Deep Explore Reflection
I originally set out to create and publish 5-10 podcast episodes about informing practitioners and
the public about integrative medicine, while also touching on best practices and ethical dilemmas around
integrative medicine. I was planning to interview researchers, clinical and community practitioners with
my two mentors/co-hosts about their work and how exactly integrative medicine modalities could be
made more accessible to everyone regardless of socioeconomic background.
I found that I was ambitious in my initial aim when considering all the different steps of creating
a podcast. From the beginning, I had to find equipment and optimize my audio set up to record episodes
which required contacting the library tech specialist and distributing the microphones to my co-hosts. I
also had to contact musicians to acquire theme music for the podcast, which was met with fees of $500 to
splice their music for our podcast. Once the audio set ups were optimized and we all found a time to meet,
recording the introductory episode went smoothly.
When it came time to edit the introductory episode and one of the interviews, I realized that the
learning curve for editing over an hour of audio was steeper than I expected. I started to understand the
reasoning behind why people either take audio editing classes or hire audio engineers to edit their
podcasts if they have no prior experience with creating a podcast. The other issue I ran into was in
reaching out to people to interview because most of my cold emails were met without a response. In
retrospect, I wish I had sent more follow-up emails to people or asked my mentors to contact interviewees
as well. Not having enough people to interview ended up becoming the rate limiting step in the overall
process, along with the time required to edit the episodes.
By the end of the process, I have 2 podcast episodes that are in the final stages of editing. I am
extremely grateful for the patience of my co-hosts, the expertise and equipment of the library tech
specialist, and the person I was able to interview for the podcast. If I continue the podcast, I want to
network with people in the integrative medicine community more to start discussions about the podcast
and get more people interested in being interviewed.