sent from: London, UK. destination: UNKNOWN!

1. CONTENT: you and your friends BS-ing about pop culture isn’t enough. Have an angle on the material that you believe to be fresh.

2. FORMAT: only talented raconteurs can talk aimlessly for more than a couple of minutes and keep an audience engaged. I’m thinking Greg Proops,Tom Wilson, Garrison Keillor. Chances are you’re not one of those people. Format gives you structure, and a way out of a corner when you run out of things to say.

3. MAKE IT SOUND GOOD: your podcast doesn’t need to sound like it was mastered at Skywalker Sound, but it should be better than pulling out your iPhone on a table of a wind-swept Starbucks and hitting ‘record’.

4. NO EATING. Seriously. No eating while you’re recording.

5. NO PLAYING STUFF OFF YOUR PHONES. This is barely tolerable in real life.

6. NO “AUDIBLE GOOGLING”. If you don’t know something, bullshit. That’s half the fun.

7. CONSTANTLY LISTEN TO YOURSELF AND IMPROVE. It’s brilliant that we live in a time when broadcasting is available to all and that rigid rules don’t exist. That means you need to listen to yourself. Be brutal, get rid of things that aren’t working.

8. DON’T APOLOGISE. DON’T EXPLAIN. No more than 10% of your podcast time should be spend on letters/feedback/talking about last week’s episode. If I listened to it, I know what sucked. If I didn’t, I don’t care.