Bonni Stachowiak [00:00:00]:
Today on episode number 589 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast, the Richness of Podcasting in Higher Education with Dom Conroy and Warren Kidd.
Production Credit: Produced by Innovate Learning, Maximizing human Potential.
Welcome to this episode of Teaching in Higher Ed. Hi, I’m Bonni Stachowiak and this is the space where we explore the art and science of being more effective at facilitating learning. We also share ways to improve our productivity approaches so we can have more peace in our lives and be even more present for our students. On today’s special episode of Teaching in Higher Ed, two guests help me celebrate International Podcasting Day, which happens on September 30th, or if you ask me, really any day of the year. What a pleasure it is to be welcoming Dom Conroy and Warren Kidd to the episode. Dom is an associate professor at the Open University with expertise in qualitative and mixed methods research, and he’s conducted health related research focusing on alcohol consumption, non drinking and sobriety among young adults. And he’s led several projects designed to promote engaging, accessible, inclusive environments for higher education learners, including work concerning educational podcasts, work on links between connectedness, mental health and academic achievement, and work on closing the ethnicity linked graduate outcome gap.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:01:55]:
Also joining me is Warren Kidd. He’s a senior lecturer at UEL, an honorary visiting research fellow at the University of Patras, Greece. Prior to higher education, Warren’s background is in the teaching of sociology, psychology and geography, which you’ll hear about during the interview. He has an interest in technology, enhanced learning, inclusion and neurodiversity in the teacher workforce, Podcasting for educational gain, the use of emergent technologies for educational research practices, teacher identity and practices, teachers, professional hiring, museum education, and critical and creative education. Warren Kidd and Dom Conroy, welcome to Teaching and Higher Ed.

Warren Kidd [00:02:44]:
Hi, nice to see you.

Dom Conroy [00:02:45]:
Thanks very much for having us.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:02:47]:
What a delightful thing. We get to celebrate today. So, for those listeners not aware, today.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:02:54]:
Or thereabouts is International Podcast Day and.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:03:00]:
I have been wanting to prepare for this advance and came across some research that Warren and Dom had conducted and I am so excited about our conversation. We have to start with what to some might seem a fairly elementary question, but it actually goes a little deeper than one might expect. Dom, kick us off.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:03:23]:
What is a podcast and why might the definition of what one is matter?

Dom Conroy [00:03:28]:
Okay, well, it’s a fantastic question to start us off with and that might take us to the end of the end of this recording perhaps.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:03:34]:
And then it’s a six part series.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:03:36]:
Yes.

Dom Conroy [00:03:37]:
Wow. Yeah, I mean, I think that’s part of actually the journey that Warren and I have been on in writing up the research reports of the study that we did on educational podcasting. One of the threads of all that was sort of thinking about, well, what, what do we mean by a podcast here? We had reviewer feedback and different feedback coming here and others and probably conversations with colleagues at the same time. And there were some different debates about what we mean there. I mean, I think Warren and I, with the podcast that we’re talking about in the study that we published, is us on our own sort of creating educational resources for learners, but they’re not used year after year after year. These are podcasts recorded for specific cohorts, specific groups of learners that we’ve already spent time with, probably, and therefore they’re sort of reactive, they’re responsive podcasts. But that’s a different type of podcast. To guess what the sort of typical definition of a podcast would be, which would be something like.

Dom Conroy [00:04:37]:
Something like this, I guess, you know, having a conversation between different colleagues in the, in the wider kind of global sector, perhaps about a given sort of topic area. So I suppose there’s something general in that it’s audio, it’s a recording, it’s about a given theme, maybe on an episode by episode basis. But it’s possibly that bit more kind of specific in the sense that we’ve been using them as educational practitioners and for research purposes, or the study that we both conducted together. Very long winded answer.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:05:12]:
Oh, yeah, no, we. Like I said, most people wouldn’t necessarily.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:05:16]:
Think that there’s that much depth to it, but yet there definitely is one thing that I tend to distinguish, and maybe I am not accurate on this, but I tend to distinguish if a difference between an audio file and an audio feed. And when something turns into an audio feed, to me that’s what I call a podcast. But then as you said, Dom, there’s so many different formats. I will. Sometimes people think I’m being overly self deprecating about the work that I do. My conversations tend to be linear. I’m not going to say that our podcast editor hasn’t ever shifted things around to make comprehension easier, but for the most part, what people are listening to is a condensed version of a conversation in a linear way. And I so admire the story, the audio storytelling, and that captivates my imagination.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:06:11]:
That’s not exactly what’s happening here, but it’s still a podcast.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:06:14]:
You just got a feed and it has some structure to it.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:06:19]:
But as you said, Dom, and even audio storytelling it’s not only interview or audio storytelling. There’s so many different ways to capture people’s imagination through an audio feed. Warren, do you make that distinction? Does it have a feed? Or am I being overly dogmatic in that, trying to clarify that?

Warren Kidd [00:06:40]:
No, I think I do make that distinction, but I think it’s also a distinction that I, and also Dom kind of break, really. I guess. I mean, when we wrote our two articles, one of the articles came back and we’ve always very appreciative of and respectful of people who, you know, like, review academic work. We know it’s a kind of relatively thankless but time consuming job. But we did get this comment about, well, I don’t think that what you’re doing here actually are podcasts. And it kind of generated a whole conversation between myself and Dom, but I guess it’s a conversation that I feel I’ve been having with myself and having with others, and myself and Dom have had it previously as well, throughout my exposure to being an educator who thinks that they are podcasting. So that idea of a feed is interesting, isn’t it? Because. Because, you know, podcast an audio that is cast, an audio that is broadcast in some way, but it’s not a broadcast.

Warren Kidd [00:07:53]:
In fact, is it because it wasn’t a radio wave. It was originally an RSS feed, a really simple syndication feed. So, you know, is an audio that is an audio file a podcast, or does it have to be cast for it to be an audio podcast?

Bonni Stachowiak [00:08:13]:
So we began with a definition, and one of the ways that we were attempting to distinguish was between, does it have a cast, does it cast, or does it not?

Bonni Stachowiak [00:08:23]:
This is reminding me of. We started watching we’re very late to this party, but have you heard of this television show called Is It Cake? Have you heard of this?

Warren Kidd [00:08:32]:
Yes, I have. Yeah.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:08:33]:
They attempt to make very realistic things out of cake. And you have to guess, is this a real sword or is it a sword that’s made out of cake and frosting, et cetera? I started to remind myself we were going to have it is it podcast? But instead of doing that, let’s each.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:08:50]:
Share a little bit about the kinds of podcasts that we consume and the pot, the ways in which we might use podcasts as educators. I will just briefly share that it is impossible for me to ever pick a favorite one of the interviews that I’ve been so honored to get to do. But I do have my favorite of someone else’s podcast, the most brilliant way of bringing someone into a podcast series. So this was a podcast series called S-Town. And of the different forms of podcasts, instead of like the one that I’ve done every week for more than a decade now. This was a very short number of episodes. I think it was something like six or eight episodes. Episodes 2 minutes, 8 seconds.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:09:39]:
About. It’s a foreshadowing. It’s beautiful writing about people who repair clocks and that apparently old timey clocks, they essentially have scars in them so that when a clock repairer goes in to try to fix what’s wrong, you can see all the marks and the scars and they tell their own story. Course, this is foreshadowing of the journalist Brian Reed, who goes and visits this town that is known as S-Town. They leave out the four letter word that is akin to poop, but a.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:10:20]:
Less polite word than poop for S-Town.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:10:23]:
And essentially he is preparing listeners for broken people. So we go from broken clocks to broken people. It is a beautiful 2 minutes and 8 seconds. And I can’t recall before or since being so captivated by. I mean, who knew that clocks were that interesting? In fact, I’m just going to briefly share a quote from episode I’m about to air. Education is the process of helping people find things that they don’t yet know they love. That’s a quote from Roland Moe on an episode of Teaching and Higher Ed.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:11:03]:
And I thought that’s what podcasts can do.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:11:06]:
I never knew I was interested in clocks, but yet as soon as I go there, I start thinking about my grandparents always had what we would call a grand. What do we call Grandfather clock. Yeah, grandfather clock. I think that’s what they were called when I was growing up. And then I can remember the chimes. I can go right back to their home in terms of if that same melody is playing on another clock. It was just amazing that I didn’t know I was interested in clocks.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:11:32]:
Definitely interested in broken people and the.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:11:35]:
Ways in which our scars are evident to others or not evident, just depending on the context. So love listening to podcasts. Been listening to them for a long, long time now. And I’ll share one other thing and then I want to. I’m so interested in hearing from you. Of course. I really have enjoyed as an educator. I love a good podcast that’s about 15 minutes long and I love if it has a story arc, which most of the very good podcasts do.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:12:02]:
And I love pressing pause in the middle of when a real question has begun to occur and then inviting students to guess what happens next or to come in as experts. If you were an expert, how would you handle this situation? And I will put a link to this in the show notes. My favorite one ever that I did on this was from the podcast Planet Money, and it was about a story of, I believe it was Brazilian currency, although as soon as I say that, I’m going to have been wrong. But a country undergoing significant currency valuation fluctuation of their currency. So one day a pair of jeans.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:12:44]:
Is 500, whatever the currency is, and the next day it’s 5. I mean, it’s the utter lack of.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:12:50]:
Trust in one’s currency. And so to introduce students to just what is economics, but to press play, if you were the economist who were brought in to try to help this country deal with currency instability, what advice would you give them? I love using podcasts that way.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:13:08]:
It’s gotta be nice and short. It’s gotta have a story arc.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:13:11]:
There has to be kind of a place where a real question gets posed. And to press that pause and either ask them to predict what might happen next or to give advice for what should happen next is a great way to get a group of learners engaged and really curious for their listening.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:13:28]:
So I’m going to pass it warren.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:13:30]:
To you first this time. What do you listen to?

Bonni Stachowiak [00:13:32]:
What do you like to get students curious about?

Bonni Stachowiak [00:13:36]:
How do you find, as both a consumer and as an educator, the power of podcasting?

Warren Kidd [00:13:42]:
Yeah, so I have a, I think it’s a shamefully contradictory relationship, maybe paradoxical relationship to podcasts. So I, I started as a consumer before I thought about being a creator. I mean, it was, it was genuinely way back in 2006, and I had that job teaching teenagers, trying to explore a very particular solution to a very particular learning and teaching problem, which I maybe talk about a bit later. But the podcast I was listening to at the time were those very early BBC radio snippets of what were in fact BBC radio shows that were then repackaged because of the kind of digital possibilities and then pumped out on RSS feeds with the early iterations of, of the ipod, eventually obviously becoming the iPhone. But I’ve always been, I’ve always been that person. You know, I was born in 70s, I was a teenager in the 80s. I was of the Walkman generation. So throughout my teenage life and my 20s and my 30s and so on, I’m now 50, I’ve always been that person with headphones, walking around a kind of urban place, listening to my own sound in a kind of mobile or portable way.

Warren Kidd [00:15:08]:
Now, when I started to produce podcasts. I stopped listening to them. And I mean, this sounds really grand dose, and I don’t mean it to be, but I know lots of people who are chefs, and the people I know who are chefs never cook at home. And I find that really interesting. And so here I am as an educator now making podcasts, and I then notice that I stop consuming podcasts. And, and that’s kind of interesting. Covid, though, changed that. And Covid for me brought back my pleasure in being a consumer.

Warren Kidd [00:15:48]:
But my consumption is not for formal educational or learning and teaching purposes. I’m a massive, massive fanboy of vintage lenses and 35 millimeter film photography. I’m a kind of amateur photographer, street photographer. And all the podcasts that I listen to now avidly are podcasts, which are effectively radio shows with multi guests with two hosts or three hosts who have a kind of Bonhomme about them. They have a kind of rapport. And I feel I’m being brought in to that world. And they are. There is laughter and there are anecdotes and there are snippets of their lives, but it’s structured around the use of vintage lenses and 35 mil cameras.

Warren Kidd [00:16:37]:
And those podcasts, I think are relationship, relationship building. They’re engaging, they’re kind of community facing. They’re about kind of hobbyists who define perhaps their identity through their kind of hobbies and their kind of creative practices. And I just absolutely love them.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:16:56]:
Oh my gosh, you’re bringing me back.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:16:59]:
So we are similar ages. I am 54 and I am also.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:17:02]:
From the Walkman generation. I went, I went a totally different direction than you. I still, I mean, I’ve just gone.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:17:10]:
So deep into podcasts. Every day is filled with many minutes of podcasts. I’m trying to infuse a bit more audiobooks into that because I find that especially with our politics here in the United States, who I, you know, we can’t be going for those rides every day unless the rides are with intentionality towards some greater end other than anger for anger’s sake. So those rooted, those important works that can root us more in the arc of history and our place in it is, I’m finding I need to nourish myself that way.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:17:42]:
But I don’t listen to enough music anymore. How wonderful that you can get such.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:17:47]:
A narrow niche topic of something that you’re so passionate about. And you also evoked this imagery. I don’t think you said the word couch sitting together. That this is something that’s come up so much this imagery. People tell me that I listen to your podcast. I feel like you’re all in a living room together, you know, and they mention couches a lot.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:18:07]:
And then they say, and I feel.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:18:09]:
Like I’m sitting with you. And that really, that. Boy, that is just the best thing in that terms of not even just community, that word feels too big. But just the intimacy of people talking about things that you’re so passionate about, that you care about so much, and gathered in that kind of an intimate, intimate way. Dom, what’s coming to your mind as you think about your listening as a. As a. As a listener and appreciator of the medium and as an educator?

Dom Conroy [00:18:39]:
Yeah. So, I mean, it’s an absolutely fascinating conversation. And I mean, I’m 48 years old. I was a child in the 1980s, and I suppose I’m sort of conscious that sort of audio played this really. I mean, it was a really sort of key role in my childhood and then my teenage years listening to story tapes and then listening to loud music on my Walkman, you know, cycling around my hometown and everything. But I suppose sort of sort of reflecting on the full cycle there. I wonder if sort of during the 90s turn of the millennium, audio kind of was a sort of took a back seat to visual almost. We had, you know, this whole kind of VHS videotape culture and then sort of DVDs.

Dom Conroy [00:19:18]:
I don’t know, I’m talking in very broad strokes here, rather loosely, but I just. It. What’s. What’s really fascinating. And there is a sort of post pandemic bit here that takes us more up to date. What’s. What feels really fascinating there to me is just that sort of travel back to the audio or the audio finding or refashioning itself in our culture, having this new sort of role. And I think we have sort of learned a bit of sort of culture and some conventions around what we’re going to focus on in individual episodes, what the structure is going to be, how we use tone of voice and this kind of thing to kind of fit in a structure into the course of a podcast or a passage for podcasts or that kind of thing.

Dom Conroy [00:20:00]:
But then at the same time, we are in the middle of talking within a podcast. We are. We’re thinking for ourselves again. We’re having these conversations with each other or perhaps we’re recording on our own just. Just with ourselves, but we don’t quite know what we’re going to say next. And there’s something. There’s something quite daring about that, that can get quite lost in, you know, in some sort of, there’s the potential for it to get lost in, in learning environments, you know, for all sorts of different reasons. And I think podcasts hesitating to use the word danger here, but podcasts do keep that kind of, they do keep something alive and just wind up here in a moment.

Dom Conroy [00:20:41]:
But I think there’s also something there that we’re doing that’s actually kind of modeling something to learners. As educators producing these podcasts, we are communicating in some way to learners saying, look, I’m not quite sure what I’m going to say here, but I’m going to start articulating ideas here anyway. And of course, you know, we are going to be doing written stuff as well, probably at some stage with the assessment or with engagement with course materials. But look at me go here. I’m just talking and the idea is coming and that, and you know, things will work like that for you as well. So yeah, very roundabout history there. But I think, I think that that sort of change and that new position of how audio works and how there’s a particular currency for podcasting now. I mean, I love listening to, I mean, I listen to my sort of podcast menu.

Dom Conroy [00:21:26]:
I’m not, I don’t, I’m not a, a die hard podcast listener, I wouldn’t say. But I do have regulars, you know, on different sorts of topic areas. I’m very into running podcasts at the moment, but that’s what I like about them. Give it, take any given topic area, any sort of passion you have in your life, whether it’s professional or something else, there’ll be a podcast for it and you won’t, you know, you won’t engage and connect with all those podcasts, but there will be, there’ll be at least one for you, for you, the listener that you can go to and that you can get excited about life.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:21:58]:
From when I had John Warner on to talk about his book, about writing, he talked about writing as thinking. And Dom and Warren, as I’m thinking about so many educators struggles with communicating how vital it can be to actually experience the friction, to experience the wrestling with trying to get our ideas and think about them critically and especially with other people. That can be so hard. What you said, Dom, got me thinking about the way that speaking, of course, is also thinking. But it gives us a unique opportunity to make that more visible, to watch me writing and thinking in my head.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:22:44]:
As you can’t, you can’t, you can’t.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:22:46]:
Pick up what’s happening as much as you can in the way that I might fumble, struggle with what’s coming next. Wait, I didn’t say that quite the.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:22:54]:
Way I wanted to.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:22:55]:
But that kind of authenticity is so difficult to cultivate and people do get uncomfortable hearing their own voices and allowing other people to experience that sort of intimacy of being human and fallible and wrestling through that.

Warren Kidd [00:23:11]:
I think the idea of intimacy is really, is really key here, isn’t it? I mean, Dom, you said earlier that you, you suspect or you, you think that it might be the case that for a while there in our collective kind of childhoods, video might have become something that was dominant over audio because of its newness or maybe offers a different, a different type of, of engagement or stimulation. And I still, I still have that now. I still have people who say to me, oh, you podcast, that’s very interesting. But, but isn’t that a bit old fashioned now? Like, shouldn’t you be really doing video and sometime connected to some sort of spurious half truths about well, aren’t young or aren’t all young people? And then a kind of generalization comes which is, but aren’t all young people on TikTok or aren’t all young people interested in whatever and, and not wishing to create a kind of a, a lazy dichotomy between audio versus video and. And they are separate and different. That’s not what I’m trying to say. It feels voice and the richness of voice for intimacy, the words that you just used, Bonni, or for relationships. It feels to me that that is a kind of a part of the human condition.

Warren Kidd [00:24:35]:
Now this sounds very profound, doesn’t it? Here I am in fact just making, you know, six or seven minute podcast on stuff that I teach. But actually education is a relational experience, or at least it should be if done properly. Sadly, sometimes learners don’t have that experience. But so if education is a relational experience, you know, relationships are built through, I think, words, communication, intimacy. And I think it’s the case that educators inevitably give a bit of themselves in the same way that learners give a bit of their selves. And there’s some kind of co construction of, you know, like what does this thing mean? It could be a lecture theater, it could be a workshop, it could be a class, it could be a kind of study group or whatever, formal or informal. So I think that probably means that the act of teaching, whether it’s in a classroom or a lecture theatre or online or through an audio, the act of teaching is both like reflective and reflexive it changes the person, the educator changes as they educate, as they meet the students who change them as well. Which I think is what you said, Don, that idea about, it’s a boldness, it’s a risk, it’s.

Warren Kidd [00:25:56]:
Where are we going with this? I’m not too sure. When I started podcasting, I got feedback from my 16 year old students. And you know, 16 year olds are a brutal audience, right? There’s no hiding here. They will tell you what they think. So I did an experiment. I recorded some non scripted podcasts and some scripted podcasts and we’ve talked about this before actually Dom, as an, as one of the outcomes from our research papers where, you know, like, what is the structure, what is the tone of voice? How does one shape a podcast and what does that look like? In the same way that you might ask, how does one shape a lesson and what does that look like? So I gave my 16 year olds these two choices, didn’t tell them which one was which, didn’t tell them what the difference was. But I asked them to tell me what they preferred. Do they prefer this way of doing it or do they prefer that way of doing it? One of my students using my tutor group, I remember this very distinctly because she kind of said it out loud in front of everyone and I loved it as a comment.

Warren Kidd [00:26:59]:
She said, well, actually I don’t want robot Warren. I want Warren who’s in front of me in the classroom. And this recording, this feels like it’s robot Warren. What have you done that’s differently? And funnily enough, that was the scripted recording, wasn’t it? And robot Warren from that point onwards never appeared on a podcast that I recorded. And I think that’s the right choice, even though sometimes I mess them up so badly that I have to hit delete and start all over again. But I think that’s no bad price to pay really.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:27:33]:
Oh, what a powerful illustration. That little way to get the insight that because we. I don’t know about the two of.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:27:42]:
You, but I struggle. This has been a long struggle of mine.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:27:46]:
I feel that desire still to, to this day, all these years later, after starting doing this, to want to be scripted Bonni, because like she feels so much safer.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:27:56]:
It really does. I don’t like to speak about myself in the third person, but I mean.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:28:00]:
That this literally, to the extent to which that self preservation can kick in, because it does feel very difficult to be fully human in a world that craves fully human things. But it’s also quite ready to criticize and to cancel. You know that. Because you said it the wrong way. And I’ll, I’ll.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:28:24]:
I’ll have. Speaking of intimate conversations, I’ll have many.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:28:26]:
With Andrew, who does our podcast editing.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:28:29]:
Where I’ll, I’ll type, or sometimes I’ll.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:28:30]:
Record a video of myself or I’ll type the words of like, I made this joke. And I don’t, I don’t know if people are gonna know that I was kidding and, or maybe they will, but I don’t. I don’t know.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:28:41]:
I feel like a lot of times.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:28:42]:
It comes down to feeling like I will seem dumb. You know, that’s a common theme of like, or I said a joke. I don’t think it was funny.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:28:49]:
Could you get rid of the joke? And can, can the, can the podcast still live on? Because, you know, I, I’d hate to be a person, be the kind of person who tells a joke that isn’t funny and all of that.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:29:00]:
That’s really a lot of emotional labor to do. And yet that’s what your students wanted. That’s what they preferred.

Warren Kidd [00:29:09]:
Yeah, I think, I mean, I think being an educator is an exposure, isn’t it? It’s an exposure of, of professional self or professional identity. I know some people refer to it as a performance, but I think that’s not quite my, my choice of metaphor, really. But if it’s an exposure, you know, if you have to give of yourself for it to be the authentic, as much as it can be, version of you, regardless of what that education looks like. Is it a formal setting? Is it a podcast? Is it a. Is it a kind of show? Is it a class? Are the learners sort of younger or older? You know, there has to be some giving of oneself that that is exposing that that is a risk. I can’t see how you can get authenticity and relational qualities any other way, though.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:29:59]:
Just like writing there. I want to kind of have us argue the other perspective on this for those types of podcasts that are heavily edited, like the 2 minutes and 8 seconds that I had mentioned from the journalist on the S-Town, well crafted words that I can’t imagine how long it would have taken him to create such a beautiful introductory piece. So some of the amazing podcasters out there will have the scripted words, but it goes beyond scripted because it started messy. Right? I mean, it started because they’re often doing it with. They’ve gone out and done many audio interviews. My husband has. I’ll get this link from him in the. I’m putting a note to myself link.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:30:45]:
Get the Wild episode from Dave, so I don’t forget.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:30:49]:
So my husband has talked so many times about this podcast episode. The series is called the Wild, and they go out and capture audio from, I believe, one of the quietest places on Earth. And the whole thing is about noise pollution and, like, how hard it is to actually find quiet places. We think we’re in silence, but that we’re just really not.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:31:13]:
Most of us, you know, for much of our lives and stuff. But you literally.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:31:17]:
I mean, of course that’s very heavily edited. They had to travel to one of.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:31:20]:
The quietest places on Earth and bring all their microphones. And you can’t drive there, you have to hike there, because otherwise it wouldn’t be one of the quietest places on Earth, that kind of a thing.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:31:29]:
But you literally can, as an audio storyteller, take people there. Warren, when you were saying earlier about your Walkman days and about carrying the device with you, I thought, when was I last in London? Oh, it’s been decades. And what would I have been carrying with me back then? What devices would I have had?

Bonni Stachowiak [00:31:49]:
I’m trying to listen to what you’re.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:31:50]:
Saying, but you’re literally taking me to the tube. I can see.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:31:55]:
Because the funny thing was, I’ve told, speaking of jokes that aren’t funny, I think it got edited out, but I went and I took the circle line.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:32:01]:
And I missed my stop and I.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:32:02]:
Thought, well, it’s a circle, so I’ll just stay on.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:32:04]:
I’ll just keep going.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:32:06]:
It’s not a circle. But, yeah, that was so fun. The way that we’re scripted or unscripted.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:32:13]:
The way they take us to places or invite people to join us where we are, we’re not meeting in the middle, and we’re certainly not on a.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:32:21]:
Screen or in a microphone.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:32:23]:
We go places together in such an invitational way. I think regardless of edited, not edited, that sense of authenticity is true and is present.

Dom Conroy [00:32:36]:
It’s so interesting what’s being talked about there. I mean, and that’s a really nice example. The, the, the, the idea of the podcast with different recordings in very kind of silent, quiet places, because there’s a real investment on the learner’s part. There’s a real kind of contract of trust almost, because they’ve got to believe that you’re not just sneaking into another room and recording it there. And you know that you’re actually out there in that place, in that different location, recording a different kind of silence. And there’s really careful listening work going on there. And it’s there and there skill on the part of the podcast facilitator there in kind of creating the right kind of apparatus for people to be drawn into that and to be using their imaginations to kind of commit to that. And I think just sort of linked to that.

Dom Conroy [00:33:18]:
I think when we’re creating podcasts, we are putting ourselves on the line, and there is that kind of. What are we going to say? Are we going to kind of reveal something about ourselves there? But I think. I mean, speaking about the kinds of podcasts that I think Warren and I sort of mainly produce for our. In our kind of educational, sort of practitioner lives, a lot of our podcasts come already from having contact with a specific learning cohort, knowing the kinds of issues that they have, knowing the kind of questions they have that have arisen from a session we might have had two or three hours ago. So it’s all fresh in our minds and we can really kind of. We can put ourselves on the line, but it’s also. It’s all coming from kind of a collective kind of experience and from other people’s ideas and responses and our engagement with those. I think Warren’s coming in there.

Warren Kidd [00:34:05]:
I love that word, invested. Actually, I’m gonna. I’m gonna take back some of what I’ve just said, because I think that’s the word I’m. I’m looking for. But. Didn’t say but. But you did, Dom. Very well.

Warren Kidd [00:34:18]:
So I think. I think learners want those who work with them, and I think it is a collaboration. Learners who want those who work with them, who are in the teacher role to be invested. Invested in the subject, in the curriculum, in them, their lives, their learning. And I think, I think. I think actually if we think about podcasts or any learning and teaching resource, which is well crafted, invested, carefully produced, you know, the educator has spent maybe not time, because time in itself is not necessarily a measure of success, is it? Effectiveness, appropriateness is perhaps a measure of success, but any educator who’s invested time, who’s invested effort, who’s got to know the subject and the learners and the cohort, like you’ve just said, and what their needs are, I think learners know that, don’t they? They know that about teachers. How could they not? It’s part of the relationship that is learning and teaching. So actually maybe spending time scripting a podcast because it’s a really careful and precise way that you can communicate something of value or interest or reflects the lives or learning experience of a cohort.

Warren Kidd [00:35:39]:
Yeah, that there’s Something about that that is super powerful and super important. But I think you can also achieve that in our slightly less scripted way, because it’s about relationships and relational qualities is. But learners knowing that it comes from them. So, you know, something that I think we both do, Dom, is that we don’t tend to reuse podcasts, do we? We make a recording for that group that year, but we don’t necessarily keep that recording for that group and then play it to the next group next year. There is an immediacy, a responsiveness, as well as an investment in terms of, you know, I am making this for you because this is something we share and construct and create together. It’s a conversation. This just happens to be a bit of it that I’m having with you to then pick up another bit of a conversation with you when I see you next synchronously, as opposed to asynchronously.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:36:38]:
Wow. And I. And I. What you just said, Warren, even if you didn’t tell students that you were reusing one from the last time you taught the class, don’t you suspect that they would still know, even if they couldn’t articulate what it was that they sensed? But that lack of authenticity, this isn’t really for us. This isn’t really unique to us and what we’re cultivating together as a learning community, they might just know.

Warren Kidd [00:37:06]:
Yeah, I think they would know that. I mean, something we both do, I think, is that, you know, if we have a group, we’ve taught a class, we have a group. You know, sometimes you’re in that position as an educator where you’ve got something you want to get done by the end. That sounds very transactional, but I don’t. I don’t quite mean it like that, but something you want to get done by the end because, you know, the lesson’s only two hours or only an hour and a half or only three hours. And then at the end, you get some of those comments where you think, oh, if only we had more time, we could really engage with this. And sometimes you do it right. Sometimes you make that choice, don’t you, to.

Warren Kidd [00:37:39]:
Right, hang on, everyone. Let’s just pause. Let’s just have this conversation because it’s kind of super important, but sometimes you can’t. But then here it is, and it’s hanging. It’s the start of a new conversation. So I think what we sometimes do is then we go and podcast the next bit of that conversation to validate and value that amazing point, which we quote, didn’t have time for. But then we can return to it and converse about it and go back to it again the next session. There is no way we can recreate that for another cohort, and there’s no way we could play that audio to the next cohort without them knowing it for what it was, which was in fact something genuinely not in any way recorded for them.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:38:28]:
All right, well, this is the time in the show where we get to.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:38:30]:
Give our recommendations and I actually wanted to echo one that was shared by Tricia Bertram gallant on episode 588. So she had suggested to listeners and of course my ears perked up up a podcast series called the Good Robot Podcast. The AI revolution is here. Can we build a good robot? The battle over artificial intelligence is just beginning. And this is a podcast by Brian Walsh and he is talking about a lot of the myths, the mythology, the metaphors that are used, some of the parables created by those in Silicon Valley around artificial intelligence and attempting to break them down for what they are and are not. And he talks about, for example, Sam Altman talking about creating a magic intelligence in the sky, something like a God. I’m quoting now from the description whether AI is a true existential risk or just another over hypothesis hyped trend. One thing is certain, the stakes are getting higher and the fight over what kind of intelligence we’re building is only beginning.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:39:47]:
Good Robot takes you inside this fight. Not just the technology, but the ideologies, fears and ambitions shaping it. From billionaires and researchers to ethicists and skeptics, this is the story of AI’s messy, uncertain future and the people trying to steer it. It is a beautiful audio storytelling illustration. I felt quite enveloped the whole time and can see why Tricia recommended it and didn’t want anyone to miss it.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:40:18]:
So I just wanted to echo it.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:40:20]:
And pass that on as a recommendation, particularly on International Podcasting Day or thereabouts. So, Warren, I’m going to pass it over to you for whatever you’d like to recommend and then we’ll close out with domestic.

Warren Kidd [00:40:31]:
Thank you. So this comes from a sort of a slightly strange place perhaps. So I used to be a teacher of the social sciences. I am now a teacher educator. My students are in fact beginning teachers or experienced teachers looking for cpd. Or they are university lecturers and I’m kind of helping to support their training. Or they are maybe school leaders and I’m doing work with them on sort of leadership and school organizational change. But actually I believe that educators are creative, that they are makers.

Warren Kidd [00:41:09]:
I Think I am a maker by making a podcast, but I think all teachers are makers by creating lessons, by involving in the process of instructional design. And I think there’s a kind of pleasure, like a human pleasure to be had in creativity and design and making. So I have an episode of a podcast which is the, which is created by the, the rca, the Royal College of Arts in London. And there’s an episode of the RCA podcast, the Royal College of Arts podcast, called Creative Education through Uncertainty. And this episode was actually kind of streamed originally in September 2023. And I think this, this podcast, while talking about the curricula of the arts, how we use and use creativity, to teach creativity, to unlock creativity, I think there’s some magic in that podcast, which I think applies to all teachers because I believe that all teachers are in fact members of maker culture. And I think it’s a really, really interesting listen.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:42:27]:
Oh, it sounds delightful, Warren. Dom, what do you have to recommend for us today?

Dom Conroy [00:42:32]:
Okay, I’m going to be so very sort of vague here, I’m afraid. I don’t have a specific podcast recommendation, but I suppose sort of building off the kinds of things we’ve talked about and listening to the examples there, I suppose sort of my interest in terms of recommendations might be just maybe sort of to sort of educators more broadly to think about the options for audio as a way of connecting with learners. And I think sometimes this is something that Warren, I talked about a little bit. Sometimes we can be quite humble and unsure about how to be, how to articulate some of the teaching practices and resources and fantastic maker culture to use Warren’s expression there ideas that we have going on. And I think audio resources are one of them. And there’s, you know, I remember speaking at a conference to someone a few years ago and, and sort of talking about resources they were using and they were someone who didn’t recognize the kinds of things we were doing as a sort of podcast kind of formally. But they themselves have been using audio resources to connect with learners for 30, 40 years, really a really substantial amount of time. So I think in terms of recommendations, I think maybe just that idea of audio as an educational resource and it doesn’t have to be a podcast format, it could be audio feedback on an assignment.

Dom Conroy [00:43:45]:
There’s scope to do that on, on different kind of submission platforms and things, but I think just more of a kind of culture and discussion and different ideas about what we mean by podcasting. I think that feels like, kind of like the practice and research recommendation that sort of strikes Me as most kind of. Most kind of valuable and important. Because it does feel that. I mean, podcasts are. Podcasts are all around us now, aren’t they? And podcasts are definitely here to stay, and they’re definitely here to stay in education. So of thinking about a formal understanding of how we can use audio or if we’re not using it yet in our teaching educator practices, thinking about how we might use audio in some way, whether that’s through the kinds of learning resources we produce as teachers, whether that’s students producing podcasts for assessment, whether it’s some sort of broader sector discussion involving podcasts, that there’s lots of scope, that we can use podcasts in lots of different ways.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:44:39]:
On one, Dom, you were getting me to think about my friendship, which started on this podcast with Carrie Mandelac. And even something as simple as her, instead of sending me a text message, she will sometimes send me a voice message. It’s not a voicemail, but it’s through the messages app.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:44:57]:
And it was so funny because I.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:44:59]:
Do tend to really enjoy tinkering with technology and I am sort of known for just enjoying that playful what can this do? And experimentation.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:45:08]:
But that was just not something I had really done a lot.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:45:11]:
And every single time she’s left me.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:45:13]:
One of those voicemails, I instantly.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:45:15]:
Or the. Sorry, the audio messages, I instantly feel like I’m with her wherever she is, or I get to be with the birds. She’s got one of those AI bird feeders in the back that’ll identify the kind of bird that it is, and motion detection.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:45:27]:
So she’ll send me the little clip of it and kind of talk about what’s happening in the backyard and all the things you really do feel like.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:45:35]:
You get to be present. So as you were sharing this recommendation, Dom, of thinking about the options, I was thinking about the options from the hyper specific one to one and then all the way out to an entire class, perhaps. You both sounds like you’ve taught in cohort type structures. So there’s the cohort thinking, building community across classes, perhaps the university, and perhaps out in a very public way. And just all of the options that are there. There’s so many possibilities. Well, thank you both so much for accepting the invitation from someone you’d never.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:46:12]:
Heard of before, from across the pond, as they say. And just thank you so much for your generosity and such wonderful, rich conversation.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:46:21]:
And my curiosity is so piqued. I’m so glad to know both of you now.

Dom Conroy [00:46:25]:
Thanks so much for having us on Bonni. It’s been a real pleasure.

Warren Kidd [00:46:28]:
Yeah, no, likewise. I mean, it’s, I think all three of us could just, just keep talking, couldn’t we? Because I think there’s so much more to say. But the opportunity to have this conversation with you is really enriching. So thank you.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:46:45]:
Thanks once again to Dom Conroy and Warren Kidd for joining me on today’s episode of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast to celebrate International podcast day on September 30th. Today’s episode was produced by me, Bonni Stachowiak. It was edited by the ever talented Andrew Kroeger. Podcast production support was provided by the amazing Sierra Priest. It’s time, if you haven’t done it yet, to subscribe to the weekly update from Teaching in Higher Ed. Head over to teachinginhighered.com/subscribe. You’ll receive the most recent episodes Shown up notes and the links are going to be amazing on this one and some other goodies that don’t show up in the regular show notes. Thank you so much for listening and I’ll see you next time on Teaching in Higher Ed.