Ask an expert: Kevin O’Connell
Lessons from the Director of Production for Apple and Spotify’s #1 Podcast, The Mel Robbins Podcast.
Last updated: April 11, 2025
Author: Megan Schmidt, Writer & podcast producer
We recently had the opportunity to sit down with Kevin O'Connell. Kevin’s a professional audio and video production specialist with a background in podcasting and music. Plus, he’s the Director of Audio & Video Post Production on The Mel Robbins Podcast, which is currently the #1 ranked podcast.
So, suffice to say, Kevin knows about audio editing.
Although everything Kevin shared with us is basically content gold (and you can read the full interview below), here are our top 8 takeaways from the conversation:
1. The importance of repetition and comfort in the process
“The process of getting behind the mic, writing, outlining, whatever you do to capture is one of the things that's going to really influence how you make podcasts consistently and repeatable and scalable.”
Don’t be afraid to record and re-record. The more you do it, the more comfortable and confident you’ll become. Even if your first attempts aren’t perfect, you’re learning and improving every time.
2. Know your audience and tailor your content
“You’ve got to think about what you're making and who you're making it for... listen to research, even if you don't have a show just yet.”
Understanding your audience is crucial. Create personas of your ideal listeners and seek feedback early, even before producing content. Your audience’s needs should guide your approach, whether that’s how scripted or free-flowing your episodes are.
3. Choosing between a solo guest or an interview depends on you and your audience
“As the creator, are you going to want to interview someone? Are you going to get joy from doing that?... If you love doing research and you love distilling down and simplifying some information for people, I think you can find yourself really happy in a solo format where it's just you and your mic.”
Consider your strengths and interests when deciding on your podcast format. If you love solo storytelling or research, stick with that. If you enjoy interviews and connecting with experts, make that the focus. Also, factor in your available time—interview-based formats require more time for research and editing.
4. Editing is key to shaping the narrative
“Start with just the big pieces... You don't start with the intricate design on the top, you start with just the big pieces of layered cake. I need to be able to look at the bird's eye view of the interview by topic section. So I'll use a tool that will chapter out my interview.”
Editing is where your podcast comes to life. Start with organizing the big themes and flow of the conversation, then refine by cutting unnecessary content, cleaning up the audio, and making subjective decisions. Editing is a skill, and learning how to shape your content efficiently is essential to creating a polished final product.
5. Balance in editing: Not all filler words need to be cut
“There's never been a case where I, or someone I'm working with on any show, has said ‘Let’s take them all out. We want this clean.’”
Editing isn't about removing every imperfection, like filler words, but about balancing what enhances the emotional flow and what distracts from it. Sometimes, filler words serve a humanizing purpose and create a natural rhythm, which should be preserved to maintain authenticity.
6. Storytelling enhanced by sound design
"It's the storytelling method of putting the listener in the space. ... You're taking what can be a somewhat isolated form of media [podcasts], where you're on your own and with headphones in, listening to your thing. But you can say, ‘Oh, I'm transforming myself.’"
Sound design—like including ambient noises and music—can immerse listeners in the story and make them feel like they are part of the experience. Even simple sounds, like a doorbell or background noise, can enhance the narrative and make the story more vivid and engaging.
7. Music to support, not overwhelm, the story
“You can use music to help make clear what type of emotion you're trying to put forth as the creator of this podcast.”
Music plays a powerful role in shaping the mood of your podcast, but it should never overshadow the content. Use it strategically—either to signal transitions or to amplify emotions. Be mindful not to overuse it, as too much music can detract from the narrative's impact and drown out the conversation's natural flow.
8. Create before you critique — The power of making without overthinking
“Just go out and make something. Just do it in the simplest, most raw form that you can. Go out and make one thing and put a stamp on it and then be done with it and move on to the next one.”
The best way to learn podcasting (or any creative endeavor) is to dive in and create something, even if it’s imperfect. Overthinking and getting bogged down in details can prevent progress. Create with a raw and honest approach, then refine your process with each new project.
Full interview
Can’t get enough of Kevin? We get it. Here’s the full, uncut interview of our time with him.
So good news. I actually just did my first hypothetical podcast. It's just me, talking into my laptop mic for like 60 minutes. So what do I do?
Great question. Well, congrats on recording your first thing. It's very exciting. Sometimes that’s the hardest part. I think you did the right thing by diving in. Because I think there's some fear around that—of recording yourself and it's in a permanent, tangible form.
The next thing I would recommend doing is throwing it away. Throwing it away and doing it again. You're going to make a lot of these things and some are going to be great. You're going to love them. Some you're going to want to redo. Some you're going to want to never hear the light of day.
But the process of getting behind the mic, writing, outlining, whatever you do to capture is one of the things that's going to really influence how you make podcasts consistently and repeatable and scalable however you want to. So maybe it's, it's a little extreme to say, throw it away, but I would say get behind the mic again, just one more time.
And it could be about the same thing, it could be about a different thing, but just see how it feels when you're back there again and talking to yourself on your laptop. I think something might unlock for you. Because, now you are in a familiar place. You're a little bit more comfortable. When you go and listen to yourself, you've already done two of these recordings, so you're not going to be as hypercritical.
Before recording, should I have an outline? Would that help me when editing, or does it just depend on your podcast style?
You’ve got to think about what you're making and who you're making it for.
If you're making it just for yourself and there's no rules; you can outline, you can talk freely, you can do anything you want. But if you're trying to start a conversation, reach an audience, or talk about something that interests you and you think might interest other people, then you’ve got to think about how you would want to receive that.
And then you’ve also got to talk to some people about how they would want to receive that audio. Get some audience research, listen to research, even if you don't have a show just yet. I usually start with friends and family and just see what they want to do and what they like. And in most cities, there's some kind of audio community you can tap into.
What you're making and who you're making it for will then dictate all of the steps beforehand. Maybe something scripted is going to be really nice. Or, your audience doesn't want to hear something as scripted because it sounds stale, maybe robotic. Then you might make an outline that you embellish on or you have bullet points that you kind of hit along the way.
I think a big part of it just goes into what you feel comfortable with.
Let’s talk about listener research and feedback. How can I get the best feedback from people?
Listener research and feedback is usually best before you've made anything, but you have the idea.
A really fun exercise is actually creating characters and saying, “This is Sally. Sally really loves this type of lifestyle. These are the things that she does, this is what her day to day life is. And these are the ways in which I think she would connect to this idea.”
Then you go to the next one. You're like, “All right, and there's this dude, Joe. And I think the same thing about him. He's going to really connect to these ideas because X, Y, and Z.”
So you create these fake kind of personas. And then you go and find them in real life like, “Oh my gosh, my cousin is Sally. Let me go and FaceTime my cousin Sally and talk to them. See why they might be interested in this topic.”
That's my pinnacle of listener research.
There is a step two. So, as I’m developing my podcast idea, I really need to figure out is this going to land for people? Are people going to listen? Why and why not? What types of things are people going to be able to pick up and put down in a given day? Are they the type of person who's going to listen to my three hour rant or do they want a 20 minute concise thing about my topic on, you know, birdwatching? Or whatever it might be.
It's almost like that persona starts informing the style I'm going to use. But now how do I figure out my show format? Should I do it myself? Or does bringing in guests bring more credibility?
I think a lot of podcasts hosts do that. Mel just happens to do it really, really well.
For a new podcaster deciding their format, I think there's a few factors. Content and format are two of them. But when you think about your ideal audience, the Joes and the Sallys, what types of episodes are they going to want to listen to? To connect with?
I think the other piece is you, as the creator, are you going to want to interview someone? Are you going to get joy from doing that? And doing the research? And are you gonna actually enjoy talking to them? Doing the actual interview? Are you going to enjoy editing those interviews? Because editing an interview is going to take more time than it would be just if it was you talking to your microphone. And putting those pieces together is like, how much time do you have in your life when you're making this podcast?
Sometimes it comes down to a very simple task. Like, if you have an hour a week to make your podcast, interview shows might not be for you. But those are very simplified versions of the considerations for format.
If you love doing research and you love distilling down and simplifying some information for people, I think you can find yourself really happy in a solo format where it's just you and your mic. And there are no rules that say you can't bring in clips from other podcasts or a clip of an expert from a news show or from their own social media. So you can still have “guests” without necessarily interviewing them, which is a really fun way to introduce a new format too.
Let’s pivot to people who might not understand why editing is so time-consuming. In your experience, how much of an interview actually makes it to air after being edited?
I’ll start by bringing us back to your earlier question about scripting, outlining, or just talking freely. Scripting and outlining typically yield you an actual podcast recording that's mostly usable and gets very few edits.
An off the cuff solo type episode or an interview, because you're not doing all the pre-production work to get it crafted, you end up getting into the editing process and that's when you do your sculpting and your crafting to make it fit the narrative of the topic at hand. So I think a big piece there is your time.
There's not a steadfast formula, but based on your listener research, if your Joes and your Sally's play podcasts all day, every day in the background while they're working, you can kind of push the envelope a little bit. You can say, okay, my episode might be two hours long and it's a little bit less edited. I can take the listener through the conversation.
If it's narrative-based, say something like Radiolab, and they're interviewing several different people and then they're writing narration around pieces of those interviews. That’s a lot of time to create one final product. It's like a big funnel that comes down. You have tons of interview tape and audio that comes through, you have a lot of narration, writing, and recording. And then you put that all together like a big puzzle.
I think for interviews a really nice ratio to start with is, people do really well with a conversation that is between an hour and 90 minutes. And you see how much you can cut that down and use that as your first gauge. And even target it. Like I'm going to make a half an hour episode out of this 90 minutes. That'll be very tough because you'll want to keep a lot of it. But if you get a 90 minute recording and cut it down by just 5%, that's still a listenable interview or podcast episode.
But if you start with a two hour interview and then try to make that into a half an hour, you're gonna end up finding yourself in a place where you're comparing pieces: you don't know what to cut, what to keep, and you're spending far more time in your editing process than you are in any other process of your podcast.
When you’re editing, how do you listen? Do you use text-based editing? Are you going to read the transcript? Are you going to listen from your couch and scribble stuff down? What is your process for listening to a story or listening to an interview?
It's content-dependent for sure. Taking the interview podcast format as an example, I first will do the big pieces. It's kind of like baking dessert, like making a cake. You don't start with the intricate design on the top, you start with just the big pieces of layered cake.
I need to be able to look at the bird's eye view of the interview by topic section. So I'll use a tool that will chapter out my interview. It’ll tell me: here’s the intro, here's where we talk about topic one, here's where we talk about topic two, and so on. Then I'll move those around to get them into a linear format that makes sense for the whole conversation.
Any of us who have talked to another human know that sometimes you loop back to a thing or want to expand on an idea. So it's really easy to find yourself in a conversation that isn’t linear from top to bottom, but that’s how you want the listener to experience it.
So I start there.
Are you putting in markers? Or rearranging the audio so it’s grouped by theme?
Well, both. It’s not grouped by theme, but in the order in which I want the sections of the interview or the conversation to appear for the listener. Whether I keep them or not, I'm just like, okay, here's the 12 topics. They're in chapter form, and I take those sections of the interview and I move them around to get them into a nice top to bottom order.
And if that's the cake, the layers of the actual sponge cake, then the frosting is going through and removing anything that was an aside. I do a big cut of an edit where I'm taking out anything that definitely won't end up in the episode.
And the next layer is just cleaning up our conversation to make us sound more concise: remove some filler words, clean up stutters or restarts, cut out long pauses. I’m focused on the things that help the listener really take home what is being said in the interview.
At that point, you should have a version of your interview that sounds really good and concise. And then you can make all of those nice subjective decisions based on what you like. You can cut things, combine sentences, clean things up with an AI tool, those kinds of things.
You can record a thing a thousand times and you might never be completely happy with it. But how can you make this a process that is repeatable? So you can not only get good at making the episode, but also get good at the process.
Give yourself a few, and put your stamp on it and move forward with the next one. I’ve found that to be a really helpful mantra. Don't beat it down too hard.
We have a real danger with AI of things becoming too antiseptic. How do you know when you've gone too far?
That’s a big conversation.
Well, let’s start with filler words: do you remove them all? Are you literally listening to when they might serve an emotional purpose?
Yes. Absolutely. There's never been a case where I, or someone I'm working with on any show, has said “Let’s take them all out. We want this clean. We want this cut.” The only time we do that is when we're doing ad reads and we have a specific set of time we need to fill.
For non-scripted stuff, there is a tipping point where the filler word distracts the listener or it's actually not going to serve the content. And then on the flip, there is an emotional, human kind of understanding that a listener has when they hear someone rev up to the idea or the concept that they're getting to.
I advise people to take a very different approach when you're thinking about filler words yourself, and—if it's an interview —yourself and the interviewee. You’re going to interview all these different people and you'll quickly discover all the idiosyncrasies and interesting components of human speech. Everyone speaks so differently, so the same editing approach that you have for yourself will not work on someone that you're interviewing. Because they have different patterns. They have different cadence and timing and they use different language and different filler words.
There's someone that I was editing recently that used the word “nevertheless” all the time. That was their version of “like.” That was their filler word. So we ended up searching for “nevertheless” and pulling out the vast majority of those.
I don't know if anyone knows where the line is between AI enhancement editing and human editing, but there is a component where I want to be able to hold on to some of that. I want to make the right decision to keep the relatable cadence and timing for the listener so they feel pulled in a little bit during those moments. It's not distracting. Sometimes it just takes a little bit of filler words and stutter to make it feel nice.
Something I've always been interested in is how Radiolab or This American Life will include the real-life noises. You can hear them ring the doorbell. The voiceover is saying, “We went to go visit Janine. Janine lives in rural Kansas.” *Ding dong.*
You can hear the raw tape, but why is that? What's the role of that tape? What is that doing?
That’s storytelling. Storytelling through things that are not words, because the words aren't the things that are making you feel that thing when we're listening to it. It's closing your eyes and hearing yourself in the space because they recorded it in a way where it felt like you're moving through the room, or getting out of your car and walking up to the house and ringing the doorbell. It's the storytelling method of putting the listener in the space.
You’re saying “Hey! Come with me. We're in this journey together.” You’re taking what can be a somewhat isolated form of media, where you're on your own and with headphones in, listening to your thing. But you can say, “Oh, I'm transforming myself. I'm actually transporting into this space with this host, with this person who's telling a story. I'm part of the story. I'm there with them.”
I think people have been experiencing that with all kinds of media and art for so long. I think some of the best forms of art and media will do that. They’ll just take you right along with them.
It's really, really special. And it's also fun to do as the creator.
So, back to our imaginary podcast. Good news: our edits are looking good. What else could we add? Anything in the sound design department?
I mean, music is key. It can be overused. It can be underused. It can be used as a utility where you're just navigating between sections and bringing the listener to the next topic. You can use it to help make clear what type of emotion you're trying to put forth as the creator of this podcast. You’re not trying to make people feel a certain way by using music, but it helps and supports the story.
Music's very fun and it's relatively easy to use these days where you have access to so much of it. You don't have to create it yourself. I think clips from other parts of the Internet and other media are really fun to use as well, where sometimes you're trying to drive a point home and it's not necessarily happening in the right way. You can find the right person who said it that exact same way and pull that into your edit.
And it might go without saying, but it's worth saying: the top of your episode, the intro, is where people often don't put enough thought, effort, or preparation. And the first 15% of the episode is where most shows are going to get their drop off, where people are like, “This isn't really happening for me. I'm going to go to the next episode or I'm going to go do something else with my life.” So have a really great intro that you put some time into.
When you're doing your editing and rearranging of sections, make sure the first 15-20% of the episode draws listeners in and keeps people in there. I think that's really fun to do. It allows you to do all of your editing on your episode and then go back to the mic, rewrite something, pull in little clips from the interview, tease them up.
A lot of people will do a scripted intro and tease a portion of the episode that can segue into the actual interview itself. Like, we do the interview first and then go write and record the intro.
It’s overwhelming to try to capture the in-the-moment enthusiasm you’re having with an interview when you’re editing during post-production. What advice do you have for navigating that?
It makes me think of a conversation I had recently. They were thinking about having a sample pad next to them to queue all the music. If their guest started telling a heartfelt story, they felt the need to have some string music ready. And when they start the interview, they need to tee them up perfectly and get their bio, and on and on.
But, when have you ever had a conversation where you introduce the person’s accolades? You know? Just press record and just have a conversation and see where it goes.
Just try not to overproduce. Don’t get into the conversation thinking “I'm going to write down a little timestamp at minute five. Yep. They had a really heartfelt moment. I'm going to go back later on and find the perfect piece of music to help narrate and tell that story.” Just have a conversation.
And for someone who has access to all the world’s music, how do you even decide what to use? And how much is too much?
Tone and vibe are big. There are definitely different levels of process for creating what's kind of like a mood board for the music and sounds of your podcast. What types of instruments do you like? What kind of emotions do you think are going to be elicited?
Just write that out, make a fun outline or a map of sorts. Go search for music on any one of the platforms you might be using, whether it's in your editor or on the internet somewhere. And tone is big, both from an emotional standpoint and from an instrumental standpoint.
Sage wisdom would tell you to avoid this instrument because it clashes with this voice and avoid that instrument because it clashes with that voice. Sometimes that’s true, and sometimes I think it’s annoyingly limiting. You can always do a little bit of work to make it fit.
It's often as simple as bringing the volume down a little bit. So if you like the saxophone and someone told you to not include the saxophone in your podcast, just do it. See what happens. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work, but have fun doing it. If you really love those things, it's gotta be fun for you, or else you're not going to continue to make this podcast.
Instrumental choice can be really important. People take for granted what drums by themselves can do for emotion and energy and all those things. A lot of times you're just listening to a section and deciding what's going to hit heavier right now and what's going to help the listener the most. Do they need some space to be reflective and to contemplate? To repeat it back in their heads? Or some sort of music to help carry you forward? To help create the pace?
And then the emotions and energy are attached to that. If you haven't had space to close your eyes and think about the thing that was just said, you've probably put too much music in space. Space is equally as important to music.
What about consistency of music within an episode or a series of episodes? Should you start with a palette of intros, transitions, and outros you can pull from? Or is each episode kind of its own tapestry?
That pre-work can be really helpful. Set some time aside to create a collection or library of stuff you really like the sound of. Label it in a way that is memorable. So you know what’s actually in that file, not just DrumLoop_no1. That little bit of pre-production work to create a mini library can be really helpful later on. If you’re searching for a sound and you just don't find the right one, you can go back to your library.
The consistency piece lends itself to a couple of things. One is consistency in intro music. You want someone to press play and they remember the intro music. But beyond that, there's no rule around consistency.
I think there's one piece that goes back to how much time you're spending on the edit. If you're going to be searching for new music for every single episode, it's going to obviously take more time. But, it can be really cool. There are a lot of examples of shows that are using the same music from episode to episode half the time, and then the other half they're pulling up stuff that's specific to that person or topic. It helps it stand out.
I really love hearing a theme that comes back.That's the art in audio that you'll hear a lot. There are a lot of shows that will do that; they'll have a specific theme that pops up when the narrator is talking about a specific topic. Like, childhood or something. So as you’re listening, you’re like “Oh wow, there's that theme again.” It pulls the listener in; they're involved in the story now and they're there.
Which shows are you inspired by?
Gosh, so many. So many.
Well, the first part is like, what type of show am I inspired by? And I am inspired by a show that feels like it's talking to me and only me. They're not like, “And all you listeners out there, and all my fans, and all this and that.” It’s like, “I’m talking to you, Kevin.” And they make me feel like this is a podcast that was created just for me.That type of show does really well for me. Its goal isn’t to have content exclusive to me and my life, but it's speaking to me at that point in time.
One of the best examples of this for me is this show called California Love by the LAist. It came out I think in 2020 or 2021. The creator just made a show about Los Angeles where he grew up, and there's all these weird, funny, silly things about LA that he brings up in different episodes. The way that it's narrated, and the way that sound design is brought in, and the way that music is done all just really clicked for me in that time of my life. I go back to that show as an example all the time, like this was just perfect for me at that time.
I also think it's just great storytelling, great editing, great mixing, great sound design, not overdone, not underdone. It's very specific, but broad enough where it brings enough people in where it can relate to you.
Any final thoughts before we part ways?
Every class I teach, I usually say this several times and I always end with it: you learned a lot of stuff today. We talked about a lot of very specific topics and very nerdy stuff and it's all very fun, but just go out and make something. Just do it in the simplest, most raw form that you can. Go out and make one thing and put a stamp on it and then be done with it and move on to the next one.
Because it's really fun. And once you experience the joy of making the thing, it becomes kind of infectious. And then, you've made a podcast! Which is usually the biggest hurdle for people. Like, they bought all this gear and they went to a bunch of classes and they talked to a thousand people, but just make it. Just make a podcast, see how it goes, and then do it again.
About the author: Writer, comedian, podcast producer: Megan loves stories that stick, told sometimes with words, sometimes with waveforms, always with heart.