Podcasting 101

Welcome to the saint benedict’s table podcast.

We are delighted you will be joining us on an episode. Here is some helpful information before we go live.

About us

We are a congregation of the Anglican Church of Canada and located in Winnipeg. We worship weekly on Sunday evenings and those who join us are a lively and eclectic mix of old(er) and young(er) people. We are known for our music and for our explorations of faith and the arts. Since we began in 2004 we’ve published five books, four CDs, created a series of Advent podcasts for the Anglican Church of Canada, hosted art shows, concerts and dances. We consider theology over a pint/glass, movies in the dark and have an innovative artist-in-residence program. We ventured early onto the digital commons, just launched our sixth iteration of our website and have turned attention to our podcast. Speaking of which…

About our podcast work

Long before it was the-thing-to-do we launched a podcast, and since that day in December 2006 we have created and published almost 500 episodes. We recently overhauled things and in early 2020 we launched a new podcast. Almost everything was updated, from the look and feel, to the editorial, publishing frequency and the back-end digital architecture. On our hosting site you can get a sense of the wide range of topics we've broadcast over the years.

The new podcast is still a saint benedict’s table production - and saint ben’s is the publisher - but we now have three thematic channels:

• From the Table: In-house and regular content like sermons, music clips and workshops

• Ruah: Gifts to the wider church; content largely aimed at an audience of fellow believers. The name evokes the restless, innovative, searching and creative presence emblematic of the Holy Spirit (and God over the water’s of creation) and the sense of discovery and sharing we hope to embody in this content channel.

• Ancient/Future: Gifts to the culture; content aimed at those outside the church. This will feature shows that explore new ideas and applications of the ancient wisdom to which we cleave to the issues, developments and challenges of our present and future society.

In the confirmation email you received (which directed you to this page) there will be mention on which channel your audio will stream.

Our podcast appears on all the major directories (iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Podcast, iHeartRadio and TuneIn/Alexa). You can also stream it from our host location. We have listeners around the world. Each episode is embedded on our website and appears on the directories. All episodes are available to anyone with a computer or mobile device.

Our tone

In our podcasts we strive to present material in a friendly, engaged and lively manner. We believe learning best happens when there’s a conversational tone, with energy and a warm connection between speaker and listener. So, unless we are dealing with heavy and dark topics, there’s no need for earnest seriousness or a sombre tone during our chat. We invite you to be winsome, revelatory, open and enthusiastic. We are big fans of curiosity, thoughtfulness and we’re even fond of laughter.

We’re also fond of grace and are grateful there are second chances. Obviously we extend that to all guests and we want to assure you that unless our recording is live-to-air (very rare) you can always take another run at a reply or statement if you feel you would rather present things differently. We edit all episodes and will ensure we include the right ’take’.

Technical

Technology can be intimidating but we are trying to make it easy and non-threatening. If your recording is in the studio don’t be overwhelmed when you arrive by the mics, stands, cables and blinking lights. Once things get underway just think of the microphone as a telephone that you don’t have to hold. And even better than a phone, we can edit things if you want to restate them.

If your recording is remote we’ve likely sent you a Zencastr link. This is a way for us to get clear audio without being in the same room. The key with this kind of interview is to have a set of headphones with a mic (the standard issue Apple headphones are perfect). When the time we’ve arranged to chat arrives, on a desktop or laptop computer simply click on the link in the booking email and then talk like it’s a regular telephone call. Zencastr only works on Firefox or Chrome (both browsers are free, downloadable for Mac or PC and the interview link should be opened in one or the other).

Contact us if you need to change something or if you have questions.

Welcome to our digital commons.