Tanner works at our center at the University of Wisconsin – Oshkosh. He tells us about how he recently had a chance to do talk about a subject he is passionate about on local radio.
"I am a co-host of Beyond the Breakers, a podcast about shipwrecks, loss and lessons learned from maritime disasters. Earlier this year, we were contacted about doing an interview on WORT 89.9. WORT is a listener-sponsored community radio station based in Madison and broadcasting to South Central Wisconsin. I was very excited for the opportunity to discuss the podcast in a new environment.
The appearance was a 30-minute spot on the weekly show Perpetual Notion Machine, which looks at contemporary scientific issues and discoveries in a way that is understandable and entertaining to the non-scientists of the listening community. During that half hour we touched on several historic shipwrecks and maritime incidents, including the White Ship disaster of the 1100s, the Phoenix, which had been carrying Dutch immigrants to Wisconsin in 1847, the sinking of the MV Sewol in South Korea in 2014, and many others.
I was shocked at how quickly that time passed, and impressed with how smoothly all of the transitions worked for the broadcasting crew. With podcasting you have a lot of control over the product that gets ‘published’ – you can add, delete, re-record, etc. as needed – but live radio was a very different experience knowing that I really needed to focus on both brevity and clarity in order to use the time most efficiently and hopefully make for a good listening experience.
The host of the show asked excellent questions that gave me a lot of space to talk about both specific episodes that we’ve done and more general takeaways that we have gained from 4+ years of making the podcast.
You can listen to my episode of Perpetual Notion Machine on the WORT archive – and check out the other episodes while you’re there!"
Listen to past episodes of Tanner's podcast
Read more about our programs at the University of Wisconsin – Oshkosh
