Closing out the C-Realm Podcast
I don't remember exactly when I first heard the word "podcast." It was some time in early 2006. At a guess, I'd say late February. I don't remember where I first encountered the term, but once I understood what it meant, I did a search for "cannabis podcast" and found The Dopecast. I then did a search for "psychedelic podcast" and found The Psychedelic Salon. Both shows were in their early days, and astute listeners can find the fingerprints of these two podcasts on the C-Realm Podcast.
I sent an email to the Dopefiend, the creator of the Dopecast, and he read it on his podcast. As far as I could tell, the Dopefiend read and responded to every email he received. That impressed upon me what a small community of listeners had gravitated to his show. It surprised me because his show had very professional sounding production values.
At the time that I discovered podcasts, I was selling insurance in northwest Arkansas, and my business focused on the Medicare market. I didn't have an .mp3 player, and so I listened to podcasts on my laptop. Frequently I would be dressed in my suit and tie, groomed to visit with senior citizens in their homes to get them signed up for a Medicare Part D drug plan, and I would drive to their homes while listening to the Dopecast or Psychedelic Salon from my laptop which sat open on the passenger's seat of my car.
Within a few months I purchased my first .mp3 player. It was a Zen Creative device that looked like this:
. It could only hold a few podcasts. After a while, I discovered that it had a built-in microphone that looked like nothing more than a pin hole in the body of the devise. Shortly thereafter, I took the devise to the office of a lawyer in Springdale, Arkansas and asked his opinion about a video that instructed young people how to resist being pressured by overbearing police officers into consenting to a search of their car. I bought a $14 headset microphone, downloaded Audacity, a free, open-source audio editing program, and assembled my first podcast. I signed up for a free account with PodOMatic and posted my first episode on Wednesday, October 1st, 2006.
The day I posted that first episode just happened to be a Wednesday, but I knew that I wanted to do a weekly show, so I posted a new episode every Wednesday thereafter for the next couple of years. I did take a week off in 2008 when I was on an ayahuasca retreat in the Peruvian Amazon, and I've taken a couple of Wednesday's off in the 9 years since I posted that first episode, but they were always announced in advance. In all that time, I never missed a self-imposed podcast deadline.
By the third episode I figured out how to record Skype calls, and then all the technical elements were in place. I have upgraded my equipment and my audio production chops since then, but by that third episode, I had the fundamentals under my belt to create several hundred podcast episodes.
Lorenzo Hagerty, the creator of the Psychedelic Salon Podcast, was my guest on episode 9: Athiestic Faith. Years later, he mentioned in an interview that my contacting him and inviting him to be a guest on the C-Realm gave him the encouragement he needed to continue podcasting at a time when he was feeling discouraged. Up till then he hadn't been sure anybody was listening to his show or getting anything out of it.
On October 10th, 2006, I heard Terry Gross interview Moises Naim, editor and publisher of Foreign Policy magazine, about his book book, Illicit: How Smugglers, Traffickers and Copycats Are Hijacking the Global Economy, which had just been released in paperback.
I was excited because I had read the book in hardcover the previous year and posted a favorable review to Amazon.com. The author contacted me via email to thank me for posting such a generous review, so I had both his email address and an "in" with him. I sent him an email reminding him of the review and asking him for an interview. He agreed. You can hear that conversation in C-Realm Podcast episode number 11: Illicit Maps, which also features a conversation with Rick Doblin, the founder of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies.
The Moises Naim episode was huge for me because it meant that I had interviewed someone I first heard on National Public Radio's most high-profile, long-form interview program. This contributed greatly to my sense that I'd really found my calling with this podcasting thing.
The fact that it felt like a career, took up a huge amount of my time, dominated my self-identification but did not pay was a deadly combination for my marriage. Particularly since the work I could do for pay, selling insurance, was something I hated and which also required self-motivation on my part. I had no boss, couldn't be fired for slacking off, and was receiving residual compensation for past work. Not enough to maintain a middle class lifestyle, but enough that it allowed me to crash and burn in financial slow motion. And all the while, I kept podcasting.
I'll spare you a detailed account of the next decade. Readers of this blog are likely familiar with the thematic arc of the podcast over that period as well as the fact that I moved from Arkansas, to Maryland, to Tennessee and finally to New York City during that time.
In 2012 I created a second weekly podcast called the C-Realm Vault which would only be available to paid subscribers. Finally, after 6 years, podcasting started to provide me with a reliably regular income. Not enough, but in conjunction with living rent-free with Olga, it allowed me to pay my child support, buy groceries, keep my truck serviced and fueled and continue my podcasting career.
On Wednesday, February 17th, 2016, I will post episode number 500 of the C-Realm Podcast. That will be the last episode in the series. Thereafter I will continue the weekly C-Realm Vault podcasts, and I will create a new free podcast that I will update once a month, but the free weekly podcasts will be a thing of the past.
On a recent trip to Arkansas I discussed cult groups, off mic, with C-Realm guest Dan Krotz. We noted that cults tend to put their members to work without pay. I don't remember if it was Dan or me who said that only damaged people are willing to work for free. People who are firm in their self-worth expect to be paid for their work, and that struck an immediate chord with me.
I have been pouring my heart and soul into the C-Realm Podcast for most a decade. It has been a vehicle for personal growth, put me in touch with an amazing network of people, and helped me establish a reputation as a patient and thoughtful interviewer. And the listeners have supported my efforts with their donations. I wasn't working for free exactly, but all told, I would have made more if I'd remained consistently employed in a minimum wage job over that period.
I announced my intention to end the C-Realm Podcast on the Friends of the C-Realm group on July 29th, and most of the responses I received were positive. A couple of people interpreted my scaling back from producing 8 podcasts a month to 5 as quitting and posting something to the effect of, "Nice knowing you." Most everyone else realized that I wouldn't lie fallow or retreat into a straight job, and several well-wishers expressed their anticipation at what I will do after I bring the free, weekly podcast to a close.
At present, my plan is to use the time I will free up by discontinuing the C-Realm Podcast to do more writing, get back to work on the C-Realm webcomic, and start video blogging on YouTube. I'll say more about my vlogging ambitions in another post.
I sent an email to the Dopefiend, the creator of the Dopecast, and he read it on his podcast. As far as I could tell, the Dopefiend read and responded to every email he received. That impressed upon me what a small community of listeners had gravitated to his show. It surprised me because his show had very professional sounding production values.
At the time that I discovered podcasts, I was selling insurance in northwest Arkansas, and my business focused on the Medicare market. I didn't have an .mp3 player, and so I listened to podcasts on my laptop. Frequently I would be dressed in my suit and tie, groomed to visit with senior citizens in their homes to get them signed up for a Medicare Part D drug plan, and I would drive to their homes while listening to the Dopecast or Psychedelic Salon from my laptop which sat open on the passenger's seat of my car.
Within a few months I purchased my first .mp3 player. It was a Zen Creative device that looked like this:
. It could only hold a few podcasts. After a while, I discovered that it had a built-in microphone that looked like nothing more than a pin hole in the body of the devise. Shortly thereafter, I took the devise to the office of a lawyer in Springdale, Arkansas and asked his opinion about a video that instructed young people how to resist being pressured by overbearing police officers into consenting to a search of their car. I bought a $14 headset microphone, downloaded Audacity, a free, open-source audio editing program, and assembled my first podcast. I signed up for a free account with PodOMatic and posted my first episode on Wednesday, October 1st, 2006.
The day I posted that first episode just happened to be a Wednesday, but I knew that I wanted to do a weekly show, so I posted a new episode every Wednesday thereafter for the next couple of years. I did take a week off in 2008 when I was on an ayahuasca retreat in the Peruvian Amazon, and I've taken a couple of Wednesday's off in the 9 years since I posted that first episode, but they were always announced in advance. In all that time, I never missed a self-imposed podcast deadline.
By the third episode I figured out how to record Skype calls, and then all the technical elements were in place. I have upgraded my equipment and my audio production chops since then, but by that third episode, I had the fundamentals under my belt to create several hundred podcast episodes.
Lorenzo Hagerty, the creator of the Psychedelic Salon Podcast, was my guest on episode 9: Athiestic Faith. Years later, he mentioned in an interview that my contacting him and inviting him to be a guest on the C-Realm gave him the encouragement he needed to continue podcasting at a time when he was feeling discouraged. Up till then he hadn't been sure anybody was listening to his show or getting anything out of it.
On October 10th, 2006, I heard Terry Gross interview Moises Naim, editor and publisher of Foreign Policy magazine, about his book book, Illicit: How Smugglers, Traffickers and Copycats Are Hijacking the Global Economy, which had just been released in paperback.
I was excited because I had read the book in hardcover the previous year and posted a favorable review to Amazon.com. The author contacted me via email to thank me for posting such a generous review, so I had both his email address and an "in" with him. I sent him an email reminding him of the review and asking him for an interview. He agreed. You can hear that conversation in C-Realm Podcast episode number 11: Illicit Maps, which also features a conversation with Rick Doblin, the founder of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies.
The Moises Naim episode was huge for me because it meant that I had interviewed someone I first heard on National Public Radio's most high-profile, long-form interview program. This contributed greatly to my sense that I'd really found my calling with this podcasting thing.
The fact that it felt like a career, took up a huge amount of my time, dominated my self-identification but did not pay was a deadly combination for my marriage. Particularly since the work I could do for pay, selling insurance, was something I hated and which also required self-motivation on my part. I had no boss, couldn't be fired for slacking off, and was receiving residual compensation for past work. Not enough to maintain a middle class lifestyle, but enough that it allowed me to crash and burn in financial slow motion. And all the while, I kept podcasting.
I'll spare you a detailed account of the next decade. Readers of this blog are likely familiar with the thematic arc of the podcast over that period as well as the fact that I moved from Arkansas, to Maryland, to Tennessee and finally to New York City during that time.
In 2012 I created a second weekly podcast called the C-Realm Vault which would only be available to paid subscribers. Finally, after 6 years, podcasting started to provide me with a reliably regular income. Not enough, but in conjunction with living rent-free with Olga, it allowed me to pay my child support, buy groceries, keep my truck serviced and fueled and continue my podcasting career.
On Wednesday, February 17th, 2016, I will post episode number 500 of the C-Realm Podcast. That will be the last episode in the series. Thereafter I will continue the weekly C-Realm Vault podcasts, and I will create a new free podcast that I will update once a month, but the free weekly podcasts will be a thing of the past.
On a recent trip to Arkansas I discussed cult groups, off mic, with C-Realm guest Dan Krotz. We noted that cults tend to put their members to work without pay. I don't remember if it was Dan or me who said that only damaged people are willing to work for free. People who are firm in their self-worth expect to be paid for their work, and that struck an immediate chord with me.
I have been pouring my heart and soul into the C-Realm Podcast for most a decade. It has been a vehicle for personal growth, put me in touch with an amazing network of people, and helped me establish a reputation as a patient and thoughtful interviewer. And the listeners have supported my efforts with their donations. I wasn't working for free exactly, but all told, I would have made more if I'd remained consistently employed in a minimum wage job over that period.
I announced my intention to end the C-Realm Podcast on the Friends of the C-Realm group on July 29th, and most of the responses I received were positive. A couple of people interpreted my scaling back from producing 8 podcasts a month to 5 as quitting and posting something to the effect of, "Nice knowing you." Most everyone else realized that I wouldn't lie fallow or retreat into a straight job, and several well-wishers expressed their anticipation at what I will do after I bring the free, weekly podcast to a close.
At present, my plan is to use the time I will free up by discontinuing the C-Realm Podcast to do more writing, get back to work on the C-Realm webcomic, and start video blogging on YouTube. I'll say more about my vlogging ambitions in another post.