The first time Brendan Skwire and I sat down to do a podcast, after months and months of preparation, we did about a 45 minute show and discovered that I’d forgotten to hit record. The second time we sat down, a few days later, we prepared a completely different show and got about halfway through when suddenly Brendan’s mic started sending off all kinds of distortion and we had real problems identifying and solving the problem. The third time we gave it a go, it seemed to be a success but then the file suddenly vanished when Brendan was a third of the way through editing it. This is my way of saying that we’re novices at this genre of entertainment. We’re both writers and editors, and he’s a musician, which are challenging fields, but podcasting is more challenging. Having said that, it feels like all the struggles we went through made the reward more satisfying when we finally jumped through all the hoops.
Of course, we had one last hoop we never expected. We published the first Progress Podcast on Saturday after a lengthy final edit, and then ‘poof,’ nothing happened. We couldn’t find a link anywhere, and we both had other obligations for the rest of the day. So, on Sunday we had to get back together and figure out what we did wrong. I’m not even sure what we did wrong but one of our attempted fixes worked and now can you listen at Spotify. Hopefully, Apple will pick it up soon. Please give it a listen and follow/subscribe/comment.
I don’t want to provide any spoilers but we talk about how we met 18 years ago at the Philadelphia chapter of Drinking Liberally, which was then a hotbed of antiwar writers and bloggers. Then Brendan discusses he recent trip back to Nashville where he lived for four years and we get into the scandal surrounding Jason Aldean’s hit song and video Try That In A Small Town. And we finish up talking about a topic I wrote about on June 21, which is my dismay that Donald Trump is even allowed to run for president after attempting a coup and being an overall disgraceful scoundrel.
Hopefully, longtime readers of Booman Tribune, Political Animal and the Progress Pond will enjoy hearing the sound of my voice for once. Over the last 18 years, I have done a decent number of radio appearances, but I don’t know how many of you ever listened to one of them. Overall, I’ve been aggressively private, especially after my son was born in 2010. Brendan, of course, goes on stage and sings as often as he can, which is usually two or more times a week. He’s also a legendary talker best known for calling up congressional staffers and writing up their efforts to defend the indefensible decisions of their bosses. But he’s good at letting me a get a word in edgewise. Â Were definitely not at the level of Driftglass and BlueGal yet, but I think we collaborated well and had good chemistry in the first episode. I know that will only grow as we get a better feel for when to switch off and not talk over each other.
The most important thing for me is that I discovered that podcasting and working with Brendan is downright fun, and I think that comes through when you listen. For now, the podcast is audio only, but we hope to level up to video and eventually have the savvy to take calls. In the meantime, let us know what you think and you have ideas for a future podcasts, please make suggestions.
We’ll have Episode 2 ready as soon as possible, and hopefully that process will be a lot smoother.
Did I mention you can listen here?
