Gimlet Academy

Producing any podcast begins with an idea — a pitch. And for a pitch to turn into a successful show or episode, it needs to have certain ingredients. Host Alex Blumberg shares his formula for developing successful pitches. He’s joined by current and former colleagues who weigh in with their own advice and experiences, including Jack Hitt (Uncivil, This American Life), Jorge Just (Heavyweight, Every...

What happens after you’re happy with your pitch and you’re ready to start recording? You have to book interviews with people who will bring your show idea or story to life. Host Alex Blumberg sits down with Wallace Mack (The Nod, Mogul), Flora Lichtman (Every Little Thing), and PJ Vogt (Reply All) to explore best practices for how to identify potential guests, how to connect with them, and what to ...

Many great audio stories are made from hours of interview tape. How do you decide what tape to include in your story and what to cut? In this episode, host Alex Blumberg explains how to separate the good tape from the bad by dissecting clips from the podcasts Startup Podcast and Mogul.

There’s a lot more to doing a good interview than knowing how to position a microphone or monitor audio levels. Host Alex Blumberg walks through the rules of interviewing with colleague Matthew Nelson (Mogul, We Came to Win). They show why the best thing you can do before an interview is to prepare and what to do when things inevitably don’t go as you planned.

One of the most challenging and rewarding steps of producing a podcast is figuring out how to structure it -- how to highlight your best tape and the information your listener needs to know and how to keep it all moving so that you maintain their attention. Host Alex Blumberg outlines general rules to guide story structure with examples from Every Little Thing and Conviction. And colleagues Sruthi ...