Interview with Alex Ricci on Podcast Production

Hi, this is Kevin Conroy, and you're listening

to the Geekcast Radio Network. There is nothing

wrong with your podcast player do not attempt

to adjust the volume Hello and welcome into our

studio. This is studio 2009. Of course. I am

tf2 it Mike joining me for the latest podcast

approach is Is the producer himself over there

this week in geek mr. Alex Ricci. Hello, sir.

Hello. Hello, man. It's been a while. Yes, it

has yes. Yes it has Yeah and we're here to get

Alex's podcast approach. He is going to answer

the 30 questions that we have. Kicking it off,

when did you discover podcasts and what was the

first one you listened to? Discovering podcasts,

I was working, like I had heard of them. I'd

heard of internet radio shows dating back to

the 90s, but I would say When I was working at

future shop, which was Canada's arm of Best Buy

I picked up my first iPod and I think it was

I think it was called the iPod classic at the

time like they already had the iPod video but

this right when they first launched the classic

that had the full color screen where you could

watch videos on it and everything and I got it

when they had like a staff discount because usually

they did this isn't like 2006 or 2007 and Uh,

I had high speed internet. We didn't have like

a data cap. We were like one of the only families

that didn't at the time. So I was like, I'm going

to listen to some of these shows. And I think

audio podcast wise, I think one of the first

ones I would have downloaded was something related

to the space channel, which we, we had, it's

like our version of the sci -fi channel. I think

they had one sort of dedicated to shows on there

and like interviews and that and then There was

a video podcast that I was watching and I don't

remember the exact name of it but it was sort

of what would evolve to become a lot of the variety

YouTube type shows where it would be like Gamers

and and and hackers and stuff figuring out how

to like tinker around with with robots and things,

and it was sort of a variety of like, here's

a quick hack on your computer on how to make

it run faster. Here's some gaming information.

Here's how to do a mod chip. There was all that

sort of stuff done at the time. And then I would

say I was gravitating towards like pulling whatever

I could get in. And I think it was actually this

week in Geek was one of the first ones because

at the time there was very little in the Canadian

iPod market space where it was a lot easier for

indies to just sort of just pop up to the top

of the charts. And you would go in and you'd

go, all right, let me just sample these next

five in the top 10 chart. And I believe that's

how I found This Week in Geek. And I think through

that, like a year or two later, it would have

been about, I think probably 09. I think it's

when I stumbled across your podcast where you're

running through TFG1. Oh, God. Nightmarish audio.

And again, remember those early days of like

06 to 010 or 2010. It wasn't like there was a

million other podcasts out there. So it was a

lot easier to stumble upon new things that were

like, you know, a little out there. Yeah. You

go on Spotify or iApple or whatever you want

to use for your podcasting. I use Spotify and

you just look up Transformers or you look up

Star Wars or you look up whatever. Hell, you

just search animation or cartoons. There are

a million different podcasts now, but back then,

whew. yeah if you're going like 12 to 15 years

ago and and especially even earlier you were

looking at maybe like one or two like there might

have been like four in the states but in canada

like because the the stores were sort of separated

a little bit. Like sure you could market your

stuff in different countries, but they used to

promote things that were local too. So it was

easier for if you lived in the UK to find a UK

based fan podcast versus the American. Now it's

all sort of blended into this one global store

front. But yeah, you're right. Like you could

look and if you looked at Transformers, there

might be a random episode or two, but there might've

been like one or two shows dedicated to the fandom.

And now it's like handfuls. Yeah. I mean, the

oldest one I can remember, even though I wasn't

listening to it back then, and they still call

it an internet radio show versus a podcast, which

is Radio Free Cybertron. Brian Kilby and them

started that in 1999. That is the earliest podcast

that I remember them saying, but really between

04 and 07. That's where it really started and

that's where it kind of was, was burgeoning and

by oh eight and nine and 10 and 11 by 2012 and

beyond, you've got so many things and new things

pop up every day. And, but it's great because

you can, you can find shows and people that you

want to listen to. I think there should be one

thing, and I know it's not part of the question

and answered directly, I think that something

that all the podcasters should do is have a filtered

option so that when you go to search for a new

podcast, that you can decide to filter out something

that hasn't had a new episode in six months or

longer. Because there's a lot of dead podcasts

that even tried to copy This Week in Geek's name

almost to a T. that if you go searching for this

speaking geek, and there's still a few of them,

there's about three or four, and I think one

had a random episode pop up after three or four

years, and sometimes, due to however the optimization

is, they'll pop up first. And then you go to

look, and you're like, oh wait, you haven't had

an episode since 2014 or 2017, and you had maybe

30 episodes, and then you go to look for us,

and we got like 700. So it would be nice if they

could differentiate, and iTunes would let you

do that, be like, hey, iTunes or Spotify. You

know, whatever it is. Yeah. Show me, show me

active shows because that would filter out a

lot of the stuff. Yeah. And the thing of it is,

is, is that when I started and when we started

GCRN or whatever, certain shows, I wanted to

be review shows where they have a beginning and

an ending. Yeah, obviously, you know, tune cast

can go on forever. It can whatever it's all cartoons

all the time. Same thing, even though we ended

movie we can review, but even with this show

with studio, you know, these shows that we're

doing now can go on forever. But like you have

something like to like the Transformers generation

one podcast, or beast unleashed or whatever,

you know, generally, I have an endpoint. And

that's why essentially, they turn into dead shows

because The way I look at it, I look at an audio

podcast like an 80s cartoon. You got the intro,

you got the whole show, whatever's in the middle,

and you got the closing, and that's it. It's

an audio version of a TV show is how I look at

it. That's how I've always looked at it. G1 only

had 98 episodes. Well, you know, maybe I'll refine

what I was saying. Maybe there should be three

main categories of searching outside of obviously

like I want to look for sports, I want to look

for this. Right. I think you should have ones

that are for weekly variety shows like we are,

where we're sort of a catch -all. We have multiple

episodes a week and that's an ongoing thing that

has no end in sight. You should be able to search

for that for active shows. You should be able

to search for ones that were a complete like

drama series or something where you have, think

like Dr. Death or one of those ones where there's

a whole, it's a mini series. And then you should

have ones, like you said, for ones that are,

have a finite end, but are maybe a little more

open -ended in that you might have more than

six or 12 episodes, you'll have 90, 100, 200.

Cause I know that Spreaker and some other hosts

will let you differentiate how it's your, your

podcast feed is shown, where it'll show instead

of the most recent episode and starting with

the most recent episode, which is what you traditionally

did, you can actually set it so that it will

start at episode one and go through the feed

that way backwards for people that have that

kind of show. But I don't think most people look

for that yet. No, I don't think so either. How

long after you started listening, did you want

to start your own show? I think I had inklings

in 2010 or 2011, but it was sort of finding,

you know, what's the right platform? What's the

right idea? Is it something I'm interested in

actually following through with, or is it something

that's going to, you know, die on the vine? Yeah,

there are no more vines. Vine is dead. Vine hasn't

been a thing in a while. Well, there was when

I was looking to start a podcast. Yeah. Yeah,

I know. Vine went out the way of flip cameras,

sadly. Oh, I love my flip camera. I blame Steve

Saylor for that, but yeah, no, I love that flip

camera. Oh, that was so good. What was your plan

in getting your podcast off the ground? Well,

I would say the initial plan was, I was like,

I had to go learn. How am I going to make a website?

How am I going to make a feed? Because I'm a

tech savvy guy, but this was out of my wheelhouse.

And I'm like, am I going to have a decent enough

voice for it? Can I keep interest? And then I

sort of just fell into it later on when Birdman

moved to a closer city and we started hanging

out. And he was like, Hey, do you want to be

on an episode? And I went, yeah, sure. And then,

you know, from appearing in an episode, it ends

up being, I basically run the backend of everything

and then cohost. And while he's had times where

he's had to take sabbaticals, I basically took

over everything. And so I maybe approached it

in a different way than a lot of other people

where I, I came in as a mid -season replacement.

Some of the cast, just like the older brother

on Happy Days, went upstairs never to be found

again and then suddenly cousin Alex is here taking

over. So yeah, this wasn't a case of me starting

a dead brand from scratch or anything or starting

from the beginning. I just, we've had a revolving

door of crew. It's just sort of been more stable

in the last three or four years since I've been

there than it had been, because you were part

of that crew and you know how it was, like there

was probably three or four distinct eras. You

had 07 to 2010 or so, then you had 20, then from

2010 to 20. 14 or 15. 14 or 15. It was pretty

stable and then you had 15 to 17 was tumultuous

with lots of people revolving in and out. Yeah.

And then 17 onward. It's been, we've had a couple

crew changes, but it's been pretty steady. Yeah.

And that's what's going to happen. Not a lot

of podcasts are around, you know, 15 years. Yeah,

no, they're not. You know, like I said, I never

really... I like doing the review shows because

I like looking at it as a television show, an

audio version of a television show, like I said

earlier, where it has a finite end. But at the

same time, we're recording this at the end of

November 2021. It'll probably be out, depending

on if I backdate it or not, or it might be out

in the middle of December or whatever. But the

point is that I have episode 28, 29, this is

episode 30 of Studio. I have three weeks of content.

Then I need to finish and then Steve and I just

recorded episode 31 where we talked about free

guy. So like we can cover whatever we want. Like

generally I like to cover one thing on each episode.

I don't like to do the whole, like there are

plenty and I'm not trying to be, you know what

I'm going to say, but you know how I'm going

to say it. There are plenty of audio variety

shows out there. Like this week in geek, like

that, like that's the thing about Twig. Twig

always had segments. You always had a different

person doing a different segment, so you get

multiple voices on one show. I like that and

I think that's cool both as a listener and a

producer, but for this podcast and for other

general podcasts that we do, I like to keep it

really simple and just do one thing at a time

because I'm in my old age now. laser focused,

okay, you tell me I need to do this or watch

this, I'm going to watch this and pay attention

to nothing else so I can focus on what this is

so that way in an hour or whenever we can talk

about it kind of thing. Oh, yeah. And we've like,

that's why we've had other topic shows or we've

had like, we're probably one of the few shows

that never branched out to have multiple feeds

for different shows. So this weekend, while being

obviously the flagship show that we do, is also

the catchall for every piece of programming.

If it doesn't fit into the variety platform,

and it's like a sci -fi thing, well, we'll put

out a sci -fi theme thing. So we do do that.

It's just, and I think some of it was... laziness.

We didn't want to have to have multiple feeds

for everything. As I can imagine, that creates

a lot of headaches, especially before modern

content management was where you had to post

everything manually. But still, I guess our mentality

is let's put it all under one banner and you

might get five episodes in a week and you can

choose which ones you want to download or which

ones you don't. Which do you prefer audio or

video podcasting as a fan and as a producer?

I like both. As far as producing, there's a lot

more that would have to go into the video end

of it. We've done a few clips here and there,

some unboxing videos, nothing fancy. The point

being we're not focused on that. We could eventually

do that or move into... streaming or something,

but you got to get everybody on board. They all

have to be okay with being on camera, or you

have to have a green screen. There's more equipment

involved. It's a lot more expensive than just

getting a $50 or $100 mic, setting it up and

EQing it the way you want to hear it. I do like

video podcasts, but I tend to have them on in

the background, like on my TV while I'm doing

something else. I am much more of an audio guy

where I'll have an ear in listening to something.

The longer the better. If the show is three or

four hours, great, I can break it up into segments.

I know that Birdman had... been really surprised

when some of our shows started reaching an hour

or an hour and a half. He's like, I seem so long.

I'm like, dude, you don't listen to a lot. He

doesn't listen to a lot of podcasts. And I'm

like, at the time, say what you will about Rogan

now with some of his crazy fat shit. Right, right,

right. He was averaging, this was a side gig

because he made a lot of money doing everything

else. His shows averaged three hours long and

that's a single topic interview. And it sounds

crazy until you realize that people aren't sitting

for one session. Unless they're doing something

else, they'll have it in the background. You

can have shorter shows and we'll have, but we

have a general rule. Unless there's some extenuating

circumstances, the show shouldn't be less than

35 minutes because people want to have something

on in the background they can do for the commute.

They don't want to have to constantly be clicking

to move on to another thing. They want to be

able to listen to something longer. And that's

what I love about Spotify specifically in there.

You can add to your episodes. So you have this

one playlist of any podcast episode that you

add to it so that once you're done with whatever

you're listening to, it automatically goes to

the next one on your list kind of thing. And

the funny thing is about the time length is.

One of my along with Birdman and Snowball and

everybody else one of my earliest People that

I paid attention to and gave me tips I still

have all the this is gonna sound creepy folks,

but I've told I've said this before I still have

all the emails this person originally sent to

me Michael Sims from Earth -2 .net and his shows

Some of them topic shows that he's done three,

four, five, six hours because they're huge. Like

going through the Marvel Cinematic Universe film

by film. That if you do it all in one go, you

know, as a countdown or something, that's a huge

long episode and that does work. But yeah, generally

you're right. 35 minutes to, I generally say

30 minutes to an hour and 30 minutes is a good

enough kind of time that, you know. That's been

our sweet spot is generally our main shows end

up being about an hour and 20. But we were smart

in that we record our reviews and some other

segments, sometimes different times during the

week. And it's sort of been a learned experience

where you don't want to have to do it all at

once because as you know, an hour and a half

of recording is actually more like four hours

of work. Oh, yes. At sort of a minimum. And even

if you can edit really fast, it's the start and

stops. You might have to take a break to use

the washroom. You might have mic issues. You

then, if you're editing something, you're adding

music and whatever, it can end up being, you

know, basically add an extra hour for every hour

you record. And then by the time you're done

posting and scheduling it and getting it ready

to promote it, that's an afternoon gone. So,

and I can only imagine, I remember you guys,

I don't know how you did it. Didn't you record

like a five hour Star Wars podcast straight without

a break? That would be, I believe, I think that's,

maybe we can review it. It's MWIRE. It's episode

75. We actually did it episode 75, part one and

part two with the original trilogy and the...

At the time no, no, no the prequels and the original

trilogy But yeah, that was a five -hour our countdowns

are long Those are the countdowns you can break

them up you can take a break if you need to but

yeah I don't know how somebody can go like five

hours, it's like, at that point, are you muting

yourself to go to the bathroom? Because that's

a long time. Most of the time, I don't drink

anything. Most of the time, yes, I will go to

the bathroom before starting and I might, like

right now I have a cup of Diet Coke sitting here,

but I won't drink it during the show because

I know if I take a drink, 30 minutes, hour and

30 minutes, two hours and 30 minutes later. Somebody

else talk. I gotta go. I'll be back What kind

of setup did you have when you started podcasting

and what do you use now? When I started I picked

up a cheap like $50 Mixing board one of those

ones that has support for a single XLR mic nothing

nothing great but it had a battery backup built

-in because my thought was oh what if what if

there's a Not a surge, but what if maybe in my

USB ports not giving it enough power I think

I picked that up and I picked up a condenser

mic And I ended up not like Really liking the

sound because you need us they don't tell you

that you need to have a proper soundproof room

which is sort of a no -brainer, but not realizing

that even if you're recording in like a bedroom

and you've got stuff on the walls and that You're

gonna hear every little thing especially if you're

in an apartment building like I am if people

are walking around a Condenser mic picks up pretty

much everything So I ended up switching to a

decent like not expensive like a 50 $60 XLR To

quarter jack. I think it's quarter jack. Yeah

the You know the big old headphone plug Yeah,

dynamic mic with a with a windscreen on it, and

I'm using, for the most part, an external Sound

Blaster card. That's a blast from the past because

it has a headphone amplifier, it has a proper

full -size mic input on it, and because it's

a USB one, I can plug it into anything. It also

works in my PlayStation if I want to do game

streaming or something with it. The reason being,

it's a high fidelity connection, and because

it's a dynamic mic, I don't have to mess with

the EQ settings. It's gonna be a little warmer,

the bass is gonna be a little deeper, but I don't

have to mess around and worry about noise reduction

or anything like that. It's pretty much a plug

and play system. Sure, I'd like to get a mixing

board that has soundboard stuff built in where

I can just press buttons and have sound effects

work. That's maybe down the line, but you work

with what You know your means are as far as that's

my equipment goes. If I is you want to know the

software that we're using or or share whatever

you want to say sure in general when we record

because we're recording remotely since the pandemic

started pretty much completely. We're using Zen

caster for most of the recordings because it's

a free option. There is a paid version to record

lossless audio, but we're not doing that at the

moment. You're only having one or two guests,

it doesn't matter. But we do record that way

because it gives us our separate audio streams

that we can level up and alter as we need to.

And as far as basic audio editing, we're just

using Audacity for individual streams and then...

you know mixing them into a stereo stream and

Then as far as piecing together the shows We're

using a few year old because we're not paying

for the for the creative cloud the expensive

stuff We're using a few year old paid software

of Audition that is still technically compatible

with Windows 10 and 11 still it works a lot better

and it's sort of the step up from what Birdman

used, which was CoolEdit Pro. He used that software

for like 12 years after it stopped being supported

until Windows 10 simply wouldn't work with it

anymore. And then I'm like, dude, even though

this software we can buy is a few years old,

Audition is cool at it. They just changed the

name. So it was a bit of a transition for him,

but it actually works. So we're not using...

crazy fancy software we're using slightly older

because some of the more advanced features are

not necessary unless you're doing like full -on

broadcast radio audio or you're doing stuff recording

with a band it does everything we need to so

it's it's it's a few -step process we could do

the leveling and stuff within audition it's just

sometimes simpler to use free audacity yeah it's

just it's just it's just easier. It honestly

is. And then there's always a level later too.

Yeah, there's there's and there's tons of things

you can do. It's just that's what works for us.

Yeah, absolutely. If your headphones or microphone

breaks down, do you buy the exact same setup?

Or do you use that chance to upgrade? I always

have a backup or two and at worst case scenario

if I had to use earbuds just to record I would.

Microphone wise I always keep an extra audio

cable and I did have my microphone die on me

for the first time ever where it was like the

internals of the mic was like coming on soldered

or something from just use for multiple years.

Yeah like it wouldn't plug in it was getting

a buzz and I'm like that's not good. And I had

to take a break for a week till I was able to

order a new mic. And I literally, I just look

for what has similar specs and I can get for

50 bucks because I'm not doing anything fancy.

Like if I had, you know, if I had the money and

I really, really wanted to, I could upgrade to

something better. But the reality is it might

sound better to me. There is a certain, there's

a certain level though. There's a certain point

where it doesn't matter because when, even if

I wanted to give it at a higher quality out to

the masses, whatever podcasting platform you

have is going to compress it more. And you can't

control how somebody else is going to listen

to it. And they're most likely either going to

listen to it through the speaker in their device,

which is not going to be the best quality, you

know, even in their car. Usually it's just, it'll

be transcoding it to mono spread amongst the

speakers, or they're going to be listening with

very likely cheap crappy headphones because 90

% of the headphones out there with iPods, even

like a lot of the earbuds, the wireless ones,

most people go with whatever's cheap and that

doesn't mean it's going to sound great. So all

you got to do is find a quality. Like I found

that that $50 price point for the mic is fine

because even though I may have more expensive

headphones, I know that 90 % of people aren't

going to listen to it that way. So it's just,

I find Headphone wise, if my headphones break

down, I try to find something similar to the

same or I'll do a little bit of research to see

how they sound because I do, not like a big snob

when it comes to the audio, especially for podcasts,

but the headphones I use for podcasting are also

headphones I use for listening to music and everything

else. So I would prefer them to be... better

than like a Walmart brand. But I'm not like,

I don't get suckered in by like Beats or, you

know what I mean? Like, it's just the name. I

would rather go with, if I find a Chinese knockoff

that turns out is made in the same factory, but

sounds the same, I'll get that. I don't care

about the name on it. I care about the quality

of it. So I'm using roughly like $70 headphones.

but they sound like $150. That makes sense. Oh

yeah, absolutely. That's like with me ever since

Dustin Vancouver pointed out the JVC headphones.

Um, there are these huge giant can things and

I was like, this was like 2014 and I was like,

oh, okay, cool. I'll buy those. I've had because

one pair broke down on me. I've had two pairs

and as long as I can still find it and as long

as it, you know, isn't. These are generally between

$30 and $50 headphones. They're damn good. Because

it's JVC, whether it's for music or for podcasting

or for recording or listening or whatever, the

sound is - Are they the RX 700s? Because I used

those for like 10 years. They are the, yes, HRX

700. I used about two pairs of those. They were

the best headphones you can get for under a hundred

bucks for years. Yep. Oh yeah. They're the only

headphones that I, as long as, like I said, as

long as I can still find them, they are the only

ones I will ever buy. And thankfully, luckily

this second pair has not, you know, what happened

to the first pair was the, the coding around

like the. the ear cups that was disintegrating,

part of the wire for the plug -in for the jack,

the wire itself was fraying, things like that.

I used them from 2004 till 2014 or later, but

I had two different pairs and they were like

60 US. Honestly, it's not a plug for them, but

I think there's a reason they still make them

and haven't replaced the model. It's the same

with some of them. There's a Sony pair that You

probably see them whenever you see studio recordings.

I forget the name of them, but they have a little

blue label. They've been making those same headphones

since 1980. There's a reason because they're

that good and they're not expensive. No, not

at all. I don't mind dropping, like you said,

30, 40, 50, 60 bucks on another pair of these

kind of things. Did you think you'd be podcasting

for as long as you have? No, but at the same

time, I didn't see any reason to stop. So it's

just sort of a case of, you know, I didn't know

if it was going to work, if I was just going

to be like an occasional contributor. And then

it sort of became just the hobby that keeps moving.

Yeah, absolutely. How have your podcasting goals

changed since you started compared to now? Uh,

not a whole heck of a ton. I mean, I wasn't going

out like I'm going to be famous for being on

the internet. I don't even, I don't care about

that. I don't even, I care like if one person

listens to the show, if only one person ever

did and they were happy with what we did. It's

an outlet. It's a creative outlet to get any

stresses out and just sort of collaborate with

your friends. So my goals are just to have it

maintain its fun factor. If it's no longer fun,

you know, it's not a job. It's not my job. So

if it no longer is fun and it becomes a chore

to do, then I would get out of it. But I'm currently

getting what I want out of it, which is I, this

is, it's my hobby. I'm not a bowler. I'm not

doing anything else. This sort of, it's an excuse

to hang out with friends and chat with people.

Yeah, and I've been doing this so long and I

look at it as, because I have pretty much nothing

else at this point, I've always looked at it

as, yes, it is my job as the co -creator of the

Geekcast Radio Network, as the producer of X

number of shows on the network. I wake up, I,

you know, Maybe get some breakfast. I sit at

the computer. Okay. What episodes do I have to

edit? What episodes do I have to get out? And

I'll spend, you know, four or five hours from

like, say six AM to noon or whatever, just working

on content that I want to create. Like I just

finished before we started this recording, even

though it's late. Of course, by the time people

hear this, it'll already be out. Uh, I just finished

editing our first episode of, so you want to

be a Hawkeye where Alison Richards and I talk

about the first two episodes of Disney plus is

Hawkeye. So, you know, I spent two or three hours

on that and that is an hour and 17 minutes, but

I enjoyed what I was doing because for me. It's

always about where I can find a place in the

conversation. To insert what it like if we're

talking about our favorite scenes as long as

I have that audio And as long as it's a break

in the conversation a natural break I can say

okay razor here move this put the clip in Do

a little fade at the end and then continue on

with the show. I enjoy doing that most of the

time Well, and I should say too, like this is

a case where you're in a similar boat as Birdman

and I were, you know, we're, we're disabled persons

where we're not working a regular job, but you

still want to maintain the, the work ethic of,

of if you were what I meant by it's not your

job. It's like, you're not paid for. So, you

know, When you do a job because you're paid for

it, even if you don't like it, sometimes you

got to do it. This isn't the case with podcasting.

If it's not fun, you find something else to do.

But at the same time, it's that creative outlet.

It's what keeps you going and keeps doing something.

Because otherwise, there is the stereotype of

people are like, hey, you're disabled. You're

just sitting on your ass doing nothing all day.

It's like, No, it's not for a lack of trying

in many cases. You know what I mean? Whereas

the podcasting, it's like, okay, I can do something

that even if it's just for me, makes you feel

like you've contributed something to the greater

good or what's out there because nothing bad

happens from your podcasting in the sense that

it's not a bad habit to have. If you're addicted

to making content, It's not a bad habit to have.

It's better than it is. Yeah, it's more healthy

than any other addiction kind of thing. Yeah,

absolutely. All right. It is time to surrender

your podcast listenership. As a listener, what

defines a good podcast to you? As a listener,

a couple things come to mind. One is consistency.

And it's been a sticking point with some of the

stuff we've done where health and life can get

in the way where sometimes you'll miss, you know,

your self -imposed deadline or when you want

things out. But as a listener, and you can probably

agree to this because like you said, you treat

it like a TV show, people get disappointed when

their show is preempted or moved. And there's

something about waking up and going, okay, we

set our stuff to come out 7 a .m. Eastern time.

Mondays is sort of the, that's when our main

show is out. Other shows we have Tuesdays, Thursdays,

Fridays or Saturdays. And some can be flexible

because they're not always a weekly show. Sometimes

they won't even show up for a month if there

isn't a topic for it. But the idea is whatever

you consider your flagship or your main show,

I prefer if I go to bed on Sunday, by the time

I wake up Monday, hey, that show is on my device

and I'm ready to go. Something you can look forward

to, something dependable because it fills the

gaps. You might not listen to it for a week or

two, but knowing that it's there is one thing.

Also, making a good podcast isn't just So, arguing

for the sake of arguing on a topic or just gleefully

agreeing with everything each other says, what

makes a podcast is strong, distinct, honest personalities.

Yeah. Absolutely. Because, sadly, not everybody

is going to agree that Die Hard is not a goddamn

Christmas movie. Yeah. I mean, people can believe

what they want. I don't like, you don't want

everybody to be a carbon copy or cookie cutter

copy of each other. You also shouldn't, if you're,

if you're funny, you're funny. You shouldn't

try to force it. You shouldn't try to, you know,

like you should, if you're, you might say something

like I've said things, especially at the beginning

where, you know, you'd be like, Oh man, that's,

you know, you're trying to be an edgelord. It's

like, no, it's just sort of my joking or who

I was. But you shouldn't feel like you have to

force it to get a rise out of the audience or

listeners. Everything that you do should try

to come across, if it's not, but you should at

least fake it, try to come across as natural

and as much of your real personality as possible

because people can tell. Nowadays with every

YouTuber out there and everybody being a content

creator, you can tell who's fake and who's not.

Yep, absolutely. A couple months ago on the pullback,

I had one of my guests on there from the Radiant

Black podcast bash. We were talking before the

show and I said, okay, let's get the show on

the road. There was a few moments of silence

and all of a sudden, I roll into the pullback

opening, hello and welcome to blah, blah, blah.

After I did all that, he's like, wow, it's amazing.

You can turn it on just like that. I said, yep.

You got to, you got to just go for it when you're

ready to start a show and turning it on. That's,

that's not to say that it's like, that's a fake

persona. You're just implying yourself, you know,

you're not coming in here pretending to be somebody

you're not. Oh, no, not at all. It's more so

versus like if you and I are having a personal

conversation, I'm going to be talking like this,

which I consider all of my podcast personal conversations.

However, on the intros and the outros, I've always

felt like I have to have that high energy. Really

like it's amazing sometimes how fast or slow

I can get through the outros that I write out

because I put all instead of having a pre -recorded

clip of where everybody can contact us. I do

all that myself because I also include like the

guests. Okay. If you have Twitter, okay. You

have this, that and the other thing, but between

hello and welcome to, and all right. everybody,

that's it for today. Thank you for listening

and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You'll hear

this later, folks. When I go through the outro,

you'll hear my voice change. But again, it's,

it's all about the conversation in the middle

more so than the intro and outro are only there

to get you to in and out of the show. And Birdman

does that. And that's, that's his traditional

radio background, um, with, you know, you have

your announcer voice, keep them in, lock them

in excited. I could do that, but again, that

would maybe, unless I'm really already hyped

up, that would come across as disingenuous. So

I come in it with like, hey, how's everybody

doing? It's just sort of my, like not that I'm

super Zen or anything. It's just I can get excited

and I can get excitable. And you've recorded

with me where we've gotten really over the top.

But I am not somebody who comes crashing in like

that. And everybody has a different style. And

Birdman and I discussed it and he's like, at

first he's like, you want to go over some intros?

And I said, dude, I'm just going to wing it when

I go in because that's just who I am. And he's

like, good. Because otherwise if we're the same

sounding person, it defeats the purpose of the

buddy cop team that we've got going. I'm not

sure I want to know who's Riggs and who's Murtaugh.

Well, I'm both. I'm too old for this shit and

I'm crazy. As a listener, what does a podcast

have to have to draw you in? Usually, generally,

I start at episode one. I usually never start

at the most recent because I want to hear how

the show began and how it progressed. When you

first listen to a show, what does that show have

to have to keep you coming back for more? Two

things. It has to have an introduction to the

host and the general idea of what the show is

going to be, because I want to find out in the

first five minutes if I'm going to be interested.

And the second thing that a show has to have

is, if it's one person, it's one thing, it's

just maybe a topic show, but if it's going to

have multiple hosts, the hosts have to have a

different sounding voice. They can't sound very,

like, and it could be unfortunate if let's say

the hosts are siblings or something, where they

might have very similar sounding tones and cadence

and everything. But I have to be able to be working

on something and doing something in the background

and not worry about whose voice is blending into

who. Everybody has to have a distinctive sounding

voice. Yeah. Absolutely. We kind of already talked

about this one, so it's kind of already answered.

As a listener, do you prefer short 30 minutes

to an hour and 30 minute shows, or do you prefer

longer podcast episodes as in two hours or more?

I'll tell you this. Audio podcasts, a lot longer.

Video podcasts or video shows like the, let's

say video news shows, I prefer those to be at

the 20 to 30 minute mark so I can wake up, have

my coffee and watch it as if I'm watching the

news. So if it's a news based show, whether it

be technology, current events, sports, anything

like that, I prefer those to be video and about

20 to 30 minutes. If it's any other podcast,

like audio wise, I'd like them to be between

an hour and two hours long. Very cool. Very cool.

As I just mentioned a minute ago, as a listener,

do you start at the beginning of a podcast, the

most recent episode, or do you jump around? It's

going to depend most of the time I will start

at the beginning unless it's something like like

twig is impossible like I Mean that two reasons

one. It's like 700 or 800 episodes but number

two the real reason is it's impossible because

the first wave of the shows aren't hosted anymore.

We have them. You could start by year if you

wanted to. But if it's a variety show like ours,

for the main show, you can jump in anywhere because

it's our new segments and reviews. We do our

basic introductions. If I'm looking for a new

show that I've never heard of before, I will

try to jump at the beginning, especially if it's

a themed fandom type show. If it's a variety

news show or for instance, let's say sports or

wrestlers and different people, you can sometimes

start, if it's like a fan question and answer,

like an Ask Me Anything show, you can sometimes

jump into one of them. But I will generally try

to start at the beginning, unless it's a show

that's a few hundred episodes in and it's not

like, hey, this is episode 20 where we're talking

about this episode of a TV show. Then obviously

you start at the beginning. But if it's, you

know, a current affairs show, I don't need to

know what they were talking about in 2015. Yeah,

true. The one thing I will say, not to necessarily

bring it up here, but there is a show out there

that I listened to from the beginning because

it's an evolution of the hosts and what they're

going through kind of thing. Like their wives

were pregnant at the same time or something like

that. Yeah, where it's like a weekly show where

they talk about, you know, just like Twig and

GCNR where we have, like all things Transformers,

we generally report on, you know, various Transformers

news and things like that and whatever and we

talk about what's going on in our lives. So that

I followed from the beginning because that kind

of is telling a story of, you know, you're a

parent now, you're this, you're that, and you

have to deal with all this life stuff. It also

helps if it's only, you know, between one and

three episodes per month. If you're doing three

to five episodes a week, you can't really do

that. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. This is like weekly.

And that's the other thing. And maybe I need

to... And if they're shorter. If they're like

30 minute shows, totally, you can do that. No

problem. Yeah. And maybe I need to add a question

in here somewhere. But that's the other thing

is, how many episodes per week, per month, per

whatever? Generally, we've always done either

weekly content with... You know, like you were

saying about multiple shows and things like that.

You know, we would do weekly, like all things

transformers usually was every two weeks. It

was fortnightly or. movie we can review usually

every week on Saturday kind of thing. Tooncast

every week on a Wednesday, the pullback. So that

one specific show only has one episodes, but

GCRN as a whole, I have always wanted to have

like you were saying earlier about consistent

content. I've always wanted to have seven days

of content where a show, whatever show it is

from whatever like Boy Meets World, Transformers,

He -Man, whatever it is, there's something for

each day of the week. Yeah, we're pretty much

a minimum of three things per week and Yeah,

we there has been nine episodes in a week one

time where we had to get some things out and

some stuff So it was a couple episodes in a single

day which is pushing it because nobody has like

unless you're a super fan where they're just

listening to One or two entire networks and that's

it. Like yeah You can't be expected. That's why

you know, we sort of how we've Developed it as

Monday as the flagship. Pretty much everybody

that listens to our feed listens to that one.

And then you can cherry pick what you'd like

out, you know, for the rest of the week. Yeah,

absolutely. As a listener, how many hosts? And

by hosts, I generally mean people. I don't mean

like me as the main host. I mean anybody on the

show. So how many hosts? are too many on one

episode. If they're all in the same segments,

you mean? So basically, if me, you, Birdman,

Tristan, Blair, Todd, if we have, the overall

question is not necessarily saying about who's

hosting the show. It's more about how many people

are on the show. How many voices are on at one

time? Yeah, okay. For a simultaneous segment

or show, you don't want more than five people,

unless there's a very specific need for it. We're

recording live action role play games where you'll

have, and we've got four players plus the host.

So nobody's really speaking at the same time,

but it can get chaotic if you have more than

three people talking at the same time. And a

way that we've found to mitigate that is our

podcasts are in stereo, so recording all of our

streams separately through ZenCaster, it allows

us, after we're done leveling them so we're all

at the same volume, to have it, I generally have

it where the host, if there's more than a few

people, is centered so they come out of both

ears at the same time. And then if you have four

other people, then... two people are a little

more to the left and two people are a little

more to the right in the stereo spacing, so that

if people do speak up, it sounds more like you're

sitting at a table with them and you have less

of a hard time making the voices blend together

because you remember like the days of Skype where

it was all on one mono stream and if you have

four or five people talking, you have no idea

what's happening. So I would say the... The the

ideal is two to three hosts And then if you've

got certain segments or reasons to have more

Try to top it out at five unless there's a very

specific reason to have more people Yeah, specifically

with various shows depending on what like like

with this show or any of my question and answer

shows as long as We have you know Even even when

i record on skype i make sure that no one is

talking over each other kind of thing and that's

kind of why i like doing the question and answer

shows number one as i said earlier. It gets an

all you know really good story from where you

know the guest is coming from regard regarding

podcast or watching cartoons or reading comics

and you have. a story time podcast where as the

host, I can just ask the questions, get the answers

and we have a conversation without running over

each other and arguing and whatever. Exactly.

Otherwise you have to do like with the top 100s

and kudos to everybody that's involved in those

ones that you guys have done. I was a part of

the wrestling one. There's a lot of People management

you have to do you have to work out ahead of

time. Hey, here's sort of the order we're gonna

speak in or Please don't speak up even if you're

excited until the host Points at you or tells

you it's your turn Yeah, absolutely When do you

stop listening to a podcast altogether? If it

jumps the shark I will stop if It's happened

sometimes where a show lost some of their hosts

or maybe didn't lose the host, but they changed

their format. And I don't just mean that like,

oh, hey, they've got different segments. I mean,

like they changed their entire topic and it has

happened sometimes or I'll drop it when. For

instance, if I was following a fandom, I used

to listen to GateWorld, the Stargate podcast.

Well, there was no more Stargate after 2011,

so what was the point in listening to the podcast?

I'm just going to rehash old episodes that at

the time I had recently just watched. So every

once in a while, I will go and I'll look and

see if they're up. And I won't subscribe, but

I'll download a single episode just to see what's

new. but and that's happened it's mostly with

fandomy type stuff or like like for instance

what i i don't feel the need to remain subscribed

to the beast unleashed podcast because i've listened

to it once or twice yeah and it's it's like i

don't think me being subscribed to a show that

no longer gets another download from me is really

going to help your numbers Well, it will as long

as the Beast Wars comic still goes on at IDW

or wherever it's gonna end up Yeah, no and again,

you know Beast Unleashed is one of those shows

that was supposed to have a finite ending because

we're recovering Beast Wars and Beast Machines

and then Steve did his Iacon Online Beast Wars

thing, so we put that on there, and then IDW

says, hey, we're gonna do a Beast Wars comic.

So then obviously, duh, we're gonna put the Beast

Wars comic on the Beast Wars show kind of thing.

Or if a show, I will stop if, let's say a show

gets off to a good start and they have like.

Even if it's a monthly podcast and they're like,

we've got five months in a row and then now they're

like, Hey, we're taking a break and then like

six months go by. I'm not going to keep subscribed

or listening back to it. You know, if, if you

can't, if, if life gets in the way, obviously,

you know, you deal with your life stuff, but

don't expect me to stick around. Yeah. True.

What podcasts are you currently listening to?

Right now, I've got a few of the GCRN stuff.

Again, I might have a backlog of a bunch of stuff

I got to listen to because I've been busy. I

have subscribed to our own podcast so we can

get at least one extra download. There's that

one penny a month going into us from me at least.

Actually, I'll pull out. I've got my iPod with

me right now because I am somebody who still

listens. almost exclusively on an actual iPod

touch. And that's because I prefer to have my

music device separate from my phone because I'll

listen so much that I don't want my battery to

drain. But what do I have if I go to my library,

shows. And sometimes they'll skip. I am listening,

or what I have subscribed to right now is This

Week in Geek, GCN, a bunch of those. We'll skip

because those are shameless plugs. I listen to

some wrestling ones, even though I'm not really

watching wrestling anymore. I have the Jim Cornett

stuff on there because regardless of if I'm watching

wrestling or listening to it, He's just an interesting

dude. So I'll have some of those. What else do

I have on here? This one's very infrequent, but

it used to be a lot more frequent. Best episode

ever, and the Marshall McLuhan Variety Hour,

which are two podcasts recorded by a couple of

hosts, Anthony Marco and Dave Brodbeck, both

educators in Ontario. One lives in Hamilton,

one lives in Sault Ste. Marie up north. Uh, interesting

fellows, best episode ever is they go through

a, uh, they each pick an episode or a TV show

and it has to have been made before 1990. And,

uh, the goal is they try to pick a Canadian show

that you could have only picked up here or maybe

sometimes in the States. And they sort of go

through the history of that show and discuss

how ridiculous sometimes it was. So they'll pick

something really obscure that maybe had like

nine episodes. but they'll talk about it from

like 1972 and their variety show is sort of a

random topic type show that I put on in the background

and I've been listening to them actually going

back to my original they're probably one of the

first podcasts I listened to back in like 07

or 08 and they might go like two or three months

without a show but because it's one of the first

shows I ever listened to I just leave it on the

background you know and it's like oh there's

a new episode today and then I'll listen to it

that way I listen to the weekly show, the RPG

cast from RPGgamer .com. And that's another earlier

one that has been out for like 10 years or more.

And a lot of it is, it's the host just talking

to each other, but also news about video games

and role playing games in particular. I have

a friend and former coworker runs his own podcast

called Pixel Opinions, which is him and his friends

sitting around talking about games and gaming

news. And it's sort of an idea to bounce off

of when I'm doing my own shows. If I miss a news

article online, I can always listen to theirs.

They do a show that comes out Sundays or Mondays.

Obviously, Altergeek, All Things Transformers,

Yada. And one that is probably the most unique

one I have, that it's only a monthly show, and

it's the Retro Gaming Roundup. I've been listening

to them for probably 10 years now. And theirs

is like a five or six hour podcast. So they record

multiple segments on many different topics. It

could be arcade repair, it could be top tens,

that sort of stuff. And it's a co -UK -US production.

I think Mr. Neil had one of the hosts on talk

about his book one time on his podcast. And it's

the only one I have that's a monthly show that

again, it's like six hours. And that's when I

told Mike about that. everyone's like, what?

That's crazy. I'm like, dude, they only release

a show once a month. So every week they're recording

maybe an hour's worth of content and then they

throw it all together in one big show. And they

date back, yes, it's 10 years old, but they go

back so far that, remember, bandwidth is so small.

They had a version that you could download on

their website that was like eight kilobits per

second for truck drivers to listen over CB radio.

You know, there's what else I've gone through

phases of having other things on there Some of

the podcasts that I've listened to in the past

like I'm drawing a blank on the names But they

do date back to the 90s even if they have a modern

format now So like they were originally like

real media players or like quick time So but

yeah, that's that's sort of what I've got on

the go right now I try to keep less than 10 feeds

active because that will end up being roughly

12 to 15 shows a week. So I'm guessing it's like

20 hours on average of a week that I'll have

going on in the background. Yeah. Very cool.

Very cool. All right, folks. That's the first

15 questions. We're going to take a quick break.

Come back after this for the rest of the show.

We'll be back in a moment. Hello Geeks and Geekettes!

Looking for a podcast that covers a vast array

of topics? Then check out Altered Geek Unleashed,

where we discuss our thoughts on this week's

geeky news, tech, gaming, television shows, movies,

cartoons, comics, and more. So, Get Altered,

Get Geeky with the Altered Geeks, every Friday

on the Geekcast Radio Network. Welcome to my

throne of future tales. The Beast Unleashed podcast

is over, not gone. You can hear more of this

great podcast discussing all the episodes of

Beast Wars and Beast Machines on GeekCastRadio

.com. We include voice actor and writer interviews

with stellar hosting by Steve, Mike and Michael.

Head on over to iTunes or the Net or else I will

send you my vehicles to extract your spark and

destroy you. What was that universal greeting

again? Never mind, I remember. Ba -weep, Grana!

Weep, Ninibong! Hey guys, it's Rodimus Primal,

and be sure to check out my YouTube channel.

Join me as I have Transformers discussions, retrospectives,

toy reviews, and more. You can also follow me

on Twitter at Rodimus Primal, as well as Facebook

and Instagram at Rodimus Primal Show. Transform

and roll out, and be sure to check out my content.

Till all are one. in the summer, folks. Let's

go out. Discover a world of vintage and modern

toys that's more than meets the eye with the

Triple Takeover Toycast. Hosted by toy writers

and photographers Toy Box Soapbox, Sixo and TF

Square One, this informal and chilled out series

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all are welcome. Triple Takeover Toycast. On

the Simplistic Reviews podcast, we talk movies.

We talk TV. We talk. Hello Julie, what the heck

are you doing? Trying to make our spot sound

more exciting by adding explosions Yeah, I'm

pretty sure you could have got the point across

with sound effects. Not the real thing Download

the show on iTunes or if simplistic reviews .blogspot

.com I'm sure your insurance company will cover

that. No, they won't. No, they probably won't.

All right We are back inside studio 2009 with

Alex Ricci's podcast approach It's time to talk

about your podcast production. As a producer,

do you find yourself listening to podcasts less

and less? No, I'm actually probably listening

more. Interesting. There are weeks where I won't

listen to quite as many because I'm too busy.

But I would say I'm listening to shows more often

just to see here, what's the current trend? And

sometimes I'm like, ew, I don't like that. Um,

but for the most part, I think I'm, I'm probably

listening, listening a little less than I was

when I was, when I was not recording anything.

I probably hadn't maybe two or three more shows

I was listening to, but I maybe find that I don't

listen. I might skip a random episode here or

there, but I'm still, I'm listening to roughly

the same as I was five years ago. Hmm. Yeah.

It depends on what my workload is. If my, like

right now I'm backlogged, but You know, I still,

I wake up, I roll over, I look at my phone and

I open up Spotify and oh, a new episode of this

has appeared for streaming or whatever. And that's

the other thing. And again, I need to probably

edit the questions here. I'm more about streaming

the episodes than I am about downloading them.

I know that's probably taking away from. the

pennies that we could be getting kind of thing,

but. Not particularly, but I also prefer to download.

I'm in a basement. Like my apartment is a four

story building and I'm in the basement. It's

an older building. So even with like drilling

holes through the walls to get the wifi repeaters

in there. I don't want any interruptions, so

I have it set to auto -download pretty much everything

I listen to. I will still stream video shows,

obviously, but I also tend to listen before I

go to bed. I might be in bed, it's all dark,

and I'm just listening with a low volume before

I really have my brain turn off to fall asleep.

I don't want to be listening to something and

then have it cut out or jump to something else

on the stream. I don't like to have it so that

when the episode ends, it just ends and I pass

out. Yep. Absolutely. As a producer, are you

a podcast planner or are you throwing stuff at

the mic to see what sticks? The planner. because

there has to be some structure to the chaos.

Birdman is good at planning big ideas, but it's

getting a solid schedule down because I was always

the procrastinator growing up. It doesn't have

to be rigid, but if I don't have a general plan

down and be like, hey, we will get overwhelmed.

Mostly because since I joined, we did shift a

lot of our focus from weekly or monthly topic

shows where you don't really have to plan as

long as you already know what you're doing or

unless you have to do research by watching something

to having, you know, Birdman would do maybe four

or five game or movie reviews in a month. We've

gone to do two to 300 a year. So about 50 % of

our content is product reviews, whether it be

movie, game, whatever it is. So, and that just,

it's slowly ramped up from 2017, 2018 and so

on, especially with the pandemic, you know, you

weren't going out, there wasn't much to do. So

if a company's like, Hey, here's a code to check

out this movie or check out this game, talk about

it. So if you don't, and there's different embargo

dates where, for anybody there's no embargo date

is just simply you're given the ability to view

something early or given a promo copy of it and

there will be a date saying hey you can't discuss

this till after this because it's legally binding

you could potentially at best they would just

drop you as a client and not talk to you and

it's not about giving good reviews like they'll

they can like you have to be impartial and if

it's a bad game or movie you Tell them it's bad.

What it means is they're not paying for your

good review. They're just saying, hey, we'll

drop you and not talk to you anymore because

you broke the street date. Or worst case scenario,

and I've seen some, and I can say very quickly

that I reviewed the game Control, and when that

came out, was it two summers ago, three summers

ago, something? I had to print a contract, sign

a legal document, Facts it back to them that

if I broke street date, they would hold me Financially

accountable meaning they could sue me for millions

of dollars for talking about the game before

I was supposed to and that can happen and and

and it has happened to people before so Because

of that you've got it. I've got to keep a schedule

I got to keep a spreadsheet of hey, here's what

we've received. Here's what we're reviewing We

only have two to three slots to put it in this

week and here's the date that they want, not

that they want the review up, here's the date

the review can go out. So if I don't micromanage

somewhat the schedule and be the order to the

chaos, will we end up in situations where it's

happened, where it's like, oh, we've got like

25 things to talk about this week. And that seems

ridiculous. And it's also not fair to the people

that gave us stuff if we only give them a couple

of minutes. So it's a learning process. But ideally,

I would love to have it, not be automated, but

have it be second nature to us that we just know

what our schedule is. And that's maybe a goal

for next year is to, it's always, how can I streamline

things to make it easier on our scheduling? Yeah,

absolutely. Yeah, that's the way it should be.

And that's the way I look at our scheduling and

my scheduling is. I have no life. I can make

whatever work. If you sit there and say you have

this day, this day, and this day from this time,

this time, and this time, okay, well, let's agree

on a day, agree on a time, and let's go get it

done. Recording is the fun part. The part that

does feel like work is not even so much the scheduling.

Sure, you got to wrangle people. It's the getting

the content prepared and promoted. Good Lord,

I didn't realize how boring that part was and

how time consuming it was until you had to edit

like 10 shows in a row. Yeah, promotion I don't

mind. It's the busy work of getting the episode,

the editing is fun. It's getting the episode

uploaded, having your descriptions, your pages

prepared, having it ready to go and wording it

the right way you want to word it and then just

hoping people connect to it and listen to it.

One of the things for me when I when I'm doing

something like the pull bag or whatever we're

reviewing a trade paperback or something Like

usually I with with the comic show with the pull

bag I will have series or like my buddy Joe and

I have reviewed all 100 issues of the IDW TMNT

series so generally because it's just Joe and

I on that that that series the description I

can just have, you know, in Microsoft Word or

whatever. And if I have to change it, like if

I have to change the episode number or if I have

to change this or change, that's easy. That's

nothing. But it's like sometimes coming up, like

if you have a new show coming up with a general

description for the new show, unless your brain,

unless your creative juices are flowing, you're

going to burn out because you're going to be

like, what do I say about Or for me, sometimes

with all things Transformers, even though I listen

to every second of audio and editing, by the

time I get to the point of writing out a description,

what the hell did we talk about in that episode?

Fuck, I don't remember. So that's - Again, getting

into it. If you think that, hey, it's fun to

be a YouTuber and review products and that, guess

what? Every product that you review, it's exciting.

either expected implicitly or explicitly or just

good etiquette, you are going to be searching

down a link to send people to find that. You're

going to have to get a description for it. Sometimes

you'll have to have pictures, you know, and let's

say you'd review two or three things in a show.

That means every show you have to make a custom.

You can have a template to work with, but you

have to make a custom description, custom promotion,

custom. tweets, custom tags. And if you're, you

know, it's, it's all funny. Oh, I got free stuff

to work with. It's free is never really free.

There's no such thing as a truly free lunch.

There's always something for it. So I would say

the, the The easiest thing would be if you are

somebody who doesn't care about the audio and

you think that audio podcasts are easier to do.

There's more work because there's more written

stuff you got to do. If you're somebody who just

wants to get your content out in the world, honestly,

YouTube, because you can make a generic thing

you want to say, especially if you're just talking.

random shit, and you want to make it like a vlog

series, you can still do that to dip your feet

in, but if you want to make yourself come across

as professional, you're going to have to make

a whole bunch of templates just for every scenario

you could think of. And then remember, any time

you do a themed episode or if it's a Halloween

episode or a holiday episode, you're not going

to be using that same generic thing unless you

don't want to come across as being lazy. Even

if it is monotonous work, it is kind of boring

doing that background stuff. Or we're working

on the websites, getting things posted. Good

God. I don't know how many times I've posted

something and then had to go back and go, crap,

I got the date wrong or I got this wrong. It's

like, why? It's like, because I copied and pasted

a previous one and then forgot to alter one little

thing. And then it makes me look stupid. Or when

people have to, like I don't, that's all Steve's

thing sometimes with the backend. Like with the

RSS feeds and the XL feeds and whatever feeds,

I know a lot of people, like if they accidentally

put an and sign instead of writing out and in

a feed thing, it fucks it up and the episode

won't come out kind of thing. And it's like,

oh, what the hell? Oh, I put an and sign in there.

I've had that or worst thing I've done is, speaking

of embargoes from before, is I used one wrong

wording and had to go back and alter it and go

to every platform that it was available on, make

an alteration because I used the word review

when I was supposed to use the word impression.

Even if technically they were the same thing,

a review in the contract implied that this was

the finished product and the finished product

was going to include a day one patch. So I was

like, oh shit. And then you got to go in, you

got to make a tweet about, hey, altered this

because anybody that's already received it has

received it with the wrong wording. So it's like,

you can put a bandaid on it, but it doesn't always

fix it. So you have to be diligent. Yeah. Oh

yeah. Very, very diligent. Or there are times

where Steve doesn't generally like, in the backend,

in the background, as long as we have them listed

somewhere, episode numbers are fine, but he has

never liked episode numbers in titles where I'm

like... I need an episode number in the title

so I know exactly where I am in that show as

far as a producer kind of thing. And if you're

writing out like for the top 100 Transformers

characters countdown, I wrote out six descriptions

and I screwed up the episode numbering in the

descriptions because I'm like, wait, what number

is this? Oh, this is supposed to be this. So

that way you have to go back. It's crazy. I prefer

the numbering system, or I did, until I realized

that we're putting out so many that I sat back

and went, wait a minute, are we going to scare

people off? If we put in our number, it's like,

oh, this is, hey, this is This Week in Geek episode

854. Are they just going to go, oh, that's too

far and I don't want to listen to it? I don't

think so. It could potentially do that, but also,

in our case, is there a reason to number that

except when it's special occasions, like when

we hit episode 1 ,000 or something? We already

had, I think, was it last year, 900 or 1 ,000,

total things we had produced or been a part of

or anything syndicated. So we'll do anniversary

shows and number it that way. But then I screwed

up the numbering on a couple episodes and put

them in the wrong order when we did JT from Saskatoon's

show with Birdman, the Sunday Funnies, which

is the comic book show, and then Aaron Paulier's

show, The Earth Versus Soup. I put a couple out

of order just by accident of how it was uploaded.

I upload them in the right order, but then how

it appeared in our... content manager was wrong.

So I put the wrong description in and I was like,

all right, screw it. Most of these are evergreen

episodes in that they're not serialized in a

show format that each one is carrying forward

and they're sort of on their own. So I just sort

of did a break point about a month and a half

ago where I stopped numbering them, even though

internally we have them numbered so I know where

they are. As a producer, are you a one -man show

kind of host or do you prefer working with co

-hosts? I prefer not having to do everything

myself. I can and I will and I know it'll get

done, but I find I prefer the collaboration in

the recording aspect of it and how our dynamic

works for the most part when everything's rolling

full steam ahead. is we record together as a

group. I then take the individual audio streams,

do some audio leveling. I do the initial stereo

mix of our vocals. Birdman will then do the editing,

even though we both can, but just to divvy up

the work. He will do the editing where he's adding

music, segments, titles, any prerecorded reviews

that we recorded on our own and place them all

together. and he will do the export. I do a quick

listen over if there's anything needs to be done

and then I handle the upload and the show posting

and he handles promotion after it's out because

how our social media was built and how it evolved

over the years, it pretty much was we had social

channels for the site and for the shows but Birdman

built the entire social Network around himself

as the personality So he currently has four to

five times the followers on his personal accounts,

which is what he used to manage all of the All

of the posts everything before what was done

through him directly and then it would sort of

be retweeted by the main sites so now We do it

the other way. We do it the way it's kind of

supposed to be, which is the show and the website

and we post everything. And then he will retweet

it and bring his individual followers that are

in there. The hardest part has been getting people

to move from it being, you know, This Week in

Geek's promotion being entirely the Birdman show

to being the show itself. The show, yeah. It's

hard to get, like... In an ideal world, everybody

that follows him would now be following the show

as well, but it's only about a third. How do

you go about finding your co -hosts? Who's willing

and doesn't sound like a moron? I'm sorry, I

can't be on this podcast this week because I

sound like a one -legged moron. There's been

some people where you're like, that's not going

to work. You find people that are willing and

you get people, sometimes you think they're a

good fit, but they're not consistent. How we

go about it now is we find people that We've

come to the conclusion that Birdman and I are

the full -time hosts. Mm -hmm That's that's just

pretty much how it's gonna be until one of us

can't do it or or it has no ability to do it

then That's it. So with your two full -time hosts,

we then have Anybody else we've got a slew of

you know three or four people that are I would

say regular contributors and co -hosts on specific

shows, but they're part -time in that they've

got other things going on and they come on when

there's a topic to talk about. Because going

into it with an expectation of getting everybody

to sit down, we tried it and even with a four

and three man booth, it became too much. At the

same time, you were a regular host as well, especially

during... the rough years. 2011 to 2014 or 2015,

I think. Yeah. We discussed it. We could have

you on regularly all the time, except you got

other stuff to do too with your show. We decided

we got to have a consistent couple of regular

hosts that were not putting a burden on other

people to expect them to show up for a weekly

show. Instead, we'll do shows like we'll have

our... our loose cannon show, which is our B

-movie show that we do with Aaron Paulier. We

will sometimes record, and those are usually

45 minutes to an hour, we'll record two episodes

or maybe if it's a shorter one, three with him

in a row and one day, one evening. And then that

can spread out over the course of a month, month

and a half, because he's got a full -time job.

He's got other things to worry about. And in

some cases, if we can't get the extra co -host,

then it's Birdman and I doing it. together or

solo. And generally, if somebody wants to join

us as a regular host, all we ask, and I mean,

we were guilty of sometimes missing it too, is

can you commit to one episode a month? Can you

do like a Sunday funnies? And that's been mostly

on us not getting, you know, having trouble scheduling

and feeling well or having other commitments.

But generally the goal when we talked to JT was

JT We can't guarantee more than one a month,

but can you commit to one a month? Yeah. And

if we do more, great. If we don't, you know,

whatever. So if somebody can dedicate two hours

of their time, you know, we'll have you on as

a contributor. And then eventually if you're

consistent, then obviously you're part of the

team. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah, for me it's like,

you know, scheduling. Like we were talking earlier

about being planners versus just throwing stuff

at the wall. I try, other than all things Transformers

and some of that news stuff that Steve and I

do, I try to avoid the evergreen content so much

because, like you said earlier, bing bing bing

has to be done. If you're releasing something

that needs to be released, in a timely manner

of, oh my God, if it's not out, blah, blah, blah,

blah, blah. And I'm like, that's just too much

goddamn stress. I don't need that. I would rather

just sit back and talk about a show from 40 years

ago or 30 years ago or 20 years ago and have

a fun time and have a good recording versus having

to worry about when the hell the damn show's

out kind of thing. As a producer, well, we talked

about this before too. Do you feel you need,

oh, wait. Do you feel you need a mixing board

and all the fancy stuff that would be in a radio

station, or are you good with a great microphone

and headphone setup? It would be nice, but it's

not necessary. I think if you're somebody who

thinks it's absolutely necessary, you might want

to re -evaluate honestly how good of a host you

are. If it's a crutch that you need and you think

you have to have it, re -evaluate it. In our

case, it's a nice to have because it would save

some time with editing. I'd also like to be able

to beep somebody if I want to. Or have a few

funny things. We'll put bloopers in the beginning

and end, but it would be nice to have some of

those classic bloopers that if somebody messes

up, we can just press a button and have it do

it. So as a time saver, great, but it's not necessary.

Oh boy, classic bloopers. I have a whole folder

of them. I remember the one. I don't know what

he, I don't remember what the hell he was watching,

but I have a clip of Dodd saying, or I'm sorry,

Birdman saying, he's punching himself or whatever

it is. There's a few that I think we got recorded

somewhere where I think we were recording with

you in the incarnation where I had joined nerd

news and Blair set the house on fire. Yeah. She

had a little spill of grease and there was like

barely 10 inch flames. Oh boy, that was a hot

time in the old Canadian town tonight. As a producer,

how much time do you put into the editing of

the show? If it's a show where I'm the only host,

unless there's a major problem, 15 minutes. For

a basic review show or a topic show, 15 to 20

-ish. For anything that requires a lot of sound

effects to be put in, or we have gift guides

or certain special topic shows, about an hour

for an individual episode. The easiest ones are

commentaries, because when we do a commentary,

we throw an intro on, and then we throw our extra

on, and it's quite literally a 30 -second affair.

Yeah, that's the same thing with me with commentaries

I'll throw the intro the outro and then generally

between like the beginning of the show like hi,

this is this and we're gonna be doing this and

Right after this you're gonna get our countdown.

So I'll put a click for example back to the future

You're gonna see some serious when this baby

hits 88 miles per hour here, you know I'll put

that clip from Doc Brown in and then we'll come

back and say okay three two one start and then

you just go until the end of the show and then

you put the outro on and be done as A producer

do you prefer in -person recordings or over -the

-internet recordings via Skype Zen caster, etc.

I would normally say Okay, if you have a proper

High high -end mixing board in person can be

great It is a logistical nightmare right now

And if you've got any special needs or you have

to like Birdman how he records we're in it We're

stuck in the room. We're in acoustics, you know

be damned so anything that would normally sound

like Acoustically, if there's trouble on his

end, if you're recording in person with him,

well, you're going to have that same issue too.

That can happen where he records, you'll have

people like in motorcycles drive by really loudly

and it's like, well, we're leaving that in because

I'm not starting over again. I would say that

one of the godsends of recording online and making

me lean towards this, even if the audio quality

was technically more compressed. is the ability

without any specialized hardware to record individual

audio streams, making editing and leveling so

much easier because recording in person, unless

you've got fancy equipment, you're generally

recording on the same audio track. And at that

point, yes, it's easy in that it's all done on

one track, but it also means if one person is

louder than the other and you don't catch it

when you're doing your mic setup, or you move

the position of where your mic is while you're

talking, you're going to have one person way

louder than the other and there's nothing you

can do about it. Nope. We did talk about this

one earlier. Do you prefer as a listener and

a producer, do you prefer one feed have everything

or should each type of show have its own feed?

It's a flip a coin thing with me. I prefer for

my own use. to have it all in one. But I do see

the merit in having multiples. You just need

to be able to come by it very, like once you're

subscribed, you're subscribed. It's just, you

want to make it very easy to come across. Absolutely.

How do you use social media to promote your podcast?

Uh, we will post, it's supposed to be automated,

but right now I think some of the APIs are broken

on, on our posting end. Uh, but we use Facebook

and Twitter for 99 % of it. We have Instagram,

but I mean, I just don't, I don't get it. I also

like, like it's, it's funny. There's other platforms

like TikTok you could be using or other social

media. I'm old and not so much that I don't understand

it, but I don't think people that would want

to listen to us are looking to find us through

those. So it's Twitter and Facebook and then

word of mouth that way. We've got a Discord,

but it's mostly used just for us to record. It's

not like a public... forum or anything. Yeah.

Yeah. Um, but yeah, it's, it's, we're sort of

going by those two because those are the easiest

to integrate with. Uh, and then we have our website,

obviously. And if you search out this week in

geek, you probably find it, um, through search

engine optimization, all that junk. Oh boy. Yeah.

I, and again, because I wanted to do different

shows, that's why I like the individual because

the audience for Transformers Generation 1, if

you've got a true quote unquote G -1er that only

wants G -1 and doesn't give a shit about Beast

Wars, well then... They can eat a bag of dicks.

I'm sorry. Get over yourself. No, no, no. I know,

but... Get over yourself. You can skip an episode

or you know what? You can be nice to the people

that record you and let it at least download

and then delete it. Because then at least you're

helping support them on their stream because...

You don't know how much more work you're making

for those guys. And again, I started out with

doing review shows of, again, this is why I look

at it, look at audio podcasting as an audio television

show, because again, you take the U .S. Generation

One Transformers cartoon, 98 episodes. At the

time, I fitted into 24 podcasts or so. We did

do a couple of supplementals that weren't anything

to do with - Oh, it came to my head. Sorry for

interrupting. I was thinking of your podcast

commercial. You should be listening to my TFGOM

podcast, my first podcast. Yeah. How many times

did I hear that? Tells you how much of a fan

I was. I listened to everything. So yeah, moving

on. Just had a novel. flashback. That's all sorry.

Yeah, it's, uh, yeah, it's, that's the thing.

You know, you get into this and you get 13, 14

years into it. And like, I'm, I don't even know.

I know as of our nine year anniversary or nine

year anniversary, I had just over 2000 podcasts

that I have released. Uh, and since then I have,

I like, I want to say I'm close to 3000 now because

again, as I said at the beginning of this, I

have no life. Podcasting is my life. I, whether

I'm recording, whether I'm editing, even though

sometimes with the editing, it's like, Oh God.

Cause I want to make sure everything is, is right.

I can't just do the 15 minute check because if

something is like, say for example, like you

were saying earlier, if a train comes through

or whatever it comes through, usually lately,

I'll just say, Oh, Like it was Transformers.

Oh, there's Astro Train. He's making his nightly

run or something like that. And that's fine.

But if like, there's a break, like I usually

put breaks in, in my shows, like I did earlier

with this, like I'm going to need to listen to

this to make sure at the end of question 15,

I cut here, cut here, and I can put in like a

Twig commercial or whatever, whatever thing I'm

going to put in there kind of thing. So yeah.

What is your favorite topic to discuss on a podcast?

Uh, religion and politics and why you're all

wrong. No. My favorite Tom, I would say a safe,

like something safe, but fun to talk about is

entertainment news, like gaming and TV show hobbies.

The standard sort of fair. Uh, I was, uh, it's

weird. Like I, I would, there's certain things

I would love to talk about that I know nobody

else would. So I don't bother. I would, I would

be that guy. It's like, Hey, let's talk about

how stupid some of these shows were in like 1993.

Like that's why I listened to that best episode

ever show is because it sort of goes into that

only difference being me being younger. I'm thinking

of things from the nineties, mostly favorite

things to talk about. Um, the segment we have.

Like we do our entertainment news or geek news.

It's the weird news stuff. And we, we usually

have a shorter segment for it because they're

usually not quite as long to talk about, but

it's, it's, I like searching the internet for

what happened this week that is truly strange

or hilariously bizarre. I like talking about

those sorts of things because we can really get

into it. You might have to tone yourself down

a little bit because you don't want to get too

crass with what you're discussing in it, but

sometimes just how ridiculous life can be is

interesting. Absolutely. If you've done any interviews

with famous people, which was your favorite?

Favorite. A lot of the interviews we've done,

I was running the background either monitoring

the audio feeds to make sure nobody dropped out

or maybe did a bit of an interview ahead of time

or did the pre -interview stuff. I can tell you

a couple. I'll tell you one that was fun that

I don't. No, I don't think I got to be a part

of directly ahead of time, but we ended up talking

a bit before and a bit after. And that was last

year, the year before, that Birdman interviewed

Ed the Sock, which was the stand -up comedian

character that I think Triumph the Insult comic

dog was a copycat of. Sort of very iconic to

the Canadian experience in the 90s in particular

on much music and city TV and just sort of a

very, very large part of pop culture for anybody

that's currently between the ages of like 25

and 45. There's probably been a few others in

there that were interesting. I'll tell you one

that I was disappointed because it didn't work

out because of timing constraints is I was originally

last spring or summer, I was going to be interviewing

Seth Green. Wow. Yeah, when Robot Chicken was

coming back and then a few days beforehand, Scheduling

Conflicts came up and I was going to be interviewing

his co -creator instead, which was still going

to be awesome, but it was, you know, a bit disappointing.

And then we go to do the interview and we're

there. I'm with his PR team and we're waiting

and he couldn't make it. Oh no! And then they

were like, maybe we can reschedule for another

time. And I'm like, maybe, but... you know this

kind of sucks so and that was one of the things

where we we we learned from that like we didn't

really say what we were going to be doing but

we did learn from it like hey we shouldn't announce

interviews before and we luckily we did but we

shouldn't announce who we're going to interview

beforehand because you don't know who's going

to be able to make it who's not and we were also

supposed to interview um i don't think we actually

got around to doing it because we had some trouble

maybe we did we were going to interview like

the head the CEO of the Asylum, which is that

company that makes all the mockbuster movies

like Sharknado. Seth Green was going to be interesting

and that would have been super fun. But again,

schedules just didn't work out. They only have

a finite amount of slots for that. In the future,

I'd like to interview more people. There's been

more opportunities pop up with Uh, other people

from like CW shows and that it's just, again,

timing wise hasn't always lined up. Uh, I, I

wouldn't be overly nervous interviewing somebody.

I, unless there's reason to be, you just want

to make sure you're cognizant of their time and,

and, you know, and, and not want to, you don't

want to come across as a complete goof or a complete

fan boy or anything, but I've. listened in like

I said on a lot of the interviews and before

and after talked with the people and that's been

pretty fun and realizing that most of the people

we've interviewed have been the same on mic as

they were you know live on air as they were when

they're not on air because it would be very disappointing

if we did go to interview somebody And we found

out they were complete dicks before they went

on the air Because I don't know I don't know

with my personality if I could keep their secret

the third they're secretly assholes But yeah,

so that's that's just too there's a little behind

-the -scenes story for you. Yeah, absolutely

Yeah, the thing with interviews especially with

famous people with voice actors with whomever

cosplayers musicians, whatever You know, like

especially voice actors you hear Someone like

this is Kevin Conroy and I am the goddamn Batman

Kevin Conroy or Mark Hamill or Tara strong, I

like I remember when we interviewed Jason Marsden

and Josh Keaton You know Josh Keaton does a lot

of voice acting stuff and he puts on a voice

for certain roles and, you know, certain people

it's like, Oh, this is what you like. You take

Stan Bush. Okay. I've interviewed like Stan Bush

is the single most. interviewed person on the

Geekcast Radio Network. Well, he's basically

Uncle Stan for you now. Essentially, yes, but

you listen to his music and you listen to his

voice and you assume, oh, yes, his voice is going

to sound similar to this and you pick up the

line with him and it's like, oh, you sound like

that. Just the sound of his voice, you sound

like that or whatever kind of thing. Oh, yeah.

Like with Larry Kinney, you hear Lionel or Sonny

the Cocoa Puff Bird in your head, and then he

just sounds the way he sounds kind of thing and

whatever. Is there or was there ever a moment

when you were completely done with podcasting?

Um, I've gotten to the point a couple times in

the last few years where I was like, Hey, Let's

get some stuff prepared or or You know, can I

get some stuff scheduled so that because I be

handling the back end has also meant that like

Right now nobody else is posting to the site

and that's by design until we got everything

streamlined the way we wanted and we wanted to

make sure that from a security standpoint that

We knew exactly who's posting whenever. I have

to make some extra users and stuff. There's some

work I gotta do anyway. So even if I'm not recording,

I'm the one that has to post everything right

now. And the goal is over the Christmas break

when we're taking about a month off, we're gonna

have stuff pre -scheduled and I will then go

in and make some best practice. Like video tutorials

as PDFs to show how our process is so anybody

else can replicate it in case God forbid I got

sick and couldn't do it anymore or something

But the idea is I've had a few times now where

I've like I need a couple weeks off and it doesn't

yes It's like it's too much. Like I'm gonna catch

up on my stuff so that I'm completely caught

up and You know pardon me, but I don't want to

talk to y 'all motherfuckers for like two weeks

Online I'll send you text messages or whatever

need be if you need an emergency help if you

need me to come on to You know to help you if

there's a real problem with your recording or

something, you know fine contact me, but You

know y 'all dicks f off I'm done like I need

a mental break and even if you're like, well,

you're only recording a couple times a week.

Yeah, but It's never off. So every once in a

while, I'm like, you know what, I would like

a couple weeks. And that's what our plan is,

is to, cause we, since I've started, I have never

actually had a week off where I didn't do anything

for the site. So I would, and as much as, you

know, it's not to sound ungrateful because it's,

you know, it's, I can do this if I want to or

not, but. even when I was on break, I was still

doing all the posting. So I would like to have

it set up so that when we go for our Christmas

break and we're off for four weeks, that maybe

we'll come back to record one thing together

while we're on break. But I would love it so

that for like three or four weeks, we have content

coming out. It's already auto -promoted. But

I just quite simply don't have to do anything.

And so, I mean, I've never come to the point

where I'm like, I don't want to do it at all,

but I have come to the point where like two times

a year, I would like a few weeks off. Yeah. Yeah,

absolutely. It's one of those things where you

have to take a break because if you don't, you're

going to suffer from burnout and you're going

to... basically want to burn the whole house

down kind of thing. And everybody has had this.

I've had it. Steve Megatron has had it. I'm sure...

Oh, he's had him where he's had a lot going on.

And then I've basically taken over, which I'm

glad you have. So he's my friend at the same

time. We don't want to enter a situation where

we would both be, we're like, hey, Our minds

are gone. We're going to drive a screwdriver

to the side of our head if we record anymore.

We don't want to have a situation where neither

of us want to do it and then we have weeks where

nothing happens because that is breaking my cardinal

rule of consistency. The thing of it is for me,

and I've said this since episode zero of TFG1,

I will work my ass off from New Year's Day to

Halloween. whatever we can get done in those

nine, 10 months, whatever, once Thanksgiving

and Christmas come around, I want to cut it back

to half of that. If we have, you know, at least

one or two, like if we do a Christmas episode

on GeekCast Radio, like we recently just did

the Thanksgiving episode. because sadly my wife

passed away and Karen passed away and we were

talking, you know, I was talking about reflecting

on that and, and everything else. So do holiday

episodes, do your holiday gift guide, whatever,

as long as you don't have an, like with holiday

gift guide, as long as you don't have any products

that are, you're waiting out, like sometimes

certain companies, like I'm not saying this is

going to happen anytime soon because it, they

just released the six. six and six pro but let's

say google pixel seven and seven pro are coming

out. December twenty second but you're already

ready right after thanksgiving to do your holiday

gift guide and get it produced and recorded and

whatever. You're going to miss out on that one

thing kind of thing. And that's why the whole

evergreen content, like, you know, it's a nightmare,

but yeah, just always have stuff prepared. So

that way when you have the stuff prepared, you

can walk away. And how I do things now, like

I said earlier, I will wake up, you know, five,

six, seven, eight AM, whatever it is. I will

work. Often on between that time until maybe

about 5 6 p .m As far as editing and posting

and promotion and all that and then if I have

recordings at night fine But I take breaks throughout

the day and by 8 p .m. I'm like I'm putting on

law or criminal intent, and I'm playing games

on my phone. That's it Kind of thing so that

way I have the whole night between like 7 p .m.

to 10 p .m. where I have three hours of just

shutting my brain off and then I go to bed and

I wake up the next day and just do it all over

again. Oh, absolutely. What advice do you have

for new and veteran podcasters in the art of

podcasting? Don't. Okay, do not come into it

with a preconceived notion that you're going

to be rich and famous. If you come into it with

the right mindset of you are looking for a creative

and fulfilling outlet for yourself, and if somebody

listens to it great, then fantastic. Come into

it with a concept in mind and do it like you

would do a business plan. And I'm not saying,

oh, meticulously plan out everything. I'm saying

have a format ready. You know, you can't just

click record and expect magic to happen. Right.

You know, decide. Are you going to be a one -topic

show? Are you going to be... It could just be

you and your friends shooting the show. Hey,

what'd you do this week? That's fine. But have

some sort of structure ready. A general outline

of what you want to do. Also, especially in the

beginning, make sure that you have a timer. And

you're timing yourself. So... If you are making

reviews, let's say, and I'm not saying you were

provided a review copy. You played a game and

you want to talk about it. Unless it's a long

form, and we do the long form discussions where

we'll dive deep and there'll be 30 minutes to

an hour long round tables with two or three people.

That's great. Make sure that people know that.

For a standard review, unless your whole topic

is that, you want it to be anywhere from three

to seven minutes long. anything beyond that and

you're rambling, unless there's something, unless

it's a cyberpunk situation where you have a lot

to talk about. And if you really want to get

into the minutiae, you can do that. So set yourself

a timer. Also time yourself in general for random

segments, just to see how long you take. And

we're all guilty of it. We all take sometimes

pauses that are too long, or we have filler words.

One of the biggest offenders is people saying,

you know, over and over and over again, and you'll

you'll see that happen. You will eventually find

your cadence. Watch out for your filler words.

If you're filling the air with those words, repeating

them over and over again, or um, ah, or okay,

um, kay, that sort of thing, when you're filling

up time with those words, that is not content.

That is pure filler, and it will turn people

off. And we're all guilty of it, especially if

you're not used to talking in public. Right.

making public speeches and we're all gonna like

during the show we've both probably done it many

multiple times we don't realize but the longer

you podcast you have to become more cognizant

of that and look try to think about what you're

gonna say before you say it you're almost better

having a pause of dead air that you can edit

out afterwards if you really want to then trying

to fill that space to till it comes to your brain

yeah And that reminds me, and this is, I don't

know, of course, it'd have to be you. Reminds

me of the scene with Springer and Daniel and

Springer telling him how to use the EXO suit.

You know, think about what you're going to do

before you do it. And then Daniel does - Transform.

Yeah, exactly. Come on, come on, transform. Yeah.

He finally does it. Exactly. And you can stretch

out words. If you're looking for something, I'll

do that here. I'll be like, oh. Well, you mean

you could do that. Yeah. Put that in there. Just

don't try not to have too much dead air and try

not to have too much repeating words or stammering

looking for words. If you're not ready to say

something, don't say anything. Yep. Absolutely.

All right. Final question, which this is easy,

but where can the people find your shows? Well,

if you're looking on iTunes, I don't know anymore.

You can find us at thisweekengeek .net, the website.

It is a pretty basic site. We had to make a big

migration last year due to some turmoil with

the ridiculous hosts we used to have, which I

will not name because I don't know if they would

be mad. But I will say this, they deleted our

entire archive without letting us know. Luckily,

we had a backup of most of it, which was interesting.

But yeah, www .ThisWeekInGeek .net. That is our

splash page site where you can listen directly

on there. It'll have our feed. It also has different

sections set up for each of the types of shows.

While we don't separate our feeds directly like

you guys do, there's a way to section it out

where our individual posts you could go through

and just listen to. only one type of show on

there if you wanted to. It also links to our

social media. If you go to Facebook, look up

This Week in Geek. Look it up as one word, no

spaces, and you'll find us quicker. Same with

Twitter, at This Week in Geek. You can find me

at deathfacetwig, but honestly, I'm handling

the socials, so if you need to get in contact

with me at This Week in Geek, or feedback at

thisweekingeek .net as an email, if you need

me direct, alexthisweekingeek .net. Very cool,

very cool. Alright folks, I think that's gonna

do it, and let's see how fast or slow I can get

through this one. Thank you for joining us here

inside the studio. If you'd like to get in contact

with us, or leave feedback for the show, there

are several ways to do so. Visit the website

geekcastradio .com where you can listen to and

comment on all of our content. Send us email

to feedback at geek cast radio .com here all

the ways you can listen to us nowadays Apple

and Google podcast leave us reviews, please Spotify

and any other podcasting client you choose to

use Follow us on twitter at geek cast radios

for the network at its ITS st. Udio studio 2009

for the show. I am at TF 2 and Mike Become a

fan on Facebook, go to facebook .com slash GeekCast

Radio Network, and you can also check out Studio

2009 podcast over there as well. Coming up next,

Steve Megatron and I talk about the amazing Ryan

Reynolds film, Free Guy. So that's what's coming

up next here inside the studio. For now, I am

TFG and Mike with... Alex, the This Week in Geek

producer. You'll hear us back in the studio soon.

Catchphrase. Catchphrase? Well, I haven't had

time to think one up yet. Although catchphrase

is a catchphrase. It's a pretty cool catchphrase.