UPDATE JANUARY 2020: Two Minutes in the Yellowstone Ecosystem hast morphed into a longer-format podcast called Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. See this blog post for more info. Also, I’m now the Executive Director at the Yellowstone Wildlife Sanctuary.
My new job has given me the opportunity to dive into some new and interesting projects. For quite some time, I’ve wanted to play around with podcasting. I’ve been on other people’s podcasts (The Successful Author Podcast with Julie Anne Eason, for example), and done various radio voiceover gigs, but I’ve never had my own podcast.
Here’s how it came to be.
As Education Director at the Yellowstone Wildlife Sanctuary, part of my job is outreach. Outreach isn’t the same as advertising. Outreach has to have an educational component to it. But walking into a new job at a little 501(c)(3) nonprofit and getting attention with your outreach programs can be … challenging.
Back when my wife and I owned Red Lodge Books & Tea, I had a little segment I did once a week on FM99 radio called This Week in Books. By “segment,” I mean “60 second live advertisement.” Each week, I’d give the radio host a topic and he’d throw a few (mostly scripted) questions at me. Remembering this segment turned on the lightbulb in my head.
For those who haven’t dabbled in podcasting, you can broadly separate podcasts into two production styles: casual and professional. Anyone with a quiet spot and a smartphone can do a casual podcast, but that’s not what I wanted mine to sound like.
Serious podcasting requires a bit of an investment in equipment and software, and a studio to record in. I have enough in the budget for hosting and some professional audio editing software, but not enough for a studio.
So I went to FM99 and set up a weekly segment again. Just like the old book segment, this one would be completely live. Unlike the old book segment, this one would be recorded. Thus was born Two Minutes in the Yellowstone Ecosystem.
Every Wednesday at 8:22 a.m., I go to the studio with my notes (and sometimes a few sound effects on a flash drive) and sit down with morning host Les King. I give him a heads-up on what we’re doing, and we talk for a couple of minutes on live radio. When we’re done, I have a professional recording from a professional studio on my flash drive.
I go back to the Wildlife Sanctuary, load up the script in Adobe Audition CC, and clean it up. Usually, the sound editing is pretty simple: clean up a false start or two, trim the beginning and end, and add a canned open and close. Sometimes I have to re-record a piece, and sometimes I add animal sounds in the background.
Once it’s finalized, I type up the transcript — which is sometimes completely different from my original notes because it’s unrehearsed live radio — and create an “album cover” for the episode. Friday morning, the podcast goes live on the Sanctuary’s website along with iTunes and various aggregators.
If you have an interest in the critters of the greater Yellowstone ecosystem, I hope you’ll give it a listen. Most of the episodes run 3-5 minutes (despite the name), and they cover a variety of topics related to this ecosystem and our wildlife sanctuary. As of this writing, there are seven episodes up, covering Sandhill Cranes, feeding wildlife, bobcats & lynxes, what the greater Yellowstone ecosystem actually is, porcupines, bear safety, and Swainson’s Hawks.
Gary D. Robson 