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Review of 2024 (Episode 58)

    Review of 2024 (Episode 58) | Sarah looks back on memorable podcast moments from 2024

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    Research Adjacent podcast artwork with the text Episode 58 Review of the year 2024 with Sarah McLusky and a picture of Sarah McLusky wearing a cartoon party hat

    As we reach the end of 2024, host Sarah McLusky reflects on how the podcast has evolved in its second year. She highlights some memorable moments and reveals some behind-the-scenes insights.

    Sarah talks about

    • How the second year of the podcast has been different from the first
    • How the podcast has grown and evolved in 2024
    • What she has learned from Spotify Wrapped (yacht rock anyone?) and other podcast stats
    • Most listened to episodes and memorable moments

    Episodes and links mentioned

    Find out more

    Theme music by Lemon Music Studios from Pixabay

    Episode Transcript

    Sarah McLusky  00:01

    So apparently my listeners also love yacht rock. Now, yacht as in the boats. I have no idea what yacht rock is, so if anybody can tell me what yacht rock is, please get in touch

    Sarah McLusky  00:17

    Together I do think we are changing the research conversation, just a teeny, tiny little bit with every episode

    Sarah McLusky  00:28

    Hello there. I’m Sarah McLusky, and this is Research Adjacent. Each episode, I talk to amazing research adjacent professionals about what they do and why it makes a difference. Keep listening to find out why we think the research-adjacent space is where the real magic happens.

    Sarah McLusky  00:49

    Hello and welcome to Research Adjacent. I’m your host, Sarah McLusky, and this is almost the very last episode of 2024. The last two episodes are going to land right in the middle of the festive period. And as you might already know, if you’ve listened for a while, I don’t like to land guest episodes during the holiday because it just doesn’t feel right that I can’t promote them properly. So instead, you have just me, and as I did last year, at this time, this episode is going to be a review of 2024. This one’s going to come out just before Christmas. And then the next episode is actually going to come out on Hogmanay, as we call it in Scotland, or New Year’s Eve, 31st of December. And that is going to be a look ahead to what is coming down the line for the podcast and for the other work that I do in 2025 and there are some exciting things coming, so do definitely list that episode if you can, as well as this one. But for now, here’s a little bit about what you can expect from this episode. First of all, I’m going to give you a few reflections from me on how the podcast has evolved this year. I’ve got a little recap on some of the stats and some of the most listened to episodes in 2024 and also some of my personal most memorable moments.

    Sarah McLusky  02:11

    So reflections on the podcast in 2024. Well, some of you might know I launched the podcast in January 2023 so we are just coming up to the podcast’s second anniversary, and in January, we will hit our 60th episode. Now that, to me, is remarkable. I know I’ve said this before, but I really didn’t expect the podcast to go on this long, partly because I’m those people who know me well, will know that I’m not always very good at sticking with things, and partly because when I started, I really didn’t know if anybody would listen or if it would resonate with people. But as far as I can tell, you keep listening, and every so often I get lovely feedback. And like most people, I think I am a sucker for lovely feedback. So here we are still going. And this year, I think last year, I really reflected a lot about what it was like to just create the podcast, to kind of figure out all the practical stuff that the difference of being suddenly being very visible.

    Sarah McLusky  03:20

    This year, I feel is a little bit like the year that the podcast grew up. So last year was almost like a kind of awkward teenage phase. We didn’t quite know what it was going to grow up to be, and that kind of giddy excitement has passed. I feel now that I know what I’m doing. I think if I listen now back to some of the early episodes, I cringe a little bit because I think my style has developed a lot, and what’s also happened over that time as well is I’ve started to understand what it is that people want to listen to as well. And one of the most common feedback that I get from people is just that the podcast helps them to feel seen. And as so many of my guests talk about the kinds of research adjacent roles that my guests do are often a little bit invisible, and stuff that goes on behind the scenes, and so to actually shine a light on that just helps everybody to feel a little bit more appreciated. So I love that that is resonating with people now, that isn’t to say that it’s not still hard work, em, finding and scheduling guests. There have been a couple of times this year where I’ve realized that I hadn’t made paid attention to that, and we got to sort of a cliff edge where I didn’t have any guests lined up. So finding and scheduling the guests takes a while, editing the audio, writing the show notes, all of it, it takes, all takes time and effort. I guess I have just got, it’s all got a little bit more routine as I’ve gone through and I feel like I know what I am doing a bit more. Speaking there about finding and scheduling guests, I am always really open to suggestions for new guests. So if you do have any suggestions, you’ll find a link in the show notes where you can put in either suggest yourself or suggest somebody else with their permission. And also, there’s a page on the contact page on the Research Adjacent website as well, you’ll find a link to the form there. In the 2023 episode, I talked a lot about the sudden visibility that came with creating the podcast, and this year, I think I’ve gotten used to that a bit more. But what has been really lovely this year is that some of those new connections that I made in 2023 have turned into both friends and colleagues, and that has been amazing. And what I’ve also found is that because of the podcast, lots of people who are in this world have sort of gravitated towards me, which has been fantastic. And in the next episode, I’ll tell you a bit more about what I am going to try to do, to help, to support the people who are now coming to me because they feel seen and their experience is recognized, and I’m a helping kind of person. So I’ve got some ideas for what I could do there.

    Sarah McLusky  06:17

    Another thing that I have begun to realize as I have gone through, is that what I am doing is a bit like a research project. And I guess you can take the person out of the PhD, but maybe can’t take the PhD out the person. And so I think I still think a little bit like a researcher. And essentially, what I’m doing is collecting case studies of people, and I think that perhaps more than anyone else, I have an insight into the working lives of the research adjacent community. And what that has led me to start doing is as I’ve recognized some of the things that are common challenges that come up and that has, and some of the solutions and the things that people want to change. You know, the magic wand question, the things that people want to change about this world, and all of that has led me to start pulling together some ideas and some resources. I have started writing a book. I think I mentioned that before, it’s about a third, maybe about a half done, halfway done. Maybe it’ll come out next year. We shall see. And then I have started an online community for research adjacent freelancers, and I’ve started to develop some training offers as well. I’m not going to talk a lot about those in this episode, but if you’re listening to the next episode, looking ahead to 2025 I will talk more about those then.

    Sarah McLusky  07:44

    But for now, back to this year, I do want to mention a little bit about stats, but before I do, I have previously talked about why podcast stats are not always that helpful, partly because they’re a bit slippery. And there’s, you know, is it downloads? Is it streams? What happens if somebody listens and then stops listening halfway through? It’s all very complicated, and also sometimes stats are irrelevant. And obviously there’s lots of really massive podcasters out there, which I am not a massive podcaster out there, people have millions of followers and downloads. But what’s actually more important to me is the people who are listening are people who really get something out of it. So I would rather have five people who get it and really find some value than 5000 random people where it’s just come up as the next thing on their feed. But the stats are definitely useful for me, at least, because they help me understand whether the podcast is resonating with people, and they also help me to see which episodes people are listening to that sort of thing as well which platform they’re using. And that kind of thing does help me. So it is not all about the metrics, but as we are coming up on our second anniversary, some things that’s kind of interesting, of what’s happened this year. This year, there have been 24 episodes, 23 guests in total. What is interesting in terms of followers, so that’s like subscribers in all the podcast platforms, is that those have almost doubled during the course of 2024 so we’ve now got nearly 400 of you subscribed, which is amazing.

    Sarah McLusky  09:21

    And then LinkedIn, especially the Research Adjacent podcast, LinkedIn page has really grown hugely. It’s grown about 300% from about 300 listeners to 300 followers to over 1000 now. And I was very excited. Some of you might have seen the post on LinkedIn. I was very excited when we hit 1000, because it just starts to make it feel like this endeavor is worthwhile. And so, yeah, that was really nice to reach that milestone. Other things as well you might not know. I think I mentioned it last year, that you get a Spotify Wrapped for podcast creators, just like anybody who listens on Spotify gets their music Unwrapped. So what it told me about the podcast was some of these are interesting. It’s been streamed in 22 countries. Unsurprisingly, the UK is the highest one. But 22 countries, that’s amazing. So hello to anybody who’s listening anywhere else around the world, I’d love to know where you are, so feel free to get in touch if you would like to let me know.

    Sarah McLusky  10:27

    Some of the other things it tells you, though make no sense to me. So apparently, and maybe you know who you are, my listeners also love yacht rock. Now, yacht as in the boats. I have no idea what yacht rock is. So if anybody can tell me what yacht rock is, please get in touch and let me know. And also, top with my listeners was Diary of a Wimpy Kid audio books. So I’m loving the diversity there. So again, if that’s you, I’d love to know my daughter loves she’s a bit older now, but she did love Diary of a Wimpy Kid so I’m with you there.

    Sarah McLusky  11:03

    So yeah. So lots of interesting insights there from Spotify, and what it also tells me this isn’t as much from Spotify, but from my podcast stats are which episodes have been the most listened to this year, and the top episode this year has been Anthony Kavanagh, which Anthony is a patent attorney. He was episode 44 which came out in May, and so clearly, yeah, lots of people interested in that idea of the legal side of the research adjacent world. And I was really grateful to get Anthony on, because that’s an area I do not have many contacts in at all, but he had seen something that was shared on LinkedIn by another guest who he knew, Orla Kelly. So that’s how Anthony got in touch with me. These are, these are purely stats. So this isn’t, I don’t want to give any impression that I’m playing favorites with any of these episodes, because it would be like trying to choose between children. So these are purely numbers. Second top was John Elvin. His episode 35 was out in January. Then we’ve got Naomi Tyrrell, who is a research consultant, and her episode came out in March, Kath Burton, who works in the publishing industry. And then all the lots of the others then were pretty similar once we got to feed to listener numbers there so interesting, those episodes had come up on top in terms of numbers of listeners. And that’s helpful to me, because it gives me an idea of some of the kinds of episodes that people might want to listen to in the future.

    Sarah McLusky  12:40

    And definitely, as I already said, get in touch if you’ve got some guests. But definitely, there are some gaps that I want to fill. I haven’t had anybody yet on who works in the policy world. I’ve got a couple of leads on that, so we might have something lined up. But if you yourself listening, are in the policy world, or if you know somebody who is then I would love to hear from you. And also, I haven’t, I don’t get many people, I think it’s just the nature of the people, I don’t get a lot of kind of behind the scenes people, so people who do things like finance, funding, that side of stuff. I would love to get them on. So again, if that’s you or somebody you know, please do get in touch.

    Sarah McLusky  13:22

    So moving on from the stats, I’ve got a few things that stood out for me as a personal highlights. And again, I don’t want this to seem like I you know that it doesn’t mean that the other episodes weren’t important to me, because I all of my guests, I am so amazingly grateful that they gave me their time and that they trusted me with their stories. So that is certainly not the case. But there’s a few things what I’ve gone for here, just some of the things that stood out in my memory. A big highlight for me was that in August, we reached the 50th episode of Research Adjacent, again, as I’ve said already, I never thought we’d get this far. So I thought, well, I’m going to take the opportunity to get in touch with some past guests and see what the podcast has meant to them, and putting it together really was quite emotional for me, I was so touched by the feedback that I got from past guests. And so if you haven’t already listened to that episode, go back and have a listen. I think it’s really lovely to reconnect to some of those previous guests and to hear about the things that have happened after being on the podcast, which was great.

    Sarah McLusky  14:42

    Other conversations that have stayed with me, and the first one I want to mention is episode 48 which was with Helen White and Danni Elster, who are experts by experience and who help Peaches Womb Cancer Research Trust to include the opinions of people who are experts by experience, people who have got lived experience of the conditions that are being researched. That was really important one for me, because, partly because that’s a lot of the work that I’ve done in my life has been around that involvement and public engagement side of things, but also I’m a big advocate for saying that we need to think about research teams rather than researchers. And when we think about research teams, I think it’s really important that we include people for whom this is their life. And the quote that comes from disability activism, but nothing about us, without us, and that is one of the reason why that conversation with Helen and Danni was really important to me, and also it was just, it was just really nice. It’s quite nice doing that.

    Sarah McLusky  15:48

    I’ve learned it’s quite nice doing double episodes, because my next memorable moment is a double episode as well. And that was when I had Susan Shanks and Alice Millard, who are the archivists, who came on to share what they do, and I found that really interesting, partly because it’s a topic that I just don’t know very much about personally. So it was really interesting to hear about some of the things that they’ve found in the archives that they’re helping with. And I also because it made me laugh. I particularly loved Susan’s comment about how future archivists will be cursing the previous generations because they won’t be able to access files from the 1990s which isn’t even that long ago. And she said, if you imagine it open an old file and being like, Oh no, it’s Word 2005. You’d get that little paper clip popping up. I can’t remember what it was called, but yeah. So that just made me laugh. That comment, and another conversation that really made me laugh a lot was the conversation that I had with John Elvin. I recorded it towards the end of 2023 and then often, when I there’s often be a bit of a gap between where I record something and when it comes to be put out. And I forgot how much John and I laughed when we recorded that episode. So going back to that was really lovely. And also I love the stat from John, which I have verified, not that I don’t trust him. Of course, I trust you, John. Um, but the stat that less than 30% of what we consider research is done in universities, and the other 70% is being done in other organizations. So the idea that’s one of the reasons I wanted this podcast to be about research, not just about higher education, because there’s so much more to research than just universities, and so I love that conversation with John. I loved getting Kath Burton in the publisher because I’d wanted to get somebody in from publishing. And again, it’s not world, but I’ve got very many connections in myself, so I loved hearing about her life. And then I think this made into the Sam Steele episode came out at the start of this year, but actually recorded it at the end of 2023 so I think I mentioned this last year as well. But Sam Steele now works as a research center manager, but she used to be a producer at Radio One during the 1990s when she worked with the DJ Steve Lamacq, and it just made me feel a teeny bit closer to all of those musicians that I have idolized throughout my life, and I just really just from a personal geek girl perspective, loved hearing from Sam. I also really enjoyed revisiting the Catch Your Breath exhibition that I created with David Wright, the exhibition curator who was on just a month or so ago, and it took a fair bit of arm twisting but persuading my lovely friend Helen Riding to come in and share her story about working in the NHS, because, again, I’d wanted to get somebody in from the NHS for a while. So thank you to Helen for being willing to do that, even though she was very nervous. And finally, a mention for my favorite podcast art of the year, which was a couple of episodes ago, Jeni Smith, um, but partly the credit goes to Jeni, because she gave me amazing photos to work with. So if you haven’t seen that artwork, then I’ll put links in the show notes, and you can go and find it.

    Sarah McLusky  19:16

    Other notable podcasty moments in 2024 are that Well, I’m sure you can imagine the podcast is far from the only thing I do, but what it did happen is that putting myself out into the world, both as Research Adjacent and as a podcaster, led to some really interesting things happening in 2024. The first one is that episode (, guest Orla Kelly trusted me to help her to create the Academic Adventures podcast, which came out in spring of this year. I interviewed 10 people who combine academic work with entrepreneurial ventures. And if you haven’t listened to it yet and that sounds like something you’re interested in, then it’s definitely worth downloading, getting it in your ears. I think for you as a research-adjacent community, the most relevant episode is the episode with Anne Muir, who is definitely one of us, definitely a research-adjacent so I’ll put links to those in the show notes, you can go and check that out.

    Sarah McLusky  20:23

    Other things this year as well. I guessed it, on the Diversity in Research podcast in May, talking about something which I think we need to talk about more, which is the fact that the research-adjacent world is very female dominated. And that’s not to say that I think that’s necessarily a bad thing, but I think sometimes we perhaps need to think about, if we say a male dominated workplace is a bad thing, then maybe we have to look into whether a female dominated workplace is automatically better, and perhaps what it says about the status of these roles and how they are seen, that that it is a world that is very female led, but I think there’s huge positives about that as well, but I just think we’re maybe don’t talk about it enough. So that was the Diversity in Research podcast, worth a listen to.

    Sarah McLusky  21:13

    And then in September, I was invited to be part of Leeds University webinar panel on podcasting and research culture, and that was really fun. We recorded it live with four other three other guests, and then it was chaired by Andy Tattersall from University of Sheffield, and that has since been released as an episode of the Research Culture Uncovered podcast. So if you haven’t heard that one, I’ll put a link to it in the show notes as well.

    Sarah McLusky  21:42

    So I think that is 2024 done and dusted. I will consider this my ta-da list for the podcast. If you don’t know what a ta-da list is, as in ta-da! then go and check out the very first episode of 2024 when I talk about that, and the next episode, which, as I say, comes out on Hogmanay, or New Year’s Eve in Scotland, as we call it in Scotland. And then I will be sharing my to do list for 2025 and I hope you will come along and join me then. For now thank you so much for being with me on this journey in 2024 whether you have just listened to one episode, or whether you have listened to all of them. Thank you. I don’t take your attention for granted, and it really is a privilege to be entrusted with the stories of my guests. And I’m really grateful to them for giving up their time as well to be part of my little pet project. Together I do think we are changing the research conversation just a teeny, tiny little bit with every episode. So for that, if you’re listening in real time, happy, festive, fun, holidays, whatever it means to you. And thank you so much for listening. See you next time.

    Sarah McLusky  23:05

    Thanks for listening to Research Adjacent. If you’re listening in a podcast app, please check your subscribe and then use the links in the episode description to find full show notes and follow the podcast on LinkedIn or Instagram. You can also find all the links and other episodes at www.researchadjacent.com. Research Adjacent is presented and produced by Sarah McLusky, and the theme music is by Lemon Music Studios on Pixabay. And you, yes you, get a big gold star for listening right to the end. See you next time.

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