The initial process of creating the podcast was confusing and ambiguous. Shiven and I began by spending several hours on the website FiveThirtyEight making sure that we knew everything the website had to offer. During this time our argument began to take it shape. However, there was still a major question that we needed to answer, “how do we communicate this argument in a podcast?” We started the podcast with a description of FiveThirtyEight. In my opinion, this segment is the least interesting. It sounds extremely formal and scripted. After we had finished

the description, we decided to record Shiven and I talking about random points for the next hour. This segment is where the podcast gained its life. Although a majority of the time was not impressive, there were very insightful moments of conversation. The key for us to complete a successful podcast would be to edit the audio to shift out the wheat from the chaff. This task proved to be harder than we initially anticipated. Neither Shiven nor I had any previous experience using Audacity to edit audio, and we had to learn on the fly. If we had more time to work on the podcast, we would have spent more time editing and cleaning up the audio. Specifically, we would have spent more time on the intro and the transition from the intro to the main arguments.

Although there was frustration in editing the podcast, the time that we had to spend reviewing our audio provided useful insight into our arguments. The necessary focus on our arguments developed a more clear understanding of the near form of rhetorical composition that we used to create the podcast. The general process of conveying an argument to an audience is the same in a podcast as it is in writing. However, it is evident that the method is vastly different. It is this difference in methods that makes a podcast interesting. The podcast must actively keep listeners interested. In a written essay a reader can easily reread a portion that was confusing or monotonous, but in a podcast, it is much more difficult for a listener to play the audio back. It is import to consider the way the audience will consume the podcast, and I hope to improve in this regard in the next podcast.