Michelle Daniel: It's the responsibility, I think, of ivory towers to become ivory towers of connection, of communication, of, you know, open broadcasting, essentially.
Because, yeah, they have a responsibility to the public and I think this is one thing that podcasting can really help with.
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.
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: That's right, Jen.
We can all learn from each other and staying with that theme, we just had a couple of back to back episodes about the University of Virginia podcast network.
And just sort of keeping with the network theme here, we've got another one this week where we are chatting with Michelle Daniel, who is one of the founders and creators of the Texas Podcast Network, which is out of the University of Texas at Austin, where their tagline is, the conversations changing the world.
It's a pretty cool podcast network.
I've had my eyes on it for a few years.
Great website, really well pulled together podcast network, actually.
Jennifer-Lee: Yeah.
And I like the fact that she was really realistic about why they started it.
I guess this campus is like massive.
Like we think our campuses are massive, but we know they're nothing compared to some of the ones in the US.
And she's like, you know, there's like,
Neil McPhedran: Especially Texas, because everything's bigger in Texas, right?
Jennifer-Lee: Everything's bigger in Texas.
You just wanted to say that.
There you go.
Neil McPhedran: I did.
Jennifer-Lee: I was leading you in.
But yeah, this campus has like a North, a South, a West, an East.
And just before we get in, if you want to be part of an amazing network, make sure you join us on our higher education podcasting community at HigherEdPods.Com.
So let's get into the interview.
We got Michelle Daniel and she created the podcast network at the University of Texas in Austin.
How are you doing?
Michelle Daniel: I'm doing very well.
Thank you.
Jennifer-Lee: I always like to ask people this question.
Because podcasting is still relatively new.
I always want to know, how did you even get into podcasting?
How did that become on your radar?
Michelle Daniel: Yeah, okay.
I never listened to podcasts at all.
When I got into it, I still hadn't listened to a single podcast.
But, so it was, when I returned to University of Texas at Austin as a grad student.
Obviously done my bachelors there, but it was many years, many, many years ago.
Um, but so I returned in 2018 to do, um, graduate work in Russian, Eastern European and Eurasian studies, and I was conducting political science research in Ukraine, studying youth engagement in civil society and things like that, because it was the election of Volodymyr Zelensky at the time.
And so it was a big deal.
My group, I was kind of like the graduate student advisor to a bunch of undergrads that were conducting the study.
And so we were actually doing live Skype at the time calls with university students in Ukraine.
It struck me how ridiculously excited these young people were in Ukraine to talk to Americans.
And I was like, in this age of hyper connectivity, how is it that we've gotten to this point where we still feel so disconnected and just a simple Skype call is somehow exciting us and inspiring too, in a weird way.
And, you know, as I was listening to these young people in Ukraine, talking about their experiences and all this stuff, I was like, wow.
There's so many stories out there that just aren't getting told.
I kind of took that to heart a little bit and I was sitting around for a couple weeks thereafter and I was like, there's got to be a way to generate connection, um, that's more sustained than just like one Skype call.
Again, I never listened to podcasts.
I didn't care for them.
It was very, very weird.
And also I was a trained musician.
And so, and as a musician and a firm radio lover, and, um, I was just like, ah, podcast, stepchild of radio.
But then I thought here is actually a medium that maybe could help us generate this kind of connection that I'm looking for, because it's low cost and, um, it's a very democratic kind of medium.
And so I actually started dragging a bunch of students into it.
And I was like, you guys have a lot to say.
Let's start interviewing other students, other countries.
Let's get a conversation going.
It was funny because the immediate response to the first couple episodes of what I called the Slavic Connection was huge.
We had an instant audience that I didn't even try.
I didn't know anything about marketing.
Didn't know how to, you know, push a podcast out into the world.
I learned everything myself from scratch.
I just kind of made things up as I went, but yeah, that's kind of how I got started.
And then from there, I was just this podcast believer because I saw the instant connections that we were able to create and the stories we were able to tell through the medium.
Jennifer-Lee: The power of audio in general.
I love it.
Neil McPhedran: So when you say you saw results almost instantly, was that an audience there instantly, or you just mean that you were able to create those connections, start to tell those stories and so on and so forth?
Michelle Daniel: Yeah.
I mean, I think it's both.
So we got surprising download numbers right away.
That was one thing.
And, you know, and it wasn't necessarily the countries we were aiming for at first, right?
I mean we had, obviously I'd been talking about Ukraine and so we were talking about trying to produce some sort of cultural connection.
We were hoping we would talk about taking some more esoteric topics to the average American, but then making it relatable, especially in Slavic studies at that specific time.
And so, yeah, we, we saw instant download numbers, but we saw it mainly in the West, the US, Canada, Australia, UK.
Those are still, like, to this day and it's like four years later, top downloading countries, but then we also noticed that whenever we reached out to a professor or anybody really who wanted to, you know, whom we wanted to speak to, they were instantly like, oh, my gosh, yes, we would love to be on and this, you know, so student run, uh, grassroots type show.
It was crazy because everyone was so on board and so excited to get their research and personal stories out there, and talk about why they were interested in Russia, why they were interested in Bulgaria, why they cared about Russian incursion into Syria, things like that.
I mean, it was super motivating at the time.
We tapped into something we had no clue, you know, was there and just ready to receive and it, yeah, it just fountained from there, so.
Jennifer-Lee: Did you have any stories of people coming up to you or writing to you saying that they love this podcast, or like inspire them, or they had a personal story that was relatable?
Can you share one of those?
Michelle Daniel: I think, I have a lot of stories and my memory is kind of shabby when it comes to that, which I wish it weren't.
But early on, I would say in the first year or two years, we used to get listener feedback emails.
So that was kind of cool.
We would get them from all over the place.
Some of the feedback was like, oh, you need to work on your audio.
But then other feedback was like, you have become my new podcast home.
It would be someone in Finland who was a Slavophile or something.
And he works in some NGO or something, but he couldn't, um, be in the country that, I don't know, for some reason, like maybe he worked in Moscow previously.
I don't remember, but he was just like, ah, this feels like my new podcast home.
Other fun things, just randomly on the streets in the last year, I had a couple of friends visiting California and he was a guest, um, speaker and also a guest host at one point for one of my podcasts.
And he ran into someone just randomly and he was like, based on their interest, he said, oh, you should listen to this podcast from the University of Texas.
And she's like, oh my god, I listen to that one religiously.
And it was just such a cool moment.
He was like, yeah, well, I know the executive producer and creator and all this stuff.
And so she was just so excited.
In terms of us inspiring other people to start things, we definitely have.
What we have liked to do is take the show on the road a little bit and go to giant conventions that are relevant to, to our area of study or whatever.
There's this one convention that happens yearly, the Association of Slavic East European and Eurasian Studies.
They get like two, three thousand people that attend every year physically from all around the world.
For three years, we actually were invited by the association to be the podcasters.
And so we got to have our own room.
And our own studio set up for the four days of the conference.
And we would be able to kind of both interview people from around the world we wouldn't get to have face time with, but also spread the word about us too.
And so it was through a lot of those interactions that they were like, you know, people from Lithuania or, Latvia or any country in Eurasia, broadly speaking, would be like, oh, this is wonderful.
I didn't even know this existed.
I'm going to go and start my own podcast now with our students and at our universities.
So we've had a lot of really good moments.
I wish I could remember more specific stories, but yeah, there's a lot of them.
Jennifer-Lee: Those are good.
I like the fact that this is something that, we're starting to hear a little bit more that's becoming more popular, and especially in the post secondary education space.
The fact that you're doing these tours with your podcast and doing live podcasting, like that, there's so much potential for that, college tours.
There's so many different areas you could do because it's engaging everybody.
And it's something that university podcasts.
or just in general, any post secondary education podcast could use this as a tool.
Michelle Daniel: There is no replacement for the human connection.
Just getting that face time, sitting down at a table.
It's an incredible experience for both the hosts and the, the guests too.
I mean, we've, we've never had, okay, we have had bad guests, but we have never had a bad experience.
Neil McPhedran: Right.
Jennifer-Lee: Everyone has one of those guests.
Michelle Daniel: I've been called Ice Queen and things like that before because I will just flat out not publish an episode with a guest that I just don't think was up to the task.
Jennifer-Lee: No, that's called quality control.
That's called,
Michelle Daniel: I know, exactly.
You do what you gotta do.
Because really, at the end of the day, it's not about you, and it's not about your guests, it's about your audience, and it's, yeah, you're servicing the listener, you want to generate quality, yeah, quality control, but you want to curate your content, right?
And maintaining quality, it is really, really tough.
And actually, you know, it's interesting, because we've had a couple um, I am the kind of leader that is like, I want people to contribute their own ideas, I want you to steer.
If you're particularly passionate about something, let's go.
But sometimes that has led me to more maybe taking some of my podcasts in too niche of direction because that's where one of the hosts wanted to go.
And so we've had external feedback that says, okay, it's getting too niche.
I'm feeling alienated.
And now, and so then I, we have to course correct.
Jennifer-Lee: But it's important, listening to feedback and it doesn't matter if you're a professional.
You still have to self edit yourself.
There's still, again, we're servicing the listener.
We've got to take them on a journey.
And some people like, let's be honest here and I'm not putting anyone down.
Some people are just not meant to be podcasters and that's fine.
Michelle Daniel: Yeah, it's totally fine.
But I think that whole self editing thing, you know, that's something that academia, this is a continuing studies, higher education podcast.
You know, academia needs to adapt to the modern media and information environment.
This is really why I got into podcasting, but I couldn't have articulated it that way at the time because, you know, I was new, but to the whole thing, reshaping and rethinking how we ivory tower is really important to stay relevant, to stay needed, and to stay applicable.
See, I mean, anybody who wants to research quantum mechanics can just Google it and find something out there.
They don't have to get a graduate degree in it.
They don't have to necessarily pay thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars to enter universities to gain this coveted knowledge.
What is the value proposition of a university?
Because university degrees don't mean quite what they used to mean, and they don't get you the jobs that you want.
It's the responsibility, I think, of ivory towers to become ivory towers of connection, of communication, of, you know, open broadcasting, essentially.
Because yeah, they have a responsibility to the public.
I think this is one thing that podcasting can really help with to address that disconnect that has existed for so long.
Even HG Wells wrote about it in 1937, I believe.
He was like, universities are the bane of all of our existence.
And he's like, they don't try, they don't do anything.
They're not connecting to the public the way they should be, was essentially his criticism.
And it's funny because it's kind of true today still.
Jennifer-Lee: And honestly, I think that could be a lot of industries.
COVID really shook a lot of things up and showed different ways of conducting business, but we're not there yet.
There's a lot of places where podcasting could go and expand, but people still want, you know, that's the fight between traditional and like new age.
So that being said, where would you like to see, uh, post secondary education go with podcasting?
Like your dream would be?
Michelle Daniel: I think every department needs to have some sort of either network within their particular area of study or something like that, where they're all communicating with each other, because it's not only that universities aren't communicating with communities, but they're not communicating with each other.
There's so much knowledge generation, right?
Maybe there's a lot of knowledge dissemination too.
But, it just goes out there and doesn't necessarily even start any conversations.
Probably like ninety percent of the books that are published don't actually get published from faculty and from very, very academic presses and stuff like that.
They're, they're not leading to anything significant.
So I guess what I would like to see is just more networks of podcasts, not just across the university but across universities.
I kind of see that could be the next step to supplanting in a way some things like peer reviews and things like that.
So, you know, a way to be more open about the double blind peer reviews and stuff like that, because at least if you're creating networks across the, I don't know, genetics or just pick a topic, any topic, if you have a podcast network dedicated to this across all the universities, it could be really, really great to be a tool for dissemination to the public, but also be a tool for just sharing information across university spaces.
So I think that's kind of where I would ideally go, but obviously that takes a lot of driven people who are going to crack the whip and say, okay, let's head there.
Neil McPhedran: Well, that's where we're trying to go with Higher Ed Pods, that sort of macro network, but that's a great segue into what else you've had a strong hand in creating, which is the Texas Podcast Network brought to you by the University of Texas, Austin.
I like the tagline, conversations changing the world.
Maybe just tell us a little bit about that.
So you were into your podcast journey and then how did the network come about?
Michelle Daniel: Yeah.
So this was pre pandemic, just barely.
I became this podcast evangelist, absolutely everywhere I went and people were starting to get annoyed with me, like really.
So I was still in grad school, but in 2019, I was on my way out and serving in one of our student government bodies.
And at that point, I was on the leadership team and I was like, this university needs a podcast network.
And if you look at Texas A&M University, they have a podcast network, and they had it before we had our podcast network.
I discovered this, and I was like, well, so, for those who don't know, A&M is our big rival here in Texas.
It is a massive sore point if Texas is in any way behind Texas A&M, so I saw that they had their own network and I used that in formulating my initial proposal because I said, we can't be behind Texas A&M, are y'all kidding me like right now?
But again, pre COVID, the university just didn't want to listen about it.
I had some very patronizing meetings with the dean of students, the president, and the provost.
I was in those meetings regularly, but every time I would be like, we need to start a podcast for the university that's a flagship podcast and then create this podcast network.
Every time I was shut down.
And you know, I pretty much almost gave up and then COVID happened.
That was weirdly the best thing in a horrible, horrible sort of way.
But now the university realized that all their previous channels of communication were really just insufficient, and especially in terms of communicating with their own students and with prospective students.
I mean, the University of Texas prides itself on being the most recognized branded university in the world.
And I'm like, okay, great.
But you guys don't have a podcast or podcast network.
So then I went back to them after everybody was down in the dumps about COVID, I rewrote my proposal as a means to generate genuine connection in a really super isolated and disconnected environment.
That worked and the director of marketing jumped on it.
We got a team together and pulled all the podcast people I knew on campus, an IT team as well, who I knew produced a lot of the podcasts for various faculty and departments and brought them to the office of the provost, where the director of marketing and everybody is.
I was like, okay, let's make this happen.
And so within six months, the network rolled out.
So that's, that's how, that's how it all got started.
Neil McPhedran: So what was the process once you had a green light for going with the network?
What was the process to get other podcasts on board?
Michelle Daniel: So I had, because I was already vested in the podcast role by this point, I was really scouring campus for what podcasts existed.
I was shocked at how many there were and how little anybody in my orbit knew about them.
And so I had already started making this huge list.
And so when the director of marketing did finally respond to my emails, I was ready for our first meeting and then our second meeting, I was like, here's a list.
It was a pretty substantial list.
Some of the technicalities, I guess, we're like, okay, well, are we going to have, if we're going to have these people on the network, do we have to have content guidelines, one, right?
Do we have to have a certain branding scheme?
Do we have to have a checker to make sure there's quality control for all the podcasts?
Ultimately, I advocated no for at least two of those things.
Yes, I said we needed some sort of branding guidelines.
Because UT is so big on their branding and they've done a great job building up what they've got right now.
I wanted to make sure this was not seen as some scraggly orphan.
I wanted it to be very tied to the university brand because the university brand was strong.
And I think that is really key for anybody who's gonna start a podcast network or a podcast within an organization.
It needs to be tied to what already exists.
And what already has some strength, even if it's not that strong of a brand, at least adding this podcast will help to increase it too.
So if you've made the brand identity correct.
So we tried to keep it simple.
People just needed to attach to their current designs, the Texas wordmark, which is just like the shield and the very specific font that is actually, you know, UT has the trademark on the word Texas, believe it or not.
Jennifer-Lee: Is that really a thing?
Neil McPhedran: That's amazing.
Michelle Daniel: It's like you can get sued if you use Texas in a specific font that looks a little bit like ours.
Jennifer-Lee: I feel like that's like, it's good.
But like, I was just like, I didn't realize you could do that to like apply.
Michelle Daniel: Our lawyers are amazing.
So then the, the barrier to entry wasn't that high.
We weren't telling people, okay, you have to completely redesign your entire graphics.
And, and we weren't going to provide them support for that, right?
Because especially we're starting out, it's like, where's the money going to really come from for building out the, the kind of support that we wanted.
So, you know, baby steps, but this was something that people could all sign on to.
And we had so much enthusiasm.
It was crazy how excited
all of these various podcasters across campus were to be seen and recognized by the tower.
We actually have a tower.
So that's why I say tower, but it was lovely.
And there was so much initial feelings of camaraderie and, oh, you want to be on my podcast?
I'll be on your podcast.
And even though the subjects are completely disparate, right?
Like an athletics podcast and a science podcast, we're like, yeah, let's do something.
And that is great because that's the kind of cross pollination and intersectionality that we need at universities.
The University of Texas is huge and our siloification is just through the roof.
It was lovely to see the kind of connections being generated internally for a greater purpose.
So we actually use Slack.
That's how we got everybody together.
There was a Slack channel created and then, yeah.
Neil McPhedran: So you just kind of opened it up and they just started coming out of the woodwork, I would imagine.
I'm sure you previously had known a handful of them, and then I'm sure a bunch just came out of the woodwork that you didn't, that you didn't even know about.
Michelle Daniel: And actually, you know, I didn't even connect, actually connect with most of the other podcasters who exist on campus.
Because like I said, we're all in silos.
The campus is huge.
It's like, if I want to walk to that building where X podcasters in, do I got time?
Probably not.
It's a trek.
And so I had actually never met any of them, except one person.
There was only one faculty person who was a podcaster.
He's got a great podcast called This is Democracy, which was running way before I started mine, and he was the only person I knew.
Then I met twenty, twenty-five more people after that.
So it was great.
Jennifer-Lee: Yeah.
I didn't realize it was that big, I'm looking at it on a map right now.
I'm like, oh, okay.
That's a lot.
You would get your steps in though.
Michelle Daniel: It's a beautiful campus.
Neil McPhedran: What tips would you share for other university podcasters out there looking to launch a podcast network?
Michelle Daniel: So, to launch a podcast network specifically, I mean, you have to get buy in from central administration, but I actually did a lot of things ad hoc without permission.
I'm a firm believer in build it, they will come and brand it to believe it.
And then when I do all those things, they come and they're like, oh wow, this is great.
And they claim credit for what I've done.
And that's fine.
I don't care about that because really it's about the success of the project and the people you reach that matters.
So in the absence of central administration support, which probably a lot of people have trouble getting, especially in big public universities, you'd have trouble getting attention and support from your university leadership, and that's fine.
Don't be disheartened.
Just get together with the few other podcasters you know.
It doesn't take a whole lot to say, okay, we're going to create some sort of group chat, group something.
I mean, 'cause that's, that's the first step really.
Get everybody talking, get everybody together.
Get everybody agreeing on terms and conditions and, and then also try to align yourself with your university brand.
You will get attention because your central administration will think that you are worth showcasing.
And then the other thing is you really do want a central web space, basically.
So that is where you need the university support, but you can talk to your IT people.
Neil McPhedran: Yeah, I guess so if you, if you build up that, if you, if you get a handful of podcasters aligned and organized, it'll be a lot easier to go through a thing, but I totally agree.
That is important.
And the website that has been built for the Texas Podcast Network is great.
I like the little logo with, with a little audio lines there, but I think that really is a key thing to see it all together and to see all of these podcasts, their cover art all living on a page and then linking off to their Spotify and Apple.
So that's all super powerful.
Michelle Daniel: Right.
And it's so simple, honestly, and actually, you'll notice that the domain that says UTexas dot edu slash Texas hyphen podcast hyphen network, but it has a vanity domain, which I had advocated strongly for.
And that's podcast dot UTexas dot edu.
And so you type that in, it goes straight to this, and that is just, I mean, I cannot convey to you how big a deal it is to get that kind of subdomain in our university.
Most people will, will clamor for, oh, we want something dot UTexas dot edu.
And most of them will not get it unless they're college levels, like the McCombs School of Business or the College of Natural Sciences.
And then you can get your subdomain in front of UTexas dot edu.
So, this was a huge victory, even if they had to reroute it, but whatever, it doesn't matter.
Neil McPhedran: That's great.
I mean, it's how we found you actually, it was the power of Google and search.
And so by putting it there, it bubbles up to the top when you start to type in university podcast networks, the Texas Podcast Network.
And actually the other one that bubbles to the top is University of Chicago are sort of the two shining lights that seem to be doing the best from a search engine optimization.
So that's, that's tremendous, but it shows you the power, back to your point about the one of the keys is that central place.
But also I'm sure it helps for other podcasts at the university to stumble across it, discover it.
And want to be part of it.
Michelle Daniel: Right.
And so a lot of, you know, there were, I don't remember exactly how many to start, but I think it was maybe only like twelve at the most.
And, you know, there's more than that now, I haven't looked.
But yeah, you know, they all reached out themselves after the fact, right.
We didn't even have to go evangelizing.
They heard about it from their other, you know, podcast friends.
And, and yeah, they're like, yes, we want to be part of this.
We want to be recognized by the university and supported in that way.
And, you know, it was cool when we did launch it February, 2021, that the president of the university himself promoted it on Twitter and, you know, all the other social platforms.
And so that really helps a lot.
I was really excited about that launch because it also coincided with one of the other podcasts I did, which was The Other Side of Campus.
And so those two things happened at the same time.
I was really thrilled to be part of it and honored.
Neil McPhedran: That's great.
Jennifer-Lee: I just love everything that you're doing, and I think you're just on the pulse, which is great.
I feel like we can keep talking to you for like forever because you've just, you're switched on like you're like the new generation of podcasters.
Michelle Daniel: I think there was something to be said for the fact that I'm a musician.
I came from a background as a performer for years and years and years.
I mean, I'm about to be thirty-nine, so I spent like twenty-five years almost as a performer in one way or another, live performance, right?
And so that power of connecting with the audience is just a feeling that I wanted to recapture when I stopped being a live performer and a concert pianist and whatever else.
And I feel like I can capture that with podcasting because I know I have listeners and I get feedback.
And, you know, I'm creating a performance essentially that is recorded because I'm very big on post edits.
And putting music in and sound design and all that jazz.
Neil McPhedran: That's wonderful.
Well, I think, um, we've definitely kept you long enough, Michelle.
It's, uh, been wonderful.
Some really good insights, I think, both from your personal podcasting journey, but also some really good insights into building a university podcast network as other of our colleagues are out there listening that are starting to grapple with this or thinking about it.
So that's been super insightful.
Thank you so much.
Michelle Daniel: Oh, it's been my absolute pleasure and I'm so grateful to be able to talk to y'all.
Jennifer-Lee: Good.
Thank you.
Neil McPhedran: Thanks.
Michelle Daniel: Thank you.
Neil McPhedran: Well, Jen, we learned a lot there.
I really like these episodes where we kind of dig into the podcasting journey and I thought it was really interesting how, you know, Michelle jumped in on her own and started her own podcast then pulled students into the orbit of the podcast and then started kind of looking around her university.
Had to kind of like push things forward and get the buy in from faculty.
And like we've heard a couple of times, kind of the whole COVID thing sort of really helped, I think, create some of these networks that sort of forced people together a little bit more from sort of a digital tissue.
Jennifer-Lee: Yeah.
It just brought in another way for us to communicate and be connected.
And now that a lot of us are predominantly online, it still keeps us connected.
So I think it's a great idea.
Another great episode about networks.
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