In this episode, Pilar talks to Matt Ballantine, co-host of the WB-40 podcast.
Matt co-hosts the WB-40 podcast with Chris Weston. Matt has always loved radio, as a kid and at university (back in the day when we spliced tape!). Matt set up the podcast to “see what happened”. Six and a half years later, they’re still at it!
Matt felt like he needed someone else to run the show with him, in order to keep it going and continue generating ideas. Chris was the perfect partner as they have a lot in common but also they are different in what they’ve done and in how they approach things.
Matt has been working for the last 30 years in the technology industry, but for organisations that are not in the tech space, like housing associations and the BBC. He has a degree in Sociology and worked in leadership development. Co-host Chris has worked in facilities management, and other technology and management roles. The commonalities in their careers but their slightly different approaches to their work are a good combination for the podcast.
WB40 is led by a guiding principle, the show is about what you need to know in order to manage technology in 2022 and beyond. They’ve had people talk about the changing nature of work, autonomous vehicles, defence analysis, etc.
The format has evolved and now consists mainly of a guest interview with them, but they record it almost as live, with minimal edits. The name, WB-40 comes from West-Ballantine, and the aspiration for the show to be 40 minutes. They’ve experimented with book clubs, audio from listeners about books, and other features.
A community has evolved around the show, meeting in Signal to support each other and it feels like on the back of the podcast, they’ve created something of value to others. It’s the thing Matt is most proud of, and it happened by accident! A few listeners set the group up, and Matt and Chris invited more people into it. The group has even involved its own language and culture. Some of the community members have stepped in as co-hosts, they have Ask WB-40 shows to answer questions from them and obtain feedback and ideas from them.
Matt has also had three pieces of work from the podcast, and they even piloted podcasting as a research method in an organisation. The theory was that, if people guesting on a show give more thoughtful and measured replies than in ordinary conversation, then using podcasting as part of research for the discovery stage in technology projects would provide different insights to those from using traditional research methods.
The project didn’t evolve, but Matt is still interested in experimenting with it. In terms of production costs, it’s quite easy to produce decent quality audio, so producing something that’s polished enough to be consumable, but feels rough enough that it doesn’t feel definite, makes it attractive as a research tool.
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Matt finds that his training in research methodologies and coaching helps him to drive the interviews with the guests. You also need to be able to be spontaneous and have split focus, to stay in the conversation while looking at the clock etc. As co-hosts they don’t need to do a lot of research, but they pick guests and themes that they have some knowledge off. What they do plan in advance is certain themes, topics and ideas and share these with the guest before they start recording – of course they will take the conversation wherever it takes them as it evolves.
The only times they haven’t published interviews is when they’ve had problems with the audio. There was another time when the comms department of the company a guest worked in asked for some edits once the episode had been published. Matt came close to unpublishing the episode because they were being asked to change the tone and content significantly, but they came to a compromise that worked.
Matt edits the conversation as soon as they’re done with the recording, using Audacity and Descript. This helps the production process to be sustainable and get the episodes out on time (as opposed to Pilar, who sometimes holds onto the interviews for months on her hard disk before they are released…) Aside from the arranging of guests, producing a whole episode takes him about 3 hours.
Sometimes guests have an impact on our thinking, and this was the case with episode 197 on Kinetic Defence, with guest Alex Woolfson. As well as for these moments, Matt continues podcasting because it allows him to follow his curiosity and invite people to come and talk to him and his co-host about things they’re interested in.
Finally, thinking about someone setting up a new podcast, Matt suggests starting with an open question that the show aims to answer, in the case of WB-40 it’s “What do you need to manage technology in 2022 and beyond?”
As well as thinking about who your audience is, consider what you want them to do as a result of listening – in their case help expand the knowledge of listeners by taking the show in unexpected directions, or places adjacent to their world, but related to it.
Some of the shows Matt enjoys are the 9-10 year old episodes from Radio Lab, which have great audio design, and an episode of This American Life on the month in the life of the car dealership. James O’Brien long form interviews, and Richard Herring’ s conversations.
Get in touch if you would like some coaching and advice yourself or connect on Twitter @Inpodcasting
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