Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #422: Behind the Scenes

Episode Date: March 31, 2017

This podcast is a look at the behind-the-scenes of the "Drive to Work" podcast. Very meta.

I'm pulling my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time to drive to work. Okay, so today's podcast is about today's podcast. So I did a podcast once before talking about drive to work. That was more of like a sort of history of how it had to come to be. I told the story of it starting and everything. So today I'm going to do a little bit different. I get a lot of questions about the podcast. There's a lot of people that don't understand certain elements of how I do it.

So today is behind the scenes of Drive to Work, where I'm going to talk about sort of different things I do, tell a few stories. But anyway, this is about, this is a Drive to Work about Drive to Work. Okay, so the number one question that people seem to have, so here's the thing that a lot of people seem to misunderstand is there's a lot of people that somehow believe that the driving to work is some sort of like flavorful excess I add. You know, like I'm in the studio with sound effects and, you know, superfluous excess I add.

You know, like, I'm in the studio with sound effects and, you know, but I swear, I am driving to work. If you actually listen to, like, I do a very good sound of doing the sound effects because I'm actually driving to work. And Rachel right now is actually in the car with me. So, the, and the other thing that people seem to misunderstand is my editing they always say hey how about doing something extra

can't you just edit out something and I'm like I do not edit the way that I do this podcast is this is like the lowest tech podcast possibly on the face of the earth I have my phone and I literally use the voice memos app on my iPhone and I have my headset and I turn it on. I start talking when I get to

the virtual school or work depending on what the day is. I turn it off and that's it. And if somehow I make a mistake between the start and the stop, then I will record it again. I'll do it again. There's no, it's not like I can make a small mistake and go, ah, I'll just edit that out. There's no editing out.

There's no, you know, if I mess something up, it just means, oh, I messed up for the day. Now, the interesting thing is the number one reason that I redo a podcast is not that I make a mistake. So the way it works is, in the morning I will do the podcast. Normally I do them on Monday and Tuesday.

But if I make a mistake or have to redo them, then I have time later in the week to do them. And so that is sort of key. But the number one reason that I'll redo a podcast is not because I make a mistake. Although, you know, here's how it works. In the morning, Monday and Tuesday morning, and then later in the week if need be, I do it on the way to work. And then on the way home, my drive from work, I listen to my podcast just to make sure that I'm happy with it.

Now, one of the things I do is when I listen to my podcast just to make sure that I'm happy with it. Now, one of the things I do is when I listen to my podcast, if I make a mistake, I count up the number of like just factual mistakes I make. And my rule of thumb is if I hear three factual mistakes, if I say three things like, oh, that's wrong, I usually will redo it. It depends, by the way. If I really, really like how the podcast went and I got a few facts wrong, I won't necessarily redo it. But one of the things that's very interesting is in the moment when you're trying to come up with something, you'll say something,

and then somehow when I listen to myself, I always know the right answer. No, no, no. Somehow without the pressure of doing it, it's a lot easier for me to remember what things are. But in the heat of doing something and trying to remember something, occasionally I'll just get the wrong thing. Now, if it's a multi-parter, sometimes what I'll do is I'll correct myself.

I'll be like, oh, I liked the first part, but in the second part I'll just mention that I made a mistake the previous time. I've done that a bunch of times. So okay, so I drive home and I listen to it. If I make enough mistakes, I'll redo it. Another thing sometimes is that the way the podcast works is I get up in the morning, and in the morning I have a bunch of different work-related things I do. One is, you know, while I get up and get ready.

One is I do my head-to-head, which is the competition where different things fight off against each other every day. I do that once every weekday. I make my comic, The Tales from the Pit. And I have to figure out what I'm doing for my podcast. I would say that 99% of podcasts that aren't multi-part podcasts. Like if I'm doing a multi-part, obviously, once I do part one, I know next I'm doing part two. But if you exclude the ones that are multi-part things, I mostly do not know what I'm doing on my podcast until the day I wake up.

Like, I usually that morning figure out what it is. Now, how much advanced planning do I do? A little, depending on the topic. What's common for me is if, like, sometimes I'll come up with my topic while I'm getting ready, and then while I'm getting the kids ready, I'll have a piece of paper where I'll just jot down ideas to like crystallize like, oh, what it is I want to say. Just to sort of give myself a little bit of organization. Other times I get in the car and I have nothing. Like one of the big reasons I'll re-record something is I'll get in the car with a topic I like.

And as I talk, I'm like, like oh I could have organized that better that's a very probably the number one reason that I redo things is I could um I figure out they're like oh oh now that I've sort of walked through it once and understand the things I want to say wow that was not the right way to order it I could order it better um so a lot of me redoing podcasts is just like like if I just had a little bit more time and could have planned them a little better, probably I would have to redo less podcasts. But as is evidenced by the fact that I'm doing this while I'm driving to work, I don't have a lot of free time to do that. So now it amazes me. It's funny because this is 400, this is is 400 and I don't know, 20 something.

It amazes me how many podcasts I've done and one of the challenges now doing my podcast is when I'm trying to come up with a topic I haven't done before, like I have to actually search. Sometimes I'll search online and go, did I do that topic? And I have messed up a couple times. I've redone

at least two or three topics where like I just forgot I had done it and I did it again. At least it's a slightly different take on the topic but still I try not to repeat topics. But as you start getting into the 400s it becomes trickier. The other thing that people may not believe is and I kind of don't believe this is I still to this date, something I keep asking is I want to get ratings to know how many people listen to each episode and to know which episodes are the popular ones.

I still don't have that data, which is mind-boggling to me. But I still don't have that data. So a lot of my guessing on what people like is based on feedback. Like when I put out the podcast, people will respond. Now, I have a rough idea of my numbers because I know I can look at the top charts. So if you go to podcasts, there's games. And under games, there's other games. That's where we end up. And Drive to Work is often top 10 in other games.

So I can look at other magic podcasts. And some of them, I know people make them and I can talk to them and get relative numbers. So I know my numbers roughly based on sort of other shows that do about what I do. But anyway, the show is low technology. Okay, so people ask me all the time, how often do I say something I shouldn't say and that's the reason that I had to to redo the podcast and the answer is that happens only a handful of times um you know in fact there's a there's a few podcasts where i ended

up printing the podcast where i i kind of mid saying something catch myself and realize that i'm playing in dangerous space and um, in fact, there was one podcast, I'm trying to remember what I'm saying, there was one podcast where I kind of hem and haw, and people actually figured out from my hemming and hawing what I might be implying to, and they were actually right. Like, there was an upcoming set that we hadn't quite said something about, and my hemming and hawing kind of,

oh, does he mean maybe this set would do that? And they correctly guessed that I, yeah, that's kind of what it meant. There is, the one I remember, and once again, I can't even tell you the full story yet because the thing I didn't say isn't yet public. But there was one podcast where I just happened to mention something that I was working on and just forgot that like, nah, it's not a public thing. No, we haven't announced that yet. That's not something

that people know. And so what happens is I'm driving. So what'll happen? So I, when I say I'm pulling on my driveway, one of my rules is I must actually be pulling out of the driveway. There's been a few times where I mess up, like, right away, and I literally will drive back to my driveway. Let's say I mess up and I'm just driving down my street. I'm like, ah, I will go back. I won't stop and just start on the street. I will go back to my driveway, because I want to say when I say I'm pulling out of my driveway, I am, in fact, pulling out of my driveway. That's the kind of standards I have.

And so there was one time where I was driving. So the elementary school where my kids used to go, and I go to the middle school and high school, but the elementary school is not far from my house, but just far enough that I'm not turning around and going back to start again. So if I messed up around the elementary school, usually I'm like, ah, okay, I guess I just messed up for today. And that is very frustrating because it's kind of the point where I'm like, oh, it's

far enough away that I can't start over, but so early that I'm like, wow. One of the secrets about the podcast is I actually, like, it is, there are days in which I don't have a podcast. Like, driving to work can be boring. I mean, I have a half-hour commute. And not particularly, you know, driving a half-hour, that's a long time. And when I'm not doing my podcast, I listen to music or whatever. But it is, work, like, it just seems to take longer to get to work when I'm not doing my podcast and I'm doing my podcast.

Cause when I'm doing my podcast, I'm in my podcast. I'm like, you know, like I, I really found my podcast. One of the nice perks of my podcast for me, um, is that it really fills my time that like, like for example, there's times I'm doing a podcast and like I get to Rachel's school and I'm like, whoa, whoa, I'm not, how am I here? I'm not, I'm not even remotely done yet. How did that go so fast? So I found that podcasting actually fills my time. So anyway, so I'm driving, I'm driving from my home. I'm going down the hill from where I live up on a hill. And I'm driving down the hill and I'm

basically at the elementary school. So I'm at the, you know, no turnaround point. And I say the name of the thing that I'm working on that doesn't, that's not public yet. And, like, I realize, it takes me half a second to realize what I've said. And then I look over and I see that I'm at the school. I'm like, I'm not going to turn around. And then I just start swearing. around and then I just start swearing. So somewhere deep in my recesses of my computer, I just start swearing because I was mad. A, because I had liked the startup that I, like,

I liked how it had been going so far. I thought I was doing a good job. And, you know, once I, like, I'm going to mess up. It's one thing to mess up, like, close to work. I'm like, okay, I messed up. I got to redo it. But whatever, I filled up most of my time. But it's like, oh, no, I'm not going to fill up my time at all. I ruined a perfectly good start. I'm at the point where I can't start over. And for whatever reason, I was just particularly, it upset me.

So I just started swearing. And it is the longest probably recording of me that I know of where I'm just swearing. I probably was swearing for like a minute because I was just mad. I was mad that I messed it up. And anyway, of all the infamous states. The other, I mean, usually, so here's the interesting thing is, when I mess up,

usually I just keep going. I mean, if the mess up's not a big mess up, if the mess up's like a tiny thing, I mean, sometimes, like, one of the things you'll notice,

for example, is that I mess up my outro, as they say. You know, I've gotten a rate to score. I've gotten to work. You know what that means. It's the end of drive to work.

So instead of talking magic, it's time to be making magic. I mess that up all the time. And people are like, wow, you never mess up the intro and you mess up the outro all the time. Like, no, no, no. I mess up the intro constantly.

I, you know, probably someday if I ever did edit, I have all sorts of messed up intros. You would think it's that hard to do the intro, right? I'm pulling my driveway, you know what that means. And I somehow managed to, I've messed that up. So I'm in my 420-something show.

I've probably messed that up 50 times. But the thing is, if I mess it up, I just stop, I pull forward, and I do it again. So you never hear me messing that up because it's right at the beginning, so I just start over if I mess it up. But my ending was like, okay, and the problem is,

once I, like, if I mess up my ending, but I like the show, I'm just like, okay, whatever, I messed up my ending, I'm not going to redo it if I like the show. But, uh, yeah, so, I'll be driving along, I, if I mess up, I usually try to work through it if I feel it's not too bad to mess up.

One of the tricks for you guys at home is, one of the ways you can tell sometimes I messed up is there's a little bit of a pause, or I keep talking, but I'm talking kind of very blankly because I'm trying to figure out in my head what I'm supposed to be saying. And, okay, so, probably, like, the actual number shows, oh, the other reason that I will, the other reason that I will stop shows is, and this, by the way, this is probably the number one reason why shows, I stop a show, is I'm

talking and I realize that either I have picked a topic that I just can't fill. Like sometimes I'll pick a topic, oh, and then I get into it and I'm like maybe 15 minutes in the topic. I'm like, I've said everything I've seen on that topic. What I have another, you know, 15 plus minutes to go. I, I got nothing else. And I'm like, okay, I'll just stop it because I'm like, I don't have 15 more minutes of material.

Or sometimes what will happen is I'll start doing a podcast and due to factors like traffic or whatever, where, you know, there's, it just takes, like, I have a long, like, I picked out a topic that I have 30 minutes on. And then due to traffic, I have like a 45-minute commute. And I'm like, wow, I just don't have that extra time. So there's a bunch of podcasts where, and the thing like, wow, I just don't have that extra time. So, um, there's a bunch of podcasts where, and the thing that happens is when I realize I'm abandoning the podcast, I don't just stop. I kind of like announced to like, for some reason I always finish my podcast. Like I explain on my tape why it's not going to happen. Um, and I don't know why I do that. Cause no one's ever going to

hear that. But, uh, like it's the kind of thing where I I don't know why I do that, because no one's ever going to hear that, but, like, it's the kind of thing where I'm like, oh, yeah, there's extra traffic today, and you know, yeah, this topic probably wasn't worthy of 45 minutes, and thanks to, you know, a car accident on the 405, I'm not going

to be able to do this today. So, ah, I guess I'll see you tomorrow, or whatever, and then I'll finish. I always do an outro for when I'm abandoning it. I don't, I don't know why. Um, the, uh, so the other thing is that, uh, sometimes one of the things that to me, like, well, I'll do a little bit of planning, meaning I'll do a little bit of structuring. Um, one of the things I enjoy about the podcast is I kind of have fun seeing where I go. Like one of the things, for those who don't know my background, in college, for example, I started and was in an improvisational troupe.

That's where you get up on stage, you have the audience give you suggestions, and you make up things on the spot based on the audience's suggestions. And the audience knows it's being made up because you're using their suggestions. So obviously you couldn't have prepared the material. And I've done a bunch of things like that where I sort of, I enjoy, like one of the stories I tell, I think I tell this in one of my columns, is when I was planning my wedding, I kept putting off writing my vows because I felt like I wanted the vows to sort of have meaning,

and I think I felt like if I wrote them and practiced them, they would feel wrote and less from the heart, so I didn't write my vows. I actually did them on the spot at the wedding, which most people would not do, but a little insight into me that I kind of enjoy the liveness of things. One of the reasons I enjoy this podcast is I enjoy picking a topic and then kind of see

where I'm going. I mean, not that I don't plan or not that I don't have a little bit of structure into it, because I will, and sometimes the reason I redo it is the structure. But it is always fun to see what kind of things end up. Like today, I knew I was going to talk about my podcast, and I had a few ideas of stuff I might want to mention. But I just figured, where is it going to go? What can we talk about? Oh, so another big one was guests.

So one of my goals is I like having guests. If I could have guests all the time, I would have guests all the time. Guests are great. The problem is because I'm literally driving to work, it is hard to get guests. So far, let's see, what guests have I had? So Macavata used to live very close to me, now lives less close to me, although still in the same city. So Matt has driven me a bunch of times.

And Matt's the only one where he legitimately needed a ride to work. Like, I often will take Matt to work. And I sort of said to Matt, I go, okay, I'm doing a podcast. Do you want to do this podcast with me? And Matt said, oh, sure. And then he enjoyed it. And so usually when I take him to work, I'm like, do you want to do it? He and I And Matt said, oh, sure. And then he enjoyed it. And so usually when I take him to work, I'm like, do you want to do,

you know, because he and I don't, we don't write in all that much. So most of the time when he and I go to work, we'll do a podcast. Obviously, if you haven't heard him for a while, that just means I haven't given him

a ride for a while. Like, Matt hasn't been on the show for a while just because I literally have not given him, like, it might be about a year. I haven't given him a ride in a while also on my show

Ethan Fleischer drove to my house one time to do the show and Melissa DeToro she drove two times to my house to do shows and one of the things I'll do sometimes when I have guests is I'll do to and from work just to get more podcasts with them. One of the reasons guests are so awesome, by the way, is

one of the strains of doing the show is there's only so much I know. I'm one man. And I have a wealth of information. I've worked on magic a long time. So I have a lot of stories about magic. It's been my life for coming up in 22 years. But the cool thing about having a guest is that I can then just do something that, like, I can lean on them to do material that they know. Like, that's one of the things I say to my guests when we pick topics is, I go, pick something you know.

Pick something you'll have fun talking about because, you know, I would much rather lean on somebody and their knowledge and things that I wouldn't. What I want to do is make a podcast I wouldn't make because, you know, let's make something I wouldn't make. Now, numerous people, by the way, keep telling me they want to do my podcast. And I'm like, okay, drive my house.

You can do my podcast. I have a list, actually. I have like, there's like 10 people who have all said they want to do my podcast. And all of them have a standing invitation. In fact, I'll say this to any R&D people that are listening now or any Wizards people listening now. Standing invitation.

You want to drive to my house, we will do a podcast. In fact, we'll do two podcasts because we'll do one driving home. And be aware, I live, like I said, I'm half an hour away. I'm a bit away. So for most people, like, it's a trek to get to me. So the people that have done it, you know, hats off. Now, the other people that have done podcasts have been my dad, my mom, and Rachel, my oldest daughter. I think what happened there was, first off, my dad, we had to do something where I was driving him and I think he needed a car or something.

And so I said to him, hey, we're going to drive to work together. Do you want to do this podcast? And he said, sure. And he was like, oh, sure, let's try it. And it ended up being really nice and people liked it a lot. And so my mom, my parents got divorced long ago, I guess had heard that I'd done with my dad. And so my mom, so what happened was,

my mom gets in the car, and I say to my mom, there's a bunch of rules and things that I say about, you know, we're doing a podcast, things to keep in mind. And one of the things I say is, I will list some things you're not supposed to do. Just some things, some general rules of things. You know, some of them are simple like, you know, no swearing or sometimes there's, you know, you can't say things that aren't public knowledge. And there's a bunch of rules of things you can't say. So I get my mom in the car and

during the course of that drive, she breaks, like, I don't know, three or four of the rules I had said, and a couple of them she broke multiple times, and we get to work, and she's like, how was that? I go, yeah, I can't use that, Mom. So on a different time, on a different visit, we did it again, and it worked, so I did her thing. And then Rachel's funny, because Rachel started this new school, and I ended up, so now I have to drive her to school. And I realize, I mean, most of the time what happens is,

Rachel, in fact, right now, she sits on her, she has her phone, she puts her earpiece in, she's listening to music. If you listen real closely, sometimes she plays it loud enough that you can hear her in the background, if you listen closely. Also, on a few occasions, at least one recently, she's gotten a phone call, usually from my wife, and she's talking while I'm on the phone. She's while I'm doing the podcast.

You can hear her talking in the background. Usually it's from my wife because my wife, when I'm podcasting, I have to turn off. One of the things is the very first time I ever the very first time the second time I ever did a podcast the very first one I ever did was Tempest that was when I was testing it out and seeing if it worked but the first time I was doing it

or the second time I was doing it I'm in the middle of it I'm just saying witty fun things and the phone rings it's my wife and I'm like oh that's the problem with recording on your phone if somebody calls you it shuts off

so that you can talk to the person so what I do now is I put in what's called airplane mode so someone can't call me. So if my wife needs to get a hold of me, now she'll get a hold of Rachel because Rachel's in the car. But anyway, Rachel tends to say to herself, but everyone's, well, it's fun. It's like, okay, you know, I've done a bunch of and i i think rachel has fun being on the podcast you know she doesn't do it all the time but uh um i've done a couple i did one where i sort of like meet my daughter and then i did one where i was trying to demonstrate how non-magic players like how easy it is to not understand what words mean so i used her for that uh and then we do replies with rachel which is the follow-up on Mailbag with Matt, where I like doing mailbag columns.

The problem is because I'm driving, I can't read. So I need somebody else to be able to read the things to me. So one of the things that's become funny is because Rachel does it with me, we get a lot of questions, like personal family questions that people are trying to get Rachel to answer. Like, what's your dad like? Whatever. Can he cook on the grill?

Whatever weird questions they ask. And so the replies with Rachel. And the thing is, Rachel gets to pick the questions. And so she has a tendency to pick the more personal questions just because she knows the answer to them. And then the magic questions she'll sometimes skip. And I always have to, like, okay, come on. We need some magic. This is a magic podcast.

You have to give me some of the magic questions. Oh'll sometimes skip. I always have to say, okay, come on, this is a magic podcast. You have to give me some of the magic questions. Oh, here's another interesting story. So when I first started doing the podcast with somebody else, I still just had the headset and the idea was, well, you can hear Matt. But the problem was, I was loud and Matt was quiet.

And it doesn't make matters better that I'm louder than Matt. So eventually what I figured out was was I was loud and Matt was quiet. And it doesn't make matters better that I'm louder than Matt. And so eventually what I figured out was the key was to give Matt his own microphone or give my guests their own microphone. And the answer there was

I finally figured out is, oh, I could do a splitter on my phone, meaning that I could split the output. I think the reason the splitters exist is so two people can listen to music, but it also allows you to be able to hook in a microphone. So now I have the technology that when I have a guest, we both put on headsets and I plug them in. And that's why the audio, I don't know if you noticed from the old shows, but the audio when I have a guest is much better. Now I did, I came up with the idea

for a while that it might be fun to call people and do interviews while I'm driving, calling, talking to people the problem is the phone doesn't let you do that for, you know, I guess recording conversations is a big no-no so if it would let me do that I would love to do, like, you know, phone-in things

I thought that would be a cool way to sort of interview people that it would be hard to get them to the car, but people that could at least, you know, be at their desk at a certain time or something, I could call them. If anybody knows how to make that happen, I've not figured out how to do that. If I could do that, that would open up the show

and I would do more phone interviews. The other thing that I've been trying to do with the show is I've been trying to mix up the kind of podcasts I do for a couple reasons. One is just different people like different things. I like to sort of, you know, be able to give people different kinds of stuff. The other reason is I'm trying, like, I have to fill up so many shows that, like, just having lots of different content is good. Now, remember, when I first started the show, what I originally thought the podcast was going to be was just me talking about set designs.

If you go back and look at the first, I don't know, like 10 episodes, they're all just set designs. Like, oh, let's talk about Ravnica. Let's talk about Tempest. It's just me sharing stories. And then I quickly realized that, and remember when I first started the podcast, I was doing it once per week.

And then what happened was I kind of was enjoying doing them, so I just did them more often and I started stockpiling them. And then it got to a point where I was so far ahead that I decided just to, I did a month where I put up two as a special like two for one month or something, just like I was trying to catch up. And then what I realized was that I was doing enough of them that doing two a week I wasn't catching up and so I'm like oh I can just do two a week so I changed it to two a week um uh the other thing that it's interesting by the way is the way the process works is on Fridays I get sent the links for the book. So I post my, for those who don't know this,

I post my Drive to Work podcast on Friday on my Twitter, on my Tumblr, and on my Google+. And so if you want to hear my podcast as soon as possible, it's there. It's also posted to iTunes, if you are registered on iTunes. That all gets posted on Friday. And then the following Monday, I always post it in my column. So for those of you that listen

to my column that want it to be earlier, if you listen to my social media, I actually put it out three days earlier on Friday rather than Monday. And usually because it happens on Friday, if there's a mistake with it, if I find out right away, I can call in. But if I don't find out until, like, Friday night, I have to wait until Monday until the technical people are in to help me fix whatever problem it is. Sometimes things get mislabeled or something. Or stuff on iTunes sometimes will get posted slightly incorrect.

Or sometimes there's a bad link because it's missing a letter or something. But anyway, if you want it earlier, that's the way to do it. Also, it's on iTunes if you registered iTunes. I think iTunes gets it on Fridays as well.

The other thing I often get asked is people often, so I keep a list, in my phone, I have a list of topics people have requested. So the reason why

I might not do a topic, there are a bunch of topics that are there here's the reason the number one reason I won't do a topic is I don't know if I have 30 minutes like and not even 30 minutes I kind of need to have 30 minutes with the ability to stretch a little bit

if I need to because there's traffic meaning it's ideal if my topic is something that I could talk 45 minutes if I had to although I will take things that I have 30 minutes of material knowing that I'll just stretch a little bit if I have to. Although some of them, if it gets really long, I have to abandon. Another reason I might not do a topic is there's some topics that it is hard for me to talk about. Like when I do my column, I can do all the

research I need. Like if I'm going to talk about it. I can look it up. There are some columns where I need to do the research to make sure I have the facts right. Eventually, sometimes I'll get to do the research. There are certain topics where I know I've been wanting to do them for a while and finally I get a little chance to do a little bit of research so that I can get the facts correct.

Also, sometimes there's things in which there are stories that are delicate there are stories that I might be able to pull off in my column because I can take the time and nuance to sort of tell the story correct where off the top of my head one of the things I'm trying to do is I want this to feel personal I'm a big person. There's a thing when we study communication, it's called the medium is the message,

from a guy named Marshall McLuhan, talking about how the kind of story you tell is influenced by the kind of medium you have. Meaning that what a movie is, and, like, part of the experience of a movie are the factors of what make a movie is and like part of the experience of a movie are the factors of what make a movie and that that influences like how you interpret a movie is different than how you interpret a tv show because a movie is just a different experience than a tv show you know movie you're in a dark room with a giant screen surrounded by an audience where tv you're most likely at home with the lights on and

often doing something in addition to watching the TV. It's just a different experience. So one of the things I've been trying to do is I have a bunch of different ways to interact with the public. And I try to maximize each one so that each one is like, for example, my column

is really good at being precise. Because I get to write it, I get to rewrite it. You know, I get to, you know, have a very, like, if I want to explain something, that's just the place to do it. You know, if I want to talk history in a more technical sense, that's the better place to do it. You know, likewise, like, if I'm on my blog, my blog is a little more personal. But it's give and take because I'm responding to people. And what I try to do is answer questions that I know will get more questions so that I can sort of, you know, work off themes for the day and stuff like that.

Um, you know, when I look at stuff like, um, my comic, for example, that's me doing more one liners and trying to make fun of things. And that's a little more humor oriented. Um, even something like, um, head to head, i'm trying to sort of you know take different things and see how people think about them you know like each one has its own role so the role of my podcast is i like i want you to get a sense of me like this is me unfiltered this is me not not thinking you know like everything else i do like like, even a tweet. Like, I'll write it, and then I'll think about it.

Do I want to post that tweet? Do I want to rewrite the tweet? Is that tweet right? You know, I'll think about it. And this is me unfiltered. This is me, I mean, sometimes I'm too unfiltered, and you guys don't hear me. But it is me talking as, like, if you want to get a real sense of what I'm like, the podcast is what I'm like. Because, look, I'm just talking.

This is me talking. And, I mean, obviously, I'm doing professional stuff, but I'm, you know, this is the most, if you want to get a sense of how my brain works, this is how my brain works. I'm just talking to you guys. And, you know, my goal of this is I want my podcast to sound like you are sitting next to me in the seat and I'm like,

eh, we're just talking while we're driving to work. That's kind of the mood that I want. I'm like, you know, hey, fellow passenger, you know, did you, you ever heard the story about, you know, you ever heard the story about the split cars? You go, yes, I've heard that 20 times. And I want to, you know, I want to have that sort of conversational tone.

And so a lot of times the funny thing is the reason that, like, the podcasts that I'm happiest with are the ones where I feel like I hit my topic, I said things I wanted to say, I feel happy with my presentation, and it had the tone that I wanted. one of the things that happens is, and this is another way where I abandon something, is sometimes I'm doing the podcast, and I'm like, it's just clear to me that I'm not into it. It's clear to me that, like, maybe I have the material, but I just, I'm not making compelling content.

Like, there are a bunch of things. So I think I talk about, like, oh, I have a topic I tried, and if I fail, then I redo it the next day. Sometimes I give up on it. I try it, and I'm like, like, oh, I have a topic, I try it, and if I fail, then I redo it the next day. Sometimes I give up on it. I try it and I'm like, eh, eh. It might not be that it's not enough content. It also might just be, ah, I'm not compelling. I'm not excited.

Like, one of the things I want to do is I want to be exciting. Like, I have a pretty high energy level, I've noticed. I want to talk about things I'm excited to talk about. I want to talk about things that make me go, oh, listen to this. And when I try to avoid it, it's like, okay, I guess, what else can I talk about? And every once in a while, I'll do podcasts where I get on topics where I thought it'd be a good topic,

and maybe I have five or ten really good minutes, and then maybe I have five or ten stretch minutes, and then I'm like, I bore myself. In fact, I have a few podcasts where I start getting like, you can tell that I'm entertaining myself when I do this podcast because I'll be talking, like sometimes I talk in my podcast and that I switch out of I'm in podcast mode to me explaining in podcast mode why this podcast won't work. Like sometimes things are going and it's boring and I'm like,

okay, that is boring. That is boring, Mark. I don't think they want to hear this. In fact, I don't think they're going to hear it. You know what? They're not going to hear it because this was a bad podcast. I'll do stuff like that. There's a lot of editorializing. That's when I know that part of this

is me entertaining myself because there's really no reason for me to, in podcast mode, explain why there's not going to be a podcast which nobody but me is going to hear it.

But I do entertain myself as such. And the other fun thing for me is, one of the things that I love, sometimes you tell me this happens,

is where I plot things out and I'm talking and I remember something that I didn't plot out but like it's perfect and I get excited because I'm like, oh, that's really, really good.

And the other thing that I love to do, by the way, and I don't do this all the time, but I love to get to topics that like, when you hear me excited, especially when I get

extra excited, I'm honestly extra excited. I don't fake excitement. I don't even need to fake excitement. I'm easily excited. And so I, some of my favorite podcasts are the ones where I just got really into it.

One of my favorite podcasts of all time was, there was one podcast where I was talking about the future and I was just really excited because we had all sorts of cool stuff coming. I mean, we always have lots of cool stuff coming. And I just went off on this little rant for like a minute about how awesome the future was and how much exciting things. And a whole bunch of people

i remember like clipped it and stuff and just it was just me being super emotional how excited i was it was just a it was just a nice little clip of energy of like wow you should be excited about magic look how excited mark is about what's coming um i i was just i don't know i just you know get lightning in a bottle we're just i i just was really excited and I captured it and it was a neat thing. So those are the kind of moments that I really enjoy. But anyway, I'm now driving up to Rachel's school.

So I hope that today, see, the funny thing is after this is done, I'm going to have to listen to this. This is a weird one where I have to listen to it to figure out did I like it or didn't I like it.

I mean, obviously, if you're hearing it, I liked it. But this is the kind of podcast where I kind of meander and talk about a bunch of things, have a few stories. I'm like,

was that good enough? You know, so I will listen to this where I kind of meander and talk about a bunch of things, have a few stories. I'm like, was that good enough? You know, so I will listen to this later today to figure it out. But if you're hearing it, I liked it. So anyway, um, I'm now here. So, uh, instead of talking magic and talking right to work, it's time for me to be making magic. So I'll see you guys next time. Bye-bye.