Making Better Music Choices

Doug Fraser: 00:00:02

The shortest distance between your podcast and listeners' emotions is music.

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Welcome to the pod lab, a Podcast Movement original series.

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I'm Doug Fraser, producer, and host of the NPR podcast, "What We Do."

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Today, we're looking at how to choose better music for your podcast.

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And we're going to tackle that from two perspectives.

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The first is intro music and the second is narrative music.

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So let's start with intro music.

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Your intro music will likely be the same for every episode.

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So it's important that it suits your show.

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When trying to choose an intro song for a podcast.

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I consider three main questions.

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Question number one, what are the show's themes?

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So you have an opportunity here to tie the show's themes and the music together, which makes the whole show feel more cohesive.

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You can do that with the genre of a song or more literally with the lyrics.

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Question number two.

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What do you want a listener to feel?

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If your show is about pop culture, maybe you want the intro music to be energetic and have a bit of a, a snap to the step.

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If your show is about the infinite possibilities of the cosmos, you may want something more fluid and thought provoking.

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The third question is more personal.

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And this is really, to me, I think the biggest question of the three.

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Does this song make you excited to work on your podcast?

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When you're listening to your favorite podcasts and you hear the show's music, you get that sense of...

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being locked into the show, right?

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The music kicks on, you know, that the show you love is about to start it's the same with TV shows, right?

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That's what intro music can do.

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It's, it's sort of, um, a warmup.

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It's an invitation into this world that you're about to enter, whether that be fiction or nonfiction.

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It doesn't matter.

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Now that feeling you get with your favorite shows, you need to feel for your own show.

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We all know podcasts take a lot of time to produce.

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There's so many things you have to do so many minor decisions you have to make in order to create this bigger piece.

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So make sure that you spend the time to get that intro song that really gets you pumped to work on your show.

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I don't know about you, but when it comes to picking a song, my first choice is often the safe choice.

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It's one that may work, but it doesn't have, um, like a grit to it.

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It doesn't have the feeling that...

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it doesn't necessarily bring the show to life.

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Sure.

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It could fit nicely, but I don't want nice.

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I want the listener to feel something in nice, rarely evokes emotions.

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So for me, the safe choice is usually a bit boring.

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So here's the challenge to consider when picking your song.

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What if you didn't play it safe?

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What if instead you went with a track that was less middle of the road and more hitting someone in the middle of the chest?

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So less of this:

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and more of this:

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Now let's move on to the second perspective for today, which might be my favorite topic.

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And that's finding better music for a narrative podcast, the kind of music that breathes life into a scene.

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And a side note here besides being my favorite topic, it's also one of my biggest time-wasters.

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What happens is I, uh, I visit a place like art list or any other music subscription service.

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And...

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I just become obsessed with collecting.

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I hear a good song and it may not even be for the project that I'm working on right now, but I want to put it in my cart and have it just in case in the future that I may need it for another show.

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Right?

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And so it turns into this ridiculous situation where I will, instead of going into pick one song, spending 15 minutes to grab it, and then moving forward, it'll be two or three hours

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So as silly as this may sound, if I don't give myself a time limit on how long I'm allowed to search for music, I could honestly just do that all day.

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Cause it's so much fun to do.

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I thought this was a problem that was just for me, but reaching out to other people in the community, it sounds like this is a pretty common thing, where, selecting music...

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the time that we take to do that is way, way more than other pieces of podcasts we may work on because it becomes this obsession.

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So a way that I get around that is I make sure that I set a time for myself.

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Let's say, I want to go two songs.

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I'll just say 30 minutes for that selection.

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Um, average about 15 minutes of song.

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And that works well for me.

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Maybe you need a little bit more time.

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Maybe you need a little bit less time, but I definitely reccomend setting a time limit.

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That being said, while I was working on this very episode, you're listening to.

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I, uh, forgot to set a time limit.

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So I found a bunch of extra songs like this one called "Wide Open" by Aaron Kellam.

MUSIC: 00:05:25

My heart's been ripped wide open, so many mixed emotions.

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I don't really have a place for it in the episode.

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But every time I hear it, it makes me want to dance.

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So I just wanted to share with you guys

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. MUSIC: I've been set free.

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I've spent a liftetime running...

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Anyway, back to the topic at hand, the three big questions I ask when trying to pick better narrative music for my podcasts are:

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"What is this scene about?"

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"What do I want the listener to feel?"

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And "What do I want the listener to see?"

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Let's say you're telling a story about a world famous circus performer.

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Okay, so this is one I'm just making up.

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It's a variation on a few Tim Burton and Pixar movies, but, uh, yeah, let's just go with it and see where it takes us.

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So the circus performer let's call him Jacob.

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Jacob was at the top of the world until he was under the foot of an elephant.

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The weight of it crushed him, sending him to the afterlife

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Here, I want a similar sounding song to the opening.

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One that kind of feels like the circus, but gives you an additional sense of movement because now Jacob is in the streets of Death Mountain, where everyone, including himself is a ghost.

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So there's a little bit of panic and a little bit confusion weaved in there as well.

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But still, I want it to be light and playful, right?

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This is not a drama.

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Over time, Jacob befriends a young girl named Kat who shows him the ropes of being a ghost and they go out to a local ghost pub and have a few too many drinks.

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spirits.

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I want the music in this scene to not just give the feeling of a night out drinking, but to make you see it as well.

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And one big helper here is the use of sound effects, which I'm not using because we'll cover that in a future episode.

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So for now, we're at the bar with Jacob and Kat.

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And Kat in a stroke of drunken genius, let's out a secret.

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She knows how to get back to the world of the living.

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Okay, did you hear that sudden cut at the end of the music there?

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That wasn't just the song.

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That's a little addition to it, that's called a riser.

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So here's the riser by itself and here's the music without the riser.

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And here they are together.

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The riser does a few things.

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One is narrative based.

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A secret has just been revealed.

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Jacob's eyes are probably wide open at hearing this and what the story will likely do after this big reveal is leave you on a cliffhanger, which a riser is great for.

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And the story will then move on to another scene, before we come back to the impliKations of the secret.

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The other thing a riser does, is it helps hide the cut in the music.

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So where the music stops there's no natural ending in the song that I chose.

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And that's because the songs are not specially made for this example.

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This is a song that is in its entirety pre-made a few minutes long, and we're just using a little piece of that.

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So where the music stops, there's no natural ending, it's abrupt and awkward.

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So here it is again, without the riser.

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The riser helps smooth that ending out.

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Back on Death mountain time has passed as Jacob becomes less frantic as he becomes more familiar with his new life and begins to accept where he is, the music reflects this.

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Kat denies ever having said anything about the tunnel, because you know, there is no secret tunnel.

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Or is there?

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Maybe in an upcoming scene Jacob has a moment of reflection about having gone from the life of the living now to Death Mountain.

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Eventually Kat learns more about his past and sees how much happier he is in the world of the living.

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So she shows him the tunnel.

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But there's some big, nasty, bad guy blocking the way.

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And somewhere within the story's lore, it was predicted in some mythological book that was found in the back of a library somewhere that talks about the existence of the tunnel and also the

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So naturally a battle breaks out.

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And, you know, the good guys when it's big, it's epic.

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If it were a movie it would cost millions of dollars for the special effects, but because it's a podcast, you're getting away with a much cheaper her version of that battle scene.

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In the end, the good guys, win, Kat says a heartfelt goodbye to Jacob, who reappears in the land of living.

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He can go back to the circus and live his best life, and there's this moment of change in the story where...

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he's come back to the world, but he's now a changed person because he now appreciates life more having lost it.

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But in his excitement, he forgot to look both ways when crossing the street.

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And in an instant, he was back at Death Mountain.

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Now it's time to hear a question from the Podcast Movement Community.

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This week's question comes from Dan Hinds.

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My favorite podcasts are ones that tell great stories where they get great stories out of their guests, but I am a lost on how to do that.

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How can I tell the difference between a great interview question and a terrible interview question in order to get these stories out of my guest?

Doug Fraser: 00:11:51

Dan, thank you for such a great question.

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There are plenty points of view on an answer to this, but I like to stick to three basic rules when it comes to getting the best stories from my guests.

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Rule number one, ask one question at a time.

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So if I ask, "what were you like as a kid?"

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And "how do you think that affected you as an adult?"

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And "do you think it's possible for people to recover from their childhoods?"

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The line of questioning makes sense, but you're sending your guest off into three different directions.

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So just pick one and hold back on the other two.

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Ask, "what were you like as a kid?"

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And see where the interviewee takes it.

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It may wind up that a story emerges, and the other two questions you were going to ask, become moot points.

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So ask one question at a time.

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You don't want them focusing on trying to remember three parts of your, your five-part question.

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You want your guests to tell a story in a natural, comfortable way, and to see what this feels like, go on the other side, have someone interview

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Rule number two, ask open-ended questions.

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If you ask a yes or no question, you'll get a yes or no and not much else.

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The same goes with questions that are, are set up for one word answers.

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But like any rule, there are exceptions.

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For example, to continue with the theme of childhood here.

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If I ask someone what their favorite toy was as a kid, I'll likely get a short answer, you know, probably just the name of the toy and that's it.

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But if I have a follow-up question ready such as, "what made that toy so special?"

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then I'm using a non open-ended question to ease into a deeper story.

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On the same note, uh, something else I like to keep in mind is to be simple with your questions.

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As a general rule, the more complex, the question, the simpler, the response.

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And conversely, the simpler, the question, the more in depth, the response.

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Give your guests a simpler question and give them that space to pull on the string on their thoughts and to thumb through their memory files.

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And finally rule number three, commit to curiosity.

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To me, this is hands down the most important rule because we, when you show you're listening and that you're curious about what your interviewee is saying, they'll

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Do things like reference what they said earlier or relate their story to one of your own without going too far on the side of, of oversharing or, or taking too much mic time.

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And also in, instead of moving onto your next question, respond to their answer by asking, "why?"

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That does it for this week at The Pod Lab.

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Be sure to subscribe, to get notified of new episodes as they're released.

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And if you'd like to be featured in a future episode, submit your question at the Podcast Movement Facebook Page.

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Until next time, keep experimenting.

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The Pod Lab is a Podcast Movement Original Series.

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Produced and hosted by me, Doug Fraser.

MUSIC: 00:14:53

Stop playing goalie on all the my thoughts speaking now, straight from my heart.

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But now I see, but now I see.