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50 Free Podcast Ideas from The Big Listen! (http://wamu.fm/freepodideas)
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Record a: bar/bat mitzvah, wedding, funeral, quinceanera, first communion. Call it "Rites of Passage."
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Interview people who leave negative Yelp reviews. Find out why they have so much time on their hands.
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Find obituaries from the same day around the world. Try to do stories on those people who died at the same exact day/time. Pat yourself on the back for crushing the needle-in-a-haystack challenge.
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Reenactments of great moments in history, but made for kids. Or by kids.
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People of color interviewing random white people about their white privilege
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What ever happened to…Tiffany, Pogs & Z. Cavaricci pants? Like Mystery Show but different.
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“Ask A Muslim” — no dumb questions (ok, there will be a lot of dumb questions)
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Advice from ‘Yoncé. Literally, Beyoncé doling out advice. Or a Beyoncé simulacrum.
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Embed in costume-heavy subcultures — cosplay, creative anachronists, Renaissance actors, LARP-ers, etc. Become one of them.
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Document the lives and loves of kids in daycare or old people in old folks homes. FIND THE DRAMA.
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First-time political candidates are on the rise in a big way. Find one. Follow them through a race.
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A day in the life of the gig economy - become a Task Rabbit or a Lyft driver or a Caviar delivery girl
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Pep talks for hire
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Leave a microphone on a playground. Let it run for days. See what you collect.
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Chronicle people’s second acts in life — why they’ve started over and how.
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Spend a season with an underdog’s sports teams ever-hopeful fans. Find out why they care about losers so much.
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Dig into diets through the ages. Try all of them out. Call the show "Loosing It."
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A snack matrix — the definitive snack judging show
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Investigate the inner workings of American strip malls. Record these dying places before the robots take over.
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Explore the paths your life DIDN’T take. From childhood dreams to thwarted goals. Not at all depressing.
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Strap a recorder to your outdoor cat. See what he/she gets up to when you’re at work.
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Personal ads. Like the ones in the back of alt-weeklies before the Internet ruined dating.
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Advice from grandma
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A deep dive on weirdo animals & insects. Like “Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom” but in podcast form.
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Searching: A podcast that follows 5 people hunting for jobs. Instructional and potentially disheartening.
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Stories of drug-dealing Uber drivers, which you would have to call Uberhigh
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Audio diaries from sex workers capturing the good, bad, funny, ugly and real side of the biz. Call it Red Light Diaries.
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Real-life couples explain big problems they’ve had and how they overcame them (AKA How We Solved It)
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Job Swap — Blue collar folks switch jobs with white collar folks for a day and you tape the hilarious results
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Republicans and Democrats put on the waders and get out in the creek together. What'll they catch? Who knows!
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Mom Secrets — literally, the secret lives of moms
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May/December romance, but with the elderly and preschoolers. Conversations between them
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Let’s talk about phobias. It would be like a TLC show, but in podcast form.
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A show celebrating lady crews and female friendship. Stories from the inside of these posses
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An exploration of TV game shows — the history, the drama, the intrigue. Like “Making Oprah,” but with more Vanna White.
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Ex Hex — let’s dial up exes and see what went wrong.
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Children of immigrants go on a journey to learn about their parents’ home country. And we learn with them.
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How the hell do adults make new friends anyway? An instructional podcast.
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Best dinosaurs ranked. Debate might ensue.
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Take my dog, please! Adventures in pet adoption that will double as a pup training pod
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Parlez vous Français? A language learning podcast that is pop cultural and interactive and story-based and better than all the others
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Tell a story with no music bed. Then cue listeners to play a song under certain parts Interactive scoring. Choose your own adventure, but for podcast music
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Choose Your Own Adventure — a fiction podcast where you choose the outcome (don’t get caught up in the impossible mechanics of this; just enjoy the possibility)
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Read a bunch of get rich/abundance/financial guide books. See if you make any money.
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Take us down an internet rabbit hole. Record yourself finding stuff on the web and following it to weird/disturbing places.
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Comb government archives for archival tape of regular people. Tell the history of everyday Americans.
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Let’s learn fun accents! A podcast about the origins of regional dialects across the English-speaking world.
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A documentary series on celebrity Internet cats/dogs/hedgehogs, etc. It’d be heckin great!
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Come out, come out wherever you are. People come out about different things — being a gamer, a Republican, a person who loves Ryan Seacrest. Revelations!
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A podcast about podcasts about podcasts (JK!)
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