Introduction to the Podcast Assignment

Philosophy and science are intimately related. Both are concerned with the truth about the world. And although it's difficult to say exactly what the differences between philosophy and science are (or even if there really are any substantial differences), there is at least some plausible surface-level disparity, so to speak. Empirical science seems to have a connection to the empirical facts (e.g., data obtained by doing experiments in a laboratory or making detailed observations in the field) that philosophy doesn't directly have. Philosophers are often said to be speculating from their armchairs. While we have to be careful about taking this distinction too seriously (scientists do plenty of armchair speculation and philosophers are not detached from the empirical world), there is something to it. A plausible methodological strategy is to take seriously both domains of inquiry. This involves an attempt to understand what the relations are between certain philosophical problems and certain scientific research and discoveries.

This task is challenging, and that is why you need to get an early start on your projects!

The Podcast

The aim of the project is to relate some scientific findings to a philosophical issue, but there isn't an exact formula that you will have to follow here. You don't have to conform to the following sample strategy although there are several elements described in it that will probably be essential to any good podcast:

Strategy for Selecting the Content:

• Pick a topic based on the list that is posted on the Web site. Most of the topics listed are at the right level of detail, but some of the topics are too broad and are intended as an umbrella category that you will use to start you off. As you research the topic you will formulate a more narrowly targeted subject to discuss. These topics are just ideas, and there are many more ideas you can choose. If you'd like to do a different topic, I suggest that you inquire to find out if it's acceptable and to get some advice about how to pitch your discussion at the right level of detail.
• Next, familiarize yourself with the relevant philosophical issues. A good way to begin is to find some general introductory material on the topic (one good source for this kind of material is the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, although it is not yet exhaustive. If you find some of their articles too difficult to understand, search the library for hard-copy encyclopedias of philosophy. There are several. Also, if you need more detail, you can find handbooks of philosophy, like the one on metaphysics.
• Once you have a grasp of some of the basic problems involved in the philosophical issue, you can then start to think about how certain scientific research or discoveries bears on the philosophical issue. Depending on your topic, there might be an obvious scientific result or body of theory that is relevant. If not, you should see some relevant science as you familiarize yourself with the philosophy and you see what examples show up in the philosophical literature. If you are having difficulty seeing what the relevance could be, ask.
• Next, get a general understanding of the relevant scientific findings. Again, a good general introductory source will probably be useful (Wikipedia will work). Also, check the philosopher's index to see what philosophy has been written already.
• The next step is to do some hard thinking about the implications that the scientific findings have for the philosophical issue. Here you should attempt to critically assess the situation in a comprehensive manner. Think about different possible implications that the scientific findings could have. Do they lead to a coherent philosophical position or do they support contradictory views? In learning about the philosophical issue, you will probably have learned about several competing positions. How do the scientific findings support (or undermine) the various philosophical positions? Do the scientific findings suggest some substantially new or different philosophical position?

There are several variations of the project that will be acceptable. For example, the detail of scientific findings can vary: you can attempt to show that some fairly complicated scientific research is relevant to a certain philosophical issue or you can attempt to show how relatively simple theories or findings (or, at least, how relatively simple aspects of scientific findings) are germane.  You might also choose to discuss not one, but several different philosophical issues and show how a scientific theory or different scientific theories are relevant to the issues. You don't even have to conclude, in the end, that the scientific research is relevant. You might instead argue that although it may seem like it some particular scientific theory has significant implications for a philosophical theory, the philosophical theory is, in the relevant sense, autonomous. There are other possibilities as well. If you have an idea that you think might work, ask to find out whether it is acceptable or not.

The podcast plan

The intended audience for your podcast is a well-educated listener who doesn't have any specific knowledge of philosophy or of the relevant science. It is your job to teach your audience what the important issue is.

The best way to educate is first to explain clearly what the problem is, using examples. Then, go into the details.

The length of the entire podcast will be determined by you (within limits: roughly, 10 minutes minimum and 18 minutes maximum). Don't aim for the minimum time because you will be graded on the quality of your content, and you will want to pack in as much as is useful for the audience.

The plan for the podcast will be evaluated along two basic parameters:

Structure (40%)

The structure of the podcast is up to you. Your plan should include details about two elements of the structure: the format and the time-blocks. There are several kinds of formats that you can choose (e.g., an interview format, a dialogue format) including combinations of different formats. You should attempt to present the material in a way that is compelling for the listener. This will, of course, depend substantially upon the content, but the same content can seem much more interesting depending upon how it is delivered. Your plan should include a description of what the format is going to be throughout your podcast.

You will need to map out the structure of your audio, identifying the content you will include, the order, and estimates of the time for each. To ensure that you don’t overestimate or underestimate the length of your podcast, it will be a good idea to try to talk out loud at least one section. It can be surprising how quickly the time goes by when you don't really know what you are talking about, and it can be surprising how much time will pass when you have good ideas to express and you are going at the right speed for educating your audience. It helps here to first write out what you would say in one section of your podcast, and include that in your plan. Then, without looking at what you have written, say the same thing as if you are talking to someone in person, timing yourself, and use that time for your estimate.

Content (60%)

At the beginning of your written plan, give a title and a 1 sentence summary of the educational goal of the podcast.

You will be expected to provide some details about what it is that you actually going to be talking about in each section of the podcast. You should provide a general outline of the main points that you will be considering.

This section of the plan will presumably comprise the most work because you will actually have to do some background work to figure out what it is that you will be talking about in the podcast. In addition to the sample strategy described above, the following are some ideas about how to go about developing some content for your podcast.

• Introducing the philosophical issue: although you can introduce the philosophical issue in different ways depending upon the format of your podcast, it will be crucial that you somehow introduce and explain the topic in a way that allows the listener to clearly grasp what it is. Most philosophical issues can be formulated in terms of puzzles or problems. Usually these puzzles or problems can be arrived at by reasoning from commonsense principles. You should think about how you can work in a way to explicitly take the listener through that reasoning. This will help to motivate the puzzle or problem. It will get the listener interested and give him a reason to care about what is going to follow in your presentation. For this section, write out an introduction.
• Historical background: although it isn't required, you may wish to cover some of the historical background of the philosophical issue that you will be dealing with. This needn't be extensive, but you might trace discussion of the problem back to a certain figure or time and discuss some well-known positions that have been suggested in regards to the issue. If you do this, sketch out who you would mention, any famous quotes or arguments that would be relevant, and a sentence or two about any commentary you would give.
• Different views: philosophical issues are associated with competing ways to deal with them. A good way to become familiar with the issue and to get your audience thinking about the issue is to consider how several different positions deal with it. Some may seem more plausible than others. Weighing the different options will help you get a better understanding of the issue. For this kind of content, write out the name of each view, a summary sentence, and a sentence for each benefit and criticism.
• Interviews: If you are interviewing someone, give us a list of potential interviewees, and a list of questions you would ask, along with any expected answers. As a podcast listener, I tend to prefer interviews where the expert gets an opportunity to speak for a block of time without being cut off. For example, I think Doug Henwood does an excellent job managing his radio interviews. You might listen to some of his interviews to get a sense of how long the interview answers might take.

Possible Podcasting Topics

Here are some of the general subject areas that will be acceptable for podcasting. Note that the subject matter of each podcast will be more specific than the rough subject area listed here. These topics are very much subject to change and elimination, and are just here to give a rough idea of the breadth of possible study.

Perception

• The Moon Illusion, for example.
• Hallucinations vs. Illusions
• Pain
• Perceiving the Flow of Time
• Phenomenalism
• Emotional qualia
• Access Conciousness vs. Phenomenal Conciousness
• Synesthesia

Psychology and Epistemology

• Anthropology on intuitions about Gettier problems.
• The illusion of conscious will
• Blindsight
• Attention blindness
• Personality alteration
• Taste
• Smells
• Sounds
• Auditory processing--especially suitable for the podcast format.
• Temperature illusions (Breath mints)
• Autism and Conceptions of others' minds
• Split brain phenomena

Environment

• Risk Analysis
• Biodiversity

Human nature

• How much our environment affects our behavior.
• Social structures that cast doubt on the existence of character-traits and personalities.
• Psychology of reasoning, logical errors, Wason selection task, modularity

Technology

• Prosthetics (Prosthetic vision and action)
• W. Benjamin on the Aura (Jack Turner on Wildness)
• Immortality
• Computer Intelligence
• Computational Complexity

Special Sciences (Unity of Science, Reduction, Emergence)

• Philosophy of Chemistry
• Emergence in relation to algorithms
• Reduction of the mental to the physical
• Psychological laws--Are there such things? How would such laws differ from laws of physics?
• Archaeology (for example)
• Reichenbach's Common Cause Principle
• Causation

Biology

• The notion of species
• The units of selection problem
• Artificial life

Linguistics

• Is language exclusively human?
• The poverty of stimulus argument
• Children's language development
• Innate ideas
• Language of thought

Physics

• Passage of time
• Relativity and Time
• Determinism
• Cosmology
• Beginning of time

General Philosophy of Science

• Paradoxes of Confirmation
• Falsificationism
• Grue

Sample Podcast Plan

Now available: A sample podcast plan for the PL21 assignment from when the length requirement was longer. I am still considering an alternate plan with a 3 person round-table discussion to cover some material at the end. I left it out because I thought it wouldn't communicate easily the pedagogical material. It would be good to have some debate over the content, though, so I would like to have it. Maybe I'll do a long version, 50 minutes, with the last 20 minutes hearing from some critics of the view.

Also, when you are calculating the time totals, don't just rig the time totals to come out around 10-18 minutes. Do a guess based on each section, thinking about what you want to say. Then, total these up. If it comes up outside the boundary lengths, that's OK for the assignment so far. Probably, your estimates of the sections are inaccurate, but it doesn't do any good to just stick in whatever numbers add up to 15 minutes. If I think you need to expand or contract, I'll give you feedback on that.

Sample Podcasts

Here are the first, second, and third examples from two classes ago.

Audio Recording

Here is a brief walkthrough for recording your podcast and uploading it to the iTAB site.

First, what you'll need for this project:

• Audio Recording software (Audacity is free and works on all operating systems, but Garage Band the comes with Mac OS X or similar can be used as well).
• iTunes (be sure to update to the latest version to avoid problems).
• A microphone. Most modern laptops have built-in microphones, and many desktop PCs do as well. If you cannot secure a microphone, the computers in the CIT building have headsets with microphones, which work well.

First, if you're using Audacity, play around in it for a bit. Try recording various sounds, and familiarize yourself with the interface. It's fairly straightforward, but recording can be intimidating if you've never seen such software. Feel free to experiment, though. I often find that the best way to learn software is just to jump right in.

When you open Audacity, the screen will look like this. Perhaps the most important control for getting your audio to come out well is the microphone level slider, which looks like this:

I recommend turning the level up fairly high, if not all the way. Also, if you're using Windows, you may need to adjust the operating system's mic level. This can be found by clicking on the volume icon in the system tray.

It may help you to get your levels right to use the microphone monitor, which can be activated from the drop-down microphone menu in the top right:

This will give you a real-time feel for the input level. You want it as high as possible, but without 'clipping'. If the level maxes out, and leaves a red rectangle at the end, this indicates that your input will be distorted. Use this in conjunction with the level tool to get things right. But the real test, of course, is your ears. Play back the sounds you record and see how they sound.

Every time you press record (the big red dot), Audacity begins a new track. This is called "non-destructive" recording, so you don't record over what you already have. You can click on the 'x' in the corner of a track to remove it (and Edit→Undo if you want it back). You can use the selection tool (which is the default) to click on the point in time where you want to record. You can use the selection tool to select (surprise!) a portion of the audio that you have recorded, and then cut/copy, and paste:

The paste command inserts by default, so pasting a clip won't overwrite audio in the track.

You'll notice in the above photo that the - .... + slider on the first track has been moved over a bit. This is another important tool; it is the output level of the track, and you'll want to adjust these to make sure the volume is even throughout your piece. It's best to get the levels as good as possible at input, though, since adjusting the output level will also amplify the background noise in your track and reduce the quality. Don't worry about panning unless you're a rock star and doing something really fancy - you should be mixing to mono unless there's a reason to do otherwise.

To import audio, such as the intro and outro music that has been made available if you desire, go to Project→Import Audio... , and select the file to import. It will appear on a new track. You may need to cut/paste to get it in the right spot.

Another useful feature is the Generate→Silence command, which does what it says. You can choose a selection and it will create silence for that much time, or pick a point on a track and specify a length of silence to insert. If you screw up, remember Edit→Undo. Make sure you save often to protect your work.

IMPORTANT ISSUE WITH SAVING FILES: When you are using Audacity, the program keeps your data in a temporary folder with a zillion .au files that each hold a fraction of the audio data. When you save your project, Audacity saves a metadata file, with the .aup extension, a copy of this file with a .bak extension, and a corresponding folder with all the .au data files. If you are working on a public computer (like those in the CIT building) and you need to leave the computer, you need to save both the metadata .aup file as well as the folder with all the .au files. If you don't get all of the files on to your memory stick (or at least an export of your work to a .wav .mp3 .tiff or something), then you will lose your data when you log out and the computer erases the temporary storage where the data was kept.

Finishing Touches

After you've finished recording your audio, you will want to clean it up for presentation. First off, we'd like to have everyone's recordings at a similar volume level. To make this happen, we'll use a feature in Audacity called 'Normalize.' This function takes whatever audio you have selected and amplifies/reduces the selection to -3db of its maximum, undistorted value. To Normalize, select the section you wish to normalize, and then select Effects→Normalize from the menu.

Thanks to Dominic Mazzoni, this box will appear:

The 'Preview' button simply plays the selection for you, so you should preview, and then hit OK with both boxes checked.

Remember that it normalizes your audio with respect to the maximum amplitude in your selection. With this in mind, you will probably want to normalize every track in its entirety to get a consistent volume. Remember the mix sliders at the beginning of each track, too. They will affect how your audio sounds as a whole. You'll want to readjust them, with zero as your baseline, until the volume sounds even throughout.

Next, you can clean up the sound quality by removing some of the background hiss. To do this, use the 'Noise Removal' effect. Before you do this, though, select a patch of 'silence,' (as long a patch as you can find) which unless you're a real recording pro, will sound noisy. Then go to Effects→Noise Removal... Then this box will appear:

Click 'Get Noise Profile,' and the box will disappear. Now, select the patch (probably the entire track) you want to de-noise, and go to Effects→Noise Removal... again, and the same box will appear. We're at Step 2 now, so play around using Preview. Start by setting the slider about 1/4 of the way from the left, and Preview to see how it sounds. You want to remove hiss, but you don't want to muffle your voice and make it sound unnatural. Use your ears.

Theoretically, the normalization and noise removal could be done after you mix your tracks to a single WAV file (see below). This might work/sound fine, but you'll get more control if you do it track by track, so you should try to get everything clean and clear before you mix down.

Converting and Uploading

After you've recorded your groundbreaking philosophical overture, you're ready to mix and convert to mp3. With Audacity, I recommend that you mix to .wav first, and then use iTunes to convert to .mp3. It is possible to go directly to .mp3 in Audacity with this plugin if you prefer.

To mix to .wav, simply go to File→Export As WAV... and save the file.

Now, add the .wav file to your iTunes library by going to File→Add to Library. Next, you'll need to set the iTunes .mp3 converter. To do this, go to iTunes→Preferences... and select the 'Advanced' tab.

Click on 'Importing', and select Import Using: 'Mp3 Encoder' from the pull-down menu. Important: select 'Custom' for the Setting box below.

This will open up a new window allowing you to choose the mp3 qualities.

Select '64kbps' for the 'Stereo Bit Rate' box, and then select 'Mono' for the channels (unless you're a rock star). This will yield a 32kbps Mono file. Hit OK.

Now, select your file in iTunes. Go to Advanced→Convert Selection to MP3. You're in business. Name your file with your name in the Artist field, and your title for the Name field. Don't worry about the others.

To upload, go to the iTAB login site, which will then launch a page in iTunes. (There is an error in some older versions of Firefox on the Macintosh, so use Safari to launch iTunes if you're using a Mac.) You should see a page with the Brown logo and the course name. Click the course name or Brown icon. Find the "Upload Files" link on the upper right hand side. It will launch a new browser window. Click the "Choose File" button in the 'Additional Tracks or Links' section and upload with the button in the lower right. The 'Return to iTunes' link will take you back to the podcast site.

That about does it. Of course, anytime computers are involved, there will be problems.

Godspeed!

Advice

Recording and Editing

There are some technical details about microphones that you need to know before recording. For example, you need to avoid picking up the popping that arises from p’s and t’s, and you need to get the recording levels right.

Read the advice articles at http://www.transom.org/tools/index.php

For recording phone interviews, you can find free software to record off a real telephone, or you might get better quality by using the free internet phone skype. Some advice at http://talk.transom.org/WebX?50@715.1Qxha6t8CF0.0@.eeb5dff

For sections where you are doing the explaining, record yourself in manageable chunks of time, where you can express your ideas without doing any reading. Then keep redoing your short recording looking for ways to emphasize important points, or cut out boring repetition. Later, you can splice together your best work.

Interviewing

Explain the project briefly at the stage where you are asking them for an interview, letting them know that the recording will hopefully be online and publicly available. Also, make it clear that you are not experienced with interviewing and to beg their patience. The idea is to create as informative a presentation as possible. Ask whether you can return for a follow-up interview if you need to add more material or get clarification. Provide the questions beforehand so that they aren’t caught off-guard. If they think there are better questions to be asked, give them rein to explain what they think is important. Experts usually have a good idea of what is important in their field.

Test your recording equipment first. If you are doing a phone interview, phone a friend and talk for a while to check the quality, then make sure your digital recording is not being clipped or has too much noise. Fix all these issues before you do the real interview. You can always rerecord your own voice after the interview, so the key recording is the interviewees voice.

While you are talking to your interviewee, but before you get to the substantive interview, check the quality to make sure the sound quality is acceptable and that your are actually recording.

Make sure that you and your interviewee are using a fixed telephone preferably with call waiting turned off. Schedule the interview to minimize interference like construction noise, crying babies, students knocking at the door, etc. These really detract from a recorded interview. Have beepers and cell phones turned off, etc. Do this on your end, and remind your interviewee to prevent noise interference. Be accommodating because you are taking up their time without paying them. Some people have different conceptions of what is acceptable phone behavior, and many don’t think about or don't care whether their children will impair their presentation.

Mention to the interviewee that the interview will be edited, there are no time limits, etc. If they ever misstate something, they can just pause for a second and restate themselves. Ask at the end whether there is a response they would like to restate.

Get their email address, so that you can send them an mp3 of the interview to check to see if their views were correctly represented. You need to do this if during editing, you have spliced in a recording of your question that doesn’t match what you said in the interview. You want to avoid any accusations that you are misrepresenting their views by matching misleading questions to their answers.

In your introduction, mention their name, their status (visiting prof., graduate student, their affiliation/university, and plug any relevant books or (if no books) at least an article. Make sure your interview intro is friendly, and you can make it sound live if you want.

You do not need to include the hellos at the beginning of the interview, but you should include a thank you at the end. Otherwise your listener will think you rude.

Do not talk over the person you are interviewing. It’s very often annoying to hear you agreeing with someone as they are explaining something. It also hinders your ability to edit the sound into other contexts. For example you might want to have one of their comments as an introductory quote without a setup that makes clear the context of an interview. Having you jump in the middle of a quote with ‘yeah’ or ‘uh-huh’ is disconcerting. Instead, if you are doing the interview in person, give a nod or a smile to encourage further comment.

Make sure to have questions in front of you for reference. You don’t want to sound like you are reading, but you can always rerecord your question later to make it sound spontaneous.

The one thing that has always surprsied me when being interviewed by undergraduates is that they ask a question and then don’t listen to my answer. It’s as if they are robo-calling. You want to have a list of questions and to more-or-less know what you are talking about, but do not go through your questions like a shopping list. If they mention some idea that your audience will not understand, ask a follow up question, “What do you mean when you say....” If the answer isn't long enough, pick out particular claims and ask for elaboration, or just say, "I'm not sure I fully understood. Is there another way you could put it." Ask for clarificatory examples. The answers can be spliced together later. You are in a conversation, trying to understand the expertise that they are providing.

Leave a short break of silence after they finish their answer so that you can cut and paste the audio cleanly. Don’t talk over the end of their sentences. This will prevent rearranging the content.

Remember to enjoy yourself during the recording. Don’t be so concerned about the technical details that you lose track of the fact that you are in a conversation and need to have a relaxed, confident, curious approach.

Podcasts

The podcasts will be located on the iTAB site when you start uploading them.

When downloading other students' podcasts, the mint green area at the top of the iTunes window should show the progress of the track while it is downloading. You will get feedback in iTunes 7.0 (but not iTunes 6.0) to show you that the podcast has successfully downloaded. The file does not go into a normal podcast subscription but just goes into your library. To fix this, create a "smart playlist" so that all songs downloaded from the course appear in a special playlist in your left menu. To do this, go to File > New Smart Playlist. Match a rule where the Album is "PL0021s01 - Podcast" or where Genre "is" Brown, and enable live updating. After you click OK you should see a playlist in your left menu, and it should contain all of the tracks that have been downloaded from your course iTab.

"Get Tracks" will retreive everyone's podcasts regardless of whether you have already downloaded them.

The Apple server sets the Album to "PL0021s01 - Podcast" and the Genre to "Brown" among other things. After you encode your mp3, please set the Name field of your podcast to something specific, and set the Artist field to your name before uploading. If you make a change to the file, upload the change and send me an email asking me to delete the old version. (I don't know whether the system lets you delete your own file. Let me know whether it does.)

Photos and Diagrams in the Podcast

I have found a tool to make it easier to put photos in the podcasts.

Uploading Your Finished Product

Log in to the iTab site to upload your file. You can subscribe to receive the podcasts automatically.

The podcast submissions are due Monday night. Here are a few preliminary clarifications.

1. Remember that your goal is to have a podcast that is as polished as possible. Think of it as your final submission.

2. The files need to be either mp3 or one of the apple formats. PLEASE make the file's bit rate 32 kbps and mono. Every year I get a lot of 128 kbps stereo submissions and it slows everything down.

3. Although the instructions on the website are for Audacity you are free to use any software you want.

4. Some of you might benefit from having pictures or illustrations that go along with your text. There are some programs available that let you do this. I used one two years ago that had a 15 day trial and it worked passably. Presumably the software available now is better. If you want to add illustrations but cannot get them into the file properly, just make the illustrations and you can email them to me for posting and then you can refer to them in your podcast and we'll figure out later how to integrated them into the audio.

5. The software Brown uses requires that you upload the file with iTunes. If you don't want any of Apple's software on your computer, you can upload it using one of the library computers.

6. When you upload, your submissions will go into the upload tab. If you upload several versions I will just choose the most recently submitted version as your official submission.

7. Don't forget that Audacity has a tempo alteration effect. When you are done with the whole file. Increase the tempo by 5-8%. That will speed up the speech without chipmunking it. Test to find a tempo that sounds right.

8. Also, if you have any outlines and parts of your text written up, email those to Andrew_Rotondo and dk12 so that we can use it to help you to revise the content for your final submission.

Grading Podcasts

Respond to each podcast with comments covering the areas below. You don't need to address every point but you need to be thorough, esp. with regard to #1 and #3. List your comments in a series of sentences or paragraphs. Don't limit yourself to the points mentioned below. Add any comments that will be useful. If you have read anything on the topic, mention that, etc.

Assign an overall numerical grade. The grading scale for everything in the class runs from the lowest C being at 65, the B/C boundary at 75, the A/B boundary at 85 and a maximum of 100.

You will be graded on our overall judgement of how thoughtful and detailed your suggestions are. Adjustments will be made to your grade if I think your overall grade of the other students is out of line. That is, don't pad your fellow students grades just to be nice. I will be correcting for any padding that I see anyway. Grade as if this is the final product. That is, don't give a high grade just because you know this is the first draft and that changes can be made.

Approximate length should be about 3/4 page single-spaced on average, but make adjustments based on how much you can usefully say.

Your grade on the podcast will come from your fellow students after being filtered through me, to remove outliers and to adjust based on the whether I think other students were too hard or too soft. The final grade decision is mine.

1. Topic: Evaluate whether the topic is one that can be understood by a general audience. Write about what you found interesting, and where you thought those topics could expanded or shifted. Was the topic too broad? If so, suggest which area you want to be focussed on?

2. Introduction: Does the podcast introduce the topic in a way that matches what was later discussed? For example, the topic should not be introduced as merely a broad discussion of the mind-body problem and then have a discussion merely of perception. Indicate how the introduction might be narrowed in that case. Does the podcast convey what is interesting about the topic? Could the introduction use more (or clearer) examples to make the introduction more concrete for the audience?

3. Content: Indicate any sections where your mind drifted off or you got bored while you were listening. This will help by pointing out the need for a pace change or musical break. Was there enough material where you thought you learned enough? Was the discussion philosophical? Did the author have interesting comments to make? Be very detailed in this section. Mark any comments or questions which you think can be thrown out because of being mundane or repetitive or off-topic. Suggest any new ideas where the author can replace the content with something more.

4. Conclusion: Was there a take-home lesson from the podcast? Was it reinforced at the end?

5. Mechanics: Mention any quality-control issues. Hard to understand passages? Editing problems? Was the pace of speech too slow to keep you excited. (Note that Audacity has a function where you can speed up the speech without affecting the tone. Quicker speech keeps people more interested. So speed up your podcast when done by 5-8% or so.) Does the author need to add some photos for clarification?

Podcast Music

I've got the intro and exit music finished. Thanks Erick for the great original music!

Almost all of you should use this intro and outro. If you for some reason need to do a stereo version, use the special stereo intro and outro.

The iTAB site. has been fixed to where you can upload your podcasts now.