🎧Listen up! 3 podcasts that’ll teach you a comms lesson
Written by Emily Swartzlander
Confession: I love podcasts. I’m currently following *34* different podcasts, and I’m always looking for more to add to the list.
To me, the best podcasts take lots of research and data, add thorough reporting and beautifully crafted storytelling, and deliver episodes that make you think long after you’ve stopped listening.
Lately, I’ve come across several episodes that showcase communications best practices “in the wild.” They have me thinking about how we can better do the work we all do to support children and families. Today, I’m highlighting those episodes and the comms best practices they feature.
Radiolab: Zoozve
I’ve been a fan of Radiolab for years, and the Zoozve episode is one of the best. It’s so good that when I was telling my children about it at a restaurant one evening, a man at the table behind us interrupted to share how much he loved the episode, too.
According to Radiolab’s website, Zoozve is about “...a tiny mystery that leads to a newly discovered kind of object in our solar system, one that is simultaneously a moon, but also not a moon, and one that waltzes its way into asking one of the most profound questions about our universe…”
Super intriguing, right?
Comms lesson: A great name matters
Zoozve is about the first ever discovered quasi-moon, and about a reporter’s quest to rename that quasi-moon from its original name – 2002VE.
One of the most interesting episode takeaways from a communications perspective is the power of naming and branding. At its core, this episode is a perfect example of why those best practices are so important. At Forthright, we know a strategic naming process includes making sure a name is easy to say, easy to spell and easy to remember. While Zoozve isn't easy to spell, it's certainly easy to remember, and the name brought more attention to quasi-moons than they ever would have had otherwise.
When you think about your work, consider…do your organization or initiative names follow the best practices? Do those names accurately reflect how you want people to feel about your brand and your mission?
Radiolab: Hold on
Radiolab gets two mentions, because I just couldn’t pick one episode to feature. (As a note: this episode discusses suicide, so please listen with care.)
Hold on is a powerful episode about the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline and the two women trying to fix a critical barrier to people staying on the line long enough to talk to a mental health professional. The barrier? The automatic hold message and accompanying hold music.
Turns out, it can take several minutes to get connected to a mental health professional when someone calls the hotline. And with the former automated message and hold music, nearly 13 percent of callers (almost 400,000 of the nearly three million people who call each year) hung up the phone before they got the help they needed.
Comms lesson: Understand your audience’s values and barriers
When we work with a client to create a strategic communications plan, we always start by defining most important target audiences and then researching:
what those audiences value (what they care about) and
what barriers may prevent audiences from taking the actions our clients want them to take.
In this case – how do you encourage people to stay on the line just a bit longer so they get connected to the care they need? I loved hearing about how determined changemakers identified the right barrier, and how they overcame it. Communications in action!
Psst! We have tips to help you identify values and barriers here.
A Slight Change of Plans: A blind cook becomes a master chef
Dr. Maya Shankar, the host of A Slight Change of Plans, is a cognitive scientist who uses storytelling to dig into “...the science of human behavior to help us understand who we are, and who we become, in the face of a big change.”
In this episode, Maya interviews Christine Ha, a chef and former Master Chef contestant who became blind at age 24 after developing a rare neurological condition. By the end of this episode, my kids and I were such big fans of Christine that we watched her entire Master Chef season together to cheer her on.
Comms lesson: Storytelling makes connections
This episode is all about the power of storytelling to connect your audiences to your work on a more personal level.
Stories elicit very real, biological reactions in people – in other words, reading or hearing a story allows us to physically experience what happens in it. In fact, we remember what we learn from a well-told story more accurately and for longer than things we learn in other ways. (Some data says we remember it up to 22 times more!)
As you think about your work, ask yourself: Are there ways you could connect more effectively with your audiences through storytelling? (Before you begin, check out our best practices for respectful storytelling.)
I hope you enjoy these episodes, and I hope they make you think about how you can apply the comms lessons in them to your work. And hey – if you’ve got a good podcast recommendation of your own, let me know! I’m always open for more to add to my list.
