Your show doesn't need to go viral or land sponsors to return what you put into it many times over.
Here's what ours have done for the people behind them:
Most institutional podcasts don't fail. They drift.
The show launched fine. The audio is clean. Episodes ship on schedule. And somewhere around episode eight, without anyone deciding it, the show became a seminar — experts talking to other experts, every stakeholder's priority getting a turn, downloads politely flat.
Nobody can quite say what the show is for anymore. Which becomes a real problem the moment someone upstairs asks why it's in the budget.
Here's the thing: it was never a production problem. It's a decision that never got made — or got made once, in a kickoff doc, and never enforced again. Who, exactly, is this show talking to? And what is it supposed to change?
When that decision is missing, institutional gravity takes over. The show starts serving the org chart instead of a listener. And a show that can't name its job can't defend its line item.
The fix is one vividly imagined listener.
Every institutional show I've made that worked — and I've been making them with MIT, BCG, HASI, and the GIIN since 2015 — worked for the same reason: the host knew exactly who they were talking to. Not a demographic. Not "policymakers and the general public." One specific, non-expert person, held in mind so vividly they might as well be sitting in on the interview.
The questions change.
Hosts stop asking what would impress their colleagues and start asking what their listener actually needs unpacked.
The answers change.
Jargon stops surviving the conversation, because she wouldn't follow that — and the host hears it in real time.
The edit changes.
The tangent that would impress the department but lose the listener gets cut, without a committee meeting.
The outcomes change.
Because a show built for someone specific actually reaches people like them — and those people do things. They enroll. They partner. They cite your research. They make different decisions.
The Outcome Diagnostic
A fixed-scope way to find out whether your show is set up to do its job — and exactly what to change if it isn't.
I listen — properly.
Two to three full episodes, the way your most important listener would hear them — plus whatever founding documents exist: the launch memo, the goals deck, the listener you meant to serve.
We talk — ninety minutes, structured.
Your host and whoever owns the outcome, in one working session. Not a presentation — a diagnosis. We name what the show is built to produce, surface where the editorial discipline is slipping, and pressure-test it against what I heard in the episodes.
You get the brief.
One page. It names the outcome your show exists to produce, who the listener is in human terms, where the discipline is breaking down episode to episode, and the three concrete editorial shifts to make over the next ninety days.
The honest part: Sometimes the diagnosis is "this shouldn't be a podcast," or "pause it and rebuild." If that's true, the brief will say so, plainly — along with what to do instead. You're paying for the answer, not a pitch.
Where it goes from here
The Diagnostic stands alone — plenty of teams will take the brief and run it themselves. When teams want help executing, it works like this:
The Outcome Diagnostic — $1,500.
The decision-grade picture: the outcome, the listener, the editorial fixes. Credits forward.
Launch — from $4,997.
Concept to episode one: format, pilot episodes, host coaching, sound design, launch strategy — built on the brief instead of guesswork.
Production & advisory — ongoing.
My team runs the show alongside yours and keeps every episode pointed at the outcome.
Shows that did their jobs
Since 2015, I've produced and consulted on more than forty shows for institutions whose work matters.
Students decide to attend universities after hearing our shows.
Energy CEOs use our shows to make science-based decisions to protect the environment.
Fortune 500 executives reconsider how humans stay in the loop as AI becomes ubiquitous.
Who this is for
Institutional shows with a real mission behind them: university departments and research centers, public media newsrooms, climate and impact organizations, policy shops, professional firms — teams whose show is fine, but whose gut says it should be doing more.
And who it isn't for: if you're after viral growth tactics, or you just need affordable editing, I'm genuinely not your best dollar — and I'm happy to point you toward people who are.
Questions, answered straight
Our show's been running for years. Is it too late for this?
The opposite. The Diagnostic works best with real episodes to diagnose. Long-running shows usually have the most drift — and the fastest wins.
We haven't launched yet.
Then you don't need a diagnostic — you need a launch built right the first time. Book the same call; we'll talk launch instead.
Who needs to be in the room?
Your host and whoever owns the outcome — the comms lead, the center director, the dean's office. The total ask is the ninety-minute session plus a short intake.
What if you tell us to stop the show?
Then I just saved you next year's production budget. If it's true, it's in the brief.
How does payment work?
One invoice, $1,500. W-9, vendor forms, whatever your office needs. The price sits deliberately below most procurement thresholds — it's a decision one person can make.
Can I send this page to a colleague?
Please do. That's usually how these start.
Find out what your show is for.
Thirty minutes, no deck. Bring the show; I'll have listened to an episode before we talk. You'll leave knowing whether the Diagnostic fits — and you'll get at least one honest observation either way.