Summary

This article discusses exemplary uses of sound design in podcasts, highlighting episodes from Radiolab, Reply All, Love + Radio, and Limetown.

Abstract

The article emphasizes the importance of sound design in podcasts, which can create a new sonic world for listeners. It showcases creative uses of sound design in various podcast episodes, such as Radiolab's "Playing God," Reply All's "Hello?", Love + Radio's "Bride of the Sea," and Limetown. These examples demonstrate how sound design can transport listeners to different locations, tell stories, and create a sense of immersion.

Opinions

Sound design is crucial in creating an immersive experience for podcast listeners.
Sound design can effectively convey emotions and tell stories without the need for words.
Fiction podcasts like Limetown have more freedom to experiment with sound design.
First-person storytelling podcasts like Love + Radio can be greatly enhanced by sound design.
Absurdist and surreal podcasts like Reply All's "Hello?" can use sound design to create a sense of delirium and disorientation.
News broadcasts and interviews can be effectively incorporated into podcasts using sound design.
Sound design can be used to create a sense of tension and unease, as demonstrated in Radiolab's "Playing God."

Exemplary Uses of Sound Design in Podcasts

and what you can learn from them

Sound design is the art of using sound to create the world that your podcast lives in. This can achieved with sound effects, effective editing, or a combination of creative sound manipulation like reverbs, delays, and other whacky effects.

One of the great things about sound design is that it has the potential to take the listener to a newly created sonic world. It can transport you to a location, real or imagined, or tell a story better than words ever could.

This list of episodes showcases some creative uses of sound design that should hopefully get you thinking about how to use it in your episodes.

Radiolab — Playing God

Radiolab is a hugely popular show that weaves together interesting stories of science and the everyday through compelling audio production, and its use of sound design in this particular episode is heart-wrenching.

In short the episode revolves around the theme of triage and on the questions that spin out from it, most potently on the notion of playing god by following writer Sheri Fink through her reporting during various crises from New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, to Haiti in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake.

The episode of full of excellent sound design examples from the interwoven news broadcasts featuring distressed interviewees that serve as backdrop of the New Orleans segment, to the hospital beeps and tones that create an unnerving mise-en-scène for the path we’re taken down as listeners.

Perhaps the most harrowing and affecting example in this episode is the use of a heart rate monitor flatlining. It’s simple and used to devastating effect. Our understanding of what it means is implicit so there are no need for words to explain what’s heard. We’re just left to feel the weight of the moment.

Reply All — Hello?

The self-styled “show about the internet” is so much more than what it proclaims to be at a glance.

This unique episode winnows down 48 hours of non-stop call-ins to hosts PJ Vogt and Alex Goldman to a 90+ minute episode of absurdist surrealism that welcomes you down along the path of sleep deprivation and delirium that PJ and Alex wrestle with along the way.

Aside from the futzed audio of phone calls there is one particular edit that features the many, many “hello”s from callers overlapped, heard from left and right, reverberated to create a disorientating swirl of unknown voices.

It’s as much a technically creative sound design moment as it is a pivotal moment in the episode as we descend further down the rabbit hole of delusion to experience first-hand how PJ and Alex must have felt during those 48 hours.

Love + Radio — Bride of the Sea

Love + Radio is a first-person storytelling podcast that begs to be ornamented with sound design.

Taking first-hand accounts of extraordinary personal stories and allowing the subject to tell their own account provides the path, while the sound design recreates the experiences for listeners to be enveloped in.

This particular episode is the recounting of an Irish construction worker who traveled to Libya to fight in the civil war of 2011 and the decisions he made, the actions he undertook, and the effects the war had on him before and after deciding to fight.

Limetown

Limetown is a drama podcast about what happened to an entire town’s population that disappeared overnight.

Taking the form of investigative reporting by a journalist of the fictional American Public Radio, the podcast is interspersed with faux-news broadcasts, and staff meetings about the investigation.

Being a fictional podcast gives license to experiment with these forms and so the sound design is crucial in being able to pull them off effectively.