Zan Romanoff
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Articles by Zan Romanoff
Jazmine (JT) Green on Making Space for BIPOC Audio Creators
Jazmine (JT) Green has always forged her own path. When she felt that there weren’t enough audio opportunities for women, people of color, and queer folks, she teamed up with two friends to launch Postloudness, a Chicago-based audio collective and piloting program for BIPOC creators. That work led her into the academy, where she helped create a graduate-level curriculum for the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
What Fresh Hell Podcast Hosts Margaret and Amy on Pivoting Toward What Works
Amy Wilson and Margaret Ables have done it: they’ve solved parenthood. Or at least that’s the (extremely ironic) premise of their hit podcast, What Fresh Hell: Laughing in the Face of Motherhood, which includes a mix of their own hard-earned parenting advice and interviews with experts on the subject.
Podcaster Mary Knauf of Ocean Dreams on Working Within Your Limits
Mary Knauf’s commute turned her into an audio nerd. After spending her early twenties bouncing around jobs, including work as an au pair and at a movie theater, she was spending her days at a boutique PR firm and driving at least an hour each way to get there. So she started listening to LA public radio station KPCC… and then wondering if she could work there. She got an internship—something pre-entry level. But she had finally found an industry she was passionate about.
Weight for It's Ronald Young Jr. On Making Every Episode Better
Ronald Young Jr.—or “Big Ron,” as he’s often known—has always been a go-getter. His first job in audio was at the DC-area radio station Hot 99.5. There, he learned how to cut tape using Adobe Audition. But he wanted to be good at every part of the business, so after he cut together the ads he’d been assigned, he would practice reading those same ads himself. He would hit record and then cut that tape to teach himself how to host, as well as how to edit.
Proxy's Yowei Shaw on Life After a Podcast Layoff
One of Yowei Shaw’s first longform audio projects got her in big trouble at work. She was an intern at a college radio station in Philadelphia when she put together a half-hour audio doc about…trash. “There was a skit involved. There was dumpster diving,” she recalls now. “I hung out with my friend who's a crust punk, and we went dumpster diving.” But when it came time to actually turn her work in, “I was so late on getting it to my boss that he just aired it without listening.
Everyone Told Me That Freezing My Eggs Would Make Me Less Anxious But Actually I Can't Stop Crying
Last fall I was sitting in my therapist’s office, crying about whether I would ever have kids. In my 20s, it had been so easy to swear I would never be this woman: obsessed with fertility, reducing her life and body to a steadily-ticking time bomb. But nothing humbles you like the passage of time, and there I was, 36 and single and crying. “Have you thought about freezing your eggs?” my therapist asked. I’d encountered the question before, of course.
Fern & Matt of Five Conversations Before Sleep on Making Audio Fiction as a Couple
Husband-and-wife team Fern Diaz and Matt Kagen started their first podcast together in 2017. Matt is a playwright and theater producer, so naturally, they focused on people in that world. The Quickening asked a series of theater professionals “What was it like making your first show in New York?” Then, in early 2020, Matt began collaborating on an Audible Original called Six Sermons with his friend Asa Merritt. But of course, it—and everything—was put on hold by the pandemic.
Attack Action's Taylor & Colin on Evolving Your Podcast Over Time
Most podcast listeners have entertained an idle daydream about befriending the hosts of our favorite shows. Maybe they see our clever tweets and start following us; maybe we hit it off at a meet and greet and somehow manage to transcend our fan status. Colin Honigman is one of the rare few who has actually pulled off the fan-to-friend move. Not only that, he now co-hosts one of the shows he used to just listen to. It all started with the trading card game Flesh and Blood.
The Industry's Dan Delgado on Pursuing Your Best Ideas (and Using Descript)
Dan Delgado started his first audio project in 2006. It was his take on a talk radio show, focused on entertainment news. He called it Radio Dan, and broadcast it through some public radio stations as well as online and, eventually, as a podcast. Radio Dan was something like podcasting grad school. There, Dan learned how to produce audio and how to host and be an on-air presence. And it also became an incubator: his next show, The Industry, actually started as a segment on Radio Dan.
In Moon Unit Zappa's memoir, 'Earth to Moon,' famous names collide with family trauma
One night in 1979, 11-year-old Moon Unit Zappa falls asleep to the sound of her parents arguing. They argue plenty, so this isn’t unusual. Her father, Frank, is a musician and composer with a knotty, complex aural style and a seemingly insatiable appetite for sleeping with his fans. Her mother, Gail, helps him manage his business, and the two are often in conflict about money, other women or both. But on this particular night, things spiral out of control.
The Ghost Story Guys on Cohost Breakups & Building a Podcast Audience
In 2016, Brennan Storr published a book called “A Strange Little Place: The Paranormal Secrets of Revelstoke, British Columbia.” Through that work, he met another author, Ian Gibbs, and together, they started a paranormal podcast called The Ghost Story Guys. That partnership didn’t last, but the show did; Brennan is still involved, now with co-host Paul Bestall at his side. Paul is also a podcast veteran with an indie show of his own, Mysteries and Monsters.
Emily Shaw of Candy Ears on the Balance Between Audio Passion Projects and Paychecks
Creator HQ How They Made It Emily Shaw of Candy Ears on the balance between audio passion projects and paychecks. Emily Shaw’s first audio project began as a means of teaching herself Vietnamese. She had spent time in Vietnam during college and fallen in love with the culture and language. So the next time she went, she brought a handheld recorder and taped people telling stories. She didn’t know what to do with the material; it sat on her computer for two years.
Quorators' Jeremy Kaplowitz on Comedy Podcasting
When Jeremy Kaplowitz and Alex Ptak decided to start a podcast together, they knew what they wanted to make. Something low-lift, highly clippable, and, of course, funny—they’re both comedy writers. Together they created Quorators, a show dedicated to exploring the stupidest queries on Quora.com.
Out There's Willow Belden on the Joys and Challenges of Indie Podcasting
Back in 2014, Willow Belden thought she had her dream job: a hosting gig on Wyoming public radio. But as much as she loved it, it still felt like something was missing. She had no idea what she wanted to do next—but she knew intuitively that this job wasn’t quite right for her. She was dealing with unresolved grief from her mother’s death a few years prior, as well as some health issues, when she read Cheryl Strayed’s classic hiking memoir Wild and got inspired.
How Wild West Extravaganza Took Josh Taylor From Construction Worker to Full-Time Podcaster
In the late 2010s, Josh Taylor—or Wild West Josh, as he calls himself on the internet— was working in construction and listening to a lot of podcasts. He had the vague thought that he should make one one day. Then he stumbled upon Dan Cummins’ show Timesuck, and something clicked. The format inspired him. Josh wanted to make his version of the show.
Megan Tan of Millennial About Learning the Podcast Ropes as You Go
Megan Tan made one of the OG podcasts: Millennial, which debuted in 2015. It has been recommended by The Atlantic, The New York Times, and The Guardian, among others, and helped launch her into a full-time career in audio. Her work has continued to make waves and garner acclaim: in 2020, she was named Producer of the Year by Ad Week, and in 2016, Refinery29 listed her as one of the 29 Under-30 Powerhouses Poised To Change The World.
Industry Veteran Jane Marie on Making Art in a Podcast Graveyard
Jane Marie has been working in audio for more than two decades, and during that time, she’s done it all, from producing This American Life to starting a production house and recording studio, Little Everywhere, as well as creating her own critically acclaimed show, The Dream. Her most recent project is the genre-defying Finally! A Show About Women That Isn’t a Thinly-Veiled Aspirational Nightmare.
The Overlook's Matt Peiken on the Value of a Local Podcast
Matt Peiken’s origins as a journalist were in the world of print media. As a writer, he often covered music and the arts, but it wasn’t until 2012 that he launched his own audio project: a podcast called Whole Note, which he created in conjunction with the online magazine MNuet. Matt’s next pod, Metal Brainiac, came in 2015. His experience with audio production then landed him a job at Blue Ridge Public Radio, the local NPR affiliate in Asheville, North Carolina, where he lives.
Join the Party's Eric Silver & Brandon Grugle on Building a Podcast Community
Eric Silver and Brandon Grugle first met while they were both working at Sirius XM, and bonded when Eric spotted a piece of podcast merch in Brandon’s office—an Adventure Zone neckerchief.
Low Orbit's Josh Mattison on becoming a self-taught producer of "slow radio"
Like so many of us, Josh Mattison’s introduction to audio storytelling was This American Life. (“The most cliché thing in the universe,” he says now, but hey, clichés exist for a reason.) Josh was already studying graphic design at the time, so that’s what he pursued professionally, but the idea of playing around in audio stuck with him until a friend asked him to help make a show called Bad or Not Bad?, which involved a panel rating various pop cultural artifacts every week.
Beyond...with Mike Kelton on Using Descript to Make a Far-Reaching Show with a Small Team
Creator HQ How They Made It How Beyond...with Mike Kelton uses Descript to make a far-reaching show with a tiny team. Beyond… With Mike Kelton is a podcast about a man—the titular Mike—trying to solve his mundane problems via spiritual experiences.
From Pomona to Oakland, how a skater mapped California block by block from his board Original
José Vadi’s “Chipped: Writing From a Skateboarder’s Lens” is, literally, a collection of essays. But it’s also a map of Vadi’s personal California. From Pomona, where he was raised, to the Bay Area, where he lived until recently, “Chipped” charts the state’s urban spaces as seen from the back of a board, a network of routes traced block by block by block. Vadi’s vision of the neighborhoods is granular.
Vanessa Quirk of Urban Roots on Using Podcasts to Make a Difference
How They Made It is an interview series that focuses on indie creators, exploring how they got their start and how their shows and practices have evolved since then. We hope you find inspiration in them for your own creative projects. If there’s an indie creator who’s hit it big that you think we should feature, send an email to ashley@descript.com. Dequah Hussein-Wetzel and Vanessa Quirk first started talking about making a podcast together in 2020.
How to Make Your Interview Podcast Stand Out with My Favorite Console’s Simon Parkin
How They Made It is an interview series that focuses on indie creators, exploring how they got their start and how their shows and practices have evolved since then. We hope you find inspiration in them for your own creative projects. If there’s an indie creator who’s hit it big that you think we should feature, send an email to ashley@descript.com.
The Dumb Zone on the Tricky Transition from Radio to Podcasting
How They Made It is an interview series that focuses on indie creators, exploring how they got their start and how their shows and practices have evolved since then. We hope you find inspiration in them for your own creative projects. If there’s an indie creator who’s hit it big that you think we should feature, send an email to ashley@descript.com.
How They Made It: Answer in Progress on how their creative outlet made it big
We started Answer in Progress as three students who felt their curiosity dying in the high-pressure, test-heavy environment of school. We all had our own reason to want to create a video project and we figured we'd dedicate it to reigniting our love of learning. Visually, we were very inspired by Vox videos (it might be pretty obvious, haha). Tonally, we all had our own references, but Casey Neistat and Yes Theory were major sources. We never really spent time doubting ourselves.
How They Made It: Ross Sutherland of Imaginary Advice on podcasting's parallels with poetry
I think fiction is particularly hard to do on a low budget. I feel for these shows where they have big casts—the more people that you have involved in the production, the harder it is to assume that everybody can work for little to nothing. One of the reasons that Imaginary Advice is the way it is, is because I couldn't pay for any voice actors. It automatically took on the form of being more like sound designed short stories, because I couldn't pay for anybody else to be in them.
How They Made It: James Kim of Moonface on the importance of artistry
How They Made It is an interview series that focuses on indie creators, exploring how they got their start and how their shows and practices have evolved since then. We hope you find inspiration in them for your own creative projects. If there’s an indie creator who’s hit it big that you think we should feature, send an email to ashley@descript.com. James Kim’s life in audio began in an unlikely location: the production office of a reality television show.
How They Made It: Drifting Off With Joe Pera on why staying indie is best for the audience
Ryan: We had a format that made sense for podcasts. People like to put on podcasts when they're just working around the house, or they've got some time to kill. And sleep is a perfect one. My wife listens to YouTube constantly; I've learned so much from her falling asleep. Ryan: We've accumulated some things, having worked in production for a while. So all the microphones, microphone stands, interfaces, et cetera.
How They Made It: Mark Pagan of Other Men Need Help on making a beloved podcast with a day job
Well, I'd say I was a so-so DJ, but I'm a great engineer because of it. In high school, my parents put some money together to buy me equipment. My mom and dad let that be my thing. And then at home I would try to beat-match and make mixtapes. At best, they're fine. But those are skills of building rhythm. What has been really interesting about that is watching an audience, blending and doing something for a crowd. You immediately get that reaction. I worked in comedy for years. I directed theater.
How They Made It: John August and Drew Marquardt on lessons learned after 10+ years of Scriptnotes
So John, you’d been blogging for a while. What made you think, I'm going to jump mediums and try audio? John: I had my blog starting back in 1998, 1999. It was a chance to answer the common questions I was getting about screenwriting. For a while I had comments turned on, and there was sort of a community. But I turned comments off, because comments are a black hole of terribleness. And I realized that ultimately, a blog is very much a monologue.
How They Made It: How to Do the Pot's Ellen Scanlon on following her curiosity to a critically-acclaimed podcast
So you’d gotten interested in cannabis. How and why did you decide to start a show about it? I'd been living in California for several years. Cannabis was legal. I had a friend from college who had started a cannabis business, and this friend told me that she was finding cannabis was helping women in very specific ways.
How They Made It: Chelsea Devantez on how Celebrity Book Club built a massive fan community
I have this text thread of friends; they’re all showrunners and head writers, a bunch of cool women. We were all trying to get together, and it took us two years to plan a trip. The date we found was Valentine's Day in 2020. And because we were all so tired, we're like, “We're going to go on a girl's trip, but everyone can nap at any time. It's a nap trip, too.” I was in the hot tub. Everyone had gone to nap, and I started reading Jessica Simpson's memoir.
How They Made It: How It's Nice to Hear You took Heather Li from a finance career to a Third Coast Award
No! I have a finance background. I went to business school, and prior to COVID I was working in retail and strategy operations. I think my background actually lent itself quite well to the project, because it involved interfacing with a lot of different teams. My past work in retail was about integrating product markets and working with a lot of vendors. How are we thinking about storytelling concurrent to visual merchandising? How are we marketing? What is our budget for promotions?
How They Made It: Molly Lambert's solo production of the chart-topping Heidi World | Descript
I was at ESPN, at a website called Grantland. People at the site were doing podcasts, and I thought I should do a podcast, I bet I'd be good at that. Emily Yoshida, who I worked with there, was like, “We should do a podcast together.” I said we should have Tess Lynch be part of it too. At ESPN there's a lot of dude stuff, so we were also like, we'll be the podcast where women talk about pop culture.
Cruising Santa Monica Boulevard with the fetish photographer who shot L.A.'s male hustlers
“That ugly, generic building,” Rick Castro says, pointing out the window of a car parked on Santa Monica Boulevard just west of La Brea Avenue. Castro is in his mid-60s, a soft-spoken man with long black hair and an all-black wardrobe. He’s gesturing north, to where a primary-colored glass-and-concrete apartment complex has risen from the asphalt.
Cruising Santa Monica Boulevard with the fetish photographer who shot L.A.'s male hustlers
“That ugly, generic building,” Rick Castro says, pointing out the window of a car parked on Santa Monica Boulevard just west of La Brea Avenue. Castro is in his mid-60s, a soft-spoken man with long black hair and an all-black wardrobe. He’s gesturing north, to where a primary-colored glass-and-concrete apartment complex has risen from the asphalt.
How They Made It: Karina Longworth on how You Must Remember This found early success
I started in the spring of 2014. It was before Serial, which I know a lot of people think of as the ground zero of podcasting, but I already listened to a number of podcasts, such as Marc Maron’s and the Slate podcasts. I was stalled professionally and wanted to transition from writing about new movies, to writing about old movies. I felt I needed to make a showcase for the kind of work that I really wanted to do.
How They Made It: Podcaster Traci Thomas on how The Stacks hit it big
Traci Thomas started her books podcast The Stacks in 2018 with the help of some friends… and a lot of Googling. She describes the show as “like a smart, bookish brunch with the literary pals you’ve been waiting for,” and her listeners seem to agree. The Stacks is a fiercely independent project, run mostly out of Traci’s garage-cum-office, but she’s managed to score interviews with everyone from Ibrahim X Kendi to Angelina Jolie.
The Power of Perseverance
Edan Lepucki got the earliest inklings of her novel Time’s Mouth from the stare of her then-infant daughter, Ginger. “She had these big blue eyes and this knowing gaze,” the author recalls in the bougainvillea-swept backyard of Civil Coffee, in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Highland Park. “She would look at me in this way that was just like, ‘Oh, I’ve got your number.’ I was like, ‘Whoa, magic baby.’ And then I thought…‘Ooh, magic baby.
No such thing as a 'crackhead': Drawing stories and lessons from the last drug epidemic
“I’ve been all over the country and have interviewed hundreds of people whose lives were touched by crack, but never have I met a ‘crackhead,’” Donovan X. Ramsey writes toward the end of his first book, “When Crack Was King: A People’s History of a Misunderstood Era.” He continues: “Their stories were buried by that word.” The debut is an attempt by Ramsey, a former staff writer for The Times, to unearth some of those stories and put them in context.
How to write a cold open that will hook listeners from the start
Creator HQ Podcasting How to write a cold open that will hook listeners from the start. May 23, 2023 Zan Romanoff is sitting at an east LA coffee shop, trying to relax her jaw. She fits right in with the crowd here: it’s populated by creative class professionals with messy hair and expensive denim. Outside, the sky is the kind of damp gray that makes it extra-hard to concentrate. But Zan isn’t looking at the sky. Like everyone else, she’s looking at her laptop.
Forget something? Here's a handy podcast episode posting checklist
Creator HQ Podcasting Forget something? Here's a handy podcast episode posting checklist. May 3, 2023 So you’ve launched your new podcast (maybe you even used our podcast launch checklist to do it.) You know how to start a podcast; now you just need to keep it going, week after week, month after month. You’ve got a posting schedule and you’re sticking to it. You upload every new episode to your hosting service and wait for it to push out to the platforms where it lives… and finds its listeners.
How to start a podcast: Your podcast launch checklist
April 13, 2023 Congratulations! You’ve come up with a podcast concept; you’ve recorded some audio, and put it together into an episode. You feel like you’re ready to share that podcast episode with the world, and you…almost are! But there are also a bunch of other things you’ll want to have lined up and ready to go before you hit publish for the first time to ensure that your show hits with maximum impact.
Ergonomics principles for video editors, from an Instagram PT
Creator HQ Video Ergonomics principles for video editors, from an Instagram PT. March 28, 2023 You’re probably aware that sitting at a desk all day isn’t exactly good for you. Even if you haven’t read a million terrifying studies on the dangers of a sedentary lifestyle, you can feel it when you get up from a long day of clicking and typing and your joints and muscles come together for a rousing chorus of “owwww.” But what are you supposed to do about it?
TikTok Sensation Whitney Hanson on Home and the Healing Power of Poetry
The viral TikTok poet talks to us about writing poetry as a coping mechanism, finding freedom in her work and her new book, Home Our editors and experts handpick every product we feature. We may earn a commission from your purchases. “The beautiful thing about poetry is that there aren’t any rules. It can be whatever you want it to be,” says Whitney Hanson. She should know: At just 23, she runs a TikTok account, @WhitneyHansonPoetry, that has earned her more than 1.6 million followers.
When and how to hire help for your creative project
Creator HQ Video When and how to hire help for your creative project. February 28, 2023 We live in an era of incredible DIY possibility. Anyone with an idea and an iPhone can record a podcast or make a YouTube video; with an internet connection, you can put that work online and let the world see it. But at a certain point, as the project gets bigger, doing everything yourself stops making sense.
A thoughtful guide to editing a podcast guest who stutters
Creator HQ Podcasting A thoughtful guide to editing a podcast guest who stutters. February 13, 2023 If you’ve ever edited an audio track, you probably know that it’s standard practice to “clean up” people’s speech a little bit: delete any stray “likes” or “ums,” and maybe do some cutting and stitching to make sure ideas are expressed clearly.
Parenting as an online creator: how one mom navigates it all
Creator HQ Video Parenting as an online creator: how one mom navigates it all. February 8, 2023 Being a person and a brand is, as we‘ve discussed, complicated. But being a parent and a brand? That’s a next-level challenge. For some creators, parenthood is besides the point of what they make; your true crime podcast or politics-focused YouTube channel might not benefit from appearances by your toddler.
How to keep your creator brand and your personal life in harmony
Creator HQ Podcasting How to keep your creator brand and your personal life in harmony. January 18, 2023 Whether you make podcasts, videos, or anything else for the internet, you probably aren’t just making that thing. Chances are you’re also spreading the word on social media, maybe doing interviews to promote your show. You’re trying to get an audience to care about your content, and if you succeed, something a little strange happens: you become a brand.
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