Kentucky caves, mountains, lakes, rocks and even glaciers are focus of new UK podcast
Despite a lack of audio recording experience, an engineering geologist at the Kentucky Geological survey saw an opportunity to channel his passion and start his own podcast show.
“I’m a big listener of podcasts,” engineering geologist Matt Crawford said. “My sense was that there was a niche that we could fit into.”
After doing a little research, Crawford realized that there were many science-oriented podcasts being produced, but few of them were focused on earth science.
The result is “The Big Blue Rock Pod,” which launched in January. It’s a production of the Kentucky Geological Survey at the University of Kentucky, which conducts unbiased research for the state and disseminates that data.
“Outreach is an important part of what we do,” Crawford said, whether that be through talks at schools or the annual open house where the public is invited in to see the work that’s being done. “This just seemed like a no-brainer.”
Crawford, who specializes in landslides and slope stability, tapped Doug Curl, who heads the survey’s Geoscience Information Management Section, and Sarah Arpin, a geologist in the Water Section, to join him as co-hosts.
So far, they’ve produced episodes on topics ranging from earthquakes to Mammoth Cave, from paleontology and fossils to how Kentucky’s geology relates to the bourbon industry. Their most recent episode was a roundup of listener-submitted questions.
“The sky’s the limit,” Crawford said in a recent interview.
In the future, they plan to talk about oil and gas, landslides, meteorites, climate change and points of geologic interest in Kentucky such as Middlesboro, which sits in a meteorite crater. An upcoming episode they recently recorded will answer questions submitted by listeners.
So far, Curl said, their most popular episode has been one about Red River Gorge.
None of the hosts had audio recording experience, but over the past year, they’ve learned as they went about keeping the flow of conversation going, finding interesting guests and developing good questions to discuss.
Curl said they try to keep the tone conversational, and episodes are about an hour long. A new episode is released in the latter part of each month after editing by UK Research Communications.
Their goal is to “take something technical and make it more accessible,” Crawford said.
“It kind of forces you to describe things in a very basic kind of way,” Curl said. “It’s kind of like teaching.”
While Curl said he was initially skeptical, he’s gotten positive feedback from listeners. They said they’ve heard from all ages who are enjoying “The Big Blue Rock Pod.”
“The Big Blue Rock Pod” is hosted by Podbean and can be heard on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music and Google Podcasts, according to a UK Research article.
