How are you celebrating International Podcasting Month? Europe edition
Eurowaves #21
Hey podcasters,
September is turning out to be an absolutely packed month. Somehow, I ended up setting a hundred deadlines for myself, in a month when I’m going to be traveling more than during the summer. Oh well! We’re getting through it, you and I. I know many of you can relate. Keep it pushing! It’s a podcasting fall.
Remember: September is International Podcast Month and September 30 is International Podcasting Day. You can expect an extra special bonus issue in your inboxes that day. Mark your calendars!
Before we get into it, I want to shoutout and thank two wonderful podcasts I had the opportunity to be on recently:
Bogdan Bratis of Saspod had me on his show to talk about, you guessed it, European podcasting. Stick around through the mid-roll segment filled with fun questions that got some pretty quirky answers out of me. Thank you, Bogdan!
I was also a guest on Martin Quibell’s Pods Like Us. Apart from Eurowaves-talk, we also “nerd-ed” out about a number of podcasts we’ve been listening to and loving, including We’re Doing the Wiz. Thank you, Martin!
Another piece of exciting news!
Next Friday, September 26, I'll be speaking at the festival for radio and sound creation, Orizont Sonor, organized by the French Institute!
I'll share an overview of European podcasting, the Romanian industry's beginnings, growth, and where we're headed, and some international inspiration.
Come join in person or remotely! 🎙️ https://lnkd.in/dgMxMbgS
🇪🇺 Podcasting & Community News 🇪🇺
🇩🇪 On October 8, Cologne will host a uniquely interactive podcasting experience: The Podcast Summit, held at high.studios, is where the European podcasting scene meets to explore the future of audio content creation, collaboration, and strategy.
🇮🇹 Festival del Podcasting is Italy’s top podcasting conference, taking place September 20 to October 3, in Milan, Rome, and online.
🇬🇧 The Behear Independent Audio Awards is a new initiative from
Behear to recognise and reward the creativity, innovation, and dedication of the indie audiobook community. Enter by September 30.
🎭 Are you an audio fiction podcaster or lover? Support this Kickstarter campaign to make TAFCON: The Audio Fiction Convention happen! This will be US-based with a potential opportunity to participate remotely.
🇩🇪 REC Club Podcast Community is a German group that celebrate the open audio ecosystem.
💰The Audio Marketplace (TAM) empowers European podcasters and audio producers to seamlessly trade, distribute, and monetize their content.
🎙️The Simple English News Daily podcast (SEND7) has reached 10 million downloads. Big congratulations!
📹YouTube announced new ways for creators to earn more with brand partnership. New features include auto-dubbing, collaborative videos and dynamic ads.
👚Contribute to the worldwide filler word campaign! To celebrate International Podcast Day (September 30th), EarBuds is teaming up with Certified Crucial (a merch company) to create a limited edition waveform t-shirt featuring filler words like “ummm,” “ehh,” “εε,” “음,” “เอ่อ,” and more. Submit your ummm here.
Eurowaves Update ☘️
Since the last issue, we have…
…+30 new subscribers.
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Back-to-school for podcasters, with Benjamin Lorch of The Berlin School of Podcasting
Benjamin Lorch is the Director of The Berlin School of Podcasting. His audio work with NGOs, universities and independent makers focuses largely on international education and civil society efforts.
You can connect with Benjamin on LinkedIn here.
What's your story origin in podcasting?
The funny thing is that 70s disco got me into podcasting. Let me explain: When I was a kid my parents set up a little desk for me in the kitchen and I would “work” there, drawing pictures, sending away for free things from magazines and cereal box promotions. The radio was always on. Top 40 radio in those days was a lot of disco and I listened rather than danced! And what did I listen to? The lyrics! So my first exposure to audio storytelling was through stories of looks, lust, and lasciviousness on an imagined illuminated dancefloor.
That was all in Providence, Rhode Island, but when I later moved to Chicago to attend university, I was there when This American Life hit the airwaves and I was hooked! Many friends produced or hosted This American Life segments and I thought to myself, “these are my peeps!” I never did much in audio at that time except record blues shows and occasionally spin records on WHPK, The Pride of the South Side! Eventually, however, I got into telling my own stories and producing work for others.
What's The Berlin School of Podcasting's origin story?
When I moved to Berlin I did a lot of work in the international education space and I guess I am still at it. Beginning nearly two decades ago, I got hired to start up several schools and programs: finding campus spaces, hiring the first staff and teachers, taking care of the students – kinda doing everything. Often I compared myself to the first “explorer,” the one to set foot on the shore and set up a tent for the first students to arrive. Then later the lawyers and those with PhDs would arrive and dredge the harbor and build houses of stone. Pardon the colonial settlement metaphor, but that is often the model upon which international programs work, unfortunately!
When I was done with several of those projects, I was asked a question that changed my life: “Hey, Ben, you set up all these schools but they were based on the ideas and dreams of other people. If you could set up your own school, what kind of school would it be?” Without hesitation and out of seemingly nowhere, these words popped out of my mouth: “A school of podcasting because I love conversation, connecting with people, and talking about ideas.”
The next day I began designing the curriculum based on a humanistic, convivial approach to audio storytelling.
Your mission is that stories can change the world. Can you share one story from a past program that has made a tangible impact?
First, I want to say that I am far more into depth of impact than breadth of reach when it comes to podcasting. This means I work toward touching select listeners in a significant way rather than working toward reaching lots of ears. A good example of that would be The Commit Podcast, which is dedicated to amplifying the voices of civil societies. We began in Ukraine and talked with people working there and in exile to maintain civil society as they navigate the brutal and exhausting complexities of war. It was not easy to produce. The voices and emotions and traumas I still feel by being told those stories, but I was honored to work with and produce with the amazing team at a project called Vidnova, supported by the Bosch Foundation.
The result, the tangible impact, was that the people working to hold Ukraine together as a society felt heard, they felt recognized, they felt that their exhaustion, their feelings of guilt or inadequacy, of not doing enough behind the battlelines, were recognized. Essentially, the podcast, in a small way, restored a feeling of dignity, recognition, and love among an important group of people in a time of relentless violence, death, and hate.
How does your equity-based tuition model directly support your mission of empowering new and necessary voices?
Our world is full of inequities. In rich countries like Germany, where I live, we take so much for granted while so many in this world struggle to have access to the basics. The prices for courses for some are completely out of reach and so I want to try and rebalance the scales. I know it is not enough and the model is basic, but I hope that it attracts storytellers from around the world because their perspectives are needed and their voices are important to hear.
My online students come from all over the world and this diversity of experiences and stories makes the courses rather remarkable – you learn how local histories impact us all individually and deeply affect the experiences that make us who we are. We feel brotherhood and sisterhood in our learning groups and that is only because we learn the stories of others. Not told by a robot AI, but told by a beautiful, living, breathing human being with a world within them to share.
More than skills, what is the most important mindset you hope every student takes away from your school?
There are three things I hope students take with them.
First is the power of listening. Dr. Paul Browde changed my life when he introduced to me an image, a metaphor. That image is of the listening vessel. The idea is that our listening style, your way of being when listening, “shapes the telling.” When you work on and focus on your listening, people talk with you in entirely new, deeper ways. This lesson from Paul is a gift and something that I try to share with everyone I meet.
Secondly, the art of voice and story. The power of our voice and just how vulnerable we are in the face of a story. Chimamanda Adichie taught me just how powerful stories can be – those told and those untold and dangerously assumed. Those stories we speak out and those we hold inside of ourselves, unarticulated in silence.
Our voices are our signatures, our stories are our understanding of the world. Both must be respected and used responsibly because today we see so many people speaking without any regard to the impact of their words, and many also remaining silent. This is why I have recently become interested in the work of Marshall Rosenberg on non-violent communication. His methods teach us the power of empathy and respect. As far as I can see, this is the only way we will collectively emerge from these very dark times of human and environmental degradation. Only new stories will save us! Only new stories can change the world!
Lastly, I want people to have a Punk Rock mindset to their work and make punk rock podcasts. This has nothing to do with loud music and everything to do with attitude and your place in this corporatized world which demands we market ourselves toward the masses and the robots. This means not being too precious about your podcast. This means being yourself.
Say what you want to say to connect with people in a raw and honest way. Be a little broken and loud about it rather than baroque. Show your emotions and vulnerability. Let people know who you are rather than constructing a persona and point of view to pass purity tests. In short, BE A HUMAN BEING.
When you are starting out in podcasting, it is very important to make a lot of pieces quickly, even if they sorta suck. That is OK! That is an important mindset and one I myself struggle to always achieve, honestly. Punk Rock Podcasting helps with that.
How can podcasters and audio lovers get involved with your work and The Berlin School of Podcasting?
Join a course! Either online or in person.
Or, run a workshop. I am in the process of setting up smaller workshops and I am looking for talented people to contribute.
But the most important thing you can do is reach out to talk, really about anything! Connection and conversation is what it is all about. And sometimes we turn the microphones on when things get good!
🎙️🌍What I’ve been listening to🌍🎙️
Proxy is one of my favorite indie podcasts out right now. Yowei Shaw creates magic in every episode with what she calls emotional investigative journalism. In her latest episode, Hyperfixed’s Alex Goldman joins her about a conversation on monetizing podcasts. Given how things are looking in the industry, podcasters are heavily relying on supporter’s donations but…for some of us it’s pretty uncomfortable to ask for money. Yowei and Alex embark on a journey to figure out how to get comfortable with it, and for that they bring in help: a pro at fundraising, and her husband who happens to be a Hyperfixed fan, yet has never financially supported any show. This is a crash course in fundraising, in general, but also a kind reminder why it’s so crucial to show up for podcasters. If you have a show you love in your rotation, or more than one, consider becoming a supporter. It means the world to creators and it keeps those podcasts alive. And if you’re a podcaster in need of support, this will hopefully give you the push to unapologetically ask for it.
The feed started for a WePod co-production, Mar de rabia, about drug trafficking and its impact on local communities across Europe and beyond. Now, they’re releasing a new series called La Mecha, reported by journalist Javi Caminero (also host of Sounds Like Europe). It covers the causes and consequences of an explosion in his hometown that forever changed its identity. Start with the Mar de rabia series and keep an eye out on the feed for the new full series.
There are few podcasts that have the intimacy and heartwarming “after-taste” of Country of Dust. It’s a beautifully crafted podcast telling Armenian stories. Lauren Passell (of Podcast The Newsletter ) recommended the Daughter of the Crying Man episode, calling it “blindingly beautiful”, and that’s exactly how it is. Listeners get the honor of traveling through time and space with Nyree Abrahamian’s family and personal history. The archival material, the sound design, and the gentle and honest narration pack the story into a gorgeous listen. Start with this episode and explore many more Armenian stories on their feed.
What podcasts have you been listening to lately?
🇩🇰 Podcasts from Denmark 🇩🇰
Steph Fuccio, Coffeelike Media is a Podcast Manager and Strategist, helping business owners and community leaders shape and share their info, stories and experiences. She's a serial expat who has lived in Denmark for about 2.5 years. These are 3 of the podcasts about living in Denmark (in English) that helped her adjust to life there.
How to Live In Denmark: Quick takes on life in Denmark, in 10 minutes or less. Life as an international in Denmark, one of the world's most homogenous countries, isn't always easy. In Denmark’s longest-running English-language podcast, Kay Xander Mellish, an American who has lived in Denmark for more than a decade, offers tips for enjoying your time in “the world’s happiest country” plus insights on Danish culture and Danish working culture.
What Are You Doing In Denmark: What are You Doing in Denmark is the podcast that helps you make Denmark makes sense. The name is inspired by "hvad laver du i Danmark," one of the most-heard questions for foreigners living amongst the Danes. This show delivers a blend of education, entertainment, and virtual group therapy from your hosts Derek Hartman, Conrad Molden, Brooke Black, and Mike Walsh.
Last Week In Denmark: Each week, two hosts from the LWID community talk through the top news stories and developments — in English — sharing personal insights and international perspectives. It’s a clear and accessible conversation about life in Denmark, made for people who live here but didn’t grow up here. Last Week In Denmark is a volunteer-driven media project with a simple mission: to empower people through information.
Thank you for sharing, Stephanie!
You can connect with her on LinkedIn here.
🚀Events and Opportunities🚀
British Journalism Awards (The UK)
This event celebrates the best journalism produced for a UK audience. These awards are open to all publishers and journalists, whatever the medium: print, broadcast, or online. The aim is to acknowledge and recognise great journalism that is revelatory and has real-world impact. The judges look for work that displays journalistic skill and rigour and serves the public interest.
When? September 25.
real21 Media Fund (Switzerland)
The fund provides financial contributions of up to CHF 10,000 to cover research and travel costs for journalistic contributions in German-speaking Swiss media.
Reporting on developments in Africa, Asia, Latin America, or Eastern Europe is suffering from cost pressure. The Media Fund supports journalists from all media genres who want to learn about the world behind the headlines.
When? September 30.
AJP Journalism Fund (Belgium)
The Journalism Fund supports investigations, research, and in-depth reporting in the Wallonia-Brussels Federation (WBF). It enables the production of any work that offers real added value and encourages the emergence of new journalistic formats, including audio. Financial assistance is provided directly to journalists.
When? September 30.
Phonurgia Nova Residencies (France)
In 2026, they are opening six creative residencies, each with a minimum grant of €2,000. They are aimed at authors of projects that fall within the spectrum of radio creation or narrative podcasts .
When? October 13.
That’s it for now, thank you for reading!
Got an opportunity, podcast recommendation, or event to share for the next issue? Reply to this email or drop me a message.
Until next time,
Andreea Coscai
I miss the virtual live Internatiomal Podcast Day event so every year I like to go back and watch sessions I have not seen before. So much of it is still relevant and interesting.
I'm also going to republish a session I led for the event back in 2020 with language learning podcasters. It was such a blast to do!