It seems like one day your podcasting days are behind you, and then the next you’re practically swimming in podcasts.
I both consumed and produced podcasts way back in the early days. Along with Steve Wilson, we put together a few episodes of a Space Squid podcast, and the beginning of the RevCast podcast. RevCast became way more popular once others took it over and gave it a more coherent format. The Space Squid podcast is still around somewhere. Those were heady days.
A few weeks ago, almost without conscious volition, I ordered a pair of smartphone-powered lapel mics. When they arrived, I put one on myself, and one on my fishing-colleague Jamey. Jamey took to performing for the microphone like a fish to water. Like Athena springing from the forehead of Zeus, Last Cast Podcast appeared, fully formed and articulated. I think that in some ways, our years of fishing trips were practice for this podcast. I highly recommend that you subscribe to Last Cast. It’s sort of a podcast vérité, a lot like tagging along with one of our fishing trips, except with all the long, frustrated silences cut out.
There’s a section at the end of every episode called, That Wasn’t That Bad. It’s a little bit of a joke, because after a fishing trip, as we’re piling into the car, there’s usually a conversation between Jamey and myself where we recount the experience, or as I like to put it: “Try to convince ourselves that it wasn’t that bad.” Sometimes that process takes longer than others.
At about the same time, my long-time writing colleague Steve Wilson suggested that we start a podcast based on our Sioux Cantu novel series. The problem with this novel series is that it’s not intentional, it’s the byproduct of a series of agents and editors requesting re-writes. In fact it started out as an encyclopedia, and now it’s two or three middle-grade books.
Steve’s solution is to make the podcast about the multiverse. This Week in the Multiverse follows our eternal champion Sioux Cantu from one world to another, where each version of himself tackles the problems of his particular storyline, whether those be the quasi-mythical beasts of backwoods Wisconsin, waves of alien invaders, or an empire of space-faring zombies.
The first episode of This Week in the Multiverse is already up, and I have to say that it’s perfectly lovely. Steve edited together a podcast that’s fresh and funny, not just for the target audience of kids, but for adults too. I do the fiction reading part, and Steve put together the sketches and news segments with his kids.
You should be able to find both these podcasts in the podcast service of your choice (iTunes, BeyondPod, etc.) and if you can’t, be sure to let me know! Please subscribe to Last Cast Podcast and This Week in the Multiverse. I think you will enjoy them.