Sound Judgment
Sound Judgment

Sound Judgment

Elaine Appleton Grant

Overview
Episodes

Details

Become a better storyteller, in audio and beyond. Sound Judgment takes listeners into the studios — and the minds — of your favorite audio storytellers. In each episode, lifelong journalist Elaine Appleton Grant and a top host, producer or editor dive into their creative choices. It’s a revealing conversation about the storytelling craft, and it’s show and tell: Elaine plays back clips from her guest’s podcast. Tune up your storytelling by learning from today's best creators! www.soundjudgmentpodcast.com podcastallies.com soundjudgment.substack.com Threads: @elaineagrant

Recent Episodes

How to Grow Your Show — Without Social Media
APR 17, 2024
How to Grow Your Show — Without Social Media

Sound Judgment is about the craft of audio storytelling. Not about the marketing of podcasts. But today, we're bringing you a gift from someone I trust completely when it comes to audience growth: Jeremy Enns of Podcast Marketing Academy, and his co-host, Justin Jackson, cofounder of Transistor.fm. They've teamed up to produce Podcast Marketing Trends Explained, a limited series that extracts proven audience growth techniques from Enns' comprehensive annual survey of podcasters about their marketing methods. 

In this episode, you'll learn: 

— Whether the famed "podcast discoverability problem" actually exists
— The three types of marketing channels at your disposal & what the data shows about their effectiveness
— Whether or not it's worth it (and when) to pay for ads
— How to pick the right marketing channel for you
— Why "owned media" is the low-hanging fruit for many creators
— What most podcasters get wrong about growth through collaborations, and
— How to kickstart word-of-mouth growth. (P.S.: Word-of-mouth growth is my favorite kind of growth, and IMHO, the best kind!) 

About Jeremy Enns
About Justin Jackson
Can't get enough of Podcast Marketing Trends Explained? Follow it now. 

 

Improve your storytelling Check out our popular workshops on interviewing, story editing, story structure, longform narrative, audience engagement, guesting, scriptwriting and more. 

Hire Elaine to speak at your conference or company. Subjects include: Effective Storytelling; Communicating for Leaders; Communicating about Change; Mastering the Art of the Interview; Success in Guesting, and much more. 

Discover our strategic communication services and coaching for thought leaders using storytelling tools to make the world a better place. Serving writers, podcasters, public speakers, and others in journalism & public media, climate change, health care, policy, and higher education. Visit us at www.podcastallies.com.

 

Subscribe to Sound Judgment, the Newsletter, our twice-monthly newsletter about creative choices in audio storytelling. 

Connect:

Facebook | LinkedIn | Instagram

✉️ Email Elaine at [email protected]

💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts

🟢 Leave a rating on Spotify 

🗣️ Share the show by word of mouth and on your socials

Help us find and celebrate today’s best hosts
Who’s your Sound Judgment dream guest? Email me: [email protected]. Because of you, that host may appear on Sound Judgment.

 

Credits 

Sound Judgment is a production of Podcast Allies, LLC. 

Host: Elaine Appleton Grant

Podcast Manager: Tina Bassir

Production Manager: Andrew Parrella

Audio Engineer: Kevin Kline

Production Assistant: Audrey Nelson

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63 MIN
Courage vs comfort: Is it finally time to pursue your dreams?
APR 3, 2024
Courage vs comfort: Is it finally time to pursue your dreams?

At some point, every one of us will reach a point in our professional lives where it's time to change — but the status quo, even when it's not working, is comfortable. Are you ready to say goodbye to your old life in order to find your way to a new, better one? But you don't have a map?  That's what Daily Creative host Todd Henry and his "story architect" producer Josh Gott wrestle with in the episode we deconstruct together, "The Curious Death of Todd Henry." You won't be the same after you listen to this episode — a play in seven acts. 

Follow Sound Judgment on your favorite podcast app, or subscribe to our channel
@SoundJudgmentPod
on Youtube. 

Listen to the full  episode deconstructed on today's show: Daily Creative: The Curious Death of Todd Henry

Follow Daily Creative

Join Us for New Sound Judgment Workshops!

Improve your storytelling, interviewing, writing, producing, hosting and guesting skills! Sign up for new Sound Judgment workshops today at www.podcastallies.com/workshops. 

April 5, 2024: Mastering the Art of the Interview. Interviews are the foundation of all good storytelling, but we don’t get much instruction on the art and science of them. In this workshop, you'll get ten proven, transformative strategies that you can apply to your own work right away. 

April 11,2024: Success in Guesting: Be a Great Guest, Get a Great Guest
Learn  how to curate great guests and what it takes to be a phenomenal guest yourself. Learn how NPR producers curate and book guests – and how you can set yourself up for success no matter whether you're making a show — or seeking to be a guest yourself.  

Todd Henry
Positioning himself as an “arms dealer for the creative revolution,” Todd Henry teaches leaders and organizations how to establish practices that lead to everyday brilliance. He is the author of seven books (The Accidental Creative, Die Empty, Louder Than Words, Herding Tigers, The Motivation Code, Daily Creative, and The Brave Habit) which have been translated into more than a dozen languages. He speaks and consults across dozens of industries on creativity, leadership, and passion for work.

He began podcasting in 2005, founding The Accidental Creative. Before transforming it into Daily Creative, The Accidental Creative had been published continuously for 18 years and been downloaded 18 million times. Both podcasts help audiences become brave, focused, and brilliant. 

Joshua Gott
Joshua Gott is a messaging strategist and creative director helping companies simplify their brand message so they can tell a better story.  He's worked with organizations like P&G, Anthem, Nestle, Dropbox, Workday, Trip Advisor, ESPN and many others to make sense out of nonsense.  His approach to crafting clear messaging is encapsulated in the Story Square®, a framework he developed based on many years of finding creative ways to explain complicated ideas.  When he isn't playing pickleball or coaching girls volleyball he's telling stories with Todd Henry on the Daily Creative podcast. 

Connect with Todd
Website: www.toddhenry.com
Instagram and Twitter/X: toddhenry
LinkedIn: toddhenry1
Facebook: toddhenry.ac


 



 

Improve your storytelling Check out our popular workshops on interviewing, story editing, story structure, longform narrative, audience engagement, guesting, scriptwriting and more. 

Hire Elaine to speak at your conference or company. Subjects include: Effective Storytelling; Communicating for Leaders; Communicating about Change; Mastering the Art of the Interview; Success in Guesting, and much more. 

Discover our strategic communication services and coaching for thought leaders using storytelling tools to make the world a better place. Serving writers, podcasters, public speakers, and others in journalism & public media, climate change, health care, policy, and higher education. Visit us at www.podcastallies.com.

 

Subscribe to Sound Judgment, the Newsletter, our twice-monthly newsletter about creative choices in audio storytelling. 

Connect:

Facebook | LinkedIn | Instagram

✉️ Email Elaine at [email protected]

💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts

🟢 Leave a rating on Spotify 

🗣️ Share the show by word of mouth and on your socials

Help us find and celebrate today’s best hosts
Who’s your Sound Judgment dream guest? Email me: [email protected]. Because of you, that host may appear on Sound Judgment.

 

Credits 

Sound Judgment is a production of Podcast Allies, LLC. 

Host: Elaine Appleton Grant

Podcast Manager: Tina Bassir

Production Manager: Andrew Parrella

Audio Engineer: Kevin Kline

Production Assistant: Audrey Nelson

play-circle
39 MIN
[Bonus] Introducing Sound School Podcast: Tracking Partners
MAR 27, 2024
[Bonus] Introducing Sound School Podcast: Tracking Partners

It's a brave thing to share the outtakes from a tracking session. All the blemishes are right there. But Martine Powers and Rennie Svirnovsky from the audio team at The Washington Post have graciously done just that. They invited  Sound School's Rob Rosenthal into their studio to witness Martine at work voicing an episode of The Empty Grave of Comrade Bishop, with assistance from Rennie. Hearing how they work as tracking partners is a real gift for anyone who wants to perform better in the mic booth.

Today on Sound Judgment, we’re excited to share this instructive, hilarious episode of Sound School.  If you’ve spent much time behind a mic yourself, you know that tracking an episode – that is, narrating it – takes time, coaching, practice, a good ear, humility, a good sense of humor— and a great producer.

*Update! Martine Powers won the 2024 Ambie Award for Best Host  at The Podcast Academy's the fourth annual awards for excellence in audio.

You will be a better narrator and a better in-studio producer after listening to this episode. 

Sound School is produced by Rob Rosenthal for PRX and Transom.

Join Us for New Sound Judgment Workshops!

Improve your storytelling, interviewing, writing, producing, hosting and guesting skills! Sign up for new Sound Judgment workshops today at www.podcastallies.com/workshops. 

April 5, 2024: Mastering the Art of the Interview. Interviews are the foundation of all good storytelling, but we don’t get much instruction on the art and science of them. In this workshop, you'll get ten proven, transformative strategies that you can apply to your own work right away. 

April 11,2024: Success in Guesting: Be a Great Guest, Get a Great Guest
Learn  how to curate great guests and what it takes to be a phenomenal guest yourself. Learn how NPR producers curate and book guests – and how you can set yourself up for success no matter whether you're making a show — or seeking to be a guest yourself.  

***

Sound School (formerly HowSound) is a bi-weekly podcast on audio storytelling produced by Rob Rosenthal for PRX and Transom. Listen to more episodes and follow the show at https://transom.org/topics/soundschool/

The episode featured on Sound Judgment: https://transom.org/2024/tracking-partners/

About Rob Rosenthal

Rob Rosenthal is a freelance story editor, podcast producer/reporter, and a teacher. Longform, documentary podcasts are his sweet spot. He offers workshops for podcast companies and public radio stations. He hosts the Sound School Podcast, a joint project of PRX and Transom, on audio storytelling. 

Rob has been interviewing reporters, producers, editors and artists about the craft of audio storytelling since he began making his show in 2008 under the name How Sound. Rob says he still learns something every time he interviews someone.

Improve your storytelling Check out our popular workshops on interviewing, story editing, story structure, longform narrative, audience engagement, guesting, scriptwriting and more. 

Hire Elaine to speak at your conference or company. Subjects include: Effective Storytelling; Communicating for Leaders; Communicating about Change; Mastering the Art of the Interview; Success in Guesting, and much more. 

Discover our strategic communication services and coaching for thought leaders using storytelling tools to make the world a better place. Serving writers, podcasters, public speakers, and others in journalism & public media, climate change, health care, policy, and higher education. Visit us at www.podcastallies.com.

 

Subscribe to Sound Judgment, the Newsletter, our twice-monthly newsletter about creative choices in audio storytelling. 

Connect:

Facebook | LinkedIn | Instagram

✉️ Email Elaine at [email protected]

💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts

🟢 Leave a rating on Spotify 

🗣️ Share the show by word of mouth and on your socials

Help us find and celebrate today’s best hosts
Who’s your Sound Judgment dream guest? Email me: [email protected]. Because of you, that host may appear on Sound Judgment.

 

Credits 

Sound Judgment is a production of Podcast Allies, LLC. 

Host: Elaine Appleton Grant

Podcast Manager: Tina Bassir

Production Manager: Andrew Parrella

Audio Engineer: Kevin Kline

Production Assistant: Audrey Nelson

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31 MIN