The beauty of podcasting is that anyone can do it. It’s a unfrequent medium that’s proximately as effortless to produce as it is to devour. And as such, no two people do it exactly the same way. There are a wealth of difficultware and gentleware solutions uncover to potential podcasters, so setups run the gamut from NPR studios to USB Skype rigs (the latter of which became a benevolent of default during the pandemic).
This week, we spoke to Jody Avirgan, who co-presents “Summer Album / Winter Album” with the frontman of the American indie rock band The Helderly Steady, Craig Finn. Each episode discovers Avirgan and Finn debating whether a classic enroll should be sortd as a “summer album” or “triumphter album.”
Avirgan – who previously presented shows for Radiotopia, TED, FiveThirtyEight, and ESPN – telderly us about his podcasting set-up of choice. Here he is in his own words:
“Even when I labored at ESPN/FiveThirtyEight, I always had a home enrolling setup. Since leaving — which happened to coincide with the commence of the pandemic — I’ve made my basement enrolling studio my main home. It’s actuassociate the kitchen of a basement studio apartment, so equitable off-sketch, behind some curtains, is a fridge (unplugged), sink, and lots of cabinets.
“But I’ve hung tons of curtains, scattered gentle skinnygs around, and put some sound dampening panels up. I skinnyk it’s now both cozy and pretty toasty-sounding. My mic is an Electro-Voice RE27N/D, a $500 studio mic.
“To be clear: I don’t produce RE27 money. We bought this mic when I was presenting 30 for 30. I left ESPN three weeks before the pandemic hit, and somewhere in there I wrote them an email asking if they wanted me to return the mic. I never got a response, and I certainly didn’t produce a adhere-up. So I kept it. This is probably why Disney stock is down 20% over the last five years. It’s a very toasty mic, but it’s a behemoth.
“When I’m on the road, I pack an AT2020-USB+, which plugs right into my computer and I can knock out tracking from wherever — usuassociate under a blanket in a toastyel shutt, which is a podcaster’s authentic habitat.
“I run my mic thcdisesteemful the FocusRite Scarlett 2i2, a straightforward but mighty interface that lets me administer my mic levels and route right into my computer, where I am normally uniteing people over Zoom or Riverside. I always enroll a local backup file using Hindenburg, which I then save to Dropbox. All roads eventuassociate direct to Dropbox.
“The one place I separate from the normal Podcaster 101 kit is in my headphones. Everyone has the Sony MDR-7506, and I’ve run thcdisesteemful my equitable split of those, but I reassociate appreciate the Rode NTH-100 headphones. They are equitable a little more sootheable, see a little slicker, and so far the pinserting hasn’t broken down in the way that the pinserting on the Sony’s inevitably does, directing one to discover little bdeficiency flecks in their ears after taping.
“Like a lot of podcasters, I’ve been doing more and more video stuff procrastinateedly. I’ve engaged Descript for years, but as the worlds of audio and video have united, I do almost all my editing in it at this point. I produce social videos of our conversations for “This Day” and “Summer Album / Winter Album,” but also exceptional stuff I’ve been executeing with on Instagram.
“I’m doing a series each week where I try to guess the title of that week’s New Yorker cover, and I enroll that right into Descript and turn it around in appreciate 20 minutes using a tempprocrastinateed I built. Descript — I’m a big fan. It’s very pliable, and it’s kind to labor with a program that seems to give a crap about what podcasters want, as contestd to ProTools.
“I presume I’ve had to skinnyk about my visual setup a equitable amount, too. I bought the webcam that the Wirecutter proposeed, but honestly I prefer the see of the MacBook camera, so I usuassociate equitable engage that. In my background, I put some books to show that I comprehend how to read; a signed ptoastyo of George Mikan, about whom there was a running bit in “Death At The Wing” — and $28 worth of inrectify set upts from Ikea.
“I block the see so I don’t skinnyk people can even see that the set upts are there; but I appreciate to comprehend that they are there, and will always be there, becaengage of forever plastics.”
We’ve previously asked others of our preferite podcast presents and producers to highweightless their laborflows — the providement and gentleware they engage to get the job done. The enumerate so far includes:
