even we as business economics reporters can't be jaded about it. And it also, you know, the staff of Planet Money has changed over and over again. Adam Davidson and Alex Bloomberg left to do amazing things. And the sort of original cast moved on to do other things. And then we've had just teams of reporters. I guess we're sort of in generation four, maybe? I guess you might call it, you know, of turnover of the staff. And it's become a show that has such a particular sound and approach. And yes, you know, a length to it and a formula to the way we oriented. It actually allows new people to come in and still have the show feel the same. And I think it's pretty, it's pretty rare in podcasting, maybe even somewhat unheard of, to have a really successful long time show without the, you know, a single person at the middle of it, you know, a single voice, you know, it's voices and personalities that tend to drive podcasting. And we were lucky in that the formula and the promise of Planet Money was so strong that new people could come in and bring their own personality, yes. But also it sounds like Planet Money, even though you could turn it on this week and it could be two people you've never heard before. So how do they do it? How does the team at Planet Money create a podcast episode that is not only extremely educational and informative, but is also really entertaining to listen to? Starting is the hardest part coming up with story ideas, you know, story ideas that we haven't done before, but also story ideas that are doable, you know, that we can accomplish in a few weeks, which is what it takes for an episode. And story ideas that are actually feel new and interesting to the people listening and understandable. So, you know, it's, there's no secret to finding ideas, usually most of my best ideas come when I am working on something and I hate it. And I think, wow, what I really wish I was working on is this other topic. So I always write that down because I'm like, well, that can be the next thing, you know, this is podcasting, we can do it again and again and again. And you know, if we can, in general, at Planet Money, we try and make sure that each show has a real story to it, a story story, which is a human being, a person who is doing something or wants something or is facing a problem or a conundrum and they have to go through steps to solve it. And, you know, there's personal stakes involved, it means something to them, they're passionate about it. So there's that story and that's the sort of Planet Money formula it's super hard to do. So I'm, I'm not like, I don't feel bad sharing the secret, like all the secrets on your show, they're not secrets, they're really obvious, but they're just really hard to do. So, you know, people like to hear podcast episodes that teach them something and that are entertaining to listen to. It's probably it, right? Well, I learned something useful from this and will I be entertained along the way? And for us, that translates into, will I learn something about business and economics that makes me function better in the world? That's a satisfying feeling we want to give you. And will you be entertained along the way? Will there be a mission, a mystery, you know, a problem that needs to be solved, entertaining people, great jokes, sometimes stunts, like whatever it takes to get you that big idea. Right. Do you find that you often start with the idea and then find the story and entertainment or vice versa? You know, for me, the way I go about it is I read and I listen to a lot of economics podcasts that are super obscure that people would have trouble understanding. I'm just immersing myself in the big ideas out there. And then I keep those in the back of my head and then I start to look out in the world when I go for a walk, when I read the paper, when I talk to people, I'm looking for little stories that make me think like, oh, yes, this little story fits into this bigger picture. So in order to have the beginnings of a great podcast episode, you need to find the little story that fits into the big picture, got it. But there's a problem that we podcasters face. There are an infinite amount of little stories to choose from. I mean, think about how many cold pitches you get for your podcast from tons of self-proclaimed experts and self-made trillionaires who almost died and then came back and want to share their story of resilience. The options are endless. So when picking what our podcast episodes are about and who we feature, how can we narrow it down even further? I think the most important thing is to focus each show and have a reason that each show exists. And the reason can't be, oh, I talked to this guy and he's like just super interesting and he's got a lot of stories. That may be true, but it doesn't tell me what this episode is going to do for me the listener, you know? And so if you as a podcast host are focused, if you know, here's what I want to get across in this episode. And here's what I find interesting about this topic I'm talking about. And here's how the person I'm interviewing can get me there. And if you know that before, either of you are on mic, you know, you've focused your show. You can adapt when you're in there. But if you have this focus, then I think it just becomes a lot easier to have a show that eventually gets to that point you want to get to, you know? And then it's easier to write the beginning of the show because, you know, you promise the thing you're about to give them. And then it's easier to title the show and to sell the show and to have that show serve a purpose, you know? And I think that's the biggest problem I hear with people just starting podcasts. They just think, well, I'm just going to talk about people who know about my topic and like, we'll find something and, and, and, you know, unless your guest is, you know, Beyonce or something, that everyone's going to listen to this episode no matter what, no matter the topic, you have to sell it. You have to tell me, yes, yes, yes, that's great that you got the number one insurance agent and all of North America for your insurance podcast, like hooray, but why should I listen to them for 40 minutes? What am I going to get out of it? Like, this person is going to show you what? Like, we're going to hear a story that promises what, you know, adventure. Are we going to hear, you know, rags to riches? Are we going to hear like the, the five biggest failures before they found success, you know? Are we going to like, you know, you have to know that in your own mind. And if you're trying to figure that out after the interview while you're putting your show together, it's too late. This right here is the key. Every episode of your podcast must exist for a reason. And the easiest way to do that is to have every single episode of your podcast pose a question. This is true, regardless of your show's topic, format, genre, purpose, where you're located, whether it's a hobby or a business, whether it's meant to educate and power or entertain, in all of those cases, every single episode must exist to answer a question. If you can establish before you press record what that question is, this whole ordeal that you've signed yourself up for making, growing, and monetizing and amazing podcasts will be so much easier for so many reasons. For one, when you're recording, it can be really easy to go down deep rabbit holes and to talk about literally anything that pops up, regardless of how relevant it is to the episode at hand. This is fun to do when you're having the conversation, sure, but it's actually not fun to listen to. In fact, it's actually pretty confusing and jumping around topics turns most listeners off. A strong question, though, will keep the conversation on track. As you go, you can keep referring to it and make sure that every piece of information you are putting in your episode is necessary to help your listener answer the question at hand. If you're a comedy show, you got to pose a question that sounds funny to answer. If you do monologue episodes or solo episodes where you share your perspective or expertise, posing a question will keep you from ranting and rambling, and that'll prevent the episode from being too long and unfocused. And if you have an interview podcast, posing a good overarching question ahead of time before you start the interview will help you to find the right people to interview for your show. Because booking interviews and selecting guests is not just about finding someone who knows about your topic or who has a big name or an impressive resume, it's about finding the person who can best help your listener answer the question at hand. And the best part about this is for interviewers, if you come to the interview with an overarching question to be answered, you are free to play within the confined space that that question creates. So rather than having to figure out during the interview what the whole point of the discussion is, you come to the discussion already knowing that. And that's when you can really start to shine as an interviewer. And like Planet Money does, bring out the best in your guests. We go into these interviews and if they're experts, you know, they're used to having a certain formality, you know, and they talk in jargon and they're very serious. And I think the mistake that a lot of reporters and podcasters make is, you know, they're intimidated a little bit. And so they become serious. They become like, oh, yes, yes, yes, we must talk about these serious things. And if that happens, you're letting the person you're interviewing take control of the show. Like they are experts. They are experts in whatever your topic is, in our case, experts in economics. And as the podcaster, where are the experts in how the story comes out? And so we're just very, very, very interventionist in these interviews, you know, we're constantly thinking like, how do I get this expert to sound like a real person? How do I get them to tell story from their own life? You know, how do I get them to speak in simple language? How do I get them to give concrete examples? You know, and in a bigger sense, how do I get them to deliver that surprising thing? You know, how do I get them to unspool the story so that the thing they discovered, let's say, feels like a real discovery. People are the worst storytellers. People just want to start with the end of every story, you know, they just want to be like, oh, yeah, you know, I discovered this cure for this disease. You're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, that's the end of the story. Let's go back. And it's very hard for people to go back because they'll do things like, well, you know, I guess when I was younger, I didn't really think about this disease that I'm about to cure. And you're like, no, no, no, let's go back. Your teenager, you're in your first science class. You don't know anything about your future. Tell me about yourself back then and just like bringing them back to that moment. And then you have them work through the story, right? The most important part of presenting your story to the listener is presenting it in chronological order. So as the interviewer, the key to making any story entertaining is to get the guest to start at the beginning, build up to the revelation and save the punchline to the end. And at the same time to make your episodes even more entertaining, you got to be ready to deliver some punchlines yourself. I think most people have enough humor to put humor into the podcast. But you really do have to be shameless about it, especially when you're interviewing people. This is one of Planet Money's biggest strong suits. It's hilarious. And it turns out this is not by accident. I will embarrass myself mightily in interviews to try and get someone to loosen up, to try and get them to tell joke. So I'll tell a joke and it'll be a terrible joke. And I'll tell another joke and it'll be a terrible joke. And then they start to feel like, oh, I can, I can top that. I can be better. And then they try and be funny. And then I just cut out my part. I don't like, why embarrass myself? I'm very familiar with doing that. No, no, it's great, right? And so, you know, I always say that people will read the hosts' attitudes and the way they present themselves and sort of mirror it. You know, because if your guest is on a podcast, they have no idea. Like, is this a serious academic podcast? Is this like comedy podcast? They don't, like you've told them, but they don't really know the demeanor. And so, I feel like people are looking to mirror something. So if you come in as a host and you're like, oh, so and so is my guest and I'm going to ask you this following 17 questions and they'll respond, oh, yes, yes, I'm very serious. I'm very serious. I'm very serious. You know, if you come in and you're just like, wow, it's crazy. This is wild. I can't believe this. I'm just amazed that there will match that in a way, you know, it's hard with some people, but they will, they will elevate their energy. They will become more like what you want out of them. Yeah. So, and you know, for us, it's telling stories that are entertaining about economics, but you know, sometimes we're trying to get people to come up with big ideas. So we'll come up with big ideas. We'll say, oh, it's kind of like a, it's kind of like an onion, right? You know, with all the layers and they'll be like, no, it's not an onion. And be like, well, it's kind of like a pirate ship, you know, with all the sales. And they'll be like, no, it's not like that. And then they'll say they'll come up with something better that I can't even think of. And they'll start to get into the story now. Like now they're telling it like a real story. And then here's the key is the planet money key. I'll just reveal this right now. When they get to the part of the story that's surprising, we act surprised. See, we know what they're going to say because that's why we're interviewing them, right? Right. You're interviewing the guy because he or she, you know, cured this disease. But when they tell you the story, you have to be like, whoa, no way. Like you cured it? Yeah, yeah, you have to just like get super excited because just because the story's old to them and it's old to you, the reporter, the host, it's new to everyone who's listening. And you've promised them this great story. And if you get to that moment and everybody seems bored, like we've all told us a million times, that's bad. So you want, you want to kind of, um, I don't know, it's, it's an acting, it's an acting job. Yeah, when you are surprised or delighted by something in your research, you remember that feeling. And then you hold it with you until the moment you sort of deliver it into the microphone. This is a huge part to appearing on any podcast, whether as a host or a guest. When you're talking about a discovery or something that you learned, you want to inject into your voice the same sense of wonder and surprise that you felt when you initially discovered that thing in the first place. If you're able to do that, you will make the episode so much more interesting and compelling. How the stories told and how ideas are presented plays a huge role in your listeners level of surprise and delight. And there's actually something else that you can do before you actually share an idea that can contribute to an even bigger payoff in the listener's mind. It's how you introduce the episode itself. We want to raise a question in someone's mind. Sometimes we're subtle about this. Most of the time we're not subtle at all. We literally just say the question, you know, like this story makes us think, how does that work? You know, what are the principles behind that? Like we try and like plant the question in your mind that hopefully you will be like, yeah, that is a good question. And then we always promise that we're going to answer that question because I think, you know, if you listen to a lot of talk radio, they love to raise questions and never answer them, you know, is bowling a sport? I don't know if the lines are open. Okay. I think of true crime shows where you listen to like 10 seasons of this crime that they're investigating. And then at the end, they're like, yeah, we never found out the killer was like, what? I think it's really delightful to raise a question and then just say, and we'll bring you the answer, you know, or at least imply that we have the answer. And you know, oftentimes you don't. And you know, you're kind of framing a question in such a way that you can have a sense of completion and answer to it. But I, you know, I tell people about this like, you know, we have something which we call the hello and welcome because we literally say hello and welcome to plan a money on Robert Smith and so and so. Today on the show and we say what we're going to do on the show, we lay out exactly what's going to happen don't spoil every surprise, but we lay out what's going to happen. And we say the question and we promise you that we're going to answer it and then we throw an ad in there. So hopefully they stick through that. So ask a question and make a promise. That's it. Those are the two ingredients that you need for a killer podcast intro. The first ingredient should be easy because like we said before, you should already have an overarching question that you created this episode to answer. So for the first ingredient, pose the question, you simply have to clearly state what the question or the mission of this particular podcast episode is. The second ingredient, make a promise is also really important and it's important because the promise is the difference between confusion and curiosity. If you start your episode just posing a bunch of random questions, your listener is actually going to add many questions of their own. Where is this episode going? What am I going to learn? Why do I care about all these questions? And is this really the podcast episode that I want to commit to for the next 45 minutes or should I just go listen to planet money? These are too many questions. So posing to many questions or not posing a question at all in the intro is going to leave your listener confused. If your listeners confused, they're going to turn you off. They're going to get bored. Their mind's going to wander. You know, you have to think of the listener doing something else. They're not staring at a computer. They're not seeing graphs and pictures and words. They can't go back. It's a really distractible medium. And so you really have to tell people at all times, what am I listening to and why am I listening to it? And what am I going to get out of it and how does it contribute to the story? You have to tell the listener what's in it for them. What will be the benefit of getting this question answered? Will they be surprised, delighted? Will they be better? Will they be smarter? Will the world make more sense? Will they be a better parent spouse or friend? You can't rely on them to figure this out for themselves. You have to make a promise, a specific promise that the episode will deliver on. You have to tell them why they should listen and things like because it's interesting or because it's important or because it's entertaining. Those will never ever be enough to get listeners to stick around. If you begin each episode by posing a specific question and making a promise, you'll have just enough intrigue. To spark some curiosity and you'll eliminate all sense of confusion for whether the listener wants what's to come. And that level of clarity is going to make your listener yearn for the answers to the question that you post. And that is going to get them to listen to the whole episode. You will have gotten their attention. But unfortunately, the job doesn't start there because now, once you've got their attention, you have to know how to keep it. What of the big keys to success of Planet Money is we have people who work for us who are really impatient and have short attention spans. You know, and you think like, oh, they work for Planet Money, they'd listen to three hours of economics. But in fact, if you do this professionally, you have to cultivate this sense of like, yeah, I know that that's boring. You said that already. Oh, no, no, no, it's too confusing. Make it simpler. Like, get to this part. That's the good part. And so that's what our edits are like, you know, people say like, oh, I don't understand what's happening until page three. Or I completely zoned out on page five. I have no idea what was happening there. You know, it's like, there's too many characters. I don't, I don't understand who is who and you're moving back and forth between them. And I guess it could sound kind of harsh, but, but that's what makes it good. You know, the, the willingness to submit your work for an edit and the willingness, the person who's doing that to really be honest with you. And then to recognize that that's a gift and incorporate that into your script. Yeah. And it's, I look, we have professionals who are our editors who are making big decisions. But, you know, sometimes the best ideas for a script will come from the intern, like someone who's been around for three weeks, because they don't know what's going on. And if they're bold enough to say like, I don't understand it, we'll change the whole episode. Wow. So, you know, I say that because I think for a lot of people on podcasts, they think, listen, it's just me or it's just me another person. I don't have the money to hire an editor. It's just a small team. But I think you can, if you have somebody in your life who can be honest with you, you know, who's not just, oh, you sound great. Oh, it's so nice. Oh, it's great. Somebody who can really listen and say, I am confused, like I'm so sorry, you know, find that person and just talk it out to them at the beginning or play it for them later. And you really got to push them. People will be very polite. Your friends will be way too polite. The best way you can find out if your episode holds people's attention is to ask people who are not afraid to tell you, no, it doesn't friends and family want to support you and encourage you. So they're going to tell you it's good. And for that reason, it's much better to ask people who actually don't know you very well. And if you need to find people like that, why don't you join us over in the free Grow the Show Facebook group where we've got more than 2000 podcasters who are just itching to tell you where your show is boring. But I do have good news. You actually don't have to rely on other people or even strangers to figure out where your episodes need to be tightened up because you can also gauge what might need to be changed from just listening to it yourself and running a little test. When I was first an editor, my mind would start to drift a little bit and I would think, like, what am I going to have for dinner tonight? And then I would, oh, I'm supposed to be editing. I'd start to listen to the piece again. I used to blame myself. I used to be like Robert, you have a short attention span, focus on the piece. But then I realized it's not my fault. There's something wrong in the piece at that moment that allowed me to have my mind drift. And so the key to editing is to figure out, like, okay, so it happened in this moment. I often don't even know why. I don't know why my mind drifted there. But we go back to that moment and we just look at it and we're just like, okay, what is it? Is it confusing? Oftentimes it's because you're telling the same story you've just told, you know, you've told one story and then you're like, here's another example. If the same story, your mind mentally is like, okay, I'm just going to check out a little bit and think about dinner and then I'll check back in when there's something new. And so that's what my, when I'm editing a script or listening to a colleague script, I just put notes in the, and they're just like really symbols in on the side of the script. So if something's boring, I just put a big circle. That's like a mouth. If something's just like, uh, bugs me horribly offensive, I'll put a big X through it. I'll put a question mark if I'm confused. I'll put check marks against things that I really like like to make me laugh or that I'm really wrapped on. So I know to keep those things. And that's about it, you know, I'm not trying to solve the problems. I'm just trying to identify the problems and I listen through. Because like, you know, sometimes the problem is much earlier in the piece, you know, it's the way you set up the story or you didn't give people the right information or you started in the wrong place. So you don't always want to just fix the part that you feel is a problem, you know, maybe the thing doesn't work because you've taken too long to get to it. So the thing is actually fine. It's just you board people with the pace. The pace is slowed down too much. Okay, so I think we're starting to see the overall guidelines here to turning complex and nuanced topics into digestible entertaining short podcast episodes. You first have to pose a specific question to be answered in the episode. You then have to find a little story within the big picture. You have to introduce that story within the first 60 seconds after the listener presses play by posing the big question and making a promise. You then have to tell that story in a way that is captivating and ideally funny. And you have to keep the promise that you made by surprising and delighting the listener with some sort of payoff towards the end. And that my friends is the grossly simplified way that planet money has managed for over a decade to make us all enjoy economics and even make us feel like economists ourselves all through short punchy 20 minute podcast episodes. That's pretty cool, right? But there's still one thing Catherine and I still haven't figured out how to talk about math and numbers on this show without putting you are listener to sleep. So what do we do? We have this little trick at planet money. I'm always hesitant to talk about it because it's really shameless. It's a shameless shameless trick. But anytime someone that we're interviewing says a number, we just repeat that number with amazement. So how old you Kevin? 29. 29. 29 and you're so successful. See, if we end up using that, you know, it's really hard to remember numbers and radio and podcasting and we try and use very few of them. But if we do, we want it to be a significant number and we want to dwell in that moment a little bit. Wow. And so that's why we just routinely repeat the number. One million dollars. Yeah. A $1 billion. That's crazy. 33 cents. You know, you spend a lot of time reacting to the material that you're hearing because it does give listeners a clue about how should I feel about what I'm hearing? This person has just said that they spend a million dollars on this home. Is that a lot? It seems like a lot, but maybe it's not a lot in New York. Like, you know, numbers just don't have emotions attached to it. So if we can react and repeat, we can reinforce why you're hearing this story. Oh, that's the amazing bit. Oh, that's unexpected. You know, and we'll just often say that too. Like, I can't believe that. That's not what I expected. I certainly did not expect to feature a podcaster of Robert's stature here on Grow the Show just within the first 30 episodes. So hopefully you've enjoyed learning how the pros over at Planet Money do it. And now you'll be able to implement these guidelines to make your own podcast be just as entertaining, informative, and empowering as Planet Money is. And I'd love to know how you plan on implementing what you've learned today for your next podcast episode. So join us in the Grow the Show Facebook group and let me know make a post and tag me in it. Also, if you do that, you'll get to learn from other podcasting entrepreneurs how they're implementing these lessons and how we here at Grow the Show will be doing the same. The link to join us in the Grow the Show Facebook group is in the show notes. Grow the Show is a Q9 production. This episode was produced by me and Catherine Nails with post-production by Jeremy Bishop with a very special thanks to Michelle, Sunsino, and Matthew Lewis. And of course, huge, huge thanks to Robert Smith. For it Grow the Show, my name is Kevin Smitlin. See you next time.