BAMOS August 2025
16 Article
The Outlook for weather and climate communications? It ' s Totally Cooked!
Iain Strachan, ARC Centre of Excellence for 21st Century Weather( iain. strachan @ monash. edu)
‘ Poker Face’ isn’ t a skill you can list on your LinkedIn profile, but it’ s been a crucial attribute throughout my career to date.
I called upon it at the end of my interview to lead the Engagement & Impact team at the ARC Centre of Excellence for 21st Century Weather.
The interview had gone well, but a final hurdle was flung in my path when Director Christian Jakob and Deputy Director Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick, while wrapping up, mentioned they wanted to start a Centre podcast.
Externally, I smiled cheerfully and nodded enthusiastically, telling them anything was possible and saying what a good idea it was.
On the inside, I was wincing and imagining all the work involved in researching, producing, hosting, editing, and promoting this daunting undertaking.
Podcasts are one of my favourite forms of infotainment, but it’ s a full-time job for multiple people to create, promote and sustain a good one.
When I commenced in the role, part of me hoped Sarah and Christian would quietly forget about the idea.
Spoiler: If you were at AMOS 2025 in Cairns or you follow 21st Century Weather on social media, you already know they didn’ t.
Thankfully, what they did do is listen.
They listened when I told them that if we create a podcast, we’ ll be choosing to do it instead of exploring other communication tools and platforms.
They listened when I said we should only take the podcast plunge if we do it properly.
And they listened when I told them that we shouldn’ t expect overnight success, and that we’ ll be in it for the long haul, measuring impact in terms of years rather than weeks or months.
And so it was that Totally Cooked: The Climate & Weather podcast was born. Fittingly for the subject matter, it happened through a healthy combination of negotiation, collaboration, scepticism and optimism.
It wasn’ t always called Totally Cooked. Our first choice was‘ It’ s a Hot Mess’ or even simply‘ Hot Mess’, inspired by Sarah’ s catchphrase during media interviews about the record global temperatures recorded in 2023.
Unfortunately, Hot Mess was already taken by a sex and relationship podcast in the United States, and we returned( frustrated) to the drawing board.
Taking inspiration and suggestions from family, friends, colleagues and social media followers, we settled on a name that honours our status as a straight-talking, uniquely Australian-based climate and weather show.
A referral from Tim Macuga, the creator of the long-running maths and stats podcast The Random Sample, led us to Podcast Services Australia.
Their co-owners, Christina Canters and Aaron Heath, provided expert advice in developing our tone and narrative, and steered us towards the best recording equipment and editing software.
A major piece of the Totally Cooked puzzle fell into place in late 2024, when Zach White joined 21st Century Weather as our Communications Advisor— Video & Social Media.
Zach was hired primarily to create short-form video content for TikTok and Instagram, but his skills at video editing enabled him to rapidly gain proficiency editing podcast audio using the platform Audacity.
Zach, Sarah and me at AMOS 2025. Credit: Zach White