Ever had what you thought was a great idea for a podcast that looked good on paper but turned into something quite different, once you started recording? Well I had that experience on Sunday evening and today I am dealing with the results. It all started with an innocuous Twitter conversation (don’t many things I hear you say) which highlighted a minor cultural difference between the US and the UK. Having recorded with an American co-host for many years this is a common occurrence, so I decided to make it the theme of the next Contains Moderate Peril podcast. I initially thought of several fun examples that could be discussed; the British obsession with the weather, cheese-rolling and Morris dancing. However, rather than take a scattergun approach, I decided to list specific categories in the show notes. Subjects such as school, work, food, social customs and public holidays were added for discussion and I believe that is where thing started to go wrong.

Podcasts are becoming an invaluable medium for the analysis and discussion of niche interests and bespoke subjects. Many of the shows that I regularly listen to bring professional quality documentary skills to bear on unique and varied areas of fandom. More and more podcasts are being made by informed and intelligent fans, offering in-depth material rather than just light weight banter. Simply put, I am spoilt for choice. Therefore, it is essential to have a suitable podcast management app to stay on top of such quality entertainment. Something that allows me to curate and organise those shows that I currently enjoy, as well as providing recommendations for comparable material that I may wish to subscribe to. For several years I’ve been using Podcast Addict on my Android devices, although I’ve struggled to find something comparable for my PC.

Last night, myself, Hannah and Chris (AKA Jaedia and Wolfyseyes) had an especially productive recording session. We managed to produce two hours of material in total and I’m confident that it can be whittled down into a coherent and enjoyable ninety-minute episode. What I especially enjoyed about this podcast recording was buoyant atmosphere and the flow of the conversation. I felt that we explored the various topics well and that the discussion felt natural. Ultimately, it will be the listeners who’ll determine whether this is the case or not but from my perspective the recording went well because the guests were a good choice. If you are pursuing a podcast format that has multiple hosts or regularly features guests, then it is important for there to be a rapport between all involved.

As I surmised, in its current state Squarespace has proven an inadequate host for my current podcast. After exchanging several emails with Apple support, I was informed that “the server for your episodes does not support HTTP HEAD requests. To enable streaming playback of episodes, ensure the hosting server allows HTTP HEAD requests and has byte-range requests enabled”. To cut a long story short, there is no scope for me to alter any of these things at present within the Squarespace dashboard. Nor did I want the work involved in using a third-party feed managing service such as FeedBurner. So, I decided to open up an account with a commercial hosting service. After some research, I determined that PodBean could cater for all my needs and at a competitive price. Submitting the new RSS feed was easy and Apple approved the podcast within 36 hours. As of today, the Contains Moderate Peril podcast is back on iTunes.

Whenever I encounter a word or term that I’m not familiar with, I will usually Google it. That’s the way I’m wired. I prefer to “know” rather than “not know”. However, it is not the concept of continuous self-improvement that I wish to discuss in this post but something else. Namely sociolinguistics. Earlier today I saw someone mention vocal fry on Twitter. I had no idea what that was so I checked on Wikipedia, watched some You Tube videos and finally read some newspaper articles. An hour later I was aware of not only vocal fry, but run-ons, uptalk, glottal Ts and the fact that the way we speak has a major impact upon our lives, just like education and class. According to sociolinguistics, the manner in which you speak has a major impact on the way you are perceived by others. Sadly, like so many other social markers, it can be used in a discriminatory fashion.

Back in April I decided to relaunch the Contains Moderate Peril podcast for reasons of brand continuity. At the time, I was hoping to get back in to the podcasting saddle and return to producing weekly shows. However, the recording session was fraught with technical problems with Zencastr crashing regularly. I was left with nine separate audio tracks that weren’t in sync which made editing a major problem. There then followed a wealth or real-world issues that I had to address that meant for the next three months the podcast was put on hold. Finally, at the beginning of August I managed to complete the post production work on the show and publish it via Squarespace. I was hoping that using this existing website as a host for the show would save some money and reduce the work load. However, like most plans, it didn’t exactly work out that way

Professor Beej recently tweeted about consolidating all his various blogs and online activities into a single entity. I naturally agreed with him and encouraged him to do so because I did something similar back in 2010. I had a gaming blog and a site for movies reviews plus a podcast to manage. It ultimately made sense to put all these thing in one place, despite their respective differences because the common factor in all of them was me. To coin a rather nauseating phrase “you are your own brand”. This is how Contains Moderate Peril came to be. In recent years, I’ve embraced this concept further and will now write or podcast about any subject that really takes my fancy. I try to stick to the things that I like but from time to time, I do stray in to wider real world subjects.

Although we at the Burton & Scrooge podcast are not driven by numbers, it would be nice to see the audience grow. We seem at present to have plateaued somewhat and maintain a robust but fixed listenership. Currently our back catalogue of shows is available via SoundCloud, iTunes and Stitcher. However it would appear that other directories and aggregation services are available, so it would seem prudent to ensure that we are listed with them. My colleagues tell me that the Google Play Store and iHeartRadio are beneficial to register with. I believe that there may well also be comparable services aimed specifically at the console market. However, as our show is more geared towards PC gaming, I don’t see the need to pursue these.

A week on from my last post on this subject, I have decided to script the entire of my solo podcast. It won’t be one hundred percent verbatim but I need to get the lion share of my thoughts down prior to recording. I discovered over several recording sessions that I continuously think of additional points to add as I’m speaking. The net result is having to constantly stop and start Audacity, the program I use for recording, as well as having to research extra points on the fly. Again, I was not happy with the finished product as you could frequently hear the hesitation or more to the point, the frustration in my voice. So, I’ve returned to the idea of having well fleshed out notes with some sections such as the introduction, written out in their entirety.

I recently wrote in a blog post that I would be producing a new podcast this year and that Burton & Scrooge Uncut would be taking a break for the immediate future. Well in fact I’ve decided to record two new shows. In the meantime, Brian has already embarked upon his solo project and seems to have found his niche already. I however am currently bogged down in the pre-production process and because the format of the new podcast is different from those I’ve done before, it is proving to be a little more challenging than I initially thought. Since I find writing to be a practical way of ordering my thoughts, I thought I’d keep a podcast diary. I can therefore work through some of the issues that arise as well as produce a blog post, now that I’m back to writing daily.