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Starting a podcast is hard. In the Anglophone sphere, there are prob somewhere close to a million *active* podcasts. Beyond the competition, it's simply hard not only to get people's attention but also to keep it for 45 mins--especially if you are talking about serious things
My very first episode (with @EskandarSadeghi, who recorded answers to questions in a library stairwell like a criminal
) is extremely overproduced. I had these highfalutin pretensions of a "non-dialogic" show in which guests spoke to the audience directly through my editing
) is extremely overproduced. I had these highfalutin pretensions of a "non-dialogic" show in which guests spoke to the audience directly through my editing
Those poor guests who came on during the first episodes were very indulgent and i appreciate them all for their patience. After doing a few archival mixtapes, eventually i decided to finally speak on the podcast for the first time directly to a guest. It was weird but also fun?
A lot of those "monologic" episodes turned out really well. The one with @amyrwong is the first example that comes to mind because by then i had mostly figured out the mixing and Amy was really really good at rephrasing and honing my questions. I kinda have stopped doing them tho
I don't know how true these figures are but they certainly feel correct. I know from experience that for most podcasts each new subscriber (seperate from downloads of an episode) is a real accomplishment insofar as most people have to be actively convinced to try a new podcast
Late capitalism has managed to fuse virtually all cultural forms into a singularly monstrous stream of data, and all of us are merchants of content in competition with eachother for real estate in people's minds. So If i have 45 mins of your brain once a week, that's pretty good!
But wait there's more!! There is a strange double-edged sword of covering topics largely ignored by most explicitly leftist podcasts. You are at once invisible to the *predominantly* white, Anglo-American centric audience and hypervisible because you are doing "minority" subjects
I worked full time on the show for 9 months. Unemployment is awful as you sink into oblivion, so the show gave me something nourishing to do. i was lucky b/c my supportive ex listened to every episode and was my test audience. I learned to edit on a shitty netbook w/audacity
This show is 100% a product of my years in academia. Aside from research skills + contacts I made at conferences/talks, those countless hours listening to "In this essay i will critique" were training for understanding how (not) to get people to pay attention to not so fun things
I don't know where any of this is going but oh wait i remember it's cause i listened to the first episode of a new podcast and it triggered a Proustian wave of warm gushy feelings. 
The point of podcasting is that it's amateurish: people talking into a mic about their passions.
The point of podcasting is that it's amateurish: people talking into a mic about their passions.
