My last post was supposed to detail the “Hot Summer 70s Family Horror” series MBS and I are doing right now for the Family Pictures Podcast, but it turned into a love letter to that podcast. We’re gonna record episode 28 and 29 later this week before I go on vacation, so that means we have just about 30 episodes in the can since November of 2024. That averages out to an episode a week for 8 months, which for those who have ever started a podcast know is no small feat.
The cool part of all that is we’re just starting to catch our stride; we’re starting to feel really comfortable with one another and realizing how valuable it is to have carved out the time to commune around something as awesome as movies (be they good or bad!) and bloviate at length about them—which might be the real joy of podcasting!
I spent this morning watching the documentary Birth Pains in preparation for our chat about David Cronenberg’s most personal and classic horror film The Brood (1979). That’s a damn good way to channel my energy, it gives my passion focus. The fact that MBS always brings his A-game with brilliant insights pushes me to stop pretending I know more than I do. It forces me to dig deeper and that’s the very thing you want when you’re trying to not just watch movies, but use them as a tool to make sense of the world around you…it’s what bridges them to a sense of culture. The joy of this particular podcast is using movies to try and understand how these artefacts inform the world in which we live. The episode on Fellini’s Amarcord (1973) was a moment wherein the film spoke to me about how an artist deals with the dark past of fascism in an honest way without erasing the deeply human players caught in its web. In fact, the post I wrote about that episode highlights just that—I wouldn’t have written that if I hadn’t have put in the work with MBS to think harder about that film.
The process of podcasting has been joyful because all the time I already spend watching movies is now channeled into a weekly event that psuhes me to research, reflect, negotiate, discuss, and ultimately write about it all. I have to think that’s at the heart of what undergirds the idea of an education that is everywhere promoted, no?
So, MBS and I are planning on doing a live session* for Reclaim Open wherein we do a meta-episode to discuss our podcast and highlight what I’m calling “The Joy of Podcasting.” Academic podcasting is nothing new at this point, but it might be fun to hear two goofballs talk about their film podcast and try and draw connections to higher ed, edtech, and open education. I’m sure we can shoehorn a few more themes in there as well, like say video production studios? 🙂
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*If you are keeping count, that’s my second shared presentation for Reclaim Open. What’s more, I have at least one more coming on AI Maddeness with Tom Woodward. Is there a fourth on the horizon?
I though podcasting was audio 😉
I have a post stuck in my brain about after all these years how I do podcasting wrong.
I do think the episodes are pretty much audio only, but doing them in a space where they are recorded and you can connect with one another makes all the difference. As for the various places to listen to podcasts I am pretty bad because I could care less. I hate them all equally (uhhh, Spotify and Apple suck balls), so Youtube is easier and as good (if not better) than any of them, with or without the feed.
The real revolution is when I finally get cast-o-pod up and running to self host the videos and audio (actually I am planning on importing them all to peerTube as well just for shits and giggles before Reclaim Open. In the end MBS and I decided as little friction as possible and production overhead as possible top start, biut after experiencing the studio I am not sure I am all that happy returning to Whereby 🙂
As for the podcasting part of our podcast, we’ll have that figured out by year 3 or 4 🙂