From the research layer

What I'm reading,
thinking, and finding.

Research, credibility, and methodology articles by Martin Schattenberg, for THE INSIGHT SOURCE. When I find something worth saying, I say it here.

All articles

Everything written, and what's coming.

Methodology

What a Research Brief Actually Contains, and What It Does to a Recording

Most of a research brief is not findings. It is constraints. The three parts of mine that change what a host says on the day, and what they caught in one brief.

Research & Credibility

Why Health Podcast Misinformation Is Getting Worse — And What Hosts Can Do

Peer-reviewed research is now documenting the specific claims made on influential health podcasts that contradict current evidence. Here is what the research actually shows, and what it means for licensed practitioners who podcast.

Industry Thinking

Pre-Recording Production: The Gap In Every Podcast Production Stack

Most podcast tools and agencies I looked at start with a transcript. Which means the deliverables that follow are limited by what the host already knew when they sat down to record.

Methodology

How I Build an Episode's SEO Architecture Before the Host Records

Keyword research happens after recording in most workflows I have seen documented. Here is how I do it before, embedded into the research brief so the host speaks the search terms naturally.

Written, not published yet
Research & Credibility

The Credibility Shield: What Source Verification Actually Catches

A citation can name a real journal, a real study and the right numbers, and still be wrong at the author's name. Four failures caught in one month of episode briefs, and what each would have cost on air.

Mind & Body

The Research Gap Inside the Mind & Body Podcast Space

An episode is permanent. The evidence it was built on is not. In one cohort of systematic reviews, 15% showed a signal for updating within a year of publication, and 7% showed one before they were even published. Podcast production has no mechanism for that.

From the podcast

The episodes, written up.

All episodes →
Illustrated room at night split in two, a dark home office on one side and a lamp-lit sofa with a glowing phone on the other, beside the words Work stopped. You didn'tEP 03
From the podcast · EP 03
Mind & Body

Why Am I So Tired on My Days Off? The Costs Outside Work

Work's fine and you slept, and the tired is still there on your day off. What keeps draining you outside the job, and the one thing to start with this week.

Illustrated desk at night with a stack of self-help books, a single lit candle, and a notebook list with several items crossed outEP 02
From the podcast · EP 02
Mind & Body

Why Self-Improvement Burnout Makes You Feel Worse

The practices are almost never the problem. What flips a good habit into something that drains you, and the 15-minute list that shows you what to pause.

Illustrated bedroom at dawn with a rumpled bed, morning light through the curtains, and a phone left untouched on the nightstandEP 01
From the podcast · EP 01
Mind & Body

Nervous System Friendly Morning Routine: Start Calm

Why the first hour after waking isn't neutral, four common morning stress stackers, and a 5-10 minute reset that survives real mornings.

4M+ existing Podcasts. Only a fraction in active production.
72% of the podcasters in a 2026 RSS.com survey already pay for tools or services for their show.
14 health claims per episode, on average, that went against the scientific evidence, in the 15 episodes a 2024 BBC investigation flagged on the show it called the UK's number-one ranked podcast.
0 Generic outlines — I build primary-source research briefs.
See the methodology in practice

Read enough. Now hear
what it sounds like.

THE INSIGHT SOURCE podcast runs on the same system I write about here. Every episode is the methodology applied: research-first, fact-verified, SEO-built before anyone hits record.