The Concept

Ever since I was a teenager, I have held the belief that the First Amendment of the United States Constitution—freedom of speech—is the most important right that we as Americans are granted. Maybe it comes because I watched so many music artists become censored by the Federal Communications Commission, or because I watched people get in trouble for using profanity on television. It never really made sense to me why seven words of the 400,000 words in the English language were flagged for being indecent or vulgar, and I was not the only one.

The late comedian George Carlin did a monologue in 1974 about the seven dirty words you can never say on television, and in it, he questioned the very topic.

In the spirit of Carlin, I wanted to create a podcast that looks at the “Seven Dirty Words” in depth. The idea was to take one word per episode and investigate its meaning, find alternative terms, review court cases regarding indecency, and listen to audio clips where the word was used.

Prior to deciding to do this podcast, I had plenty of experience writing and researching, but had never put together a podcast.

The Pitch

My initial pitch for the Oh Fudge! Podcast was to create a seven-part series on the seven dirty words. As the host, I wanted to reach out to free speech experts and get their take, interview members of the clergy, talk to people in the community, and drill down into court cases where the first amendment was at risk of being compromised.

The Roadmap

Before starting to conceptualize how the podcast would sound and how it would be laid out, I first needed to conduct research. People have been putting together podcasts for years, and before that, people were producing radio shows. Fortunately, many of these people have documented the obstacles they encountered and how they overcame them.

Creating a road map of tasks was crucial. The solution was a project management program called Asana. I was able to sketch out each task that I needed to complete to stay on track. The idea was to be as granular as possible to ensure I did not miss anything in the production of the Oh Fudge! Podcast.

Production and Promotion

When it came time to produce the show, I recorded each segment, cut the sound bites, and created intros, outros, and segment breaks. I then imported all of the sound clips into Adobe Premiere Pro and pieced together the show.

Once it was complete, I used BuzzSprout.com to host the Oh Fudge! Podcast and parse it out to top podcast platforms like iTunes, Spotify, and Stitch.

Promotion was conducted on social media before the podcast was live, and after.

Taking an idea from concept to reality taught me that when you break every task down to its finest element, anything can be accomplished.