Seen and Heard in Edmonton

Meet Sarah Hoyles, the passionate storyteller who talks to people about their animals on Pet Sounds, and nerds out about history on the Edmonton City as Museum Project‘s podcast.

Sarah has followed a long and winding road to podcasting, which you’ll hear about in our conversation. Like me, she spent much of her career in mainstream journalism (me in newspapers, she in public radio), and came to the realization that she might have to make her own job if she wanted to keep doing what she loved.

It was at the Third Coast International Audio Festival that she got inspired to start her own podcast, and she launched Pet Sounds in January of 2015. It is a monthly look at people and their pets, and while it is without a doubt a podcast, you’ll hear how her time at CBC and CKUA equipped her with the polish and discipline to tell great audio stories.

She applied those same skills to the experiment she recently did with the Edmonton Heritage Council’s Edmonton City as Museum Project. She put together three delightful episodes on different aspects of Edmonton’s history: on the city’s relationship with garbage; on a thankfully thwarted freeway plan, and on Canada’s first mosque. Take a listen and then fill out the feedback form — it will help the council decide whether to keep the podcast going.

Sarah is game to help other organizations tell stories that are aligned with their missions in this way, so if you’re in the market, email her at sarah@petsoundsradio.com. Here’s our conversation:

You can also get the podcast on SoundCloud, in iTunes, or on Stitcher.

Find Pet Sounds in iTunes, on Instagram, on Facebook and on Twitter.

The ECAMP podcast is on SoundCloud, and you can find the Edmonton City as Museum Project on Twitter and on Facebook.

Sarah herself goes by @permanentplural on Twitter.

Here are her recommendations:

• Heritage Forward!: A community-driven effort to preserve Edmonton’s built heritage
• Dress Me Dearly (which, as we note, is winding down so Janis Galloway can concentrate on Publicity Room)
• Weird Canada: Born in Edmonton, still amazing
• Hacked: A podcast about “curious, enlightening and occasionally criminal underbelly of the internet,” put together by Scott Francis Winder and Jordan Bloemen

This week’s podcast and roundups are brought to you by the Seen and Heard Podcast Network, a project to help local podcasts get more listeners and connect those listeners with local businesses.

In this episode, Andrea Beça quizzes me about what the network is and why I want to build it. If you’d like to join, apply here.

Musical credits: Beethoven’s Sonata No. 1 in F Minor, Op. 2 No. 1, played by Daniel Veesey, from freemusicarchive.com.