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Stories in sound. Told by you.
Stories are the most powerful form of communication. And stories told in sound — stories that get inside listeners’ ears and hearts with real voices and unforgettable moments — often make the greatest impact. That’s why listenership to podcasts is surging.
We are podcast coaches. SeedPod empowers your team with everything you need to spot great stories, produce them beautifully, and launch a dynamite podcast that gets heard above the noise. Then we continue to sharpen your skills through production, every step of the way.
What’s unique about SeedPod?
We bring years of deep experience in all the disciplines needed to help you conceive, create, and sustain unforgettable podcasts. We are:
Storytellers: We’ve produced award-winning stories for NPR, Marketplace, and the BBC and edited chart-topping podcasts for TED and Duolingo.
Audio doctors: We teach you to recognize a great story when you hear one, bring it to life with plotting and structure, and get the most compelling interviews and sound.
Mentors: We help you learn and learn fast. Whether you’re a team of two or 25, we foster an environment that strengthens your ties to each other and empowers you to take risks. The result: You create better podcasts than you knew you could.
Grace is a remarkably gifted shaper of stories and ideas. If you’re starting a podcast, I can’t imagine anyone better to teach you the key skills and coach you to build a product with higher quality and broader impact."
Adam Grant
Host of the chart-topping TED podcast WorkLife and New York Times bestselling author of ORIGINALS and GIVE AND TAKE
Julia gave me countless techniques on everything. I left feeling more empowered and excited than ever before to make this podcast as incredible as it could be."
Ashby Vose
Editorial strategist, Dia&Co
What we do
There is no formula for creativity, so SeedPod customizes our approach to each client. We tailor our trainings to your team’s podcasting goals and teach with your skill level and future audience in mind. Then, like the best coaches, we walk beside you as you produce your first and future podcasts. You choose your coaching plan from the following menu.
Training phase
Our trainings are hands-on, active, and immediately productive. In just hours or days, we equip you to:
- Translate a general topic idea into a detailed, dynamite story about real people.
- Capture quality audio recordings in settings from conference rooms to concerts.
- Draw out the most compelling quotes and details from an interviewee.
- Distill a mountain of interviews and research into the essential ingredients.
- Write in a clear, conversational style that works best for the ear.
- Narrate an audio story in your own voice with warmth, presence, and energy.
- Edit audio clips together into a seamless story.
Coaching phase
Once you’re trained — or if you already have basic podcasting skills and want to dive right into production — our coaching and consulting improves your product at every stage. We help you hone your ideas, refine your pilot, craft your trailer, sharpen your scripts, polish your sound, and navigate the competitive podcast market to make yours stand out.
I now have enough of a foundation to either create a podcast solo or manage the production of a podcast for my workplace."
Andrea Rees Davies
Stanford Center for the Humanities
The class was approachable and tapped into creativity. Julia and Grace have such a host of experience, answer questions without judgment, and shed so much light on the process."
Lauren Hall
Twitter
Who we are
Based in the San Francisco Bay area, SeedPod was founded by two professional radio storytellers with more than 15 years of cumulative experience producing and editing unforgettable stories—investigations, features, interviews, documentaries, and audio walking tours—for national radio shows, podcasts, and companies. We know how to transform ideas into compelling audio that keeps listeners engaged and curious for more.
Julia Scott
Co-founder
Julia Scott is an award-winning journalist, editor and podcast expert with an extensive background in international journalism. Primarily focused on science and the environment, her work in this area has been featured in Best American Science Writing and on Good Morning America. Presently an editor with NPR station KQED and formerly an editor for NPR station KALW, she has written, produced, developed and edited podcasts for clients as diverse as IDEO and Duolingo.
Scott’s features, essays and documentary radio work have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Nautilus, The Walrus, National Public Media’s Marketplace, Canada’s The Current, the BBC World Service and Public Radio International’s The World. Scott began her career in print journalism, reporting on science and natural resources for the Bay Area News Group.
Grace Rubenstein
CO-Founder
Grace Rubenstein is a journalist, editor, and media producer specializing in health science and immigration. She is the story editor of TED’s WorkLife with Adam Grant podcast and previously served for seven years as multimedia editor at TED Books, where she coached great thinkers to transform their big ideas into engaging prose. Grace’s award-winning work has appeared in the Atlantic online, New York Times, Boston Globe, STAT News, Longreads, NEO.LIFE, and the Center for Investigative Reporting’s Reveal. Her radio stories have reached the airwaves of NPR’s Morning Edition, KQED’s The California Report, and PRI’s The World. Her dream story is one that compellingly explains how the forces outside us (culture, environment) and inside us (biology) shape our behavior and thus our health.
Grace and Julia are knowledgeable, clear, and engaging. They managed to take a complex subject that requires mastery (or at least a working knowledge) of many skills and distill it into a training that is digestible and user friendly. I highly recommend it if you are interested in podcasting."
Nicole Giacinti
Attorney, Center for Families, Children and the Courts, Judicial Council of California
Grace and Julia are not only knowledgeable and personable, but also are effective teachers. It's truly amazing that they had our whole group producing podcasts in a matter of hours!"
Todd Harshman
Attorney,
Center for Judicial Education and Research,
Judicial Council of California
Consulting packages
SeedPod’s in-person trainings can be distilled down to a day or deepened into a two-day, three-day, or weeklong workshop. We work with you to mix and match our training to target the skills that your team needs. Potential topics include:
Story arc essentials
The five types of audio stories
Elements of sound: Ambi, acts, and tracks
Basic mic anatomy: the right mic for the job
Audio gear 101: The complete package
How to get great sound on the phone
How to get great sound in the field
How to get the most out of an interview
Finding your story theme
From notes to script: How to structure a story
Essentials of audio editing
Voicing your story
Podcast distribution and promotion
SeedPod can also provide one-on-one training, consulting, and coaching. Ask us about it!
Contact US
Get in touch! We welcome questions and requests. You'll hear back from us promptly.
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