Solange Khumalo· Editor, Radiolab
"The best edit I ever made was removing the host entirely from a 45-minute conversation. Nobody noticed. That was the point."
On the moment you realize the interview you flew to record is the wrong interview — and what you do with the tape anyway.
Tariq Osei· Acoustics engineer, NPR
Why the mic you spent $400 on sounds worse than the $80 dynamic in your friend's closet.
Priya Nair· Indie podcaster, Chicago
"I stopped trying to sound like a podcast and started sounding like myself. Downloads tripled in four months."
Six years of making a podcast about urban agriculture. The exact decisions that moved her from 200 to 8,000 downloads.
Marcus Webb· Host, Feed
A solo episode. What your intro music is actually doing, and why most of it is overworking itself.
Dani Chen· Former producer, Gimlet Media
"The day Spotify walked in, everyone knew. Nobody said it out loud for three months."
What it felt like to be inside the best podcast company in the world when it stopped being that.
Elan Bergström· Field recordist, BBC
Two minutes of silence can make or break an edit. The technical and emotional case for recording room tone every time.
Yemi Adeyemi· Host, The Long View
Techniques for reclaiming a conversation without making the guest feel interrupted — and when to just let it run.
One email. The week's episode, the thing Marcus was wrong about, and three links from the edit bay. No sponsorships. No upsells.
"The only newsletter I actually open on Friday morning."
— Priya Nair, 6-year podcaster, Chicago
Episodes about structure, interviewing, editing, and the hundred small choices that separate a podcast people finish from one they abandon at the 8-minute mark.
Sarah Okonkwo· Senior producer, This American Life
"Silence is the most underused interviewing tool in podcasting. We're all too scared of dead air."
On withholding the obvious question until the guest stops performing and starts talking.
Finn Larsson· Narrative producer
Why the podcasters who claim to "just have conversations" are lying — and why that's fine.
Amara Diallo· Editor, Wondery
A production workflow that turns a 90-minute interview transcript into a 28-minute episode without losing the soul of it.
Marcus Webb· Host, Feed
A solo episode dissecting 20 cold opens from listener-submitted shows. Most of them start three minutes too late.
Not gear reviews. Gear thinking. Episodes that treat your recording chain as a series of considered decisions, not a shopping list.
Kenji Watanabe· Acoustic consultant
"You can spend $5,000 on treatment or you can hang two moving blankets. The difference in audio is smaller than you think."
The definitive guide to recording in small, untreated spaces. What to buy, what to skip, and what to hang on the walls.
Rosa Mbeki· Mastering engineer
The case for doing your entire edit on headphones — and the specific pair worth the investment.
Tobias Reinholt· Audio engineer, podcast
A tested signal chain for indie creators who are done apologizing for their audio quality.
Yuki Tanaka· Indie podcaster, Tokyo
A defense of free software in an industry that fetishizes expensive tools.
Marcus Webb — Brooklyn, NY
Photographed by Dani Osei, 2025
Twelve years in audio. Started as a field recorder for WNYC, spent three years as a senior producer at Gimlet before it got absorbed into something larger and less interesting, and then did what everyone does: started his own thing.
Feed launched in 2022 as a place to have the conversations Marcus kept having in Signal threads and over post-recording drinks — about the decisions that don't make it into the show, about the edit you almost didn't make, about why your intro music is doing all the emotional heavy lifting and whether that's a problem.
He records in a walk-in closet in Crown Heights. The foam is from Sweetwater. The mic is a Neumann U87 that he bought used and regrets every time he reads about condensers on forums at midnight.
"The gap between a podcast that plateaus at 200 downloads and one that breaks through isn't talent. It's a hundred small craft decisions made with intention."
Previously
WNYC · Gimlet
Episodes hosted
142
Mic of choice
Neumann U87
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