Miriam Ingber: We went rogue.
We did it with no permission from anybody.
No, I'm just kidding.
I'm just kidding.
Don't give me that face, Kristi.
Neil McPhedran: Welcome to Continuing Studies, a podcast for higher education podcasters to learn and get inspired.
I'm Neil McPhedran, founder of Podium Podcast Company, where we work with a number of higher education podcasts.
Jennifer-Lee: And I'm Jennifer-Lee, founder of Jpod Creations, podcasting is broadcasting.
We want you to know you're not alone.
In fact, there are many of you higher ed podcasters out there, and we can all learn from each other.
Neil McPhedran: Absolutely, Jen.
Now, before we jump into this episode, I just want to encourage each of you to please join the higher ed pods community at higheredpods.com.
Jennifer-Lee: Sweet.
Let's get started.
Okay, Neil, have you ever wondered what it takes to get into law school for Harvard or Yale?
Neil McPhedran: Well, I wondered at one point in my life how to get into law school.
And maybe if there was a podcast way back then, such as the one we're about to talk about today, I might've actually carried on and become a lawyer, like I had originally intended.
But here I am a podcaster with you.
Jennifer-Lee: Yeah, I would've never been able to work with you.
So I feel like it worked out.
I feel like we do a little bit as lawyers, you know, we have to research.
We have to get our points straight.
We have to get them across.
We're defending our topics when we are diving deep into what makes every university podcast unique.
Neil McPhedran: That's good, Jen.
I like that.
So today we're going to chat with Miriam and Kristi from Navigating Law School Admissions.
Now, the really interesting thing about this conversation is Miriam is Dean of Admissions at Yale Law School.
Kristi is Dean of Admissions at Harvard Law School.
So, we really dig into the collaboration between what one would think on the outside would be competitive law schools and how do they work together.
And spoiler alert, they don't compete.
Jennifer-Lee: There's no cutthroat competition at all.
Neil McPhedran: So with that, let's get into it.
Kristi Jobson: Thanks for having us.
Miriam Ingber: We're thrilled to be here.
Neil McPhedran: Great.
Well, why don't we just start before we jump into the podcast itself?
Why don't you just quickly just each of you introduce yourselves?
Kristi Jobson: Sure.
All right.
So my name is Kristi Jobson.
I am the Dean of Admissions at Harvard Law School.
I'm also a Harvard Law School grad.
Before taking on this role, I was a law clerk for judges in the Boston area and also worked at a large law firm headquartered in Boston.
And for the last six years, I'm going on year seven, I've been leading the admissions office at HLS as we recruit and select and yield five hundred and sixty of the most promising lawyers and leaders to come to Harvard.
And all along the way, I've been there with Miriam.
Miriam Ingber: That's right.
Kristi and I were baby deans of admissions together.
We met six years ago over pizza, if I recall correctly, in New Haven.
I am Miriam Ingber.
I'm the Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid at Yale Law School.
Uh, I'm also a Yale Law School alum.
Um, definitely of an older genre than Kristi is from Harvard, but she puts up with me.
Uh, after law school, I clerked in Canada, which is where I'm from.
I worked at a couple of law firms in private practice as a litigator.
And then I was, uh, in, uh, the public sector, both at a nonprofit and then at another law school before I joined Christie in the admissions and financial aid world.
Jennifer-Lee: So you said that you met over pizza.
How does somebody from Yale and somebody from Harvard get together?
Miriam Ingber: We're not actually enemies, we like each other.
Kristi Jobson: So it was actually a joint event with members of both of our teams back in summer 2018.
Miriam and I had both joined in our recent roles.
I think we'd said hello very briefly at an event.
Um, but the HLS admissions team came down to New Haven for a training held by a company headquartered there.
And so while we were in town, I reached out to Miriam and I said, hey, do you want to get together?
And maybe we should just get our teams together as well.
Um, we went to a fantastic New Haven pizza spot named Bar.
Miriam Ingber: Is it Bar Pizza?
Kristi Jobson: It's Bar, yeah.
Very good pizza.
They've got like mashed potato pizza.
There's so much.
Neil McPhedran: Wow.
Kristi Jobson: Yeah, it was delicious.
The two teams got together and we hung out and that's, that was kind of the genesis of our friendship.
And then over the years I mean starting all the way in 2018, there's enough events and conferences and recruiting events that we go to together that we've had a lot of opportunities to hang out and along the way we've just also become dear friends.
Miriam Ingber: It's nice to have someone who's new with you so that you can ask all the dumb questions to someone who doesn't think they're dumb.
So that, that was really nice.
And then I agree with Kristi.
It's, you know, our jobs are hard in certain ways that it can be hard to explain to people who aren't in them.
And so it's really nice to have someone who really instinctively gets the pressures that we're under, uh, the complicated things we have to deal with.
Someone you trust to ask questions of and to get advice from.
And yeah, it's so nice to have such a good friend come from work, which is not always the way it happens.
Jennifer-Lee: No.
And I think a lot of people think too, like, you know, you guys are from two separate institutions and you're doing a podcast together, uh, that a lot of these schools compete against each other.
So you wouldn't necessarily see the two of you on the same podcast.
Miriam Ingber: Can I just say something about the competition thing because I think I'll speak for both of us, but Kristi can always correct me.
I don't view it as a competition.
I don't think either of us does.
I think both of us want both with the podcast, with applicants to help people to optimize their outcomes, make the best choices for themselves.
And I think both of us feel that way.
Even if we admit some of the same people, I think both of us hope that all of those folks will end up at the place that is the best fit for them.
And it's not, that's not always Harvard.
It's not always Yale.
Um, it depends on the person and their goals and their life circumstances.
And so I don't view it as, oh, we won or we lost with anything like that.
I view it as helping people, you know, make good choices for themselves and for their lives.
Neil McPhedran: That's great.
That's a really nice to hear.
So you formed this friendship, um, and you, um, were collaborating and then you came together to form a podcast, Navigating Law School Admissions.
Um, so can you just sort of tell us a little bit about the podcast?
Kristi Jobson: Sure.
So it came out of the pandemic.
So much of law school recruitment and admissions recruitment prior to the pandemic had really been based on travel.
You go around different university campuses, you meet people in person, you try to convince them to apply, you give them some good advice.
There were all sorts of different, what are called law school forum events where tons and tons of law schools come together to host sort of a fair for applicants to get to know a bunch of schools at once.
These were very travel based, and as you can imagine, they weren't a great fit for 2020.
There'd been some virtual events prior to the pandemic.
There was lots of virtual events that were, um, kind of launching during that time.
And Miriam and I think back to May 2020, it was very early in the pandemic, the two of us were like, let's think if there's something a little bit different we could do than yet another Zoom webinar, um, or Zoom meeting.
Um, and that's where we really landed on the idea of the podcast.
I think both of us liked the, the fact that a podcast is a piece of static content.
Someone could listen to it at any time when it's convenient for them, going on a walk, washing the dishes.
Um, you can rewind a podcast.
You can hear the advice again.
Um, and both of, I think we were very attracted to that and also to the idea of doing something a little unique during that pandemic time period.
Miriam Ingber: And I think one thing we both wanted with the podcast is for it not to be the way a lot of recruiting is very, recruiting is focused on your school in a way, um, convincing people to apply to your school, giving them advice about being the best applicant for your school.
I think with the podcast, we wanted to take it up a level to give more general advice, um, about how to be a good law school applicant to any school.
And for that reason, we thought having two of us would help.
And we also brought in a wide range of guests, um, from schools.
Some were similar to ours, some were different from across the country.
So we could try to give that more general advice.
Neil McPhedran: So who is the audience?
Obviously prospective students.
Is that the main audience or is there sort of a broader audience that you're trying to reach as well?
Kristi Jobson: I suppose it would be anybody interested in law school admissions, prospective law students, people who are thinking about going to law school in the future, people who are applying right now or preparing their applications are probably the most obvious answer.
But also perhaps the professors and advisors who work with those students to put together their applications.
We've heard from all sorts of folks who listened to the podcast.
Miriam Ingber: Yeah, I think pre law advisors often find it useful.
Uh, when I was in a different job, it always used to feel like students would listen more to a third party than to me when I was in the counseling role.
And we've had some pre law advisors who will say, you're saying all the things that I'm saying, but it really helps to have you reinforce it.
So I do think pre law advisors are another.
I think, unexpected, a little bit Kristi, part of the audience.
Not my mother.
My mother listened to one episode and never listened again.
Kristi Jobson: I contrast, my mother's listened to every episode.
Miriam Ingber: Well, that's it.
That says something about our moms.
I love you, mom.
Neil McPhedran: I guess the fact that, as you mentioned earlier on, when you're talking about the show itself, it has a wider aperture of not just focused on your two respective schools.
But there's a bigger picture to law school admin, administrations overall, I guess that's how that appeals then to the, to, uh, also a wider audience than just someone who might be interested in applying for one of your two schools.
Miriam Ingber: That's certainly what we hope.
Jennifer-Lee: And the thing is, like, I know we talked to Yale Admissions, um, and how they do it, uh, in another podcast that we did.
And it was interesting because I asked them, like, do you find a lot of parents are listening to the podcasts to understand what the requirements are for the kids to get in.
Do you find that as well?
Miriam Ingber: I don't know.
I feel like I'm sure there are some parents of perspective or actual law school applicants who are listening.
I think our hope, and I think generally it's true that at the graduate school stage, parents are substantially less involved than they are at the undergraduate stage.
I hope for my own children to be minimally involved at all stages, but certainly for graduate school, we'll see how that goes.
So I think, you know, some of our applicants are in their forties, right?
Or in their thirties.
And, you know, even the ones who are in their, you know, earlier, mid twenties are often fairly independent.
So I do think, I'm sure there's parents out there who listen, um, and help support their children.
But I think that's a much smaller part of our audience.
Kristi Jobson: I have heard of some people's significant others listening because I've definitely had spouses of current HLS students who run into me and they say, this is going to sound really weird, but we spent a lot of time listening to your podcast.
Miriam Ingber: Yeah, that's very sweet.
I will say when I call everyone we admit, and I would say like a good twenty-five to thirty percent of the time they will say, oh my gosh, it's so crazy to hear your voice in real life because I've heard it so much on the podcast.
Uh, and that's really nice to know that there's folks that end up in our communities who we've, we've hopefully helped, uh, and we're sort of a little bit familiar to them already.
Jennifer-Lee: And you actually call them?
Oh, I was gonna say, call them to admit.
I thought you just get a letter saying like, you're in.
Kristi Jobson: Oh, no, we call everybody.
Miriam Ingber: We call everybody.
Kristi Jobson: Yeah.
Jennifer-Lee: Personal touch, love it.
Okay.
Kristi Jobson: I had someone at 1L orientation tell me, your voice is so much deeper in real life.
And he, I was like, oh, really?
And he goes, yeah, I'm a big listener to your podcast, but I always listen to it on one point two five speed.
Neil McPhedran: It's funny how people do that.
Miriam Ingber: Much higher, like munchkins.
Uh, yeah, I did have someone say, oh my gosh, you sound just like your podcast voice.
And I was like, I only have one voice, it's the same voice.
I don't have a special podcast voice.
I thought that was really cute too.
Jennifer-Lee: It's so funny that people think that you have different voices for that because I come from radio and everyone's like, do your radio voice.
I'm like, no, my radio voice is my regular voice.
Miriam Ingber: It's just my voice.
Neil McPhedran: Um, I want to circle back on the collaboration, uh, of the quote unquote, non competing as you shared with us.
But when you concepted this podcast, did you have to convince anyone?
Sort of administrators or what not to get blessing, for to collaborate on the podcast together?
Miriam Ingber: We went rogue.
We did it with no permission from anybody.
No, I'm just kidding.
I'm just kidding.
Don't give me that face Kristi.
No, we both spoke to our deans who are actually very friendly with each other as well.
Neil McPhedran: Hm.
Miriam Ingber: We both spoke to our office of public affairs to make sure that they were on board we, did we speak to the GC?
Maybe we spoke to the GC too?
Kristi Jobson: I don't know about that one.
Miriam Ingber: I don't remember, we got all the appropriate permissions.
But honestly, no one blanched it at all.
I think everyone's like, oh, this is really cool.
It's, you know, the pandemic was a time where people were trying a lot of different things.
So I don't know how much that played into the flexibility, um, that people had.
But I think our view that this is not a zero sum game, I think is, is pretty widely shared, uh, among our deans, our colleagues.
Neil McPhedran: And then not only is it two schools collaborating, but you, as you mentioned, you've, uh, over some of the episodes, you've interviewed other admissions officers from other schools as well, too, so.
Kristi Jobson: We always had that as part of the vision for the podcast of having kind of guest stars to come in and keep things lively.
It's a little more, it's fun for us to work with our colleagues.
And, um, we also were kind of cognizant that maybe listeners would get tired of just our two voices episode after episode.
And, you know, frankly, it's helpful to have a couple of different perspectives on these topics, because not all schools think about applications quite the same way.
Not all schools read applications the same way, so we were very intentional about incorporating guests from other schools and from a wide variety of schools.
So we have everyone from Brooklyn Law to UC Berkeley to UT Austin to Northwestern on our podcast.
Um, and it was a lot of fun.
It was really a lot of fun.
Jennifer-Lee: And for both of you, do you ever find that you learn something new that maybe you'll try in the admissions process from talking to everybody else?
Or do you find it's pretty standard from every admissions law office?
Miriam Ingber: I feel like one of my biggest takeaways was despite how different some of our schools are, how similar the underlying values, um, the things that we cared about, the way that we thought about things was.
Of course, everyone's process is different.
You know, everyone has slightly different priorities, but I was actually most surprised by the similarities rather than the differences.
I don't know Kristi, if you felt,
Kristi Jobson: I'd agree with that.
It's like philosophically, most all of us are really on the same page and the differences are more in the details.
Neil McPhedran: In listening to a number of the episodes, I, one of the things that really rang out for me was the energy, the humor, the banter that the two of you have.
And I think we're hearing some of it here in our conversation today.
Um, uh, so obviously that's, uh, that is for the most part, who you guys are.
But also, um, going into it when you're kind of thinking about your tone, your voice in the podcast, was that something that's always been since the beginning or is that something you found along the way, or sort of, how did things evolve over the seasons?
Kristi Jobson: I think we definitely got much more comfortable with recording over time.
Both with the process of recording, even having those moments where you start a conversation, you realize you want to kind of, it's good content, but you want to state something a little bit differently and cutting.
We got much better at editing and the value of editing over time.
And I think we are more conversational as the episodes go on.
In the first few episodes that we stuck a bit more to kind of the framework and outline plan we had.
Um, I think just naturally and organically we realized over the, especially recording the first season, that some of the best content that came out of it is when we went offscript, if you will.
Um, when a tangent took us down to, um, a whole different conversation.
Maybe all of which was cut except for a good ninety seconds, but those ninety seconds really made the episode feel fresh and informative.
And so we leaned more into that in our second and third seasons.
And then when we did the live recordings, of course we were live.
Miriam Ingber: I'll just say two things on that.
One is these were, we had very detailed scripts and I think that part of what gave us a framework for freedom was knowing exactly what was coming, what we wanted to say, I think that really helped.
And then the banter was sort of in between the points in our script.
And then I think the other thing that let me at least feel, like I could say whatever I wanted is that I have total trust in Kristi, that if I said later, oh my gosh, I actually don't feel comfortable having that be broadcast.
She'd be like, oh yeah, no problem.
Or that she would sometimes say to me, I was listening back, you said this.
I'm not sure you would want that to be out.
That could be misunderstood.
And so I think the fact that we really trust each other and respect each other's judgment also really helps, uh, to feel comfortable kind of taking some risks a little bit, uh, in a structure.
Jennifer-Lee: You're speaking my language.
I tell this to people all the time.
If you want to feel or sound free and loose and casual, you have to do the homework.
You have to be prepped.
There is no way to sound like that if you don't know what you're doing.
Miriam Ingber: That's right.
That's right.
We had, we just, we had very detailed bullet point by bullet point scripts, and we didn't always use all of it.
We didn't always, sometimes we would jump around a little bit, but I do agree a hundred percent.
Uh, and I think that's a separate point, which is how much work a podcast is.
I think if you want it to be good, and I'm sure you all know that because this is what you do.
But you know, it is a lot of work.
And that was another advantage of working with Kristi is I think we really both took on a laboring aura pretty equally.
Uh, and that let us do, do more because we weren't trying to do it on our own.
Jennifer-Lee: Did you guys have a team at all help you?
Or was it just the two of you creating this content and editing it and pushing it out?
Kristi Jobson: We have a wonderful, wonderful producer who edited everything for us.
His name's Ryan McEvoy.
Shout out to Ryan.
Jennifer-Lee: Wasn't that a tennis player?
Miriam Ingber: That's different.
I play tennis and close, but not quite.
Jennifer-Lee: Oh, okay.
Miriam Ingber: I did sometimes have someone on my team listen to the final edit.
Just to make sure that I didn't go rogue as I can sometimes, as Kristi knows, have a tendency to do.
I would be like, just listen to this and tell me if I said anything that I should not have said.
And the answer was always like, no, it was totally fine.
You were okay, but it was nice sometimes just to have a totally objective outsider.
Give me a gut check.
Jennifer-Lee: You don't want to get fired.
Miriam Ingber: Definitely not.
Kristi Jobson: You definitely don't want to get fired.
Um, but all of this script writing, all of the conceptualization.
Definitely each of our teams were kind of helpful in brainstorming, but it was really just the two of us.
Neil McPhedran: I think there's some really good insights in there for us, just about, you know, especially the, um, the part about, um, as a listener, I listened to the podcast and it just, and you can feel the, as it was, as mentioned, the banter and the comfortableness and the quote unquote ad lib.
But to hear and to know that you guys were actually on the other end, quite planned out and scripted and thought through and that was liberating.
I think is a really good insight to, um, you know, for us all, uh, in the space of creating podcasts for sure.
So.
Um, events.
Now that is, um, there's a number of episodes, uh, where you're on a live tour and you're actually recording these live events and you're turning that into episodes.
Um, any advice for fellow higher ed podcasters out there who are thinking about incorporating live events into actual podcast recordings?
Kristi Jobson: I do have some.
I have, well, there's, I think there's a bunch of things we did well, but there's one thing in particular that I really appreciated listening back to the podcast.
And that was the incorporation of audience members into the actual audio.
Of course, we warned everybody this is being recorded.
If you get, um, you know, if you get on the microphone, you're going to end up potentially on the podcast.
But I actually think, um, the audience members really liked that and appreciated it.
Um, for those who haven't listened to our podcast yet, we always start each episode with a game.
The game, there's a different game on every single episode and they aim to be both fun and informative about law school admissions.
And so in that spirit, we did games with all of our, um, our live episodes.
We did two truths and a lie.
What were some of the other ones we did live?
Miriam Ingber: What else did we do?
I don't know.
That's the one that sticks out at me.
I think we did that one a couple of times because it was so fun.
Kristi Jobson: We did different truths and lies.
Miriam Ingber: Different truths and lies for each, for different, different events.
Yeah.
Kristi Jobson: But it worked really well live.
Um, and that was just not only was it really fun in the moment because it kind of kicked off the event with people getting up and guessing.
But you can really hear in the audio that there's energy in the audience.
Um, you can hear people laughing.
Um, and I do think that some of the listeners who later became applicants who were on those live, uh, episodes really appreciated that.
Miriam Ingber: Yeah, I will say that those episodes are quite different in style than the regular ones because they're much more like a regular information session that we would do live.
And so instead of focusing in detail on a single topic, which is what most of the other episodes were, they went fairly quickly through the whole, set of admissions topics.
Uh, and each live episode was quite similar to the others.
Obviously the Q and A was different, the game was different, but the content itself was more similar.
So it was, uh, it was a very different kind of episode.
Uh, and I think we did, how many did we do, Kristi?
Five or six of those?
And I think we only, we recorded a couple.
We recorded maybe two.
Kristi Jobson: We did two that we recorded in full where we had kind of varied up the, um, the order of the presentation and some of the content.
So those two you can find completely full, um, from front to back.
And then the other two we kept the other two live events.
Miriam Ingber: The games.
Kristi Jobson: We kept, the games and,
Miriam Ingber: The Q & A.
Kristi Jobson: The live Q & A.
Miriam Ingber: Yeah.
Kristi Jobson: And I think one of us just recorded an intro saying, you know, for this event in Seattle, a lot of the content in the middle was really similar to our Boston episodes.
So, we're just gonna do the Q& A and the game.
Um, and that was a, uh, if you will, game time decision that we made when we were editing.
We're like, wow, I don't know if we want to release four of the exact same episodes back to back.
So it's another piece of advice, I guess, is, uh, um, give yourself permission for your plans to change if you're planning on doing some live recording.
Jennifer-Lee: Yeah.
And sound is a whole new issue of live recording, but I could go down that rabbit hole forever.
But
Miriam Ingber: I think we were lucky because we had a lot of tech support from the law firms, which like very generously hosted us.
So we mostly were able to outsource that piece to sort of internal experts, which I think really made it possible to do the live recordings.
I don't think we could have done it.
Certainly if I had been responsible for any part of that, I could barely get my headphones to work today, it would have been a disaster.
Kristi is better than me, but still maybe that would have been slightly above her pay grade too.
Jennifer-Lee: It takes a team.
And it's interesting that you guys are talking about the live events and engagement.
When you're doing a live recording of a podcast, it really creates a different air and it really engages the audience in a different way, where they get to feel like they're part of something special.
We were talking to another university here in Canada and they were saying the reason they love going to the podcast was they were doing these archaic events where like people would come in and they wouldn't be mic'd that properly and they would have regular video.
And then the video really wouldn't translate that well of the panel onto, um, their channels and then people really want to engage with it.
But the fact that you guys are taking your podcast format and bringing people into the show, I think that's a very smart idea.
Kristi Jobson: Well, thanks.
Miriam Ingber: Thank you.
Kristi Jobson: We had a lot of fun.
We really had a lot of fun with it.
Neil McPhedran: And in your regular episodes, you're also, you also lead off each episode with a game or like a quiz or like, there's some really interesting things that you did.
Like I like that was really interesting sort of programming, if you will, in, into the episode, just starting with something quite engaging.
Um, and real actually, so you, like I was listening to one episode where you brought in real excerpts from, uh, admissions and you talked about them and what was real and what wasn't.
Like, so like, you were really opening up the process, I thought there in a fun, in a fun way.
Miriam Ingber: The games, I think, were sometimes the hardest part of the episode to write because, you know, it was, you had to be really creative often with them.
But I think that when they worked, and some worked really well, I think some were slightly maybe less successful.
But I think the ones that worked really well, like really worked.
Uh, they were really fun.
You were able to get content out in a really, creative way, which is often, in the law maybe less fun and creative.
So it was nice to find a way to do that.
Kristi Jobson: I think it also helps to, from the very beginning, we were like, let's have a real structure for how we want each episode to go.
And so we all, we thought of each episode as a three part structure.
Game, content, and then listener Q & A.
And we invited listeners to submit questions to our joint Gmail, um, and so they could submit those questions that we read, or they could submit a recording of themselves asking a question, which we really liked.
But that was always sort of the three parts, game, content, Q & A.
And it helped when it sat down, when we sat down to draft each episode, it really helped to have that structure in mind.
Jennifer-Lee: Doing a podcast like this, has there been anything that has surprised you as you've gone through this process that maybe you didn't think would happen when you did a podcast?
Miriam Ingber: I'm shocked by how many people have listened, to be totally honest.
Like when we got the first, I think someone internally asked, oh, do you know how many people are listening?
I was like, I have no idea.
I could be, you know, Kristi's mom and my mom on the first episode.
And then when we pulled the numbers, I think I was sort of astounded, actually, Kristi at the number of listens that we had.
Uh, and it was a nice feeling.
It felt like we had definitely put a lot of work into it.
You sort of throw it out into this like black hole and you have no idea if it's resonating in any way, if it's going anywhere, and it was really nice that it seemed to be helping people in the way that we had hoped.
Kristi Jobson: One thing that has surprised me is the extent to which I have needed to become an expert on something I said off the cuff years and years ago.
Miriam Ingber: Yes.
Kristi Jobson: Because sometimes at events now or on webinars, people will ask well, in season two, episode four, you made this particular point about letters of recommendation.
And I'm curious whether that still holds true if X, Y, and Z.
And I've had this moment off the cuff all the time over the last couple of years where I'm like, what did I say?
Miriam Ingber: You know what was the most controversial thing I think we ever said, was when we gave advice about when to retake and not retake the LSAT on that first season?
I forget what we said.
It was at scores such and such, like probably don't retake it, like it may be questionable.
And you see that pop up all the time in questions to us in Reddit where they're like, well, they said this, you know, some people are like, so you shouldn't, some people say, oh, they were totally wrong.
It's like a very tiny moment that I don't think either of us put a ton of thought into.
And it sort of has taken on a life of its own.
And in hindsight, I don't, I kind of wish we had not said anything at all.
It sort of became too big and much bigger than we intended, for certainly than I intended.
Kristi Jobson: And that was actually a somewhat unscripted moment.
We had a bullet point about, we were going to talk about retakes and we had some of the thoughts we were going to make sure to get out there.
Um, but that's sort of, when to retake on a particular number, I think we were just sort of speculating to each other.
Miriam Ingber: We were spitballing
Kristi Jobson: Yeah.
Miriam Ingber: Very generally and now it's become this controversial and sort of, you know, commandment that neither of us really intended.
So you do have to be, I think, a little bit careful.
You don't really know what's going to resonate or take hold.
And if I could take one thing back, it would be that.
Jennifer-Lee: Good to know.
Miriam Ingber: I'm sure there's many others, but that's the one that jumps to my mind.
Jennifer-Lee: You're viral now.
Um, another thing leading on that though, because you guys have been stopped since the fall, are you finding that you're getting emails being like, come back, create new content?
Like, where did you go?
Kristi Jobson: Well, after we finished our third seasons, we did first season fall 2020, second fall 2021.
And the third, fall 2022, we announced at the beginning of that third season that it would be our final full season and that after that it would be special episodes and special events.
Um, so, we have definitely had people reach out and hope for us to bring it back, but we're, we feel like we came up with three really excellent seasons worth of content.
Um, and so we're, at least for now our plan is to stick with special events like the live tour and um, special episodes for the next bit.
Jennifer-Lee: Or creating some more viral moments.
Neil McPhedran: Yeah, I was going to say, I mean, it's, that's a, seems like a really smart strategy.
You've created this evergreen content.
You've just told us how up to today, you maybe not exactly today, but metaphorically speaking today, that you get comments, um, people are listening all the way back into the catalog.
So that's great.
Do you use specific episodes or things that you refer back to in any of your ongoing communication?
Like, oh, and also go reference this in season two, where we talked about such and such, or how are you using that, this evergreen content ongoing.
Miriam Ingber: I think, I don't think I would be able to even remember specific content for specific episodes personally.
Um, I do think that when we have, we get general questions to the inbox, we have, you know, a little, they're called snippets that someone on the team who was frontline on the inbox can use and one of them, if the questions seem to be pretty high level or pretty introductory, oh, we have this podcast.
You might want to listen to it.
There's a lot of good content there.
And it's still on our website and we certainly hope that it's something that people can continue.
I mean, lots of things have changed on law school admissions.
So I do have in my head, at what point do we really have to go back and listen to everything and make sure we still agree with it, that there is some there's stuff in there that, you know, time has overtaken.
Um, but I don't know that we're quite at that point yet.
Kristi Jobson: We have these application toolkits for each component of the application.
So we have an application toolkit for your resume, an application toolkit for your letters of recommendation, um, your written essays that you submit.
And for each of those toolkits, we, I think we link to relevant episodes.
Um,
Miriam Ingber: And that's really smart.
Kristi Jobson: That's helpful.
Yeah.
They're useful to have, and I find that my team uses them sometimes too.
If you get a question in an information session, um, you might answer the question directly and say, and if you want to hear a whole, you know, forty minutes of discussion about personal statements, you should check out this particular set of episodes that Miriam and Kristi did.
It gives someone some action items and some homework to kind of keep learning more after an event ends.
Neil McPhedran: Uh, well, that's, uh, that's great looking forward to, uh, future episodes.
But it's wonderful that you've got that three seasons worth of resources that you can utilize.
And, um, and then, and people are constantly listening to on ongoing.
I think that's, um, you know, for, it's for a lot of higher education podcasts, I think that's, it's the type of content that that's being created, it's not news and topical necessarily.
It's really something that you can lean into and you can use on, ongoing.
So, um, thank you so much for your time today and for all of your insights and for telling us about your podcast, any sort of last tips you might want to impart upon your fellow higher education podcasters?
Kristi Jobson: If you are thinking about launching a podcast, get a really good editor that you trust.
Um, Ryan, our editor, didn't necessarily have, um, he wasn't really involved in the substance and the creation of the content.
But he was so invaluable in the process of making it really feel coherent as a listener.
Miriam Ingber: Yeah.
I think it's important to think through whether you have the bandwidth to commit to something like this and to kind of have a plan, a more long term plan.
So I think it's easy to say, oh, wouldn't it be fun to do an episode?
And it is fun to do an episode, but we sort of viewed this as at a minimum, we committed to one season.
And we sat down and we said, these are going to be the, I think it was eight topics that we're going to do this season.
And I'm going to take the lead on drafting these four.
Kristi's going to do these four.
And we kind of had a sense of when we want, we put together a calendar, when we would record by when we would have drafts by.
It is a very, uh, rewarding project to do.
But it's also a lot of work and I think you just have to think about what you're committing to in advance.
Is it one season?
We did one and then committed to a second.
And then Kristi sort of twisted my arm to do a third and then we kind of knew that would be it and then the live stuff was just sort of a fun add on.
But I do think as Kristi said, you need to have the resources to support you.
You need to have your own time, which is always at a premium in any job, that you're willing to commit to it and kind of think about it from, uh, from the top down before you dive in to the small stuff.
Kristi Jobson: I have one related tip.
Don't necessarily blow all of your content in the first season.
We almost kind of made that mistake, but I, by the time we'd recorded a couple of episodes I think we were thinking maybe this could be a multi season arc, so we kind of parking lotted a bunch of different ideas with the thought of we don't need to necessarily cover this in this season because we might have a second.
And we went back to that parking lot of ideas.
It was just the shared Google Doc where we kind of dropped all of these one off concepts that we haven't covered in the first season.
And it was so invaluable in storyboarding out what the second season would look like and the whole arc.
Miriam Ingber: And then I, that made me think of one other thing, which is to really let the content drive the podcast.
So, you know, there were episodes that we started writing them up and there just wasn't enough there to even be a full episode.
So we would mush them together.
Or resumes comes to mind where there was so much content and we had such a good guest host that we ended up making into two episodes because we felt like we had so much to say and that there was, you know, more we could share on it.
And so I do think it's a little bit of flexibility.
And you kind of don't know until you start to write it down, what you have to say, whether it's going to work.
And I think we were both really good at you know, changing midstream as we needed to make sure that, that it would be successful.
Jennifer-Lee: I love that you guys knew when to stop, too.
The thing is, just because you have a podcast doesn't mean it needs to be ten seasons.
If it's three seasons, that's great.
But the problem is most people don't stop properly or they only start a few episodes and they don't continue on.
So I think what you guys have been doing is brilliant.
And also knowing that it's a strategy, it's part of a strategy for marketing the admissions process for both schools.
And a lot of times people don't think when they're creating a podcast, whether it be personal, business, uh, university, college, what the goal is around the podcast, and you guys did it.
And that's why it's successful.
Is because you guys prepped it, you thought about it and you knew when to stop.
And I know when to stop for this interview, which is we're wrapping it up.
Miriam Ingber: Thanks for having us.
This was a pleasure.
Neil McPhedran: Yeah, that was really nice.
Thank you so much for sharing so much.
Jennifer-Lee: We learned so much.
I want to apply to law school, even though I don't, but you guys made me feel inspired.
Kristi Jobson: Well, we look forward to reading your application soon.
Jennifer-Lee: There we go.
Miriam Ingber: Good luck with that
Neil McPhedran: Oh my goodness.
Okay, Jen, that was great.
Uh, I learned a lot.
I know you probably learned a lot.
Miriam and Kristi, they are fun and it's obvious in chatting with them, and the conversation we had with them just now, that is why their personalities come out, uh, on their podcasts, um, themselves.
Jennifer-Lee: And they're just great friends.
And that's just something that I talk about to a lot of people.
I said, if you want to do a co hosting podcast, you've got to have that spark between you.
You don't necessarily have to know each other as long as Kristi and Miriam did or do.
But, uh, you have to have something that connects you.
And even after our call, it was cute because they're like, oh, are you going to be there at Tuesday for this conference?
Well, I am.
So you can really see that bond and it shines through and that's why their podcast is successful.
Neil McPhedran: Yeah, yeah.
And there were some really good, um, uh, tips there.
I thought there was like, you know, multiple insights for us to learn from.
Um, I really appreciated, especially, um, and I know you did too, the part where they talked about how they were quite scripted, really spent a lot of time up front thinking about like what the episode was going to be about, um, and so on and so forth, and scripting it and planning it.
Um, but that allowed them to have that extra personality and that allowed them to ad lib more and what not.
And I think that there's this thought out there that, well, we need to ad lib.
We don't need to script it.
We're just going to wing it.
And, you know, we don't want feedback that it sounds like we're reading off of a script or whatever.
But really shows you the opposite, that that show is just full of personality and full of banter.
You know, for them to tell us and to share with us that no, no, we were super scripted, really rings through to some of the advice that we give to, I know the shows we work with Jen, about the importance of planning and scripting ahead of time.
Jennifer-Lee: I can't stress it enough, and I'm glad that they finally brought that to attention, because I think there's a lot of misconceptions out there, not just in higher ed podcasting space but in a lot of podcasting space.
And the reason people are at the top of the podcasting game is exactly what they talk about is scripting.
That's what makes you sound casual, not just turning on a mic and not knowing what to say.
And of course, always knowing how to end.
Neil McPhedran: Not so fast.
We had promised an update on our journey to infuse Podcasting 2.0 into Continuing Studies.
So as we said, in each episode, we're going to be adding this quick little segment that's going to focus on one feature that we've updated.
And we're going to just talk to you about how that process went on our end and what that means.
So the good thing is, we use Transistor.fm for our hosting platform.
And Transistor actually already supports nine Podcasting 2.0 elements, tags.
Including chapters, person tag, pod role, OP3 analytics, pod ping, and the transcript tag, just to name a few.
So, we've got a long runway of things we can utilize just by default with Transistor.fm.
So in this first segment, we're going to focus on transcripts, or the transcript tag, as this is a key one that's quite prevalent and is actually the first element the Apple podcast app has adopted and has good support across many of the hosting platforms.
I'd actually also argue that it's quite important for higher ed, the transcript tag that is, where a lot of the institutions have a mandate or a best practice to include transcripts and closed captioning for accessibility.
So this is a key one, I think, for all of us higher ed podcasters.
Now, full disclosure, we have been including transcripts in every episode since we launched Continuing Studies, but we weren't fully doing it right.
And so this process actually has helped us do it properly.
And we're going to share that with you.
Now, there's a ton of other amazing apps.
I know we're going to talk about Apple this time, but there's a ton of other amazing apps that also support transcripts.
So we'd encourage you to seek one of those out.
For example, TrueFans, Podcast Guru, Podcast Addict, Castomatic, Podcast, just to name a few.
PodcastIndex.org, we'll link to that in our show notes, has a great resource of all the apps, hosts, and directories utilizing Podcasting 2.0.
We'll talk about that a bunch probably.
Okay.
So as I said, we're going to focus on Apple as it's, it is the most popular app that has adopted the transcript tag.
I'd also, if you haven't checked it out in Apple, I encourage you to check it out in action.
It's quite slick, actually.
The audio and transcript sync up so you can read along with the audio.
The words kind of like light up and move along.
It's pretty cool actually.
You can even search by phrase, by word.
So, really, uh, interesting opportunity there, and I would say, especially for academia.
Some really cool opportunities, I think, the, uh, the transcript tag.
Okay, so where were we going wrong?
We being Continuing Studies.
So up until this episode you're listening to right now, we've been posting our transcripts as a TXT file, a text file.
So we go into Transistor, we drop, we've already been doing our transcripts, human proofread, et cetera.
And then we're dropping them in there as a TXT file.
So not fully wrong, but it's not optimized for Apple and some of the other apps.
Apple actually has a really good resource page that we're going to link to in our show notes.
So check that out.
It's for podcasters and it's for making sure you're got everything dialed for, um, transcripts.
So there's one thing you need to do before you get the ball rolling with Apple is you need to go into your Apple Connect account, update in the transcript settings and your settings section there, you'll see there's an update for transcripts, and you want to hit the toggle that says display transcripts I provide.
Or auto generated transcripts by Apple if one isn't provided.
The default in Apple is they're going to, if you're choosing transcripts, they're going to, they're going to generate them for you.
We want them using our proofread version of the transcript that has all the accurate speaker names, designations, everything's spelled properly.
Basically, we're in control.
It's not some AI that is serving it up.
We want to hit that toggle.
It's a one time thing.
Once you've done it, you're off to the, you're off to the races.
Okay, so now, next thing is, I mentioned the TXT file.
Files that Apple says we should lean into and most other apps is called, there's a VTT or an SRT file.
And actually the VTT is the best option.
It's the most robust, it has the most metadata infused.
So that's the one we're going with.
We used a Descript for our transcripts.
There's a bunch of other options out there that I'm sure that you use.
I think most of them, uh, if not all of them, have options for all of these different, uh, versions.
So once you've got your proofread transcript, um, for us in Descript, then we exported it out of Descript as a VTT file.
Okay.
Then we upload that into, um, that VTT file into transistor.
So just like we've already been doing, we just, we're doing the wrong file format.
And then now it's going to be rocking and rolling and ready for Apple and all the other apps to recognize.
And they're going to be grabbing that proofread transcript that, um, that, uh, we, uh, designated.
There you have it.
Not really a ton of extra work.
Transcript tag, check, we've sorted it out on our end.
You can sort it out on your end.
I'd really encourage you to do that.
So please reach out with any questions or suggestions.
We'd love to hear about your Podcasting 2.0 journey.
Our email is in the show notes.
Okay, next up, we're going to explore chapters in our next episode.
So stay tuned for that.
Okay.
Now, Jen, read us out.
Jennifer-Lee: So thank you for tuning into the Continuing Studies Podcast, a podcast for higher education podcasters.
We hope you found this episode informative and inspiring.
If you enjoyed the show, we encourage you to follow and subscribe to our podcast on your preferred platform, so you never miss an episode.
But if you found this episode particularly valuable, please consider sharing it with your friends and colleagues who also might be interested in higher education podcasts.
We also invite you to join your peers on higheredpods.com, where you can connect with other podcasters in higher education and learn from others in the field.
Thank you for being part of our community.
We look forward to continuing to bring you valuable insights and conversations around a higher education podcast.
See you in the next episode.