Armchair Anthropologist

This is Our Time

When I first started doing radio work back in the 1990s, it felt awkward to listen to my own tape. When I heard the listened back, nothing about my voice seemed familiar. It was like it could have been someone else. Definitely someone younger, less assured, ah, and, ummm who was sometimes prone to up-talking.

Eventually, this changed. Practice, practice, practice. The more interviews I did, the more I had to listen to my own voice, and then the more I edited my own voice, the more I began to sound… edited. And then I began to notice that the voice that I heard on the tape was the same voice that I heard when I talk. Now, there’s no difference. They both sound the same to me.

And I love a good interview…I love giving an interview, and and I also being interviewed. There’s something about a conversation with meanders down unscripted paths that’s…just…fun, that’s what I love.

But when I was that ship in Antarctica, mostly, really entirely, I was the one behind the microphone. Listening and recording, and then, recording and listening…and then many many sit down interviews as well. For anyone who has done a lot of active listening, you know how tiring this is. Exciting, super interesting, but wickedly exhausting, braindead by the end of the day.

After the trip, when we got back to Argentina, but before we had all dispersed, one of the participants, in fact, someone who is featured regularly in the second season, Dr. Sarah Hamylton, she asked if she could turn the mic on me. Was I interested in an exit interview with , with her? Absolutely!

And so we set out to find a quiet corner of the hotel to talk…which was not as easy as you might imagine.

[underlay sound of trying to find a spot to sit down]

Months later, when I listened back to my own voice, it didn’t feel strange to me at all, hearing this interview again, years later, this is what felt strange:

I could hear that I actually knew all the story beats, already. They were already occurring to me in that moment….except that it took a lot longer to piece it all together. I sort of laid it all out for Sarah on the table, like it was a done deal, but yet when I got home, it was an arduous job of putting it all back together again.

And so I’ve since done a lot of thinking about, this. About how you piece a story together, when you start with 100 hours of tape, and it’s got to go somewhere. The story has to be something. It’s got tell a story, it’s got to have highs and lows and has to go on an emotional journey, with the listener.

So, I’m excited to say that I’m putting the final finishing touches on a course, that I’m going to share, where I can help teach people the methods that I used, and the system that I developed, in order to create a narrative that has all of these elements included.

Listen to this space. That will be forthcoming in the fall.

This story originally appeared in my newsletter, Audio Love. That’s my email newsletter that I’ve been sending every other week, for over a year.

Did you know that email marketing is the number one channel for creators to connect with their audience? It’s huge. ConvertKit, which the email platform that I use, which is only one of the ones available, report that last year over 16 billion emails were sent.

And according to the Data and Marketing Association, who did a survey in 2021, 92% of consumers, and 72% of marketers, said that Email is their favourite way to connect with customers.

So here’s why I’m telling you all of this. When I sat down to map out an email strategy for thai year, for the launch and everything beyond it, I realized, that despite the fact that I’ve been using email since it started, hello 1992, I actually didn’t know how to do it for this post-modern era.

And this month, I’ve decided to join forces with this woman, whose name is Tarzan, to help her to sell her flagship program, Email Stars, as an affiliate. There are some really incredible free workshops where you can sign up for to learn more.

If you’re curious to learn more about how to up your game on email, you should go to my website to found out more.

Ok, lots of chatting. Time to listen to this short episode now:

Armchair Anthropologist

Thanks for listening.