The Admiral’s Log
Notes on podcasting from the Seaplane team.
Should You Build an Audio Tour or a Podcast?
These get talked about like they're the same thing, which makes sense because they’re both informative audio, but because they serve different purposes they really should be thought of as a different thing entirely. A podcast is built to be found anywhere, by anyone, whenever they want it. An audio tour is built for one specific moment: someone standing in front of something real, wanting more context right now. Those are different uses entirely, and knowing the difference will directly relate to how you build the piece and how successful it is.
What Does Success Look Like Beyond Downloads?
Downloads are the easiest number to report and one of the least useful data points available. A download only means a file moved onto a device, which, great. But we all know that downloads happen automatically before anyone has made a real choice to listen. Measuring success by downloads alone tells you almost nothing about whether the show actually did what you made it to do.
Why We Only Take Certain Projects
We turn down more work than people expect from a two-person shop. Some of that comes down to simple math, a budget that doesn't actually cover the work being asked for. Most of it comes down to something less transactional: whether the project is one we actually want to make.
How a Boutique Studio Works Differently Than an Agency
At most agencies, the person who pitches you isn't the person who makes your show. A senior creative director sells the vision in the room, and the actual work gets handed down to whoever's available on staff that month, sometimes talented, sometimes junior, always a step removed from the person you actually trusted with the idea. At a boutique studio, that gap doesn't exist. The people pitching the vision are the same people in the edit at midnight making it real.
Why "Audio-Forward" Matters
We describe ourselves as audio-forward, and it's not a stylistic flourish. It's the actual difference between a show that happens to be in audio and a show that was built to take advantage of everything audio can do that no other medium can.
How We Collaborate With Communications Teams Day to Day
Most of the organizations we work with have a communications team already stretched across a dozen other responsibilities. Our job is to make working with us feel like one more capable hand on the project, not one more thing to manage.
How Much Editing Does a Raw Interview Need Before It Becomes a Real Story?
There's no universal ratio here, whatever rule of thumb you've heard about hours of editing per minute of finished audio. The real answer depends on what job the piece is actually doing. A tightly structured documentary segment often needs heavy shaping to hold together. A conversational, hangout-style interview show usually wants a much lighter touch, because part of what people are there for is the unfiltered, unpolished feeling of two people actually talking. The amount of editing should follow the format's job, not a fixed formula applied the same way to everything.
Adapting Oral History Interviews Into an Episodic Structure
Oral history and a narrative audio show exist to do two genuinely different jobs, even when they're built from the exact same recording. Oral history exists to preserve the whole story: the full, sometimes nonlinear, sometimes messy shape of someone's actual memory, kept intact as a historical document meant to last. A narrative show exists to shape material into an arc a listener will actually follow from beginning to end. Those two goals can pull in opposite directions: preservation wants completeness, storytelling wants selection and shape, and adapting oral history material into an episode means serving the second goal without quietly betraying the first.
When Silence Works Better Than Narration
The instinct in editing is to fill every gap: cut the pause, cover the dead air, keep things moving. That instinct is right most of the time. It's wrong at exactly the moments that matter most, where a beat of silence does more emotional work than any line of narration could.
Using Music and Sound Design in Documentary Podcasts
Sound design and music aren't decoration layered on top of a finished story. Done well, they're part of how the story gets told in the first place, sometimes doing work that narration and interviews can't do on their own. A few real, different approaches show how wide that range actually is.
Building Narrative Tension in Nonfiction Audio
Narrative tension in a nonfiction piece is about timing more than it is big juicy details. Often the details you’re working with are complex and smaller than some kind of big reveal. You can't manufacture an obstacle that wasn't there, or write in a twist that didn't happen, but what you can do is find the honest, real tension that's already buried in the material, and structure the story so a listener feels it the way you felt it discovering it yourself.
How Do You Build a Scene Around Old Tape?
Most archival recordings arrive with no setting, no context, no nothin’. You can hear what someone said, but not what the room looked like, who else was there, or why that particular moment mattered enough to record. And helpfully, the person who could tell you all of that is often gone, retired, or simply doesn't remember. Building a narrative around old tape usually means reconstructing what the recording can't tell you, and doing it honestly, without inventing details you don't actually have.
Should You Build Production In-House or Outsource It?
Advertising and PR agencies have run this experiment for decades: build an in-house production team to save money, discover a few years in that it didn't save money and the work got worse, dismantle the team, go back to outside production partners, and repeat the whole cycle again about ten years later. That pattern keeps recurring for a real reason, not bad luck. In-house production only works at a scale most organizations never actually reach.
How Do You Know If Your Organization's Story Is Strong Enough for a Series?
Importance and narrative strength are different things, and it's easy to confuse them. A mission can matter enormously and still not have enough story in it to sustain more than one good episode. The real question isn't how important the work is. It's whether there's real narrative material underneath it.
Who Is This Show Actually For?
A podcast built to serve two different audiences equally, in every episode, usually ends up serving neither one well. Pick a single, real audience to build for, and let everyone else benefit as a side effect of the show being good.
When Do Archival Recordings Actually Improve a Show?
Archival tape has a place in your show when it proves a point that a fresh recording can't, or it sounds like nothing else available and makes the episode more alive to listen to. Either one is a great reason to use it. But when you have archival tape that's neither, that’s probably an indicator that you’re using it only because it exists and feels like it should be used.
How Many Interviews Does One Episode Actually Need?
Not a number. A question: does this next voice tell the listener something the episode doesn't already know? If the answer is no, adding it doesn't make the episode more thorough. It just makes it longer.
Single Host or Multiple Hosts — When Does Each Work?
A second host only earns their seat if the relationship between hosts is engaging and fills a purpose. If two people are just taking turns reciting prepared points at each other, that's one host's job split awkwardly between two people, not a genuine co-hosted show. If one co-host mostly sits and provides occasional color, that’s a baseball game not a podcast.
Should Your Founder or Executive Director Be the One Hosting Your Podcast?
Hosting is a distinct skill from leading an organization, and it doesn't automatically come bundled with the job title. The person with the most authority to speak on a topic and the person best equipped to carry a conversation on mic are sometimes the same person. Often they're not.
How Much Narration Is Too Much in a Documentary Podcast?
Narration should do the work tape can't do on its own: move time forward, supply context a listener has no other way of getting, connect one scene to the next. The moment it starts explaining what the tape just showed you, or telling you how to feel about something you already heard clearly, it's doing too much.