Looking for participants in a Podcast project - trust me, you'll want to read this

Cafe Society
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Like to gab? Show how smart you are? Think “shit, I can do that” while listening to some dork blab on the radio regarding some argument point debunked on the SDMB 14 years ago?

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… Ever thought about doing a podcast? Wouldn’t you love to do it, if even just for a single episode? You only live once, right?

DOPERS!

I am looking for your help in setting up and participating in a podcast project based on a Straight Dope thread (which itself is based on a list I have been compiling for over a year now) for 2023. :smiley:

The Podcast will be called Freakouts of the Right!, based upon my Freakouts of the Right list which I have been compiling for about a half a year now. The podcast will be, as you can tell, political. And rather one-sided, at least from this hosts viewpoint, though the cohost may very well disagree. Which brings us to…

I am looking for cohost(s) to participate, as well as a Doper or two who can contribute podcast art and podcast music. (See next post for more details, thanks.)

I have two ideas for episode/overall structure (it would help to look at the thread link to understand the following):

  • Chronological. The episodes are broken into time periods where we give a brief synopsis of the freak outs that happened that year. This would require short mentions of each freak out (especially as we get closer to now), not too much analysis, and is more conducive to a light-hearted tone. Each episode would last about 30 minutes, and the period of time will vary depending on where we are. Pre-1980s covers 200 years in one episode, maybe 2. 2020 alone might require 5 episodes, lol.

  • Topical. Each episode is focused on one or two of the more than 250 Freak Outs identified in the list. Obviously the amount of research needed to do a topical episode is greater than the chronological – maybe two minutes per freakout (in a chronological show) vs twenty in the topical episodes.

  • Mix. We do chronological episodes for the entire list, then pick and choose which Freak Outs are worth a 15-30 minute topical discussion.

OK, I guess that’s three ideas. Sue me.

Each podcast will be around 15-30 minutes, I would like to do two per week (M & Th release dates) but once (Sun) will be fine, anything less than that won’t draw a regular audience. Recording can be done over Zoom or other host. I will do post production and get rid of burps, errors… hell, once I got rid of 50 uses of the word “like” in one podcast. Recording doesn’t even have to be concurrent with release dates – we can record all the episodes in January-February, release them throughout the year. We can record every Sunday. We can do whatever – it’s not live, it’s Memorex.

Also, this is a project which won’t even begin recording until January, February at the latest. No recording in December.

Anyway, I genuinely don’t want to get too into the weeds on this in the first post – look for the next post to go into more detail about what I am looking for in cohosts and more. Also, review the thread, see if you’re interested in talking about certain topics. Maybe you have nothing to talk about re: Ebonics, but can go on and on and on about the time the Right was mad about Mr. Potato Head’s dick – there you go! Volunteer to talk dick talk!

Lastly, the podcast is NOT affiliated with the SDMB even though I have shared my list – and compiled it with many Doper suggestions – on this Board. This is a personal project between myself and any contributors, just like the Long Bust… where I roped 10 Dopers into writing articles about a 25 year-old, laughably-wrong, Wired magazine article… was a personal project involving myself and the contributors.

Regardless, while this isn’t affiliated with the SDMB or parent companies or whatever, I want this to be a project from, of, and about the Doper community. This pod is about Freakouts of the Right (FotR), but it will be about us as well. FotR is what the pod is about, the Doper community will be what it’s about-about.

You’ll see.

(Lastly, this is in CS because (a) CS is highly traveled, (b) is entertainment related, and (c) marketplace is where threads go to die. Please don’t kill this thread by moving it to marketplace. It’s entertainment-related, let it be. :pray: )

OK, let me shut up so I can begin speaking again…

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All the above has led us to the following question:

Who wants to join? :smiley:

Here is what I am looking for, AKA, “The Ask”:

Podcast Art - the little graphic you see in Spotify, Apple Music, or wherever. Need 1 for the pod. You will get paid (not a lot) and attribution. Generally, podcast art has either (a) drawings of the host(s) or (b) a single picture which represents the theme as well as the podcast name in clear, big letters.

Podcast Music - 15-25 seconds, one for the intro and one for the outro. 2 pieces in all, and I really don’t care if you just repurpose some Mozart melodies on a keyboard or come up with tracks of your own. You will get paid (not a lot) and attribution.

Cohosts - obviously! I sure as hell don’t want to do this by myself, in fact, my current podcast is me and a cohost. Being a cohost is fun! :smiley: It fulfills bucket lists! :smiley: You only have to cohost for 1 episode! :smiley: But you can do more! :smiley: I can even script the entire thing if need be! :smiley: Cohosts make for better content! :smiley: You can do this from home! :smiley:

Cohosts are the most important ask here, for I will be frank: I do not have an interest in doing this myself. (That would be boring!) I can make my own podcast art, I can download some 1938 recording of a Beethoven piece and slice it for intro/outro music, but I think that one-person podcasts are boring. Myself included.

And I don’t want boring.

Team, I’m not going to worry about equipment specifications. We’re going to test out with what equipment you currently have (headset, microphone, the equipment built in the computer, other?) and if any improvements have to be made, we’ll talk about it then. I just don’t want someone to count themselves out because they think their current set up isn’t good enough. Let me worry about that. :smiley:

The podcasts will go through post-production where I remove pauses, burps, start overs, speaking in tongues, and other irritations. I will try to make up for your equipment issues, if possible. The final episodes will have outtakes, intro music, and outro music, and likely different segments (obviously a mailbag so we can use the podcast to respond to SDMB posts made about the podcast) – it’s going to be a real podcast, Jack*.

(If you want an idea of what one of my podcasts sounds like, go to the above link and listen to the first and last 5 minutes of the Stanley Steemer podcast.)

Each podcast will be about 15-30 minutes, but there is no set time limit. What we’ll find is each topic will take the amount of time it deserves. They will be distributed via my Buzzfeed account and will be available on Spotify, etc: the distribution channel is set up, I just need content.

Doing this is a fair amount of work and dedication. I understand. To that point, having a number of people “on hand” where we can have a rotation of cohosts is very possible and would reduce the workload on any one person. Excepting myself.

(One idea I’m having is a single cohost for the chronological pods, and then rotating cohosts for the topical pods (see OP if you don’t know what I mean by this).)

I have zero intention on making any money on this – no patreons, no websites or newsletter subscriptions, I’m not running this financially through my corporation – this is just a labor of love, a project to keep me busy in my off time during 2023. I’m someone who is project-oriented, likes to be busy, and tries to keep myself entertained by doing new shit. And an SDMB-oriented podcast where I bash on idiots with other Dopers is definitely some entertainingly new shit.

LASTLY: I have no idea how long this will last. Probably until we get bored. But there’s a hell of a lot of items on that list, more are being added by the week, so there is plenty of content that we can discuss have no doubt about that.

OK, that’s kind of enough for this post. Let the volunteering… and discussing… begin!

*What movie is this a paraphrased quote from?

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I gave some thought to some other ideas. Was thinking about maybe doing a weekly roundup of SDMB threads with a group of Dopers, that’s still on the table. I was also working on developing a thread game about evil/most hated businesses, but… unlike the freakout thread, which has received a lot of positive feedback both here and elsewhere… the participants in that thread were far more negative to the concept, so I’m thinking of just dropping the idea all together. The podcast ideas behind that one were great – one podcast would be 10 minute episodes detailing each of the 48 businesses, the other would be more for the Doper community where a group of us do a roundup of each rounds action, like Sportscenter “Man, David, can you believe that Norfolk-Grumman took down Hasbro???”. But I can’t even get the list together and given how much work a game would be on top of two podcasts… ugh.

Anyway, I digress. My point is, if you don’t like the political nature of this one, throw some ideas my way, let’s see what we can do about it. Maybe we can do a 2nd pod. Maybe your idea is so good we can do that one instead. Who knows?