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March
5, 2007
VOL.
45, NO. 5Oakland,
CA
Doctor becomes
Internet evangelist
with weekly podcasts on Catholic saints
 |
| Dr. Paul J. Camarata, a neurosurgeon and Catholic
parishioner in Overland Park, Kan., works on his weekly podcast, called
SaintCast. He draws on his faith and skills as a former broadcaster
for the program. CNS PHOTO/JOE BOLLIG/The Leaven |
KANSAS CITY,
Kan. (CNS) -- Dr. Paul J. Camarata never planned to become a worldwide
Internet evangelist. It just worked out that way.
Camarata, a neurosurgeon who practices in Kansas City, Mo., and lives
in Overland Park, Kan., is the creator of SaintCast, a weekly Internet
podcast about saints.
SaintCast has gained fans across the United States and as far away as
Japan, New Zealand and Ecuador with more than 70,000 downloads during
the last five months of 2006.
“As soon as I heard about the SaintCast, I subscribed to it on my
iTunes,” said Gloria Denis, a regular listener. “On (one)
particular show, Dr. Camarata had a trivia question on St. Francis of
Assisi under his ‘Saint Jeopardy’ segment. I was so excited
about answering that question, even with my limited knowledge of the saints.
That was it! I was hooked.”
Podcasting also is relatively inexpensive to start. Anyone with a computer
and an Internet connection just needs to talk into the microphone on the
computer, make it an MP3 file and place it on a hosting Web site.
Camarata estimates he has spent about $300 on equipment and $10 a month
on Web hosting -- all from his own pocket. And he doesn’t need a
fancy studio. A clothes closet in his home works very nicely, thanks to
the sound-dampening qualities of the hanging clothes.
It takes between five and seven hours to put together a single podcast,
he said, so he usually makes one per week. Sometimes when he’s busy,
he has to skip a week.
While admittedly no computer geek, Camarata did have something that many
other budding podcasters didn’t: actual broadcast experience. He
was a part-time announcer at an AM radio station while in high school
and college.
He was so good that one of the station’s owners offered to pay his
way to broadcasting school, but Camarata decided to follow in the footsteps
of his physician father.
The key to a good podcast is “content, content, content,”
he said of his focus. “The saints are people who are there to serve
as our guides. We have thousands of (saints) we can look to who have done
everything. They were all sinners. They faced identical problems that
many of us have to face, and they faced them the right way. Their lives
are presented for us to emulate.”
In his SaintCasts, Camarata has interviews, music, narration, quizzes,
“sound-seeing tours,” book reviews, movie dialogue clips and
listener feedback. His sound-seeing tours have included his own visits
to the catacombs of Rome and the papal summer residence at Castel Gandolfo,
Italy.
Camarata’s SaintCasts also include guest appearances by experts
on various topics, such as relics, or features by other podcasters overseas.
“I try to mix it up and have some entertaining pieces, a little
bit of levity and musical segments,” he said.
The SaintCasts and a related blog are available at www.saintcast.org.
A subscription is available through iTunes at feeds.feedburner.com/saintcast.
