Retrospective of 1-700 via episode 502

Notable Language:

• Yammering
• Creative Reservoir
• Transylvania Twist

Notable Culture:

• A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James
• Bette Midler
• A Christmas Story

Notable Talking Points:

• Yam Bands
• Scooter's Screenplay Dreams
• Getting Into a Nice Rhythm
•  

Retrospective of 1-700 via episode 502 (1-500)

[START OF RECORDING]

 

SCOOTER: Friends beyond the binary, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, and my patron peeps; my patron peeps, this is a little look back.  I think for you it’ll have a couple…this’ll be maybe a extra-long episode.  I’m recording this now; I haven’t assembled the episode yet but I think it’ll be maybe Episode 500 and maybe one or two other episode-only things.  This episode, 502, is the actual episode but it looked back at our first five hundred episodes and it really is one of the few times I gave a in-depth look at how the first hundred, hundred-fifty episodes of Sleep With Me was a big experiment and then how to do time restraints, how we reached the schedule and the release style that we have today.  I haven’t even listened to the whole thing.  Then it’ll be…then it’ll come…I don’t know.

 

Maybe I’ll put in Episode 600 or something.  I don’t know.  I gotta figure that out, but to give you a little something extra because the amazing thing is I don’t know how many…I actually don’t know how many times this podcast has been downloaded.  Definitely over 200 million times and probably somewhere between 200 and 300 million times.  There’s only been about…I’d have to look in the history of the Patreon…people that have come and gone.  It’s probably around 12,000 people.  There’s like, 6,000 of you or so that are current patrons.  So, think about that.  600…6,000 people or 12,000 people; that’s 200…let’s just say 250 million downloads because of your support and the support of some other active listeners, but the Patreon is definitely the biggest thing that got us here.

 

I’ll probably talk about this more maybe on the 1000th episode and stuff as we get there, but just think about that.  It kinda blows my mind; 250 million times people have listened to this podcast, and you’re involved in that.  You could do the math; I can’t.  Let’s just say six…let’s say, okay, the people that are gone…the 6,000 patrons that are…have moved on or stopped listening to the show or stopped supporting it, give them 50 million, so then you have 200 million.  I don’t know; there’s some math there.  So, thanks so much and what do we say…what do you say we get on with the show?

 

INTRO:    [INTRO MUSIC] Hey, are you up all night tossing, turning, mind racing?  Trouble getting to sleep?  Trouble staying asleep?  Well, welcome.  This is Sleep With Me, the podcast that puts you to sleep.  It’s been putting some people to sleep for over 500 episodes but in case this is your first episode, I wanna set the stage for you.  So, this is a podcast that puts you to sleep.  We do it with a bedtime story.  Alls you need to do is get in bed, turn out the lights, and press play.  I’m gonna do the rest.  What I’m gonna do is create a safe place where you can set aside whatever’s been keeping you awake, whether it’s thoughts, physical sensations, feelings, noises, whatever’s keeping you awake.  It could be any of those things; it could be something totally different.

 

Whatever it is, I’d like to take your mind off…what I mean by safe place is one, I want you to feel welcome.  Now, this podcast, it doesn’t work for everybody.  I hope it helps you out.  Give it a few tries.  It’s a little bit different.  I’m a little bit silly.  I’ve got creaky, dulcet tones, I’m not…I don’t have the voice of a angel, you know, like sweet, sweet Bette Midler or Carole King.  I don’t even have the voice of Carol Kane.  I mean, if I had Carol Kane’s voice, I guess this would be a different podcast.  I don’t have any of those sweet…I have creaky, dulcet tones.  So, what I’m gonna do is send my voice across the deep, dark night and I’m gonna…tonight it’ll be a little bit different of a episode but it’ll still be full of meanders.

 

I guess if you were gonna use a pejorative term you’d say I do a lot of yammering, though I don’t think that’s in regular parlance in the US.  I don’t know about any other countries anymore.  That tends to be more aggressive.  I don’t think I’m…I think when someone uses the word yammer, that tends to be aggressive.  Well, it’s…let’s agree to do this together ‘cause this is a open, safe place.  Let’s take yammering back.  Let’s reclaim, repurpose, and not necessarily redefine but let’s shape yammering.  Maybe it’s that Y.  Y’s are very pointy, so what I’m gonna do here…and this is kinda how the pod…I’m gonna take that Y, I’m gonna bend it a little.  Ooh, yeah, give it some curvature; give the Y a little curvature even on the edges.  I don’t know if you can feel me but I’m sanding the edges of the tips of the Y down.

 

Yeah, and now I’m gonna be doing some yammerin’.  Yammering; maybe I’ll just be yammerin’.  I don’t know, I just read a brief history of seventh…seven something.  Bob Marley was a tertiary character in that book, Marlon James, and he wrote Jammin’.  I’ll be…I guess yammin’…why don’t we just cut out the…I guess that’s totally different.  You’d say, what is yamming, Scoots?  I’d say well, that’s what I do here.  It’s like, I talk too much and I ham it up.  It’s yammin’.  I’m yammin’ like it was a thing of the past.  I’ll be…’cause I do yam about the past.  I yam about the future.  I guess if…say I did have a grouchy neighbor and they were walking by and eavesdropping, but the kind of eaves…passive-aggressive eavesdropping where the pod…recording of the podcast is getting on their nerves.

 

They’d say what are you yammering about in there?  I’d say man, there’s no yammering; we’re just…I’m just yammin’.  I guess there’s jam bands, too.  I wonder if there could be…this could be a new thing.  It’d be a party of one like it always is with me but you say well, yeah, Scoots, he wrote a bunch of letters to Phish; he wanted to turn them into a yam band.  But they said jeez, I think we’re doing fine.  We got thirteen shows at the Madison Square Garden this summer, so I think we’re covered.  I said well, yeah, I…well, I don’t have a band.  Well, I’ll just yam.  I do yam in the middle of the podcast.  So, that’s kind of a explanation if you’re new here that doesn’t make any sense which is how most explanations of the…related to this podcast go.

 

What I was gonna do…believe it or not, I had tended for this to be the quickest opening ever but I guess I might as well keep going.  When I got a good thing going, that sleepy, strange, and senseless and…but that we’ve repurposed…you say this is healing; this is live, literary healing, if literary…word…I’m a word healer.  Word repurposer.  I don’t know, that’s what all these rugged dudes that wear leather coats and stuff do.  They say well, yeah, I repurpose redwood from the bottom of the Great Lakes.  Really?  They say, what do you do?  I say why are we…is…I didn’t even realize we were in competition with…I’m very intimidated by your repurposing of redwood and your leather coat.  Is that repurposed leather?  Yes, because it’s…I say, okay.  You’ve got a bit of a Banderas thing going there.  Oh, you are…?

 

Oh, you’re Antonio Banderas’ cousin that lives in my mind.  Oh, another one of those.  Yeah, well, what I do, I repurpose things, too.  I don’t repurpose yams but I’ve repurposed yammering into yams which is not the same as a yam which is like a sweet potato.  This is a whole…this is a repurpose and I didn’t have the foresight to make up a whole new word.  I just wanted to shorten yammering down, make it less harsh, ‘cause I think that was something in 50s sitcoms…they would say to one another.  My goal was to create…take yammering, repurpose it, re…I’m also a word healer.  No, I don’t use mystical energy; I just use mental scissors.  I just say well, yammering; sounds a little harsh.  Let me…and sandpaper.  So, I sanded it, I bended it…bent it.  Oh, thank you, thank you.  I’m glad you’re correcting my grammar.

 

I guess you’re healing my words.  This is really…we’re really getting along here.  Yeah, but anyway, I was trying to make a point before you correctly corrected me.  I appreciate it, but then I bend the words, sand them, and then snip them.  So, I said yammering; I said more like yam.  That sounds nice.  I mean, not…I don’t eat yams.  Sometimes I do, but let’s not get distracted by the yams ‘cause this is a whole new thing, a bit like a jam.  No, no, no, not like the jam in the refrigerator; like Bob Marley jam or like jam…like, what’s your jam?  I’m yamming.  It’s like the soft version of yammering.  Exactly; so smooth. Listen to…have you been listening?  I’ve been yam…oh, I’ve been yammering.  Yeah, it’s a little bit…I’ve got my yam on.  At some point I usually like to work in some puns, like yes I yam yammering.

 

That would be my…if I had a shirt that no one would understand but me that explained exactly what I’m doing, I’d say yes I yam yammering.  I yam what I yam; even better pun, brain, except it doesn’t make…it doesn’t make any sense.  It’s still a pun even though it doesn’t make any sense.  It’s a nup.  What’s a nup?  Senseless puns here at Sleep With Me, where we get…get your yam.  If you’re new here, this is the kinda nonsense you can expect three times a week.  The thing is, I’ll be doing the [00:10:00] yamming; you just gotta kick back.  I’ll take the Y’s, I’ll bend them.  I’ll take the edges right off those Y’s and any other word…you know, that’s the word-healing, word-softening…I don’t know if you buy a fabric softener or you have water softener; I’m your word softener so, you’re right, maybe healing was a little bit too…that was maybe too much of a proclamation.

 

I do like it, though.  Let’s just say I’m imbuing…I like to…the spirit of healing words but really, I just soften them.  Okay, silence even from my internal voices.  So, anyway, if you’re new here, I’m glad you’re here.  This is a podcast to put you to sleep.  You don’t really have to pay attention but I’ll be here for an hour to keep you company.  It’s a podcast to put you to sleep but believe it or not, you don’t need…you’re under no pressure to fall asleep.  That’s why it’s so long, so you can just kinda kick back and just let me yam.  I’ll be here.  The whole reason I make this show is because I had trouble sleeping and I still do.  I do have…it’s a distracting thing; I just wonder, as I’ve been here talking, putting the Y to the A to the double M or single M; I don’t…I gotta talk to a trademark attorney; they’ll…imaginary one.

 

Of course an imaginary one.  But, as I do that, I just wonder if you were thinking about whatever it is that’s been keeping you up the whole time or if I took your mind off of it.  So, that’s all you need to do.  You listen and just fall asleep when you want.  You don’t need to remember what I was…ideally tomorrow you’ll wake up and if you worked with people that listen to this podcast, you say…that would be like a inside joke.  You’d say did you listen to Sleep With Me last night?  I don’t remember, one person might say.  Then it’d be funny if one person was eating sweet potato fries; that would be kind of like a…I don’t know if that would be a pun but it would be funny.  They’d say, I think he was talking…he was talking about yams.  I think he’s…started a yam farm.  Would you like a sweet potato fry?

 

You’d say I don’t…then you say oh wait, I’m still…I’m sleeping.  I’m dreaming this.  So, that’s the idea of the podcast.  As I said, the podcast isn’t for everybody.  If you’re skeptical though, give it a few tries.  If you’re up already and you can’t sleep, I just want to help, so it’s not an aggressive thing.  I hope it helps you.  I just can’t guarantee it ‘cause I’m weird.  I mean, let’s be straight, and I want to be…keep you company but it’s not gonna put everybody to sleep.  I hope it puts you to sleep.  I appreciate your time.  Tonight we’re gonna be doing a run through of a historical look back at the podcast, I think.  So, I’m glad you’re here.  I appreciate your time.  I appreciate you stopping by and I really hope…not only do I hope; I yearn and I work so hard because I really want to help you fall asleep.  Thanks.

 

Okay, hey everybody, so this is kinda like our 500th…I don’t know if it’s a celebratory episode ‘cause for me I guess the train is always moving, so I’m like okay, I’m already planning episodes in the 510s, the 520s, but I did want to take some time to look back in the past and AMAs that you can find on SoundCloud and then in some of our story-based [inaudible] I’ve kinda talked about a little bit about the production of the show and our year of podcasting.  I kinda talk about how much work; it takes at least twenty…it takes a lot of work to make the show, basically a lot of work.  So, I’ve talked about those things in the past but I want to just kinda run through historically because I guess even for me, I don’t…I know part of me knows ‘cause I’ve been here working…I mean, let’s see, 500+ episodes; that represents…just the episodes, not the administrative work, like, 8,000, 9,000, 10,000 hours of work.

 

Then there’s all the…I say jeez, I can’t believe I made 500 episodes of a podcast.  That’s just, like…so, but I just wanted to run through the episodes ‘cause so many people are new.  If you make a podcast and you’re hearing this…and I’m gonna do it, like I said, well, what’s the way we could do it in a lulling, soothing way that’s also the tradition of the podcast, straddles the line between engaging and boring?  So, it’ll be I guess like a retrospective ‘cause…I mean, and believe me, I’m betting there’s gonna be some surprises in here for me.  I don’t know if we can do this in one super-long episode, or…we’ll see ‘cause in the feed here of our current host, it’s five…there’s 587 things in the feed out of 500+ episodes, so I don’t even know what the other sixty things in the feed are.  Oh, it was…well, we’ll see.

 

So, let’s run through it and just take a look back at some of the episode titles.  We’ll do them in fifty…batches of fifty I guess, ‘cause that’s the…so right now we’re looking at…even though it’s batches of fifty, it’s 1 through 37.  According to this, Sleep With Me podcast Episode 1 was posted here, October 18th, 2013 at 7:57 PM.  The first episode we did was not the first episode I thought of but it was like, I was trying to figure out what…it was the first episode I recorded but it was about Hall and Oates; what I want, I think, and it was just analyzing that song in kind of a goofy, silly way.  Very, very different than most of our episodes have been.  It has a lot of music in it and it probably needs to be taken down because it has peoples’ music, but it was early on.  It’s just an experiment.

 

The original content I had already thought of years…I think towards…was the Game of Drones and After the Glass Slipper.  The closest I got to launching the podcast was After the Glass Slipper which is a re-imagining of what happened to Cinderella after she became queen.  Then Game of Thrones, I think I thought of Game of Drones…I almost started it I think a year and a half before the podcast itself started, maybe, so maybe June of…either June of 2013 or June of 2012.  June of 2013 probably makes more sense, though.  I just didn’t have…I just was too caught up in the idea.  So, let’s just run through these episode titles and then we’ll do…I guess let’s run through them.

 

So, the first one was about Hall and Oates, then we have Twainzy which was The Walking Duds, then Rats to the Dogs, and then Episode 5 was You Don’t Have to Like A New Dawn or Accept It, so those were based on the TV show which I’ve always…I was watching that show, The Walking D-E-A-D and I guess at the time, I mean, there was no one listening to the podcast.  I think I had like…I don’t think I broke a hundred listeners ‘til I broke…I don’t know.  I’d have to look back.  Maybe it took me a year.  I don’t know.  Maybe…I don’t know.  Maybe…I don’t know.  So, all these early episodes, at the time they were coming out, it was just…I was just making them to get a idea if I was gonna follow through on the podcast and what the podcast was gonna be.

 

I think there are a few of those listeners still around, but…so, the second episode came out…I mean, I don’t know when it came out on the internet but it got posted October 30th, 2013.  I guess it’ll be interesting; I don’t know what the release schedule was back then but so, the first episode was about Hall and Oates, then there was four episodes about The Walking Dud.  But those all had kernels of what the podcast would become.  The Walking Dud, I was experimenting with recaps, facts, the fact section that would be in the future Game of Drones stuff, and then a little bit of fanfiction or fanciful re-imagining, a parody…whatever one’s legal; I don’t know if it’s parody or satire but that kinda thing.

 

Then Episode 6, we had Memes Strike Back which is the character Steve who’s a famous meme or was back…this was November 10th, 2013 and he…I think he was a meme in like, 2011.  It was kinda just like…I don’t remember exactly what it was.  I think it was a little bit too…I think it was funny and it…but I think maybe it wasn’t…I don’t think it was mean but it was like, I’m…I don’t know.  I’d like this podcast to…where I’m the…always the foil or institutions or whatever, or rich…super-rich people are the foils; not…even villainous characters, I will like them to be empowered, so I don’t know if picking on Steve was the best…and I don’t know if it was.  I haven’t re-listened to the episode in a long time.  I think he’s from Boston but I think since I’m from Syracuse, I could relate to the character.

 

He just seemed like maybe somebody I knew.  Then Episode 7 was another Walking Dud, then Episode 8 was the first After the Glass Slipper episode, so that would be our first serial story.  [00:20:00] That was important to me, doing a serial story.  This was I think right around…so, it looks like most of the episodes were coming out once a week and once we got to Episode 8, we went to a twice-a-week schedule.  I don’t know, so this was just a re-imagining of what was…I named her Agatha, Cinderella’s stepmother; what would she do after Cinderella became queen and how would she react?  This was one of the first story ideas that I’d had leading up to when the podcast…over the two or three years that I knew I was gonna…that I wanted to make this podcast but I was still procrastinating about it just ‘cause I found that idea interesting.  I don’t know.

 

Then also the idea of serial stories at the time was important to me just ‘cause I had…old-time radio was based on serials and while I wasn’t around when old-time radio was around, I was around when people my age were rediscovering it or our parents were telling us about it or we were watching movies like A Christmas Story.  I think my brother Carl was a big old-time radio fan when we were kids or in high school or maybe college.  I don’t know, I just liked the idea of these goofy serial stories, so that was where After the Glass Slipper…and you’ll see it became a thing.  Then Episode 9 was another Walking Dud Episode called The Convenient Pirate.  Then a After the Glass Slipper, and this is when we move to a Tuesday/Sunday release schedule, it looks like.

 

Then, let’s see, we had a After the Glass Slipper, then a Walking Dud, then a Walking Dud: North Pole Chronicles which was just the idea that came out of the fanfictiony side of Walking Dud.  Then another After the Glass Slipper.  We’re at Episode 13; we’re already in December of 2013.  So, we were going back and forth between After the Glass Slipper and Walking Dud.  Let’s see, December…then our first non…our first new…well, we had the meme, then in Episode 17, The Elf Nobody Knew, that was our first improv story.  I think…I don’t think that was written, and that was December 10th, 2013.  That was about a elf that kinda was the forgotten elf.  So, this time I was writing…I was watching The Walking Dud and taking notes and then I was writing After the Glass Slipper episodes.

 

At some point here…not yet though; we’re still on a twice-a-week schedule…then Episode 19.  Episode 18 is Frozen Reindeer Tears which was a North Pole Chronicles.  Then a After the Glass Slipper, then another…this was another story that was a little bit older I had written; The Year Rudolph’s Nose Broke.  I had used…I had made that story up to put my daughter to sleep that previous summer and I was like oh, I could use that for the podcast I never started.  Then another North Pole Chronicles, then Part 2 of Rudolph’s Nose Broke.  Now we’re in December 22nd, 2013.  Then a North Pole Chronicles and a After the Glass Slipper…so, a little break in After the Glass Slipper there.  Huh, that’s interesting.  December 15th…it looks like we moved to a three-day-a-week schedule somewhere in here, I think.

 

Let’s see; After the Glass Slipper, then Call Me Canada’s Wonderland Maybe.  That was Episode 25.  That feels like a more mature episode, to be honest.  I don’t know what it sounds like listening to it, but that was another one where the seeds were there.  It was about the song Call Me Maybe which is I think is a Canadian pop star whose name…Meghan…I don’t think it’s Meghan Trainor but maybe it is Meghan Trainor.  I want to say it’s someone that has a name that starts with a K.  But that came out New Year’s Eve, December 31st, 2013.  That was just someone describing what they thought the song meant.  Then The Tooth Fairy’s Assistant which was another just one-off fictional tale.  Then After the Glass Slipper, then the season premier of Get Besos; January 7th, 2014.

 

Now we’re on a three-day…three-day-a-week schedule for sure.  This was one of the mistakes I made.  So, I kicked off Get Besos ‘cause I had that idea for a series, then I had another idea for a series, The Florida Project, which was based on a idea I had just for a story or TV show because I write…I wrote a screenplay about a retirement community.  I was always…I had visited a few retirement communities and I was always curious about the oldest profession in the world in retirement communities, and that would be an interesting TV show.  So, I thought okay, what if there’s a character going to start…going to try that in Florida but he’s not really cut out to do that?  Like, be…and it was…and again, we had no listeners back then so it was very safe to try stuff like this.

 

If I tried something like this now…it was very joking; it wasn’t encouraging the oldest profession in the world and I tried to be as respectful as I could about it, but it was definitely a little too edgy for now, just like The Walking Dud would probably be too…a little bit too out there, though I like to push the limits of the podcast.  Otherwise it wouldn’t be possible to make 500 episodes if you’re not really…there’s no way to sustain something like this and…in the…walking down the middle of the road, you know?  But my mistake at the time was like, so I…then now we have three serial series for a while; Get Besos, The Florida Project, and After the Glass Slipper, and all of them were written so I was trying to write an episode in two days and then perform it which was very hard.

 

Luckily we didn’t have any listeners, or very many, so it was a risk-free period.  I’ve learned that lesson, like okay, you can only do one written series a week.  There’s just not enough time.  Even if somehow I was working on the podcast as my job, I don’t think I could write…it’s just, it takes so much…anybody that’s written anything or tried to, it’s like, really hard.  So, we were doing that for a while.  So, it would go Get Besos, The Florida Project, then After the Glass Slipper.  Then Get Besos, The Florida Project, After the Glass Slipper for a little while.  At some point…so, this is through January of 2014.  Let’s see how many…how long we lasted.  Episode 38, 39, 40 was still this alternating all three.  Episode 41; Canadian Johns in Mexico.  That was The Florida Project.

 

I remember that episode; I don’t know if it was like, I had trouble writing it.  I knew that at that point I was like oh, this isn’t gonna work, this Florida Project.  Then After the Glass Slipper, then Get Besos into February.  So, now we’re three years ago.  Episodes…these are the 40s and then The Florida Project I ended right around my birthday in February.  Actually, yeah, and then I tried to do another series.  It was still about sexuality, I guess, or sexuality influence.  Oh, wait, here’s…yeah, Get Besos.  So, then I tried another series which is again something comedic I was going to write not for the podcast which was a mistake.  This was a repeat of the mistake with The Florida Project where I said well, this is already a project I’ve been thinking about writing.

 

This was another…this was a movie I was thinking about writing ‘cause at this time, February 2014, I was still writing screenplays, thinking okay, I’m gonna work on this podcast and I’m gonna keep writing screenplays and see which one…I don’t know, but still having trouble with the half-prose that you use to write screenplays and I wasn’t rewriting something and this was just a project I was planning on writing.  It was called Olympic Sex and it was about two guys in their thirties or forties who were both divorced and single, or one’s a divorce, maybe, and they’re best friends.  They were trying to get into the Olympics because they’ve heard about all of the loving that goes on in the Olympic Village and they want to partake in that and they want to be Olympians.

 

So, they’re trying to…that was the premise of the movie or the project.  It wasn’t a…it was something I was gonna write that I didn’t write.  I said well, this is a decent premise.  Again, we had maybe 100 listeners, so it wasn’t like…and early-on listeners, the podcast was much more…not adult-themed but looser and experimental.  I think it still is but just in a different way.  Also, I was less comfortable so I was more likely to be flashy instead of having a little more confidence like I do now to be subtle about it.  So, but I don’t know, I can’t shame myself or anything.  It’s something I was gonna write anyway.  But again, it was the same mistake.  I thought oh, let me try to add this and we’ll still do three serial stories.  This is February [00:30:00] and we’re doing After the Glass Slipper, Olympic Sex, and Get Besos.

 

That only lasted ‘til the end of the February and then I said I can’t keep doing this.  So, then I switched to just one series.  So, then I said I can’t keep up with this work, so at some point I just…we just started releasing only After the Glass Slipper episodes.  It looks like there was a couple bonus episodes in there.  Yeah, then in March 11th, 2014 was the last episode.  Episode 55 was the last After the Glass Slipper episode.  Then we just tried experimental stuff, so Russia vs. Ukraine Gold Medal Match, The Elf Who Wouldn’t Listen, Dream Paradox of Probiotics; that was a character…now there’s a podcast; I haven’t listened to it.  Chris Gethard, he has a podcast where they interpret dreams.  This was a fraud Freud; he was a dream interpreter.

 

Then Enjoy Every Sandwich which was kind of about Warren Zevon, I think.  I remember the cafe I wrote that in.  So, it’s weird how…like I said, I gotta get out of the house, so I went into this…San Francisco and wrote in the…what neighborhood was it?  Something…Cole Valley in a cafe there, 2014.  Then we went back to Get Besos, Episode 60, and just straight trying to get through Get Besos.  So, it’s still finding what the podcast would be.  So, it’s like, three Get Besos episodes a week.  So, you can see how mistakes in…early in the podcast paid off ‘cause again, I didn’t have a lot of listeners so I was able to make this mistake of burning out, doing three serial episodes a week of different serials or the same one.  It’s just not sustainable and probably a little heavy on the ear, you know?

 

So, we did that ‘til Episode 70 and then at some point, Episode 70, it was a new feature, Trending Twitter Tuesday from Sunday.  That was April 15, 2014.  Then it looks like we would do two episodes of Get Besos and then one episode of Trending Twitter Tuesday, so it started to give me a little wiggle room.  Then we get to Episode 75 and…oh yeah, here’s Episode 76; that was the episode that caused me the most trouble.  Learned an important lesson on Episode 76, so that was April 29th, 2014; no restarts.  That was one of the early Trending Twitter episodes so it was new.  I’m not trained in improv, so it was a huge learning curve.  I mean, still a learning curve.

 

That one I just wasn’t feeling it and it had…I think it had a really good episode about something…The Goldfish that Wanted to be a Mermaid or something like that; The Bunny that Wanted to be a Mermaid.  So, that was hard.  This one just wouldn’t come together and I didn’t have the experience to just ease off the gas pedal, so I even tried restarting and deleting.  There’s just no way you can do that and come out with three episodes a week.  When you’re recording, you have to get sound and you have to be willing to release it and you have to have…I mean, it’s just stuff I’ve learned.  With this podcast, you have to stay calm and go with the flow.  Like, whatever the story swamp gives you, you kinda have to stay calm and accept it and not every podcast is gonna be…it just has to be your best.

 

It doesn’t have to be perfect.  That was a hard lesson to learn but I learned it and I have never forgotten it.  It’s interesting that I learned it at Episode 76.  Again, because these are public, these episodes, it is…it might be hard to imagine but it’s incredibly painful at some level to have something go out, at least to that internal critic part of me.  I guess it’s both sides of that coin; so, the critic part of me is like, this is gonna be released to the public.  This is humiliating and painful.  But the flip side is there’s really not…the critic is really blowing a lot of hot air.  But there’s also another flip side which is really…keeps me motivated to work hard because it is painful recording if I’m not prepared or I’m overthinking or over-stressed.

 

If I can’t be in the moment it’s painful, and then releasing episodes that…the written episodes; if I haven’t done enough writing is painful.  But it’s a good pain.  It says okay, let’s just get this work done.  So, just a little interesting thing.  So then, oh, then this is another episode I liked; May the Fourth Be With You: Twitter Tales.  At some point that would become…was that…something about Star Wars started to work its way in for a little while.  Then we’re…so, we’re still doing a Trending Twitter Tuesday and then Get Besos.  Belly of the Cookiepuss, Can a Social Media Maven Be a Raconteur, Walk…Our First Walking Tour of San Francisco, Snakes and Ladders.  These were…I really enjoyed some of these episodes.  A Turing Test to Save the World Cup; 2014.  Lionel Messi’s Coach, Sleep Coach, Casey Kasem.

 

Then at some point I decide to start Game of Drones.  Game of Thrones, Season 4 kicked off June 18th, 2014; Episode 99.  That would be another important moment.  So, a lot of these important moments happened in our first 100 episodes, where I said oh, okay, if I do these TV show recaps, it uses a different part of my brain so I won’t exhaust all this other creative energy.  So, taking notes and riffing off of notes and stuff like that, it’s a different creative reservoir than improving stories which is a different creative reservoir for me than writing stories and performing them.  All those three reservoirs have enough energy in them to make one episode a week.  Then it’s not easy, but none of them have enough to make more than one.  Or in the case that they do, it takes a lot of work.

 

So, yeah, so that’s…yeah, I don’t know the…elaborate anymore on that.  So, we started Game of Drones; that was Wednesday, June 18th, 2014.  At some point around here my brother got married.  Then Bernie the Butterfly’s first appearance was Episode 100.  Then Episode 101…I still can’t believe I even made it to 100 episodes.  That was Episode 101; it was our first recap episode.  That was a big milestone.  It’s hard to make…making a podcast is really, really difficult and especially for somebody that hasn’t followed through on a ton of stuff, that was a big accomplishment, 100.  I didn’t think I’d make it there but we made it.  Then Game of Thrones, then we have Ray’s first visit, June 30th, 2014.  Then Superdull kicks off at some point.  Huh, is that the first episode?  Toastmasters and Super…yeah.

 

So, right around here is where we settled in on the pace we would keep up for the history of the podcast, right around 100.  It’s interesting.  So, June 3rd, Superdull kicked off, and then we would go as we’ve been for 400 episodes hence, and that’s what carried us, was this three-style system.  Again, the audience was small at this time and again, the show was able to grow with the audience.  I think the audience grew because the show grew in quality.  I think this is a turning point for the show of being like okay, let’s…we can do these three things well once a week.  This is what’s gonna work if we’re gonna keep making this show.  These are, again, the really hard decisions behind the podcast…is how am I gonna sustain this?

 

‘Cause it’s not that hard tonight to sit down and record a episode and it’s a Sunday night and stuff like that, but then to just keep it going is where the difficulty lies.  Like, putting out…for me, putting out one podcast episode is not that tough but then…be like, okay, we…then we gotta do it again tomorrow or…and when…and then with a day job and stuff.  So, this was just a really important thing to follow…to discover.  So, wow, that…right around Episode 100, stuff started coming together.  So, we did Game of Thrones, then we did Goonies musical episode, Superdull, and yeah, we just started getting in the groove of Superdull, Game of Drones, Seance with Abba and Napoleon.  I remember that one was a good one.  It’s just weird; I can see myself in Berkeley thinking about that episode.  Maybe…I don’t know.

 

Around these early episodes too, I was really searching for certainty ‘cause the audience was small and I was like…I think I was…at some point I stopped caring about growing the audience.  I just said well, the listeners will help me grow the audience instead of having to control it myself.  I think in these first 150 or so episodes, the first year, year and a half, I think I was under the illusion that I had control over the show, of growing or being successful when really, you only have control over the [00:40:00] work.  Like, the process and not the results.  But these are some great episodes.  Here’s our first Real Time Recipe episode, 118.  So, a lot of stalwarts came up; Bernie the Butterfly, Real Time Recipes, Mall Walking is Episode 121.  Game of Thrones, so a lot of things that would stay with us.

 

Another Ray episode because I was getting over relying on that.  I had to stop myself at some point ‘cause Ray is so popular that it’s like oh, well, that’s gonna be easier.  Again, but I always have to make sure I don’t burn anything out or, I don’t know, I always have to keep in mind not what’s easy for Drew; what’s best for the podcast and what’s most sustainable?  That’s good, ‘cause it’s expanded my boundaries.  124 is Pitching Tim Curry, our first Pitching Tim Curry episode.  More Game of Thrones, Season 4; we’re still on Season 4.  Another Ray episode, so I was doing a Ray episode a month back then until I disciplined myself.  Then, let’s see, and I guess for people that listen to Sleep to Strange know some of these episodes are…then we get Season 4, another Season 4; that might have been the last Season 4 Game of Thrones.

 

Yeah, August 23rd, 2014.  No Swag at Costello-con.  That was a fun episode.  I remember that one.  A lot of these goofy episodes I liked.  Then we’re still in Superdull; we’re at Episode 128.  Then we…I started releasing these Napcasts which were the Prayers from…and the…I think Tommen from…and again, was an experiment to say jeez, could I grow the audience of the podcast?  Which was, I don’t know, I really like the Prayers and Tommen and the Game of Thrones episodes, again, so long…I guess part of me wanted to feature that stuff, too.  Also, sometimes I would have extra space on my hosting plan and I would…at the end of the month your hosting plan resets and your files get archived on the current…so I would want to make sure I used all that space ‘cause I was paying for it.

 

Again, I think at this point, all the expenses of the podcast are coming out of my pocket for most of the time.  I mean, but it wasn’t…it was all doable.  Then August, we started Game of Thrones Season 1.  Yeah, we’re still on Superdull.  Let’s see, Three Words Serena Wants to Hear?  That was a good one.  Lord Snow, Game of Thrones, Season 1.  Outlanders, Skin and Willie, Trending Twitter Tuesday, Big “B”, Little Alien, another Ray episode…September, so I think I was definitely leaning on that hard ‘cause it’s just, making up the improv episodes is really, really…now it’s more experienced but still not fun.  It’s like, something you always want to procrastinate on.  Game of Thrones, Vikings vs. Forty-Niners, Action Movie, let’s see, Whatever Happened to the Transylvania Twist?

 

So, we, again, I like to theme things seasonally when I can, just ‘cause I’m a kid at heart and watching holiday specials and stuff like that.  Damon D who’s on the backup, he made a song for that, Transylvania Twist.  This is one of my favorite episodes; Creature from the Black Lagoon Tells Me He’s Originally from Big Goon.  Again, that was just another favorite episode of mine.  It was improv…made up, so I don’t know, I just…I remember making that and saying wow, I really liked that one.  So, then we’re into another milestone for me.  These would be the two biggest milestones, is 100 and 150.  So, 150 was a Game of Thrones, one of the ones towards the end of Season 1, and also the conclusion.  149 was the conclusion of the series…oh no, it wasn’t the end of Superdull.  Oh, okay, I’m mixed up here.

 

But yeah, 151 was one where I met Lady Witchbeard or The Tale of Lady Witchbeard.  Full title; The Tale of a Witch Named Connie Who Would Become Lady Witchbeard.  That was October 20th, 2014.  That was just a character I could never forget once I met her.  But it would be a while…I don’t even know how long ‘til we made this series about her.  So, then we’re still doing Superdull and Game of Thrones, Season 1.  Spokesperson from Hansel and Gretel, Ray Returns, so again, a lot of Ray.  Here’s 158; Sisyphus Reborn, so that was another recap episode.  Talk a little bit about my struggles with addiction I think in there.  That was November 6th, 2014, so that’s our one-year anniversary-ish.

 

I think the podcast really started being available to the public around November 1st or somewhere between October 20th and November 1st, 2013.  So, that was a recap episode where I…I think that was the first one where I was really personal and really tried to be vulnerable and…not easy but that paid off, like that…where I felt like that was a big risk.  This isn’t bragging or anything…where I was really nervous and when I put the episode out I said did I reveal too much about myself?  But now I’ll never look back.  The way listeners have been my safety net, I can never repay that.  The boundaries inside me and outside me that have expanded and how much I’ve grown past my limitations because of listeners’ help is unbelievable.  Thank you.  Then another episode I really liked; A Bjork’d Love Story.

 

That was November 11th, 2014, Episode 160.  Then another Real Time Recipe one.  This is still really popular; Pasta and Tacos: The Accidental John Hughes…that was only Episode 161.  I would have guessed it was like, 250.  Let’s see, then we’re…Redditation, another Walking episode in November.  So, yeah, we’re almost at 215 here.  There’s still like, eight pages or something of…oh, then another Bernie the Butterfly episode; 164.  Game of Thrones, Me and Slonic and a Dino That Dreams in Silence.  Episode 167, a really popular episode; Fall Asleep with Snowy Woods Guided Meditation.  That’s really popular with people.  A lot of these Napcasts were still going, then the first Thanksgiving Day Parade episode with Greg, Ray, and the Greggor.

 

Walking Tour of Lost Island, Heat Miser with a Bowl Cut; that was…I remember making that episode.  That was fun.  Cracking Nuts: The Nutcracker; these were all themed Trending Twitter Tuesday.  Then the Roberta Claus foundational episodes, one of these scientist’s Cold War on Santa, so probably a year at least ahead of time where I had this idea of Roberta Claus, that Santa…’why does Santa Claus have to be male?’ started to…and then the idea of a woman named Roberta Claus, that she would be the new Santa somehow sprung out of this story.  I don’t know exactly how.  Then more Game of Thrones, Guided Meditation as a Christmas Present.  Somewhere in here I start to hear feedback from people that are still listening to the podcast.

 

I can remember some of these episodes and hearing from listeners that are still listening.  So, this…but the show has always grown small, so 150 episodes, right around 150 was when Bobby Finger…who now, he’s risen to podcast greatness and writing greatness, he’s on Who? Weekly and I think he still writes for Jezebel but I’m not positive on that.  But he was the first person ever to interview me.  That was right around 150, somewhere in here.  Yeah.  Then I think the second time I was interviewed was…I don’t even know.  I don’t know.  But, just another moment where I was like okay, this podcast is growing unexpectedly, slowly but unexpectedly in ways where I was like okay, this is gonna become something.

 

At some point I…I’m still at the point where I’m still trying to make it work, but it’s big enough that the podcast has this big audience now, so it’s like, I know it’s gonna work now.  I just gotta figure out how to make it work financially, you know?  But back then I still maybe had a couple thousand listeners.  I don’t know if…maybe we had a thousand listeners at 150.  Maybe not, maybe…I don’t know.  I can’t remember the statistics but it was like, is this podcast gonna grow enough or should I cut it back to be a hobby?  ‘Cause a hobby would be once a week or less.  Once a week, this podcast would be really tough to do as a hobby even, but even back then I was like, I don’t think this is gonna be a hobby.  I think this needs to be a three-times-a-week and I think that it’s gonna keep going.

 

It was just pushing myself [00:50:00] on the late nights and the weekends which is kinda still the case, but we’re on the path.  But yeah, so Last Royals, and then we…Season 2 of After the Glass Slipper starts up at some point in here.  Jeez, I can’t…so, I guess it’s two years ago.  We’re looking at January…we’re in the 180s.  I can remember these like they were yesterday.  I really enjoyed Season 2.  I don’t know, I really like Agatha.  This is another big episode for me; 184.  Bathroom Locks, Boys Tap and a Dance Contest, ‘cause that was about my relationship with dancing as a kid.  Valar Morghulis, My Life With a Perm; 187.  That was another big episode.  That would become a recurring theme.  Plane Ride; that was Andrea G who still listens to the show at some point that gave me that idea.  Interesting.

 

Wow, so January 2015, Dougie’s Kitten Bowl Disaster Dance; that was Eli H, another person who wrote a article about that from TouchArcade.  He’s a good friend of the show.  Then Mother Nature’s First Visit with Pordo or Porto.  Let’s see, After the Glass Slipper, Game of Thrones, Meditative Sleep With Songs…I don’t know what season of Game of Thrones we’re on here; 2 or 3.  Then the Olive Breadcrumb Pasta with Young Guns; Episode 202.  Can’t believe we’ve had 300 episodes since this.  Like, this really is weird for me.  It’s like okay, this feels like 100 years ago and five minutes ago I recorded that episode.  There’s a file in here just marked ZZZZ.  I don’t even know what it is.  Interesting.

 

More After the Glass Slipper, Game of Thrones, Taught by Two Teens on the 51A; I remember that episode ‘cause the 51A is the bus I used to ride all the time.  Kanye’s Laptop; that was December of 2015.  Florida’s Guided Meditation; so, this was when my mom was in…I was dealing with stuff with my mom at some point in here.  Spring of 2015; yeah, Florida Sounds, Sounds from Airplanes.  Here’s a thing you could record a podcast episode anywhere; March 31st, 2015.  That episode came out…I recorded it while waiting for a flight, like with a mic that I would never use, with a condenser mic, just the mics built into my recorder.

 

‘Cause at this point everything was bang, bang, bang, so if this episode came out on a Tuesday, I was probably recording it on a Monday and then just staying up to get it out on a Tuesday or recording on a Sunday and staying up or getting up really early before work so that it would come out…I was literally finishing the episodes when…and then they would come out.  Again, it’d still…it would be a little while ‘til I got help here with the show.  But yeah, I remember recording that episode at the airport, Dallas Airport and Tampa Airport, I believe.  What else we got?  That was two years ago, huh?  Wow.  That feels not that long ago.  I remember getting food with my brother before.  Also, that was our first website crash, our big…first big website crash.  Who was it?  Dr. Graham let me know about that.

 

I think he was the first person.  I would return our RSS, actually, like, our podcast host and before, I was managing it through the website.  Rains of Castamere; that episode came out April 5th, 2015.  That was a big GoT episode for me.  First Morley Safer episode, April 7th, 2015; 220.  Let’s see what else; Geeseman of…that was our first appearance by Wilfred Brimley.  We’re still doing After the Glass Slipper.  Spackle the Elf; that was the second…I think this is the second thing…appearance of Orange Lux.  I think also that was the first time I talked about my hobby of listening to knocks, K-O-N-C-K-S; April 21st, 2015, 226.  Then we’re winding down towards the end of After the Glass Slipper ‘cause of That Feeling in the Pit of your Lentils.  Also Season 5 of Game of Thrones, The House of Black and White.  Wasn’t it a premiere?

 

So maybe this is the premiere.  Then there’s the…Hypnotic Sleep is what one episode’s titled.  It doesn’t have a show number or anything.  Yeah; High Sparrow.  Wow, these episodes…season…that must have been Season 5.  What is this one?  The Cat in the New Suit as in a Swimsuit from…oh, that’s from…that’s a Ser Pounce one.  May 5th, 2015; A Pop, A Mop, and A Candy War.  That was another episode that was very…I don’t know, that I just really liked.  I was really happy with how it turned out and the characters, and so then that ended up becoming a two-parter; so, Keeper of the Candy Mop.  I think we needed to ‘cause we were done with After the Glass Slipper.  We didn’t have a replacement.

 

Yeah, and then another Pitching Tim Curry, then a Real Time Recipe, so we…this was one of these times I was write…trying to write a new episode or a new series.  Then Mall Walking, then Game of Thrones.  Tsunami Sofa; that was the most personal episode I’ve ever done.  That was May 26th, 2015, 241.  So, still a long time ago.  Right along here is where I started to…where…do custom art for each episode just ‘cause, I don’t know, I like it.  Another good one; Swaddling A Platy-Billed Platypus, so now I can hear a ton of people, so the show must have grown at some point in here ‘cause now these episodes I can remember talking to different listeners about these episodes.  A Little Water Globule Trembling with Joy, so yeah, I know there’s listeners; if you’re hearing this, you’re like oh yeah.

 

Oh, this is when everybody sent me the tea.  So, June of 2015, right around Episode 250, that would be another milestone.  Cracker of Jokes and Coco Spice and Prisoner in the Yellow Pajamas, and then a…Bernie Gives A Commencement Address.  That was June 2015.  That feels really like yesterday.  Cursed Dragon Love Story, and now we’re getting to the tail end of the season of Game of Thrones.  Then this is when I used 25th…June 25th, Case of Damnesia in a Thesis; I used a thesis someone sent me.  Let’s see, Impeached by Model UN; that feels like it was yesterday, and then our first…Lady Witchbeard I think is getting ready to kick off, or was a repeat.  Remixing, re-posting of a Trending Twitter Tuesday; 151.  Yeah, ‘cause we would do…Lady Witchbeard would kick off.

 

Lady Witchbeard…at this point I was taking things…at some point along…in the last year, between 2014 and 2015, I stopped writing screenplays, or rewriting.  I don’t know exactly when that was but I said well, this is a podcast; I can either do one thing well.  I don’t have time before and after work and on the weekends, especially…you have to write every day, so I think at some point I was writing…working on a screenplay in the morning and then the podcast at night as far as writing time.  So at some point that changed.  So, Lady Witchbeard meant a lot to me.  Maybe some of these other series ‘cause it was like okay, now this is my full writing focus, is breathing life into these characters to meander around.  I can’t tell you how terribly serious I take all the…making the show and creating it.

 

So, then at some point, June of 2015 was when we started Metastasis News; 260.  It was Odio Estos Zapatos, Metastasis in Breaking Bad…oh no, that was Episode 3.  Language Learning and Double TV Rewatch All in One.  We’re still redoing a lot of…what do you call it?  A lot of Napcasts are still going.  Then a four…this episode got some e-mails; 4th of July Parade with Ray and the Greggor ‘cause there was sounds from the parade.  So, that was one…it wasn’t the first ambient episode I did but I said oh, okay, I have to…these ambient episodes are divisive; popular but divisive.  Then Lady Witchbeard’s Episode 2 and then Metastasis News.  This is when the podcast really fell into a groove in a good way.

 

Like, I think that I’d finally grown into the process, up until…like, here I can just feel [01:00:00] that it fell into a nice rhythm work-wise, process-wise.  So, yeah, we were doing…then the one I did, The Journey of the Inner Ear, and that was because of…Jess Mackelroy had said something nice to me, so I wanted to do something that was kinda nice for them.  Breaking Bad…and we’re still doing these…Regarding Algorithmic; what was that?  I think that was one…that might have been a Morley…another Morley Safer episode.  Yeah, ‘cause then 270 is another Morley Safer.  Breaking Bad, Snowden, so this is still with Morley Safer and Snowden, then Grilling with President Gooseberry.

 

I remember…then some of these I…this was the first time or only the second time, maybe, I was recording away from home so I remember some of these episodes that came out.  In August I was recording this cabin on Lake Ontario.  Actually, I was recording them outside in a screen house.  Again, amazing when you have a budget ‘cause I was still doing everything myself at this point and there’s still…I think at some point in here we did do the t-shirts to get new equipment but I didn’t have on-the-road equipment.  So, I was like, recording into a condenser mic, actually, on the top of my recorder but outside with the…I made it work.  When you’re…that’s a wonderful lesson this podcast has taught me.

 

But then also in here is when I got nervous ‘cause the podcast was still not even close to sustainable audience-wise, so I decided to try to make this a sleep show ‘cause I said well, maybe I should make a daytime podcast about sleep and maybe that’ll help the podcast grow.  ‘Cause at this point we’re in the 200s, right, and I realized how much work it was.  Oh, we’re almost at Episode 300.  I said jeez, I can’t keep doing this.  I can’t…there’s no…we don’t have a big enough audience and I’m working, whatever, sixty, seventy hours a week on the show in addition to my job.  What am I gonna go?  So, one way…and I guess this is another lesson I had to learn, is like okay, well, let me trying doing another show to get the audience.

 

I guess what I’ve learned, in all irony, was that oh, wait, our audience is tied to the college schedule.  Not all our listeners are college students or graduate students or high school students or parents of people in school, but I think when you combine all those things, it is.  So, when school’s out of session, our audience doesn’t grow.  The rest of the…whenever school’s in session, our audience is growing thus far, knock on wood.  So at this point I didn’t have enough experience to say oh, the reason the show’s not growing is ‘cause it’s summertime.  So, I was trying to wrestle control and force things by doing this sleep show and it was fun.  It was…but it was a force for the wrong reason.

 

It wasn’t a creative reason or…and it would teach me another important lesson which was at some point, I was critically burned out making four shows a week now instead of just three, one of which was supposed to be about sleeping.  That’s pretty ironic when you’re making a sleep podcast and you’re not getting any.  So, I said to myself, what am I doing?  The podcast is gonna suffer and I have this wonderful audience and things are working; they’re just not sustainable yet.  Can I be patient?  I just said what do I do best?  I make the podcast to put people to sleep the best, so let’s focus on that.  That’s carried me through.  At that point it became a formal mission statement; I make the podcast to put you to sleep.  Before that is what I said, but I didn’t really know it was a mission statement.

 

So now, any decisions I make with the podcast, I say is this gonna help me keep making the podcast that puts people to sleep instead of saying is this gonna bring me certainty or I’m nervous, or I don’t know how this…I say okay, is it gonna help us keep making the podcast that puts people to sleep?  Sometimes, you know, not everybody’s happy about those decisions but that’s how I process everything.  Like, oh yeah, this partnership will help us keep making it ‘cause it’s gonna help us hire a editor or our most recent decision is okay, with Ferrel is gonna help us…they share a goal of non-paywalled archives, so…and that’s what I want.  That’s gonna help the podcast that puts people to sleep or finding these sponsors or some sponsors that have come to the show and they’ll probably say well, that’s a lot of money but that product…that just…no, that won’t work.

 

So, it’s like oh, is that gonna help us keep making…?  That’s the thing; not the next episode but continue to make the podcast that puts people to sleep, so that was the lesson I learned here, August 20, 2015, by making this sleep show that almost ended the whole podcast.  It would come…things would come out of this ‘cause then at some point I said okay, I gotta stop doing that and it would lead to me months later…well, first, not that much longer paying Chris Postill on my pocket and then in…maybe in October, November, and then eventually starting the Patreon which has paid the editors ever since.  The third or fourth month of the Patreon, we had enough money to pay the editors, and then it’s helped keep us where…yeah, at some point, I don’t even know when this comes out, if I’ll start taking a small paycheck from the Patreon or not.

 

But yeah, so, October…but having a emergency fund; that’s what I was about to say.  So, it’s not just like oh, we’re just gonna pay the editors and then I’ll take the rest.  It’s like okay, and then there’s an emergency fund so we can pay the editors, ‘cause without editing help at this point, I don’t know…so, it’s just like, again, it goes through that channel of is that…what’s gonna help us…instead of what’s easiest or…it’s like oh, okay, what’s gonna help sustain the show?  Okay, so we’re still in Lady Witchbeard.  We’re at Episode 15 and we’re doing Metastasis News.  Then we get another fun thing with Harpsichord Dictator and Emperor Zola, like this Halloween-themed series.  This is Halloween of 2015 for a few months, with my piano teacher and Drake and Mumblebear.  Who was that?

 

Dave Osborne, Super Dave Osborne.  Let’s see, and then we finished up Lady Witchbeard, then we had 310; we did How to Break A Story.  I mean, what’s crazy to me is that it was 310; now we’re at…we’re over 500.  I’ve recorded over 500 episodes so it’s like, you telling me that was…and that was a year…over a year ago; 2015.  Now it’s 2017.  Yeah.  So then, Call Me Boris.  That was a good…with the pillows.  I can’t believe that was over a year ago.  We ran a repeat, then the Shia LaBeouf thing, then we’re getting ready to kick off Roberta Claus.  Roberta Claus is when Chris Postill started editing, so he was editing these before they came out so they could…he could learn how to do it.

 

But then I had The Dickens Fair and these Claude Neon Report episodes, another Thanksgiving Day Parade with the Greggor and Ray, Flakey and Lights on a Lake, so now we’re getting close to under a year.  A lot of holiday-themed stuff, which this year I had less of.  I’m always torn of what to do.  I guess I like watching Halloween and Christmas and…type stuff.  Let’s see, then we kick off…let’s see where we kick off.  Get Besos, Season 2.  Oh, Protector of Oakland Stonefruit; that was 341.  That was another…I liked that episode.  Bernie the Butterfly, Dust Mote Singularity; that was another good one.  Selling Elements of Style; that was the first Get Besos episode.  Explainers of Catan, Knocks Night; that was…Knocks Night was another one.  I’m really happy with the end of that episode.  Then we’re like, under a year.

 

So yeah, a year ago we started the Patreon and started paying…and the past year has been a busy, busy year.  Let’s see, Blame it on the Bile, My Interview with Spleen, then we run through Get Besos, Robber Barons and Doilies; that was in May.  Another Morley episode, Ghost Belt, and then Morley would pass away not that long after which is sad.  Adventures in Babysitting; that was another Pitching episode.  I liked that one.  Who’s the Dummy?  A ventriloquist dummy one.  That one is…at some point here soon we’ll have a [01:10:00] revisiting to that.  Mr. T and Me; that was a pretty…I liked that one.  Ray’s Return to go to California Adventure, still going through some Get Besos episodes and Metastasis News.  Imaginary Friend Reunion; that was a…I liked that one.  Yeah, somewhere along here…is this last year?

 

Yeah, like April of 2016 when my aunt passed away.  I was in Syracuse for that.  Real Time Recipe, Joy of Dance Edition.  Wow, that was a year…well, ten months ago.  Yeah, Erie Canal Museum.  A episode I recorded on a plane; Scoots and Ray on a Plane.  Bird Bath; 395.  That was a high…that’s probably still a very high, high point for the podcast artistically.  I don’t know if we’ve hit that high again.  I don’t know, there might be something recent I’ve been pretty happy with.  That’s probably one of the happiest moments, that and Water…where I was just like yeah, I love making this podcast.  So, that was May 31st, 2016.  We’re still in Get Besos.  Twenty episodes.  Pool Pill Pitch for Moranis, so now we’re under a year where…when we hit 400 in the early…late spring, early summer.  Scooter vs. Messi Boredown.

 

We’re in Season 6 of GoT.  Sidekick Lover; I don’t remember what that one was.  Mirror Maze Metaphor, Get Besos season finale, yeah.  There’s the Season 6 finale of GoT.  Oh, so we must have paused…did we pause Metastasis News for ten weeks there or something?  Yeah, I can kinda remember the planning of this got complicated.  Get Besos Season Review, then a check-in on Tommen, 412 of Season 6 recap of GoT.  Then I took a week…I think I just did a week of recaps of Tommen and Pounce’s adventures just to buy me a week buffer.  I don’t think I took a week off.  I mean, I was out of town for two weeks but there’s always…if I’m running recaps, I’m almost always working because at this point we have a couple-week buffer just in case something goes wrong with the show or if I want to take a break, but I prefer to keep these muscles in shape still.

 

Then at some point the listeners had sent me a quilt.  I think that was earlier but then the episodes started to get released.  I know I had recorded one of the episodes a while before but I was holding in my thinking ‘til Get Besos was done.  Then we had our first Carole King episode which, wow; I can remember listening to that, going to have lunch with Blake that makes Half Hour Intern.  Let’s see what else; Known Mower.  So now we’re into last summer.  Train Carousel On-Location; that one I did…it came out in August.  I think I did it…I made that episode in May, recorded it, whatever the holiday is in May.  Is that Labor Day or Memorial Day?  Memorial Day.  I think Sunday of Memorial Day Weekend I recorded that.  Then the Dreamquilt conclusion, then Introvert on Vacation.

 

I don’t know when I was on vacation, but this is when the episode came out.  Oh, I think this is what I did; I did…I stretched…I don’t know, I tried to stagger some time off ‘cause there’s My Life With A Perm recap, Leaf Losses, Olympics Opening Ceremonies, Club Senseless, a new pilot series episode; what does that mean?  Oh, that was Nuns in Space, the first episode.  August…wow, August 18th.  That’s when the first episode came out and we’re still doing Metastasis News.  DateMoi; that came out, 427.  I can’t believe I made almost a hundred episodes since then.  Then we had Nuns in Space, Half-Hour Intern Crossover episode, Dirt Bike Poets, Realtime Bed Assembly, Dirty Dollhouse that I made for Helen Zaltzman, Dirty Doormat, Ray at a Caribbean Beach Resort, Nuns in Space, Lost Village; I did that for KDFC.

 

Most of these I just did…I told the person I didn’t do it…that’s like, the radio station I fall asleep to.  My Life With A Perm; Carole King crossover, Nuns in Space 8, and we’re on the last fifty episodes.  Bernie the Butterfly debating with me about geese, Nuns in Space, Cardiff Giant Toe, then when I was going on Harmon Town I was pretty nervous about that.  I did that episode about using Dan’s Harmon’s story structure for feeling nothing.  Another DateMoi one, the Great Pumpkin Review, Sylvan Beach Troll; I liked that episode.  Nuns Opinions, Knock Controversy, Dirty Sweater Dance, Burbank Hollywood Piano; that was from…that was on-location from a hotel room.  I Kissed A Brook, Ray; Universal Studios, and then Christmas…then the holiday stuff; Christmas Tree that Took A Walk.  That was a pretty good episode.

 

It turned out well.  Replay…a Thanksgiving Day replay recap, Laurel and Hardy’s March of the Wooden Soldiers, Real Time Stuffing and Mashed Potatoes, Christmas Story Tale of the Tape; that was a fun one to make, too.  Then the Dickens Fair episodes; that was…those were a little bit tougher.  Then TNG kicked off.  Oh, January…so, yeah, now we’re to this year, January 1st, 2017, 479; Darmok.  I got Brainbot Entertainer of the Year, January 3rd, 2017, 480.  Nuns in Space was coming to a close, then Farpoint, then Tesla Haircut, and then a review of Nuns in Space.  Then Superdull stories kicked off.  That pretty much brings us back to where we are.  Again, thank you so much for listening to this podcast.  I think that was a pretty sleepy walk down memory lane but yeah, I mean, that’s just…I’m exhausted just going back there, so thank you so much.

 

I couldn’t do…if you weren’t listening and sleeping to the podcast, I wouldn’t make it.  If it didn’t help people I would have just cut it back or something or it wouldn’t be what it is today.  The evolution of the podcast is because of you and the things that keep it going is because of you, the listener, and I respect and treasure the relationship I have with all of you.  I’m so humbled that you listen and sleep to something that I make.  Thank you so much and goodnight.

 

[END OF RECORDING]

(www.leahtranscribes.com)