The thing with making any podcast that involves recorded conversations is that people have to be at the same time and place. . The same things that the internet was supposed to make irrelevant in the first place. Well, other than providing cat pictures and porn. So here is an half-baked idea:
Instead of splurging on a fancy sound recorder, or in the case of larger groups, a full-blown radio studio setup, let’s use our mobiles to share short voice messages. Sort of an unholy cross-breeding of IRC and voicemail.
This also allows for a bunch of things, potentially, at least:
- No speaker ever gets to interrupt another one;
- Potentially a more even distribution of speaking time;
- Each contribution can get a pretty hard time limit, say, 90 seconds;
- If the conversation takes a turn for the worse, the editor can simply prune that particular branch;
- Collaborative editing in the sense of curating the best responses to a particular sound fragment together;
- Moderation by the group itself.
So for the actual execution, one would need to create messaging group, for example using Signal, and have a bunch of topics read. One thing however: since this will involve sharing mobile phone numbers with all participants in the conversation, it better be made clear upfront to everyone that this is the case.
