Just Wondering

R.J. Risueño is a cis male who identifies as gay. In May, he will graduate with a master’s degree in Speech-Language Pathology and an emphasis in Multilingualism/Multiculturalism. Risueño’s clinical interests lie in providing speech and language services for underserved individuals, particularly people of color and members of the LGBTQ+ community. For his graduate capstone project, Risueño and a graduate student in social work will present a webinar for transgender adolescents and their parents. The workshop will focus on voice/communication and mental health strategies. Risueño volunteers with Arizona LDS LGBTQ+ (ALL), a local organization

that provides support for LGBTQ+ individuals who have at some point been affiliated with the Mormon religion. Risueño’s current projects center on bringing voice and communication to the forefront of health for trans and gender non-conforming individuals in the Phoenix metropolitan area.

R.J.'s Blog: https://rjrisueno.com/

Welcome to the intro episode for the Just Wondering Podcast with your host, me, Jantzen Russell. If we’re being honest, not very many people listen to these intro episodes, lovingly referred to sometimes as episode zero, so here’s the question: why have them at all?

I’d like to shoot straight with you on this subject and tell you exactly why they exist, since it’s obviously not for the purpose of creating good content.

The intro episode, contrary to popular belief actually has nothing to do with introducing the podcast and its subject matter at all (which, by the way, for this podcast, is all about answering the childlike questions we ran out of time to answer before we grew up). Instead, the intro episode is about introducing the podcast to different listening platforms.

You see, all of the major podcasting platforms (like Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Stitcher, to name a few) need to get their podcasts from somewhere. Otherwise, podcasters would need to upload all of their episodes to each platform individually, in perpetuity. Well, that would be a hassle, so instead, podcasters upload their episodes to what are known as a distributors (I’m using Anchor.fm for this podcast, but I’ve also used a service called Podbean for another podcast).

These distributors create RSS feeds for your podcast, which are essentially a lines of code that Spotify and the rest of them can use to retrieve episodes on a regular basis.

Now, getting your podcast’s RSS feed to be used by Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and the others can take time because it needs to go through an approval process—which can sometimes take up to two weeks!

This is where our intro episode comes in. Before someone (or a company) launches a podcast, they’ll launch an intro episode so they can obtain an RSS feed from their distributor. Once they have that RSS code, they’ll distribute it to all of the podcast platforms to get approved. Then, once the RSS feed is approved, the podcaster can check all of the platforms to make sure they’re live. If they are, they can then officially “launch” the podcast. If you were to launch your episodes without being distributed first, your reach for episodes would be very small.

So you see, the intro episode to a podcast really has very little to do with actually creating an episode, and instead has everything to do with manipulating an algorithm to get a podcast off the ground.

And that’s why podcast intros exist. You know, in case you were just wondering.