A Podcast About How The Best Podcasts Are Made

HowSound is a podcast entirely dedicated to the craft behind great radio storytelling. 

While this is an invaluable show if you are a producer or geek out about storytelling, this is also a fascinating show for the everyday podcast enthusiast. Every other week, radio guru Rob Rosenthal talks to the producers of all your favorite shows about how their work is made. It's like taking a long, indulgent look behind a curtain you may never have thought was even there. Rosenthal breaks down everything from sound design, to interviewing techniques, to the reasons why radio supernova Megan Tan decided to end her wildly popular show Millennial at the height of its success. 

Here's some of my highlights from HowSound.

In one episode, Rob talks with Brian Reed (Producer and Host of S-Town) about "showing, not telling" in radio stories. In another, he talks with Uncivil's Chenjerai Kumanyika about finding his own voice and not altering his speech to fit the typical NPR sound. My absolute favorite: an interview with literal genius Jad Abumrad about the sound design behind Radiolab, and how to make sound design that isn't cheesy. 


While it sounds like this is a show that might get in the weeds technically, Rob is such a good storyteller that you usually forget that you're learning a ton while listening. Episodes are often 20 minutes or less, and always deliver in ways you wouldn't expect. 

For podcast enthusiasts, this show will give you an acute awareness and appreciation of what goes into the making of your favorite shows. It's enlightening, it's captivating, and it will feed into essentially every creative practice you choose to undertake. 

HowSound is a blessing to anyone who loves audio and wants to know how it can be harnessed to effect change. Follow Rob into the darkness and come out knowing more about an extraordinary medium that continues to educate a world in flux. 

Subscribe to HowSound on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or listen online.