Tag: Podcasts

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Radio (Or The Contemporary Equivalent) Lab

A thought that I’ve been having on an irregular, but recurring, basis for sometime now:

Curating a weekly podcast in which a writer, chosen by me, contributes an essay (read either by them, or someone of their choosing within reason) of around 10 minutes in length. Each calendar month’s essays are all based around a shared theme also of my choosing, but the writers are free to approach said theme as they see fit. (In an ideal world, I am able to pay each writer for their efforts, of course; I’ve already done the mental math in my head for this bit, worryingly.)

Themes and authors are chosen with no logic other than my intuition and curiosity. The overall idea is to create a themed magazine of 40-60 minutes every month with different voices (metaphorical and literal) discussing the same topic from different angles, celebrating the diversity of thought and opinion, while also sharing fun stories and bringing writers of different backgrounds together in a virtual sense.

In my head, it’s called The Anthology.

Maybe one day.

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Thanks so much for answering my questions. How long do you guys usually spend prepping for an episode?

xplainthexmen:

Our very rough estimate is 6-10 hours, depending on the volume and intricacy of the material we’re covering, and how familiar we already are with the details.

During the week, we re-read any issues we’re going to cover, plus a lot of peripheral research. Saturday morning, we go out to breakfast and talk through everything, then go home and work on the cold open and outline pretty much until we have to leave for the studio.

Recording usually takes about an hour, and Bobby usually sends us the episode back the same night, because he is a miracle. After that, it’s a few more hours for the writeup, and to assemble all the clips and links for the “as-mentioned” post. (We usually have some idea of what to do for those going in, but where we focus can change a lot between reading and outline and outline and recording, which limits how much we can prep in advance.)

I read this and think “We could work so much harder on Wait, What?.” And then I think, “then again, the rampant inability to stay on topic has worked out okay for us so far.”