hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr0451.txt

Episode: 451
Title: HPR0451: Podcasting: From Mic to Audience
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0451/hpr0451.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 20:53:46

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Hi guys and I'd like to welcome you to the second part of the afternoon kind of sessions.
They intended to be a little bit more technical in the afternoon but I'm sure most speakers would be quite happy for you to start
and ask them questions and so on and so forth.
My name's Aaron Finn and I'm going to be talking about podcasting.
What I hope we'll find out about podcasting is where podcast can be found.
How you download one, how you can produce one, how you could upload one.
So the talk title is podcasting 101 from Mike to audience.
A little bit about myself.
As I say I'm Aaron Finn and I'm a podcaster, have been for about three years.
I'm ethical hacker and I'm very passionate about free software.
I podcast at least once a month and generally my shows are related to ethical hacker and encounter measures.
Free software or Linux in a security testing environment.
I'm pretty easy to find.
Finix.co.uk or you can follow me on Twitter.
Plenty of people in podcasting are a lot more experienced than I am.
I'll be honest and say that straight through it.
But I've been involved in around 17 shows that I've produced myself.
And I've been on a handful of other shows that I've done segments for and stuff like that as well.
So I've probably got 25 bits of work out there at the moment.
What I intend, well I hope you kind of get out from this talk,
is that you walk away knowing a very simple description but what a podcast actually is.
Understand maybe the motivations that drive someone to do it.
And I also want to kind of talk about how you could produce a podcast that home and how you could upload it and people could download it.
Talks saying that everyone I've not got anything particularly technical in this talk.
All the software that I use could be used pretty much on any computer.
So it doesn't matter if you're on Linux or Windows or Mac.
So all the software that I'm using that I talk about is pretty much cross-platform.
The other thing as well if you are a bit scared of installing stuff and all of that.
They're very simple procedures to follow.
Like I said, not very technical at all.
I won't stop at points.
Please feel free to ask questions at that time if they use terms or something like that that you don't understand.
Please just give us a shout at those points.
And once again, happy software freedom day.
I hope you enjoy my talk.
So what is a podcast?
Well, simply put, it's an audio file that people can play on media.
And basically the mathematics really behind it is as you get an audio file.
You stick it on the web and people download it and play it.
That's a podcast.
It's not a new medium, but it's a grown medium.
And a lot of more people started to hear about podcasts.
And I find it to be a fantastic thing to be involved in.
It's very good at delivering information.
You can get very good news out of this.
It's a very good medium for really, because there's no commercial advantage.
In a lot of cases, there's not a lot of commercial advantage for companies.
It's hobbyists and individuals and passionate people that make podcasts.
So it's great you get to download this media and listen to someone else's views.
Audio files can be pretty much played on anything from phones to MP3 players to iPods to PC itself.
Podcasts is a play on the word about iPods, which obviously most people will know is that Apple Media player.
Well, people were able to subscribe to shows for the iTunes, I think, as I've never used them myself.
And this is where the podcast came from.
I pardon across broadcasting, just in case anyone's interested.
It's largely unregulated, and it's a very, very diverse kind of medium.
I fit in kind of as a consumer and a producer or a monster.
I listened to an awful lot of podcasts.
I probably spent, you know, I probably spent seven or eight hours a month listening to certain shows
where I pick up lots of different information that I probably wouldn't have.
I'm not going to tune on to Radio 4 and listen to ethical hacking.
It's not going to happen.
But ethical hackers are able to produce ethical hacking podcasts.
And I'm able to download them and we're able to share media that way.
And that's an ethical hack, because I really find it very, very useful.
And in the true spirit of open source, I basically take content that I find useful.
And I produce a show based on stuff that I'm doing at the time that I have technical problems that I'm solving
and all of that sort of stuff, or people that I'm speaking to in the industry.
And as a free software advocate, it's kind of fits in with my, you know, my methodology about how I should treat myself,
how I should treat, you know, what I work on.
And I mean by that, that I'm able to take, reproduce, you know, find things out about,
a certain topic and I'm able to share that.
And I've done lots of different sort of different podcasts.
I spent a month learning how, you know, wireless routers got hacked and I produced a podcast on that.
And that means that other people can take the stuff that I found out.
And they can say either works or it doesn't work and adapt it and change it.
And hopefully they produce content and that gets passed along.
But like I say, I mean, it's that relationship of user development.
I'm sort of in the podcast and all that seems sort of guy.
It's first summer to radio broadcasting, apart from, you know, once you've recorded the show,
you're not having to rely on, you know, radio antennas and all of that sort of stuff, you know.
So there's not the great expense that it would take to, if you want to produce a radio show,
you can imagine the expense that would be involved with the equipment that you would have to get,
licensing and so on and so forth.
There's lots of free and open source software that you can use to produce podcasts and listen to podcasts.
And there's lots of free services on the internet where you could host the podcast as well.
I podcast for an organization called Hacker Public Radio, which is basically a loosely knitted organization
that has a different host on every day and they talk about whatever they're doing and whatever they're working on at the time.
I mean, it's easy to think that Hacker Public Radio is all about security and ethical hacking.
It's far from that.
There's been episodes on how to quit smoking and episodes on Doctor Who and then episodes on root kits and, you know,
but the greatest thing with Hacker Public Radio is you never know what you're going to get until it drops into your RSS reader.
But for me, it's great. I produce a show once a month. I upload it to them and they look after everything for me.
But what you really need is basically a computer with an internet connection, really to be honest with you, to download files.
Most of your PCs will have audio players built into the media player will be able to play the files.
Linux will be able to use Amerark or, you know, I'm not sure what the audio players are on Mac, but I'm sure it comes bundled with one as well.
Basically, how it works is you find a show and a subject that you're interested in and you download it.
I mean, if you like it, you'll probably subscribe. And if you don't, well, you'll get your money back, I suppose.
I mean, but basically, find something that you like, download shows on it. It really is as simple as that.
The worldwide web is a big play stone. It's a bit of a pain to go back and we say, I wonder if Paul.com has released a podcast this week.
You don't want to have to keep on checking back to see if a site's updated.
So you use RSS subscriptions. And that's kind of the bulk of how podcasts really work.
You sign up to an RSS subscription much like you would for news feeds and so on and so forth.
And then in your feeds, it will tell you that there's new podcasts available for you to download.
And then really, there is some programs that will actually automatically download the audio file feed as well, which is really handy.
There's lots of tools that you can use. And if you're a Google user, you can use Google Reader. They have a pretty good in built RSS Reader.
Here are a couple of open-did, kind of open-sourced, cross-platform sort of ones.
I have to be honest, I don't use any of these.
But I can say they're all cross-platform. They're all free for you to download.
I think they're all free as in note cash options and I don't think they're that open-sourced.
But if you're just sticking to Google and look for an RSS Reader, you'll find one very simple.
But that's just one of the, that's really just a third of the equations done there simply.
You know what I mean? The RSS is about a third of this, of the equation and game podcasts.
What I'd like is, you know, it's finding something interesting and being able to share that.
It's a great side hobby to have. And it also drives me to maybe work on projects a little bit longer or be a little bit more focused on working on projects.
And unfortunately, I want to, terrible ethical happen, the fact that I have so many projects going off at any one time.
It's very easy for me to get lost in the mix and not get anything done.
Where I find when I'm producing the show, I have a deadline and I have to get my ass in gear by this day
and I have to get it mixed by then and I have to get it uploaded by then.
So it helps in that way to actually have almost a structure to what I'm doing.
But it's very good for helping you to learn and research.
As I said earlier on, a lot of the news in my industry is delivered by podcasts and that sort of stuff.
Why device in the successful is that they're made by people like me.
Do you know what I mean? They're not made by corporations.
Do you know what I mean? They really are made by that average user who either enjoys listening to podcasts or really wants to promote something that they're working on.
And it's awesome. I mean, you find that they have, you know, Linux conferences.
They do have podcaster tables because there's a whole big subculture in Linux through the podcasting.
Because podcasting in Linux is a great way to deliver how technical support can be done.
So I find it very interesting that way.
Like I say, the very few constraints you just need really just need a mic on the internet.
And you're free to basically show your ideas.
There's lots of different programs that you use to be able to do to record podcasts, but I tend to use a program called Audacity.
It's pretty simple. It's cross-platformed. It's open-source.
And it's very, very good kind of all in one solution.
It enables you to be able to record audio files and enables you to be able to edit them.
Now, if you use a separate application to record audio files, you know, you'd be using two programs.
It's just meaning that this is really kind of very nice unified solution.
In Linux, very easy to find, just in sound.
Very easy to bring in audio files. I'm sorry, this seems to be the slide seems to be a little bit degraded.
But this is how you'd bring in files. I use a hardware recorder.
And it just works for me better that sort of.
And I'm able to take the file once I've recorded on a hardware device, and I'm able to import the audio file.
And really what happens is the screen pops up, and that's what your audio looks like.
If you were to record using Audacity, there's a button that looks just like a record button.
That's exactly what it does you're able to record using Audacity as well.
But this is what you get presented with, which, you know, looks pretty, but it doesn't really tell you much.
I mean, but basically what you do, you record something, stick it into Audacity,
bring the tracks, and then you can listen to it and find out where bits need editing and bits need changing.
They have a lot of effects that you can use as well in there.
So maybe there's a lot of noise pollution in the background.
You can get a plug-in to try and remove noise pollution.
Maybe the recording is very quiet.
You can use one of the plug-ins to amplify the recordings.
There's also handy little tools in there.
It's a pretty defacto standard.
Then I've jumped a slide by accident here.
Sorry, guys.
But once you have your sound sorted out, you can bring lots of different audio sources as well.
It's just adding extra tracks in.
So when I do, when I have an intro and an outro in my show, the intro and the outro are supplied by Hacker Public Radio.
So when I do this, I end up having three tracks.
And I just put in the intro to the beginning, move the recording bit to the end of the intro.
In the end of the main session, I just put in the outro.
And there's an option where you can just export, which is what this is about.
So you can export your files and MCAs and MP3.
You can build all the tags in it so that people's audio players know what it is.
And then you just save them.
If you see here, the option for an MP3, you can actually produce lots of different audio,
like, you know, the free, non-restrictive versions like ARG and so on and so forth.
And then I'll just give you a little bit about time to make the MP3.
And it's done. You've made an MP3.
Once you have that audio file, if you're making a podcast, what you really need to do is get it hosted.
And as I said before, I do my podcasting for an organisation called Have the Public Radio.
So it's great. I, as I say, email them, email that I upload my show and email them and tell them it's ready to go.
And the next day it's released. It's pretty awesome in that respect.
If you can find something like HPR on an industry that you're interested in podcasting,
a category that you're interested in podcasting, try and do it through them.
It's a lot easier to be able to pass them on on so far and get that to do the hard work for you.
But failing that there is options of how you can produce a podcast for free.
And you have it hosted online and RSS subscriptions.
And I just wanted to touch on that before I wrap up.
For the purpose of this talk, I've just used, I stuck into Google, host free MP3s and media files for one at the top.
So this is not me choosing them by any way, shape or means.
But what we do is you see lots of these sites that will let your host or your files to nothing.
And they'll give you a direct download link.
See a real media file. So we upload, we get this download link.
This is important because we need to remember this later on.
So when I talk about it later on, I'll just be talking about the download location.
I'm just referring to this place. But this is what we're actually after.
Once you've got this, that's a location on the internet that the podcast is stored on.
We can go and register a free blog with someone like WordPress or Blogger or anyone like that.
As you see, I've made SF Dundee 2009.
You get to choose your WordPress.
Now you can buy domains and you can use installs.
I just wanted to use the totally free option that you could go online.
Once you register, you'll be presented with a blog.
When we publish a blog page, what we can do is say, you know, I've made a new show on the history of TESIDEJOOT.
Here is blah, blah, blah, blah. The text and this is what I'm talking about.
And what I'm going to do, you can't see here, but there's a basically a volume that says insert URL.
And then what you do is you basically take that media file that we uploaded when I mentioned earlier on.
You stick that into there and say it's a link to publish your blog post.
And that's it on the internet.
Now where it comes in handy is you can send your friends.
I'm sure most people see this in their web browser all the time, they get RSS and subscription links and so on and so forth.
This is what we used to to press your show along.
So this is just an example of how public radio is RSS feed.
But WordPress allows you to do to take that URL.
They do a RSS subscription on the WordPress.
And that's how you would deliver your podcast.
There's lots of different podcasts and you can submit your podcast to play select podcast darling.
I really just want to show how much options, you know, it's easy for me as a Linux guy to just focus on Linux podcasts.
But I appreciate it probably not everyone in here as a Linux person.
So it's very easy for me to go, this is a great Linux podcast and that's a great Linux podcast.
And I forget that there is podcasts on lots of different genres.
It's not specifically security and it's not specifically, you know, Linux.
You can get them travel history, you know, science, religion, politics.
This also means that you can produce podcasts later.
You don't have to do something technical, you can do a podcast on, you know, on a personal subject that you find interesting.
It's a really good way of getting your ideas out and you thoughts laid down and getting them kind of out there and then people comment on your work and stuff like that.
Now, just to quickly recap, for you guys to produce a podcast without HPR, all you really need to do is register for a blog, download audacity, install it, record whatever you want to do, upload the file and put into your blog post and publish it.
And that is really how you do a blog podcast for free.
Is there any questions?
No.
How long did you stress on me as I went to your phone call?
It depends.
It all depends on the terms and conditions of the organization that you sign for.
I hold no, like, you know, I wavering anything to do with div share or media fire or anything like that.
There is organizations like Almedia.org that let you host what basically media.
But they'll release it under the creative comments for you.
If anyone is wondering what the creative comments is, it's a way of my podcast to release it under the creative comments, which means that no one can take ownership of them and they're open for everyone.
You're allowed to redistribute it, you're allowed to share it.
You're not allowed to pass it off as your own work, and that's about it.
But you have to, this is a great point. You have to have a look at the...
You're not worried about maybe my content really remaining my ownership.
Then there's lots of paid solutions that you can use as well that are not very expensive.
You can rent some podcasting space of organizations for as little as $5 a month.
You know, it's just really was, you know, how to do it for free really to hear.
But yeah, definitely check the terms and conditions on any organization that you're posting the file with.
Is there any other questions?
Thank you for listening to HACRA Public Radio.
HPR is sponsored by Carol.net.
She'll head on over to C-A-R-O dot N-E-T for all of her team.
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