'Slow' podcasting.....

With thanks for your patience

This is an edited format of our slow podcasting episode, released last year (see below). We hope it enhances your understanding of one of our fundamental philosophies. We thank you for your patience in the timing of our releases.

In this article, we’re going to unpack what is slow podcasting. By the end, we hope that you’ll understand why our podcast is the way that it is.

Andrew coined the phrase “slow podcasting,” and we think it’s very appropriate for the kind of podcast that we are creating here. We liken it to the slow food movement. That means that we’re emphasizing quality over quantity. We are very intentional about what we’re doing, and we are prioritizing connection and care in each episode we bring forward.

There’s a sense of deliberateness about this. We only do interviews in person and that’s slow because we are traveling all over the world to meet our guests.

In many cases, we are also spending multiple days with them, hanging in their context, living with them under their roof, eating with them, doing chores with them, exercising with them, and really sinking into their rhythms and patterns. We want to get a sense of how they see the world and how they interact with each other.

And so, by the time we sit down for the interview, there’s this rich stew we’ve all been co-creating and marinating in that informs and enlivens the field we generate with them, and the questions we ask.

In addition to that, we’ve made the decision to only use audio, because there’s a certain intimacy that is available when we don’t have the visual reference points. Interestingly, our guests have all been very relieved about not needing to be on camera. There is deeper relaxation & connection available when people aren’t concerned about how they look or the image that they need to protect or offer the world.

There is another aspect that’s really important here, which is depth over volume, and we will not be striving for hundreds of episodes quickly.

We are committed to doing fewer quality episodes with deeper content, and we are going to be prioritizing the richness of the relationships and the connections. We want to invite nuanced storytelling and thoughtful dialogue over any kind of frequency or length. We want our episodes to feel crafted, not churned out.

People will also be able to tell from the pace of our voices that we’re cultivating a spacious and unhurried way of being. So many of us have spent so much of our lives being in a hurry, rushing, and being productive.

We both now have the privilege of being in our sixties, with fewer external demands, and we can enjoy being unhurried and drop into a more spacious way of being. We are hoping this serves you as much as it serves us and our guests.

We are designing these episodes to be savored, not consumed in a hurry. We are hoping that this more spacious, mindful environment that we create with our guests may even create a bit more of that in your lives as well.

In fact, we encourage listening to our podcasts, if possible, in more mindful environments, like walking through the forest, or during quiet moments with a cup of tea. We are trying to create an intentional listening experience for all of us.

Another aspect of our slow podcast is that, after each interview, we’ll be doing a reflections episode, where we (Danielle and Andrew) will chat about what came up for us during and after the interview. What we noticed, what we appreciated, what practices were shared, and how we are metabolizing the conversation.

We’ve likely tried one or two of the practices, and we’ll have something to report back about that. We will include a worksheet where we will have distilled some of the practices from our guests into a brief one-page document

The whole basis of this podcast is to inspire reconnection. Reconnection with ourselves, reconnection with others, and with nature. So we really hope that the podcast itself inspires that, rather than offers a sort of cognitive understanding of something.

We welcome comments and questions from our audience, and we hope you will engage in some of the practices based on what you hear in your own life and relationships.

Maybe the last aspect to mention here is that we’ve dedicated our own way of being, not just in how we show up for the interviews, but all the post-production aspects of this podcast we are doing as mindfully and as spaciously as possible. An example being recently Andrew edited a couple of audio files and was conscious of the part of him that was habitually orienting towards it as a task to be accomplished and to be checked off a list. Taking a breath & slowing down, he was able to stay in dialogue with that part and allow it to relax back in favor of savoring the experience more fully.

We are hoping that these conversations that we have together and with our guests nourish you and our conversation partners, and that we get a chance to interact with you in some shape or form through Substack.

May this podcast contribute to slowing us down and helping all of us reconnect more deeply.

With love

Danielle & Andrew

Slow Podcasting episode