Join the podClast

You may have heard one of our rockin’ geology podcasts and thought “I’m a geologist, palaeontologist, or someone with a lot of interest or expertise in the earth and its systems, I’d like to join this panel of experts in their discussions.” The next question you’ll undoubtably ask is “but how do I do that?” This page will explain.

This quick checklist breaks things down into easy-to-digest steps:

  1. First things first, you need to contact me (chris [the at symbol] goodschist.com), and let me know you’d like to join in. If you’re not sure I’ve come across you before, you’ll probably want to include a quick blurb about about yourself, and your expertise or interest in geology.
  2. You’ll need a reasonably good internet connection (dial-up modems are probably too slow) and then you’ll need a Skype account and you’ll need to add me as a contact.
  3. You need the right equipment. I really like to have high quality audio in my recordings because there’s nothing worse than listening to a podcast through a constant, static hiss or fan noise. I use a Logitech noise-cancelling USB microphone, it’s cheap (about $35 USD) and the sound quality is superb. Unless you have a professional audio setup, the USB option is the best, since analogue microphones are prone to static noise and other problems.
  4. You’ll also need some headphones. Although Skype does its very best to eliminate feedback, we can just avoid it all together if we’re all wearing headphones or earbuds. I have a pair of bottom-of-the-line Sennheiser headphones (also $35 USD), but use whatever you’ve got.
  5. You need a  reasonably quiet area and 60-90 free minutes around 2300 GMT on a Sunday (we record every other weekend at the moment).

And that’s all. It may get to a stage (and judging by the response, maybe very soon), where there’s far too many people interested in joining than would make a reasonable sized panel. I like to think 6 or 7 people would be a maximum, in terms of bandwidth, discussion dynamics and time constraints. I worry if you put 15 geologists in a room together and press record, the podclast would never end : ) If that happens, I’ll probably start lining people up to participate, or even recording weekly. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.