Connect you with experts who give you a big picture overview of what you need to know

Andrea Christelle is a Ph.D. philosopher and entrepreneur who is known for her expertise in practical philosophy. Craig Van Slyke is a business professor (Ph.D. in information systems) and former business school dean who is a practicing Stoic.

The Rational Ignorance podcast helps you focus your attention on what really matters--we help you separate the wheat from the chaff. We select topics and experts with a practical view toward living life well. With so much information available in the world today, it can be hard to know where to focus your attention. We’ll pick out important, interesting topics and connect you with experts who give you a big picture overview of what you need to know. We use dialogue to tease out the important details of current topics and provide actionable advice on how to put the new knowledge to work.

Our listeners are typically well-educated, open-minded individuals who seek better understanding of how to navigate our sometimes-crazy world.
 

We wanted to have a vehicle to potentially reach significant numbers of people who are curious about the world, and want to better understand how to live well. We both listen to many podcasts.

We have two main goals for the podcast. Our primary goal is to help people gain a deeper understanding of how to live well by helping them apply enduring truths to our current world; put simply, we want to help people live better lives. Our secondary goal is to model the value of civil dialogue for gaining deeper understandings of important topics, and of each other.

We launched our first full episode on April 28, 2021, but we worked on the podcast for six months before the launching the trailer.
 

We release every other Wednesday. It takes approximately 10 - 15 hours to plan and produce each episode. Finding time can be a challenge; we generally spend a significant portion of the weekend and pre-work morning hours planning and promoting the podcast.
The podcast is self-funded. We spend about $200 per month on the podcast, although there were also some one-time expenses for gear and software.
 

We do not accept sponsorships at this time, although we do promote Andrea's business (Sedona Philosophy Experience) in our outro.
Currently, the benefits of podcasting come from our satisfaction in helping others. In addition, we benefit from the learning that comes from our research and our discussions with each other and our guests.
 

We use Buzzsprout for hosting, Hindenburg Journalist Pro for initial editing (for content), and Riverside.fm for recording. We each have dedicated microphones (an ATR2200 and a Rhode shotgun mic). We send the audio files to a sound engineer for final editing. We find guests through personal connections or through cold contacts with relevant experts.

We prepare by thoroughly researching the topic, which might include reading what our guests have written, or performing our own independent research. We often draw from academic research, which we distill to make things relevant to a general audience. We then prepare a detailed run-of-show document that includes in sequence the main questions and topics we want to cover.
 

Our show is available on all major podcast apps, on our website (https://www.rationalignorancepodcast.com/). We promote on social media (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn), through a small email list, and through personal contacts. We also ask our guests to help promote their episodes.

Facebook has been most useful so far, but we're increasing our social media efforts and will run a targeted ad on a podcast app next month.
 

We should have spent more time really nailing down our target audience. We don't have a well-defined audience (such as gamers, sports fans, entrepreneurs, etc.). Also, editing takes MUCH longer than we anticipated, which is why we're now using an audio engineer. We also learned that episode planning pays off in better content.

Here are some resources that have been very useful.
- https://www.thepodcasthost.com/
- https://schoolofpodcasting.com/
- https://theaudacitytopodcast.com/
- https://blog.lime.link/
- https://krystalproffitt.com/
- r/Podcasting on Reddit
- Buzzsprout Facebook group

Buzzsprout and Riverside.fm have some helpful videos and blog posts.

We also try to pay attention to learn from our favorite podcasts (DarkNet Diaries, The Jordan Harbinger Show, Higherside Chats, and some others).
 

Podcast website: https://www.rationalignorancepodcast.com/
Email: rationalignorance@pm.me
Twitter: @TheRIpodcast