Not one of the reasons most people put forward as a reason to podcast yet leaving a legacy body of work is a significant benefit.
Sharing Your Wisdom and Experience
Podcasting provides a platform to share your wisdom, experiences and insights with a global audience. Whether you’re an expert in a specific field, a seasoned professional or someone with a unique life story, your podcast can serve as a repository of knowledge and experience.
By documenting your expertise and life journey, you create a resource that can inspire, educate and guide others, leaving behind a tangible legacy of your wisdom. It’s not just your life story that falls into this category.
Documenting the life stories of individuals in aged care facilities, palliative care units or through vox pops on the street can be a meaningful way to put your podcasting skills to work. These stories add to the sum of human experience, provide hints and clues to a life well lived and point to the infinite ways humans have overcome adversity.
Preserving Stories and Memories
These audio recordings become invaluable heirlooms, ensuring that the stories and memories of your life, family or community are passed down and cherished for years to come. They also provide a useful resource for oral historians, constructing a view of the past. Admittedly biassed, they are predicated on the memories of the storyteller, they do provide a revised first draft of history. If you can record people as they are going through momentous events, then you have gold in your audio files.
Documenting Historical and Cultural Perspectives
Podcasting enables you to document historical and cultural perspectives that might otherwise be lost to time. You can explore and record the narratives of marginalised communities, the experiences of previous generations or the evolution of cultural traditions. Oral histories, in people’s own words as opposed to transcribed by a listener, have a tradition as old as sound recording.
Declining musical traditions have been resurrected through these recordings, nearly lost languages saved and eye witnesses to change all add to this genre of podcasting/audio recording.
By preserving these perspectives, you contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of history and culture, leaving a legacy of knowledge and awareness.
Inspiring Change and Impact
Podcasting offers a platform to inspire change and make a positive impact on society. Whether you’re advocating for social justice, environmental causes or personal development, your podcast records your journey through the process. This allows others to follow in your footsteps without having to reinvent the wheel. Each journey is different but each journey has some aspects in common with every other transformation. Your story is a part of your legacy.
Building Community
Podcasting fosters the creation of communities and connections among listeners who share common interests and passions. By nurturing this community, your show brings people together, creating a community.
The connections formed through your podcast transcend generations, class, ethnic affiliations and creed creating a lasting impact on the lives of those who find camaraderie and support within your community.
Educating and Empowering
Podcasting is the platform to educate, inspire and empower listeners. Whether it’s through informative interviews, educational content or personal growth insights, your podcast can be a source of empowerment and self-improvement for your listeners.
Empowering others to grow, learn and thrive is a legacy to be proud of. This effect is greater than we realise and is not why podcast, in most cases but remember, your words, your audio, your creations make a difference to more people than you will ever realise.
A Digital Time Capsule
Once upon a time, a published book, a novel, poetry collection or a nonfiction monograph was the way to ensure your culture had a record of you being here. Podcasting allows you to leave a digital signal that you were here. This is not a thing many 20 year olds tend to consider but as the years pass such a legacy gains more weight. Your podcast episodes, once published, endure long after you’re gone, serving as a record of your thoughts, experiences and contributions. Your voice to future generations. It is an intangible thing but definitely a thing.
A digital time capsule is another way to think about this record of your existence. Providing a glimpse into your life, an invaluable resource for future researchers as well as your descendants. An audio archaeological record is how I think of my body of work.
Connecting With Descendents
Podcasting offers a unique opportunity to connect with your descendants, especially those you may never have the chance to meet. By sharing your voice, experiences and values, you create a personal connection with future generations. Speaking through the ages, it is a wonderful thing to contemplate
Leaving A Positive Mark on Your Field
If your podcast centres around a specific field or industry, your legacy can extend to leaving a mark on that domain. Your contributions, insights and innovations can influence the trajectory of your field for years to come. This has limits. I studied with a fella who’d been Professor of biology or some such thing who was the world expert on ants. In his own words he stated that all his work was slowly eroded by newer research. He described the situation as knowing more and more about less and less until he knew everything about nothing. But, and this is the point here, his research marked a point in our knowledge as a species. Your body of work will represent our knowledge at a certain point in time. Maybe something to come back to in the future for a second look and reassessment, maybe not but the body of work will be there for all to consume and interrogate.
Your podcast is (podcasts are) markers of your dedication and expertise.
By harnessing the power of your voice and sharing your passion, you leave a meaningful imprint on the hearts and minds of those who listen, ensuring your legacy long after you’ve completed your podcasting journey. So, even if you’re not driven to leave a lasting legacy, podcasting is a legacy-building endeavour that combines creativity, storytelling and the power to inspire positive change.
To start your legacy leaving journey JMPS will be offering a “How to Podcast” course based on 1000s of episodes, nearly a decade of hard won experience and predicated on 40 years of meditation practice which might not seem related but it is. Through the meditation practice, I’ve learned to discern the necessary from the superfluous. The Course, as it’s coming together, will cover just what you need to enter the medium and nothing you don’t. I’m looking at a Black Friday/Cyber Monday launch date. If you’re interested, drop me a line at jon@mrjonmoore.com or through my Linkedin profile, both are located in the show notes for this episode.
The next episode, #12 in Season 9 is entitled: “Podcasting for mental health” which might stretch your mind a little further than you’d expect!
If you’ve found some value in this episode, please tell a friend who might be interested. This really is the best way you can help this show spread the word and such referrals are deeply appreciated, thanks.