Building the Thing You Want to See
Continuing my series of interviews with independent podcasters, this one features Lindsay Patterson, creator and co-host of Tumble, a popular science podcast for kids. Lindsay, an audio and video producer, started the podcast when she was living in Austin, Texas. Today she and her husband, teacher Marshall Escamilla, co-host the show from Barcelona, where they moved a few years ago.
Lindsay helped establish the field of kids’ podcasts, and has witnessed it come into its own during the past year. These days her world is a lot bigger than Tumble - she’s independent, yes, but her mission is to see kids’ audio - and her own work - expand beyond podcasting.
Ashley Milne-Tyte: Remind me when you started Tumble and what prompted you to start it.
Lindsay Patterson: We started in 2014. I got the idea for Tumble then, and my background was as a science radio reporter for a short form radio show. While I was there, I had the opportunity to do a special project that was finding scientists to answer kids' questions. And I really enjoyed that because I have no background in science. I didn't like science when I was in school.
So when I got the opportunity to write for kids, I made that connection of, ‘this is something that matters to me because I missed out on the most fundamental and interesting and important aspect of science when I was in my own science classes.’ And this is also an audience I can write to, because I have that beginner's mind, like I'm not trained, I'm not trying to prove what I know. I know nothing.
But at that time my boss told me, ‘Oh, there's no way that you'll ever be able to pitch a new radio show.’ Like, it was not even an ambition that was on my radar. But when podcasts started to come out, I had left my job in audio and was trying to find a way back without having to work for a public radio station and I just had this idea of doing something for kids. And now podcasting was the way to try that out.
I had just had my first child and was thinking, ‘I have to try this, I have to do it.’
Ashley Milne-Tyte: And when you started, podcasts for kids weren't really a thing, right?
Lindsay Patterson: Yeah. I remember going to a mom's Facebook group and asking, ‘Has anyone heard a podcast for kids?’ There was just a handful of things for kids [at that time].
“I thought, either this is a really bad idea that nobody’s doing it, or it’s a really good idea that nobody’s done yet.”
And I decided that it could be a really good idea.
I roped my husband into doing it with me because we'd always talked about doing a podcast. I really wanted the banter of Radiolab and wanted to bring that to kids. Me and my husband, we have fun conversations about science all the time, so I asked him to try it out with me…and we recorded some stuff and I was putting it together and it was just so boring to cut.
I threw it all away and then had to start on a new concept. And the thing that I always liked about science journalism was talking to scientists. So I decided to go back to that, and tell stories based on interviews with scientists about current research, the actual process of science. One of my best friends is an ecologist and I got her to come over to our house one night and tell a story about trying to find out what salamanders eat, and made that into the first episode.
Ashley Milne-Tyte: How did you proceed with guests after that?
Initially I drew on a group of people that I knew. And then eventually I decided to start interviewing science people who had a following, and attempt to grow our audience that way. So like science YouTubers…just kind of experimenting with, ‘can I find guests that will help grow the audience?’
“I realized very early on that we were going to have to grow our audience from scratch because nobody knew about podcasts for kids. ”
And so at the same time that we were developing the show, we started getting together with other kids’ podcasters to try to grow the ecosystem and the audience as a whole. And that's how Kids Listen got started [an advocacy organization for kids’ podcasts]. Our mission is to build community, advocate for the growth of the medium and also to do research around kids’ podcasts.
Ashley Milne-Tyte: How have you built over time? Because every independent podcaster is dying to know, how do I build an audience?
Lindsay Patterson: So it takes so long. It really takes a long time. But I think our trajectory is based on community, where there was a small number of podcasts for kids and we basically all got together to start this organization, Kids Listen. And from there we started a Slack, and then we'd talk about doing cross promotions. And as Kids Listen has grown up, we would do themed episodes. I remember one of our first ones was about family, so that everybody would make an episode that interpreted family in their own way. And then we'd say, ‘this is part of the family episodes, and you can listen to more on other people's episodes, and find more podcasts that way.’
We also developed an app, because I think that one of the big things about discovery for kids is that the kids and family category is a mess of both content for kids, and content for adults. So we created the Kids Listen app in order to have a safe place where kids and parents could discover new podcasts based on age and interests and things like that.
I also did a lot of networking, and going to things like Third Coast really helped, or South by Southwest. I was in Austin at the time, so haunting all of the podcast events at South by Southwest was more feasible for us than it might be for most people.
Ashley Milne-Tyte: But last year really changed things in a big way, right?
Lindsay Patterson: Yes. Last spring, when everything started shutting down for COVID, it was kind of a critical mass for kids’ podcasts where there was now enough content, enough awareness, and also the sudden need for content that was screen-free and educational. It really brought a lot of people flooding into the ecosystem. And so we saw a huge spike in our listenership, around the middle of March [2020]. And we also had just published an episode about answering kids’ coronavirus questions, at a time when a lot of people were looking for information so that they could explain this monumental shift in kids' perception and experience of the world.
AM-T: These days, Tumble gets 70,000 listeners a month. And since the pandemic began Lindsay and Marshall have been approached by other production companies to make things for them, and by foundations interested in funding their work. She says monetization has really picked up.
Lindsay Patterson: COVID completely changed everything. Everybody is interested in audio for kids now. And we're one of the few companies that are approaching it with an entrepreneurial mindset and experience in education as well. As my husband has been an educator and curriculum developer for so many years, we can do a lot and we have a lot of flexibility and understanding of how podcasts and audio can work in education. There are a lot of different considerations when you're looking at podcasts for kids versus podcasts for adults, in where the market might be. And we're super excited about education.
Ashley Milne-Tyte: Which all sounds great, but some of that is taking you away from your actual show, right? You're being paid because of the show, but the work isn't actually on your show necessarily.
Lindsay Patterson: Yeah, but we are thinking of ourselves more as a production company. We want Tumble to be sustainable and we want to monetize Tumble, but we have so many interests in just understanding and helping develop the kids' podcast ecosystem. And so we have really begun to think, how much further can we go? How much more ambitious can we be? I'm excited about going beyond podcasting and going beyond Tumble itself as a show.
Ashley Milne-Tyte: How do you feel about being independent?
It can be so isolating to be an independent and what I feel like we've done with kids’ podcasts that hasn't been done in adults is from the beginning, get people together and say, ‘We all need to work together to create an audience and to create awareness of the value that we're bringing to kids and families,’ and then advocate for their best interests as well, because they're a very sensitive audience. Kids are very into the things that they’re into.
In the course of my career [in media, before Tumble] I have seen the disappointments that you can have working within companies.
“I’ve always wanted to be successful on our own terms, rather than saying, ‘I got this great job.’ I wanted to make the great job for myself.”
I wanted to see that job being created within kids’ podcasts, but it became clear that either it wasn't going to be created, or I wasn't going to be the candidate that people wanted within that role.
So I have just kept trying to make this space for myself and accumulate the resources that I need to do that.
Ashley Milne-Tyte: It sounds like you’re well on your way.
Lindsay Patterson: I hope so. It's a road. I feel like so many times interviews are like, how did you get here? And it's like, I'm still on my way, you know? And everybody feels like they're still on their way. I'll be excited to talk in 10 years about how it turns out.