Meet Hiwote Getaneh: Developing Unique Podcasts

Sep 11th

Hiwote Getaneh is an audio producer whose curiosity about human-centered and emotion-driven storytelling has led her to work on some of the most critically recognised podcasts of recent years. As part of the team working on Where Should We Begin? and How’s Work? with Esther Perel, Hiwote is used to creating shows that rely on sharing parts of people that are often private.

Her passion for intimate storytelling is clear – In This is Dating, she even went as far as to put her own life in front on listeners for the sake of the story – but she says her skill for this can be traced back to her training in the field of public policy, where Hiwote worked for years as a Senior Research Analyst.

Francesca Turauskis hopped on a call with her to talk about transferring her skills in public policy to podcasts, podcasting cultures across international borders, and how to create a truly unique and intimate show…

Francesca: You have a background in public policy, how did you move into podcasting?

Hiwote: I was at Johns Hopkins studying public policy and health finance. Hopkins is really well known in the healthcare world, so I was like, “I’m so sure this is the path I’m going to go down.”

But I remember sitting in the classroom on my very first day in my master’s program, and I was like, “I’m in the wrong place, this is not where I’m supposed to be.” Over the two years of getting my masters, I was basically looking for creative outlets the entire time. When I graduated, the work I started doing was a policy analyst, and I realized “there’s no way this is gonna be the rest of my life”.

So I started interviewing people about how they created lives that they felt were fulfilling because my life did not feel fulfilling. That was actually my first foray into podcasting, because it was such a low barrier to entry in terms of just getting started to interview people.

Over the course of creating that podcast where I was interviewing people about how they created these incredible lives, I was like, “wait, I’m having a lot of fun creating this show”. That was the first indication that maybe this is the path I need to go down.

FT: It sounds like podcasting was the way you were trying to figure stuff out, but then the podcast became the thing that you figured out?

HG: That’s exactly right. Even now, I identify much more as a storyteller first and then podcasting grew on me. The medium of audio became something where I really appreciated the intimacy in a way that I couldn’t get on video, couldn’t get through writing. So I just kept going deeper and deeper on that front.

FT: Does your Public Policy background help you as a producer, is it something you’re still able to bring into your current role?

HG: When I worked in public policy, I was a policy analyst tech and what that technically means is: I was a statistical programmer. It’s the process of programming large data sets, and it means you have to learn how to break something really big into its smallest parts, or work backwards from where you want to get, to what you currently have. We would get [for example] mother’s birth data from all over a state and then try to link it with our sample sizes. That is actually intricately linked to what I do on a day-to-day basis because that’s what storytelling is, right?

You have this big picture idea, but really the things we connect to are these small moments, these emotions. They are the characters. Those are the building blocks to the stories and the pictures that we eventually end up having in our heads with someone when we’re listening to someone’s podcast. In that way [podcasting and policy analysis] feel really intricately linked.

In a much more explicit way, I’ve worked on a podcast with the Gates Foundation, which just happened to be what I did my research on during my master’s program. So there are some very direct, literal links, but to me, the more interesting part is that as a statistical programmer, I learned to think creatively. Even though I didn’t make that connection until way later, that same skill set is what I use as a storyteller.

FT: You were able to build your expertise and your connection to the Gates Foundation into producing a show – was a podcast something that you pitched to them or was that something that you were recommended because you had those expertise?

HG: At the time I was working for a company called Magnificent Noise, it was a production house, and they had been talking to the Gates Foundation about making a podcast with them. I just happened to be the easiest producer to pick because I had that background, so I didn’t really have to pitch myself. It just felt really evident that the show [Make Me Care About] would be a natural fit for me.

FT: So, just lean into things that you’re good at and lean into that knowledge?

HG: Yeah. I spent a lot of time being like, “am I glad I took out American student loans to get a master’s..?” It’s hard to look back and think about whether, actually, could you do what you’re doing now without the background that you have? You will never know that answer, right? But I think about it a lot because my career is entirely different than what I ever imagined it to be. I’m a child of immigrants, I thought I was going to go to med school. That didn’t happen, which is why I went into public policy, because I was like, “this is a serious job, I will be a serious person”.

Now I tell stories for my living and my family still wonders what I do!

FT: You mentioned being a child of immigrants, and you’ve lived in ‘several corners of the world’, as you’ve described it. Do you have much of a view on how podcasting in the UK or the US differs to other countries?

HG: I know the US market really well, but I don’t know a ton about podcasting in the UK to be honest with you because I’m based in Lisbon – I want to be upfront about that. What I have noticed is American culture, the same way it’s exported in music, and then sports and arts, is so widely exported to the rest of the world. I notice that lots of folks think the American shows that are the most famous shows we see on Apple Podcasts – the shows that are constantly charting – are the standard. But I’ve just found so many cool shows based in different parts of the world that I’m like “the Americans don’t know about this!”.

I wish we had the collective power to share what is being created in different corners of the world. I know there are a bunch of very cool shows that have come out of the UK, but when I went to Nairobi I met podcast producers and podcast houses there that were really interesting. They had shows that had concepts and a basis that I never really thought about. So my big noticing is that we Americans do a really good job of marketing and I almost wish we could take that skill set and share it with the rest of the world, instead of just the product [the podcasts] that we end up sharing.

FT: A show you worked on, This Is Dating, was one of those international successes and for good reason as it was quite unique. What was the process of developing that show?

HG: Well, it was [Executive Producer] Jesse Baker who was really the mastermind behind it. A similar show that the same producers made is called, Where Should We Begin? with Esther Perel and in terms of concept, they share a DNA. We had this idea that with online dating, you’re super superficial and it’s incredibly emotionally draining because you feel like a commodity and you’re kind of commodifying the people that you’re swiping on. The concept behind this show was “how do we go to the total opposite end and center connection first?”.

What was super interesting and super hard was – people really wanted to be vulnerable and share their stories and actually experience this kind of scary experience, but also they were terrified that the world would know who they were. So for the first season, I basically found people through my network and a big part of the promise [to contributors] from our end was, “It’s not about you meeting the love of your life… but we have a great dating coach and can provide some questions and the right structures for this hour you are together. You’re going to have fun and then you can decide whether you’re going to keep dating them or not. Only if you feel like this is going to be fun and beneficial for you should you do this.”.

The actual dates were created in that way that slowed the whole [dating] process down and so the process for us as producers also required that we slowed down and thought a lot about ‘if we’re creating a place of intimacy between these two strangers, how do we create intimacy between us and our listeners that allows them to come on the journey with us?’

The date’s are anywhere from an hour to two hours long, but you end up hearing maybe 15 minutes of that date. That was the hardest part about developing the show – finding the people was super easy and fun, convincing them was a thing we did very carefully because we didn’t want to push anybody into doing it. But actually shaping the story, we had to spend a lot of time thinking about what our audience cares about and how we insert ourselves as guides, or ‘dating fairy godmothers’ so that it wasn’t about us.

But also, we have to insert some parts of ourselves, especially me because I was the only producer that was dating. How much of my story I would share versus not was a big thing that we talked about a lot.

FT: Do you think that you’ve got the right balance?

HG: I always feel like I never quite get that balance right. [But we’ll talk about it more in our panel!]

FT: Lastly, you run an Emerging Voice Accelerator programme about helping people to create shows that are unique to them. Would you have a number one tip for developing an idea that is unique to you?

HG: The biggest thing that’s been sitting with me is this idea of creative resilience. I think that most of us don’t create shows that are unique to us, because we have an idea in our heads of what we want to make, but our skill level is not there yet.

My learning is that the only way to fill that gap is to develop creative resilience. [What I mean by this is] continue to stay with it until you actually find your voice, continue to pivot and experiment with your ideas until your ideas feel truly unique to you.

My learning is actually nine times out of ten, whatever you create is not going to be that unique to you. It’s not going to be that good yet. Even when professionals are doing it, it’s not always going to be good at first. The difference between what pros do and what I used to do as an amateur is that pros just keep going and they keep iterating and they do it with other people’s input. They keep sharing it. Maybe you don’t share it with the public, but we would have table reads where we would hear rough drafts of something we’re thinking about. We would get feedback on it and we’d go back and scrap it and start over and whatever.

When I think of creative resilience I think we need emotional regulation first and foremost because what happens for most of us is we start something, we feel the pain of it not being that good and then we either distract ourselves, give it up or just rush and publish the thing so that it’s out of our purview. We need to actually learn how to sit with uncomfortable emotions and then continue working towards the vision that we have.

The second thing is not creating in a silo. Make sure that when you are creating something you have trusted partners, friends, listeners, whatever stage you’re in. When I first started, it was a family member who would listen to the first 15 minutes of an episode. Eventually as I grew my Instagram, it became audience members who I would tap and say like, “can I give you just the preview of this thing?”. I think creating in a community is one of the most powerful tools.

The third piece of advice, and that I would give myself this advice five, seven, eight years ago, is continuous learning or failing forwards. It’s embracing this stuff, getting very comfortable with not being where you want to be and saying, “okay, I’m just going to try and fix this one thing on the next episode”. Once you fix that one thing, your level up is so big and you feel so good about that.

If you want to learn more about creating unique and intimate podcasts, Hiwote will be hosting the Structure of Intimacy Panel at this year’s International Women’s Podcast Festival on 4th October 2024. Tickets are on sale now.