The Greatest Generation - What if Jambi Box, but Orange? (Q&A with Ben and Adam)

Episode Date: March 12, 2025

When MaxFun Drive is around the corner and the Friends of DeSoto have questions, Ben and Adam sit down with producer Wynde to see what answers they can find. But when all of the accessories are the same color and video game lines get drawn in the sand, nostalgia and redundancy keep the pod sausage factory humming. Which aircraft probably costs extra in Microsoft Flight Simulator? What’s the most tedious way to play Scrabble? Who can fill in the gaps left by dinger pills? It’s the episode that’s not going to explain big dirty ring.Support the production of The Greatest GenerationGet a thing at podshop.biz!Sign up for our mailing list!Follow The Game of Buttholes: The Will of the Riker - Quantum LeapThe Greatest Generation is produced by Wynde PriddySocial media is managed by Rob Adler and Bill TilleyMusic by Adam Ragusea & Dark MateriaFriends of DeSoto for: Labor | Democracy | JusticeDiscuss the show using the hashtag #GreatestGen and find us on social media:YouTube | Facebook | X | Instagram | TikTok | Mastodon | Bluesky | ThreadsAnd check out these online communities run by FODs: Reddit | USS Hood Discord | Facebook group | Wikia | FriendsOfDeSoto.social

Here's to the finest crew in Starfleet. Engage. Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the U.S.S. Enterprise. Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the U.S.S. Enterprise. Welcome to the Greatest Generation. It's a Star Trek podcast by a couple of guys who are a little bit embarrassed to have a

Star Trek podcast. My name is Windy Pretty. I'm the producer. I'm Ben Harrison, I'm one of the embarrassed ones. I'm Adam Pranica, how about that? First time it's been kicked off by someone who's not me and Ben. I can't believe it.

Hey, Windy, way to read the cue cards. Yeah, thanks. It said go fuck yourself San Diego, but I just plowed through with the right opening. I appreciate that. You're embarrassed too, right? A little bit, yeah. What do you tell people when you're at a social function

and someone asks you what you do for a living? I usually start with podcast producer, and if they ask for more info my embarrassment grows. Yeah that could be a nice way to shut the conversation down just podcast producer and nobody wants any further information after that right? Yeah they're like oh so you're unhoused okay I see. If they say something like oh my grandson listens to podcasts you know they say something like, oh, my grandson listens to podcasts. You know, the conversation ends right there. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Ha, ha, ha, ha. Well, thank you for bringing us in in such style. And thank you for joining us for this special Q&A bonus episode. Yeah, my pleasure. We got a lot of great questions. A bonus episode that's going to be in the main feed, which I'm really excited about

in the run up to the Max Fun Drive. And just a quick reminder up top that we are a listener-supported show, and all of this is possible because of you. So we really appreciate the folks who already support and look forward to welcoming the legions of folks that are about to start supporting. Yeah, we release bonus episodes every month. This is just an example of one of the kinds that we tend to do.

Yeah, so we got a whole bunch of questions from Reddit and then we have a lot of questions from prior call-outs from Q&A episodes in years past. So do you wanna jump in? Oh, we're being called out? Uh-oh. We edited out all of the questions that were like not so much a question, more of a comment. Stop doing the show.

Because I'm looking at the spreadsheet and I don't see those in here like they usually are. Nice. It's good to have a capable editor like Wendy. Yeah. That's what I'm here for. The first duty of every Starfleet officer is to look through scientific truth or historical truth or personal truth. for. All right, we'll start with Pantsless Kirk from Reddit, which is a username I enjoy. Great handle.

They say, hi, Team Uxbridge Shimoda, if Ben and Adam were having action figures made of them as Star Trek extras, which company or style, which era of uniform, and most importantly, which accessories would they want to have included? Oh man, this is a fantastic question. Yeah, good question, Pancilus Kirk. I keep looking to see if a Benjar Prannik action figure has been made available and nothing comes back. It seems like every other character in Star Wars Skeleton

Crew has an action figure except for the one, the breakout character, like the one that is as popular as baby Yoda for some reason. I mean, maybe it's a scarcity mindset and when they do launch it, it will be, you know, like trying to order a PS5 on launch day and like, it'll be like impossible to get your hands on one. But I mean, that's the one I'm really hoping for, because I feel like that one's realistic.

But so the question is basically, our likeness on an action figure in a box, which era of action figure, what uniform, and what accessories? Okay. There's a lot to think about. My mind is going in a pretty particular direction, and what accessories. Okay, this is a lot to think about. My mind is going in a pretty particular direction, which is, I think it's maybe pre-Kenner.

I'm not sure who was making these, but there's a version of the Star Trek, the next generation action figures that are like a slightly smaller scale than the main ones that we get sent in all the time. And they're like less articulated and they're in the back zip, like season one uniform with the piping at the collar. And I feel like that might be the action figure style I want to be. This one, right?

There he is. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Adam is holding up a, you know, a Riker that looks like the water pressure in his sonic shower is a little bit reduced. Low flow. Well, I don't like the sound of that. You may also notice a drawn-on beard. Yeah. Using a Sharpie.

This was sent to us from a viewer. Beautiful. He lives in my plant now. Avoiding Echo Papa's 607. Yeah. I love that outcast song. He lives in my plant. Well, okay. So I think that's the era I want.

And, uh, I can't think of a bet. I don't know. Maybe it's like Ben Harrison as Mr. Hom or something. Cause listen, there is one good accessory that they ever included in these in my opinion, because all of the action figures ever came with a, you know, like the com badge for them to stand on,

either a trading card or briefly a POG, but not called a POG because they didn't own the rights to the three letters P, O, and G. They don't have the rights to pineapple, orange, or guava. But then they came, the like actual plastic accessories were always like molded from one color of plastic. So you'd have a purple phaser and a purple tricorder. Ooh, those are nice. But the one really good accessory they ever put out

was the gift box that beams onto the transporter pad and yells, rejoice, when it is announced that Deanna Troy will be married this day. Odd looking. What if Jambi box, but orange? Yeah. They couldn't afford to hit that with a little bit of silver spray paint,

so it came in orange. But that only makes it more hilarious to me. So I want to come with that. All right. And also it kind of looks like Baron Harkonnen a little bit. Like the face is not J, it's Baron Hart Conan. Coming out of the goo. Gonna need a bigger box for Baron Hart Conan.

Definitely. What about you, Adam? Every time I walk around the merch floor at Star Trek Las Vegas, I am just stopped in my tracks by that X-06 booth with the figurines that like, they say they're museum quality, but what that really is is like uncanny valley quality. Like they are, they are so, so lifelike.

It almost seems like, like these mini actors are trapped in glass in this display. I just think that they're like both shockingly good and just shocking generally with what they put out. Shockingly expensive also. And that's really the point of my choice is like I want any figurine that I am to be like $300. So the X06 figurine, which would be like, I don't know. I don't know what eight inches is, like that tall. I'm thinking, Wendy, you're nodding your head no.

There's no way we could possibly know. No one knows how tall that is. So I would be like one of the big action figures. Like some parents might call them dolls mistakenly. That's how big I would be as an action figure. And also monster maroonoon giant high back jacket uniform with the enormous pockets. That's what I'd want to be wearing. That's a great look.

Damn. That is an awesome call. Wendy, do you have an answer to this question? Are you about that action figure life? I don't think I am. I don't think I am. I'm going to leave the action figuring to you guys. You can't choose no action figure. You must choose. Okay, then I need to be like at a science station, you know, like turned away, working on the science station.

Looking into that like shoe box that you modify to observe the solar eclipse. I'll look into the box, yeah. Okay. Oh, what's in the box? Okay, next question. This is from Boiled Stegosaur. And this was collected on Reddit a while back.

So they would like to know more about your decision to commit to embarrassment full-time and turn the pod into a paid gig. Was it scary and how did you make the decision? Man, it didn't really feel like a decision in many ways, you know? Like I think it was like kind of a slow motion lifestyle takeover. At least in my memory of it. Like I think that I, my life was really changing a lot at the time that we started the show also, like, I think I had a job interview probably right after the Ars Technica piece came out. And it was like the only time I've ever gotten a job where I had to like go to an office every day from nine to five. And like I mentioned that I

had a Star Trek podcast and the job interview because it was like- Oh my God. Why? What? Well, they were basically like- Do you have any terrible secrets that you'd like to tell us before we do something like, I don't know, Google you? Why should we not hire you? Yeah.

It was, we were in the post-its going back and forth across the table phase of this thing, and one of the things about it was this is a media company, and so part of my employment contract was that they were going to own my creative output while I worked for them. And I said, uh, problem about that. You know, Ars Technica just wrote an article about this thing that I'm doing with my buddy Adam.

And so I had like a separate, there was like a covenant on my contract that carved out any Star Trek related podcast content as something that I retained ownership of. And that job lasted for like 11 months or something. And then, you know, the company, which in retrospect was like almost ludicrously shady, you know, eliminated the entire floor of people that I worked with. So, you know, it was kind of over and then I didn't have that many like clients left over after that to like, you

know, cultivate freelance work with, which had been my entire professional life up until that point. So I did like a few more jobs here and there and it was fine, but it was like, you know, like the show is starting to be enough work that I kind of would rather not try to like work in freelance gigs around the side. And I mean, that was like 2017 and that's when our LLC was formed. So it was kind of no looking back at that point. And I felt very lucky that the show

kind of rose up to catch me as I was falling out of the video production world. Catch you with so, so much work. Yeah. Because that's the thing I think I'm sure as the podcast grew, it became a bigger and bigger project for you guys. And then Greatest Discovery started and it was just like... Yeah. I mean, Adam and I constantly talk about what a crazy choice it was in the early days

for us to do two episodes of The Greatest Generation every week, given that we were both very, very full time at other shit at the time. Adam, what was your thought process about it? It was at a time when I was already doing freelance work full-time. And so it just became like another client to me. And then eventually it became the client

that needed more of my time and paid me more regularly than my other freelance work. And eventually it just like became the one freelance client I had. So like Ben said, it really did kind of make the case for itself, but I don't feel like I chose it in a way that Ben also described as a part of his story. Like it just became the noisiest work that I do.

And then I stopped picking up the phone for freelance clients. And you know, it's funny, you stop picking up the phone, when you're me, you stop picking up the phone after a couple of weeks and it never rings again. So that transition was fairly abrupt. Yeah, yeah. We moved to Los Angeles right around the time that was sort of becoming full-time for us.

And yeah, like the couple of times I did get a freelance gig after moving to LA, it felt like stressful and like I was taking time away from my job to do this in a way where it was like, that was like a real like tone shift because my job had always been freelance. So like making a podcast was the thing that I was doing in my funzy free time. And I appreciated those freelance gigs when I got them because money was real fucking tight when we first moved to LA. But yeah, at a certain point, they felt like not worth the stress that they were putting me through, you know?

Even before we got attention or like professionalized, you know, like as a business, I never treated this like a hobby, even when we presumed that we were gonna do episodes that no one listened to. Like, I think the approach in my mind was always like, do the best you can and see what happens. So in my mind, to treat it like a freelance gig was sincere. This was a job and it always has been.

That's fair. It's just a fun job. Yeah. Just better than other jobs. Most of the time it's fun. Yeah, that's true. Okay, I've got a two-headed question here, two FODs, one question basically. So Squonk from Reddit says, do you guys miss any of the previous series or the characters now that some time has passed since you reviewed them.

And then related question, Joshua Ridgeway asked, what audio drops do you miss not being used from prior series? Oh man. Yeah, it was actually, I had a cup of coffee with a friend this morning and he was asking, like, what do you do when you run out of Star Trek? And I was like, I mean, we just go back to the beginning

and watch more Star Trek, I think. I don't know, man. Why are you asking so many questions? Yeah. Are you a cop or something? Yeah. If you're a cop, you have to tell me. I definitely look forward to the loop back in a way

that I think is a little fucked up. But I think that a lot of Star Trek fans, part of the fun of Star a way that I think is a little fucked up. But I think that like a lot of Star Trek fans, like part of the fun of Star Trek is that it's always there for you and you can always go back to it and get different things out of it. Like when we watched TNG through the first time on the show, I felt like I was experiencing it in this whole new way that was really exciting because it was part of like a new exciting chapter in my creative professional life.

But I think revisiting it is something I really look forward to. Drop-wise, Admiral Necheyev drop got made on the last episode that Admiral Necheyev appeared, and it's one of my favorite stupid ass drops. I feel like the bits of audio that came together to make it are such a funny little conversation with each other that, yeah, I'm always down to listen to that one. And Valerian canopies? It's Admiral LeChave. Are those Valerian canopies? Admiral LeChave. Well, canopies my ass.

That's a Ritz-Backer and chopped liver. Yeah, I mean, you can't miss something if it doesn't leave. And I find myself watching old episodes of Star Trek fairly often. It's on syndication all the time. So I'm watching movies from time to time and I'm watching TNG from time to time in a way that means that it's never far out of my consciousness. But yeah, I look forward to circling back to the beginning,

10 years from now or whatever. There's not that much enterprise, thank God. Well, I mean, there's TOS before that, right? We gotta do the big circle. We gotta, I think, yeah. OhOS before that, right? We gotta do the big circle. We gotta, I think, yeah. Oh, wow. That's big news. You heard it here.

Yeah, so there's that, and then there's back to the beginning. And yeah, what was the other question about, drops? Drops, yeah, is there a drop you miss? Drop, drop from the past. I'll always love the Owl My Nose drop, but the thing about that one is that it's so specific to one episode that I think was a bonus episode to begin with,

that it is totally inscrutable to anyone who ever hears it in a mainline episode. Like when people put quarters in the drop machine for P1s and it gets played in a mainline, I don't think anyone understands what that is or what it refers to. That's what makes it special to me, yeah. Well, how do you expect me to type? And with your fingers.

With my nose? Would have definite advantages. Oh, it's typing everything I'm saying. And with your fingers. And with my nose? They'll destroy you. Do you see that? With my nose?

Stop it! Everything you have done, stop with your fingers. Stop with your fingers. How do you expect me to type with my nose? Stop. Stop it! Stop it! You thought you could handle it, so you can't.

That does it, I quit! That's fun. But I love the metamorphosis, the evolution of the Harry Kim drop over the years. Yeah. And the way it's picked up more bits and then changed characters. When that popped back up recently. For Mayweather. For Mayweather.

For Mayweather. I was so happy to hear it. And I hope we keep adding stuff to the Mayweather version in that same way, because it's striking how there tends to be that kind of character on every Star Trek show. And Mayweather is our shot with him for Enterprise. It's just great. Great job with that, Wendy. Can't keep his shirt on. The hunk that the show doesn't understand is a hunk. Yeah.

Yeah. It's like being back in the womb. Who are you? Ensign Travis Mayweather. Parents must be very proud. When I was a kid, we called it the sweet spot. Who are you? I'm the helmsman.

I guess growing up a boomer has its advantages. And your mom? Very proud. That's true. It takes practice. Other than keeping Ensign Mayweather up at night, I'm the helmsman. I'm the helmsman. I'm the helmsman. I'm the helmsman. I'm the helmsman. I'm the helmsman. I guess growing up a boomer has its advantages. And your mom very proud. That's true.

Takes practice. Other than keeping Nance and Mayweather up at night, I'm not sure what we expect to accomplish here. Yeah, I think my favorite older one that I would love to hear more often is probably, well, some people put a quarter in the drop machine and play the Maggie O'Cower in. That one's so good. Would you like to hold my hand?

Would you like to kiss me? Well, good morning, boys. The spirits have turned her into a cow. I'm not quite myself today. What kind of a girl do you think I am? Bitch, I'm a cowgirl. I was walking around town with nothing but a bell around my neck.

Everyone was staring at me. with nothing but a bell around my neck. Everyone was staring at me. Here's your doll. Ah! That one gets me every time. You're frequently telling me and Ben that like, I don't get your references sometimes, like especially with music.

That was one where I had to ask you, like there's actually a song, like that where the vocalist says that they're a cow. What are you, where did you even find that? And then when you hit me to the song, I was like, this is a modern song, this just came out. How is there a cow song right now? I thought you were a Doja Cat enthusiast, no?

I'm not, no, I was unfamiliar, but I am now. Yeah, I think that was me that was bringing most of the Doja Cat energy to the show. That checks out. Question about bonus content, and I guess the game of buttholes as well. So this is from Kyle McCowen on Twitter. He's a cow, bitch. Which of the Bocos has been the most fun to make? And second question, what is your actual favorite square

in the game of Buttholes? Do you got a favorite square? I think my favorite one just happened. It was the slash fiction, Marin. Like I have missed writing that stuff for our touring shows. And I was like, oh, that was neat. That was neat that one time I did that. And when we rolled and hit that square,

I was like, I don't know if I still have this gear. Like, I don't know if I remember how to do it. And then like, as soon as I started writing it, I was like, I know how to do this. This is like, I get into a car accident and suddenly I can speak a foreign language for some reason. It just seemed like a medical mystery that as soon as we hit this square, I was activated

to write slash fiction and there it was. I have to say, I am more scared of that square than I am the one where we have to read bad reviews because I don't know how I could possibly match your talents when it comes to the combination of comedy and erotica. All you need is a great appetite for simile. Just all the similes. I think that's what makes it really interesting to consider, Ben. I can't wait until we roll that square for you because I would love to hear a Benjamin R. Harrison version

of that. I'm terrified of that. Well, we'll see. We'll see if it happens. Wendy, you had to edit that. Did you think about quitting? Did you have to take a break partway through? Like when you took the job,

I don't think you had any expectation that you'd have to do that. There have been a lot of surprises over the last three years. You're so diplomatic. But the nice thing about, you know, I think people would think that editing a podcast would get very redundant. But the nice thing about working with you guys is that it's always some fresh bullshit. Mm. Yeah. So, you know, and I get to hear the show first, so that's the bonus for me.

On some episodes, even before me and Ben. What are the squares on the Game of Buttholes? What's my favorite square? There's all the drinking ones, and then there's like the art project. I've been having a lot of fun with the Naomi Wildman art project square. You're a much better drawer than I was expecting and not because I expected you to be bad.

It's just that I expect most people to be not as skilled as you at just drawing stuff. I was really impressed by that. Yeah, I think that the thing that surprised me about it was like feeling like a little bit reawakened. Like I always, you know, doodled in my notebook or whatever in school, but I haven't kept a practice of drawing stuff since then. So it's been like a really fucking long time actually since I've regularly put pen to paper except for like random little things like,

oh, fuck, like for our challenge coin, we really need a likeness of Kevin Uxbridge. So I like threw together a little image of him. Or the logo for the pod crawl, which you were able to put together from scratch. Yeah. Amazing work. A totally original idea by me that nobody else had ever thought of before. Like it's amazing that anyone would think that they thought of that first. Yeah.

So since we started hitting that, I like went out and bought myself like an art pad and a nice mechanical pencil. And I've been like doing little, I've been like- Did you get the pamphlet from the Art School of America? Like, are you drawing the cowboy and the turtle yet? I haven't been able to nail the pirate, but the turtle's pretty easy. Um, it's also just like not a part of my routine.

It's like starting working out at, you know, 35. It's like if it's not like part of the rhythm of your life, it takes a little effort to try and find time to do it. But I've been wanting to like do it more and I'm like, oh, maybe I should take like a life drawing class or something. Hey Ben, how's the life drawing class? I don't think the game of butt holes was ever conceived to have like any wholesome positive

upsides to it like that, but like the Adam Pranica School of Creative Writing proves that even the game of butt holes can yield positive results. Hmm. Well put. Yeah. We need to fully actualize your innate talents through art and slash fiction. Exactly, exactly. That's what we need.

There was another half of that question that I feel like I totally elided. Favorite Boko. Oh, Favorite Boko. Man, I love it when we do a movie, you know? Like the roller ball episode was such a random, like I was like, why am I even watching this movie? But it was fun to talk about and fun to watch.

Yeah, I would agree, Ben. And I think it was that it was chosen for us that made it better. Force me to watch more movies is my vote. Wendy, are there squares that when you hear that we've hit them, you're like, oh, fuck. Damn it. Well, it's gotta be the drinking ones, right?

It's gotta be the drinking ones. Like they're off the rails. They're so funny. They're usually like at least 20 to 30 minutes longer in a regular episode. You've gotta know that like we do try hard not to make them go long. Yeah, yeah.

And it's just tough. It's tough not to make them go long. Yeah, yeah. And it's just tough. It's tough not to take every tangent when you're hammered. No, it's really funny. And sometimes like maybe we'll talk about this more in some of the production questions, but usually my process for editing is to like edit the Marin and then edit the end of the show. I used to do it that way too.

Yeah, I think you did that. And there's a reason like whatever, but so it's hilarious to jump from the Marin to the end of the show on Drunk-A-Sotes because I'm like, damn, what happened in the last hour? It's a real before and after. It really is with no gradual entry into the drunkness. I think that any given episode of The Greatest Generation is a descent into madness, but those really amplify what's happening in a, I mean, God, the last one, the champagne

one that we just did recently. That champagne hits pretty hard. By the end of it, I was like, God, I'm like just on a different fucking planet and I'm not even aware that I'm on a different planet. The bubbles took you away. I think some of the game of butthole squares have been so infrequent that I've had to like go back to the Wiki and look up the last time it happened

to go listen to that app to make sure all the little details about it are in place, you know? So there have been a couple that have come around like that. Like the no notes version. I feel like we hit a bunch of times when we first introduced that and we haven't hit it in a million years. It's been a minute. Yeah.

Integri was the favorite of the person who wrote this question. Hmm. That is a rare opinion. That's why I made that sound. I was like, that's unbelievable. What? Most people tell us about how much they fucking hate that. You know what's funny about the first time we ever did an Nth Degree episode was I think, you know, like most things we do in pre-production, we did pre-production individually and then came to the show and

just found out what happened. And I think Ben, you started with your extensive research and I immediately realized that I was not on the same page as you because I took it seriously with extensive research, like actual research. Oh, buddy. And then you started with a bit, and I was like, as the show's going on, I'm recapping and making jokes about the episode, but there's like a deep part of my brain that's like come up with the fake research as we're doing the show. So live during the recording, I'm like having to do the work that was actually supposed to be done for the Nth degree

and trying to make it work. So that very first Nth degree episode, I fucked that up because I understood the assignment only after you did it first. If that's true, I feel very bad about that. You have nothing to feel bad about. Your decision was the funny decision. If that's true, I feel very bad about that. You have nothing to feel bad about. Your decision was the funny decision.

Yeah. My memory of it was just that I looked around for any information about the episode we were watching and there just didn't seem to be that much that was interesting. So I was like, I'll just make funny shit up. The purity of it is that it's a very greatest gen joke because it is not our way to do research and it is also our way to make fun of shows that do the research. Yeah. And it's a good excuse to use the the more you know drop. Yeah. But in terms of bonus episodes, I mean you guys have done so many different things. I think

the favorite one to edit for me has always been TOS or TAS, just because like the line deliveries and the music of the whole thing, it's just hilarious. Like it's so funny every time, but our freelance producer, Ali, does the Santa Monica Mountains podcast. And those are always so much fun to listen to. So if you haven't been in the BoCo feed yet, FOD,

there is a lot of amazing stuff in there. I think we started doing monthly bonus episodes around the time I joined, so we have three years' worth of monthly bonus episodes, plus everything that you guys put out before I joined the team, so. Yeah. It's that classic new hire shit that people tend to go through, which is like, you thought you were hired for one job,

and then we changed the expectation on you. Yeah. Lee Sturmans, this is one for you Adam. Okay. Asks, what's Adam's favorite aircraft? Like just what is it or to fly fly on, or to look at. Wow. Let's go aesthetics, and then let's go back to your flight simulator days. Like my favorite military plane, I love that F-14 Tomcat from Top Gun.

I think that's an awesome plane. Like the World War II era, I love the P-51, the Mustang. That's such a cool looking plane. I always loved 747s when I worked at Giant Airplane Company and I got to like crawl around quite a few of them in my time there. I thought those were the best. And my favorite plane to fly on as like an airline passenger, that A220. It's the regional size, the big, it's the small single aisle plane that one of our airlines

are flying. Window in the bathroom. It's one of the notable things about that plane. Are you filtering your flight search results for that plane? Wow. When I go to Seattle and I tend to go back up to Seattle a couple of times a year, for some reason Delta flies 737, 800s, which is just fucking junk.

Is it a chode? It's a fucking chode. That is a bad plane. I will choose a route at a different time if it's a 900 or an A2 or or something else. What about your simulator? What were you piloting back when I was flying like Microsoft flight simulator? You know, that's what I'm talking about I I took that game super seriously. Like I treated it as instruction for for flying so like I would I would start with the Cessna and I would like plot out my roots

and I would try to do things in the right way and all that. So yeah, I mean like sometimes I would fly a Learjet just because it was fun, but like I would keep it pretty real with the simulations and that shouldn't surprise anyone as an enthusiast of gears that I was. I have like an ancillary question,

which is what's like the most excited you've been about a plane you got to be on? Cause like, I remember like the first time I got to be on a Dreamliner and I was like totally geeked out about it. And you know, like I'd read about the plane. So I was like excited to experience what it was like to be on the state

of the art. They figured out how to make it much quieter and the windows are much bigger and all that. I think my answer has to do with the plane, but also the circumstance. The first time I went to Japan with my wife, we flew ANA and we were on a Dreamliner for the first time. I thought it was so fucking cool at pushback when the, when the tug let the plane go and we started taxing, the ground crew bowed to the plane as we rolled out.

And I was like, fuck yeah. Like culturally, that is so cool. And like every flight attendant was so nice and awesome. And like the food was so good, even though like we weren't in first, like we were just flying to Japan. Like all the little differences of flying a flag carrier from a different country, from a different culture, I thought was just amazing.

And it made like, it started the trip off so nice and it made it such a unique experience. That is something that really stood out to me. Yeah. That's really cool. Mine was kind of the opposite. It was really recently went to Culebra in Puerto Rico and it was a tiny little eight seat plane. Wow. And it was the smallest plane I've ever been on and I was giddy. It was so fun. Was it propellers or was it jet? It was two propellers and the propeller was inches from my face.

Like I was in the seat right beside the propeller. Wow. It was really, really neat. You wouldn't even feel it, Wendy. Yeah, it'd be over before. Yeah. I feel like it really, that is a real dividing line for a lot of people. Like the little plane can really spook some people.

My wife hates anything that, like she doesn't like flying in single-aisle jets. Like she wants wide body. She just feels safer in, like the bigger the plane, the better basically. And I'm always like totally geeked to be in like, like the bigger the plane, the better basically. Like, and I'm always like totally geeked to be in like a little puddle jumper that's, you know. Yeah.

I think it was called Islander. Is that a type of plane, Adam? Do you know? Oh, I don't know. I mean, there's like thousands of little carriers around the world that fly all sorts of planes, but yeah, I'll have to look into Islander as a type. This sounds like a plane that you have to download. Like you have to pay a couple bucks to download Islander

on Microsoft Flight Simulator. But if you crash in one of those, you're in the Caribbean, so you know. Just take the backstroke your way to safety. The water's warm. Okay, Ben, I've got one for you. Oh, okay. This is from Mechmyday, who says, as another soon to be dad of two, I'm wondering how Ben is feeling about keeping the balance with Doron, Tea Baby, and podcasting. Oh, man. It's definitely a tricky balance. Massive thanks to everyone here at the

Uxbridge-Shemoda Corporation for picking up a lot of slack that I'm leaving in the line. I had a conversation last night with my wife where I was like, we were just talking about how the amount of time we were able to build into our schedule for family leave was a lot less this time, just because of like where the holidays lined up with where a second of two was born. And so I was back to work pretty quickly and that meant my wife was kind of on overnights

in a more solo way than she was last time. With Dorone, I was getting up with her three, four times a night and doing all of the parts that I could do so that she could focus on the one part that only she could do. And this time she's doing pretty much all of it, but it's still disrupting my sleep. So I've been feeling very self-conscious about getting on mic and just being like, I don't know, man, I don't know what's going on here. And I think, Wendy, you've done an amazing job editing around how spacey I have been.

And Adam has definitely, you know, I've been looking back at the sand and seeing Adam footprints only a lot of the time, really. And we're probably like a month and a half away from when we can start to sleep drain the little one. So, you know, hopefully, hopefully things are, you know, heading in a better direction and she's already sleeping for longer stretches. But yeah, I don't know. It's really tough and I definitely don't envy anyone that has a less flexible schedule than podcast, which is almost everyone, because it's a lot. It's a ton to take on.

Yeah. We're both childless heathens to the other people on this call. It is instructive to hear this because like my wife and I have a lot of friends with kids and it's always a little bit different, the things that you hear from the parents in your life. And nothing you're saying is encouraging me to change my mind about my position on having kids. I don't think anyone should have kids that is even a little bit not sure of it. I always wanted kids. I always knew that I wanted kids and I'm so happy to have them. That's great. But it is... That's the sort of parent you want if you are a kid yourself. Well, precisely that. I think it is such a gift to the kids who aren't having to not do this if you aren't

somebody that wants it because the people that... You hear that, Wendy? It's a gift that we're not doing this. Is there a gift receipt? Yeah. Yeah, you get a $250 Amazon credit. Cool. You can only use it on MP3s or something.

Yeah, you can. Like, cool, thanks, I guess. You can redeem it for season two of Reacher. Sorry, that's the only thing you can get. Great. I am as cute as a ball. Lock pages on my breast. I am as cute as a ball.

There are four lights. Couple of production questions from Reddit. La femme dangerue? I don't know. Ben, how would you say this? La femme dangereux. Okay, I've been an FOD from the beginning and the drops have become such an integral part of the show. Can you talk about the process of putting a new one together and do Ben and Adam cue Wendy up for specific drops in parts of the recording that we don't hear or notes

after the show or does she make the choices herself? Great question. I think it's a bit of both. Because you've definitely introduced drops to the show that neither of us saw coming. Surprise motherfucker. And that is always like the top of my head gets hot. I'm just like, holy shit, I cannot believe like the monster we've created. Wendy used to be such a respectable NPR employee.

Yeah. And then she drops, I'm a cow on us. Yeah. I don't like to signal when a drop should happen. I think there's a natural moment where they do. Like I kind of feel like that's giving an actor a line reading. Like there are times when I want to be totally sure that one goes and I'll say it, but like for the most part, the recordings are conversations and we don't stop them

to note when a drop should take place. And we definitely have never said anything like, hey, Wendy, can you make a drop for this moment or this character? Like that request has never happened. And I think that's one of the things that make the situation you're describing, Ben, so much fun is like, we are genuinely surprised

when we hear one come out of the blue, the way it often does. Yeah, it's like something comes over me. Mm-hmm. Mm, yeah. I have to confess, I have, it's like something comes over me. Mm-hmm. Mm. Yeah. I have to confess, I have, it will surprise no one to hear this, but a part of me that feels terribly guilty

surrounding this, and that is specifically. What's Ben guilty about now? Oh, we gotta make another. When we're Q and A-ing, the process for that is we have a drop box and Wendy will post a link to the edit in drop box. And then Adam and I will listen through. And they have a feature on there where you can leave a note at a specific time code on the file

so that you can say, oh, if you could tighten this up or cut this thing that I said that I don't love the way I said it, or can you add this sound effect or this clip from the episode here? And- Adam used a bad word for a bad thing that we're not allowed to say anymore. Yeah.

Well, Adam, the point is we were never allowed to say it and I'm kind of surprised you didn't know that. That word is not for us. But if I'm listening to an episode while I'm driving or washing the dishes or something, if I'm QA-ing and I hear a thing that needs to change about an episode, I'll turn off the sink and dry my hands and put the note in. But when a new drop drops, sometimes I'm like, that is fucking hilarious.

That's the greatest and I'm enjoying the show and I don't put the note in that just like A plus, great job. We owe you so much more gratitude and thanks for all of the great work you do, Wendy, is what I'm trying to say. Thank you, Ben. It's, I like the collaboration of it though, because there have been a couple of times,

like the most recent thing that comes to mind is the hyper-compliance drop. So good. Yeah. Good example. Yeah, because I had put, I think you guys had kind of been like, hey, does this need a drop? That was one of the few instances So good. Yeah. Good example. Yeah. Yeah. Because I had put, I think you guys had kind of been like, hey, does this need a drop? That was one of the few instances where like, hmm, we could do something here.

And so I put something together and then Adam, you gave me like a really fun punch up. Ben's hyper compliance. Whoa. Whoa. Am I the only one around here who can say shit about the rule? Did you see the memo about this? Yeah. If the rule you followed

brought you to this, of what is, what's the rule? Compliance. Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I can be or anything.

So that's like the most collaborative, I would say. Yeah. You guys record just the raw show and then the next time you hear it, it is fully edited. Yeah. And I would say a good 50% of the time, that's the version everyone winds up hearing. Sometimes we have a few notes here and there, but mostly you deliver the final edit to us and it's just about us going like, yep, perfect. Good job. There's a version of this that I really do want

to call attention to that I think deserves praise and respect that I think only the most hardcore might appreciate, which is like editing for comedy, absence, a drop or an effect or whatever else, like to use an interstitial for comedic effect like at the end of a Tangent or something this just happened to an episode. I was listening to where I was like that is That's the next level. That's one of the reasons

I think our show is really great and good comedically is like it's not just the obvious stuff really great and good comedically is like, it's not just the obvious stuff. It's like the moment where you choose to take a break is like, yes, that is like the natural comedic conclusion to a thing. Oh, I can think of a very specific example of this. When we were talking about how great Susie Plaxton's voice is and you dropped in her saying,

it doesn't have a stun setting. Yeah. Yeah. Flawless. Yeah. Yeah. That made the episode, you know? Like that was,

Aw. That was so good. Yeah, it was from a much later scene, but I was like, this is the line. It's gotta be the line. That's the line. That's always been the philosophy, like additive and not duplicative with how those things are used. Something I've noticed about drops over the years in terms of making them is that it's not always like the first time a character's introduced.

It's like the first time you guys call a character back as a joke. So it won't be in like, for example, I think Maggie O'Cowern was like this. Like it wasn't in the episode where she featured, it was in the next episode where you made fun of the fact that she turned into a cow that we actually made the drop. So- Because we don't know when we're mid conversation, how much longer we're going to be interested in this person or this concept.

Right. So it's usually on the callback that we'll make a bigger thing out of something. Yeah, that's true. Okay, related question about production. Wijanes from Reddit asks... How would you say that in French, Ben? Oui, j'aime?

Yeah, I think you nailed it. And in Spanish it's, wihanes. Ooh, that's nice. I'm always curious to know how the sausage gets made. What are the guys recording with? What's the workflow to get things to windy? It's wild going back and listening to old episodes to hear how things have changed and also stayed the same

in terms of equipment or process. What has helped develop the TGG sound? Wow. What kind of mics are you all working with? So I think it's pretty one-to-one on Adam's side and mine. We both have Shure SM7Bs as our microphone, and I think we're both recording into Adobe Audition and then backing up on a board called a Rodecaster Pro, which is a mixing board that is made for podcasting specifically.

And I'd say that that audio interface piece is the thing that's probably changed the most times throughout the years. Like I think we've always been an audition and SM7B shop, but what you're plugging the SM7B into has probably been variation three or four different times over the course of the run of show. And I, yeah, like I like the Roadcaster pretty good. I understand that there's a new version of it, but I don't know what would be different about it from the one we've

got. And then, yeah, like we're using a program called StreamYard on the computer side to connect. And that also is capturing another backup of the audio. That's why we maintain one and one sub. It's what they call redundancy. I know about redundancy, Mr. Hunter. Ideally, and even with all of this duplication of effort, we have had times when the audio got fucked up

on somebody's end or another, but for the most part, I think the microphones have been the same since day one. Maybe we had like, maybe like early on we were recording with like a different mic setup. Yeah, the earliest episodes I recall recording into a Yeti microphone, but got onto the SM7B train really fast. I've got an SM58 over here, a lot older, but it works. Oh yeah. I mean-

It's a classic. A classic for a reason. And in terms of audition and the capabilities it has for processing. I think that the signature sound that Wijane's mentioned is really about specific presets on your vocals actually. And like if you're not into audio production, it may not, you know, I guess speak to you the details of this.

But I think one of the things I think it does for you guys and for the show in terms of what the way that we process your voices is that it makes you sound very like close to the listener, like very present. Some, you know, you listen to some podcasts and it's like they're far away and hard to hear. And, you know, then the sound effects are really loud but the voices are really quiet, things like that.

And that's all audio production stuff in terms of how we process your voices. So things like compression limiting Equalization all that stuff. Do you process us differently or do we both get the same effects? I basically use the same treatment that you guys used when you hired me. So I inherited that that was something that we kind of we kind of arrived at over the course of a couple of years of, of fiddling with it. And yeah, it's like a, it's a preset in my effects rack. That's just Grey's Gen Vox is what I call it.

And it's like a stack of like four audio filters. Like one is just for cutting out as much background noise as possible because, you know, there are usually little things worrying and making ambient noise in any given room you're in as much as you work to like, didn't and quiet your space. Um, I think that's kind of like standard for most audio work, like the, like having some compression settings and stuff. I, I heard, I don't know if this is apocryphal, but I heard years ago that, um, Howard Stern's business card has his compressor settings printed on it.

It is specific to different people. And like, when I process my own credits onest Trek, I have to do different equalization because like your equalization doesn't work from my voice. Right. So there are little tweaks, but in terms of how things have changed over the years, what do you think about that? I mean-

Production-wise or? Mm-hmm. I am not current on what the new tech is, and I kind of feel great about that. My software is updated. Everything feels pretty solid and stable production-wise. I am not particularly motivated to mess with it. I think we sound as good as we ever have.

The process works. They could come out with a new mic, they could come out with a new board, but I come out with a new board, but like, I don't know why we would need something like that. I think all my film career, we actually talked about this recently, Adam, like there was a feeling of like, there's a piece of equipment that will make what I'm making look better or look slicker or, you know. Or make you look better to a client,

like the, like the matte box question. Like there is no matte box for podcasts. Yeah. And also I think that when, like when I was kind of coming up in the media world, there was a certain kind of old timer who was like, yeah, I'm running like Mac OS 10.2.4 because after that, you know, they changed it, you know, and there was like a kind of person that was like never run the updates, never change anything unless you've like gone on some dark web forum and verified that it will like you ever go do an edit in a

Pro house and you're like is this avid on? Windows 95 Wow We got 16 gigs of RAM under the hood of this baby Look, you just you double click on the program and then you go get a coffee while it opens. That's your union-stipulated break, you know? I never really subscribed to that way of thinking, and I think that that was probably much more adaptive to the world of the 90s and the way computers worked back then.

I think we've been maybe more adventurous in the past as a shop about trying new things, but yeah, I totally agree. We've got, at least for what we do day to day, we've got it pretty dialed in. I think that we probably still have work to do on simplifying and streamlining and making more bulletproof our live show tech stuff. But that is such a hydra because every room you walk into to do a live show has different mics and different, the cabling works different, the, oh, like,

oh, your HDMI only has a hookup in the booth, but we wanted to put our computer on the stage, I guess we'll have to like deal with that fact, you know. And so like, like when we, when we do tours, the tech stuff becomes much more stressful, but I love how much we don't think about it anymore. Yeah, it just works, which is good. We've got a question from the discord drunkshemota.com from Matt at arms who asks what video games are you playing? Has anything surpassed jazz horse? Oh man. Tell me you love jazz.

Horse, earth horse. Okay, boys. Saddle up. You're as handy with a shoot knife as you are with a woman's heart. I'm beginning to like you. Horse, Earth horse. Okay, boys. Saddle up. You're as handy with a shoot knife as you are with a woman's heart. I'm beginning to see the appeal of this program. I suggest you find a new line of work. It's okay, girl, just a scratch. I've got a really bad Slay the Spire habit going right now to the point where I'll be

like lying awake in bed at night like, maybe I should do a Slay the Spire. Like, no, no, Ben, you need every moment of sleep you can possibly get. Yeah. The fact that, uh, that game runs on, on iPhone just as good as it runs on, uh, PS5 is, is a real problem for me. How are you slash we like this? I would rather sleep more than just about anything in my life. And you need it more than me or anyone else in my life. Like, fortunately I am tamping the urge down, but, uh, yeah, it's like. You know what, man?

You're bringing this tired ass shit to the show because you're playing video games all night, man. Yeah. Get it together. I deserve this. Yeah. I deserve it. You're not wrong.

I did not need to make you feel guilty about anything else. I, I retract the comment. No, I Like but you also need joy like it can't always be fucking work and baby shit like Ben needs a video game. Hell yeah, because that's what makes a fun life like absolutely You know what? You know what I'm doing after after we get off mic today is I'm going over to Jacking off like you used to do You know what? You know what I'm doing after we get off mic today is I'm going over to... Jacking off. Like you used to do. Ha ha ha. Maravilloso.

Yep. And then... Don't make babies doing that. Just shooting ropes in the studio. Sato. After that, I'm going to play Dungeons & Dragons with my buds. For the first time since second of two was born. Gonna go spend an evening drinking tequilas and pretending I'm a tiefling sorcerer. Fuck yeah, man.

Casting some spells. Yeah. Good stuff. We're starting a new campaign tonight, so I'm really excited about it. Good adventuring to you. What about you, Adam? What are you video gaming lately? I've been served on Reddit a lot of Skyrim. Like, I guess I clicked on r slash Skyrim one time,

and now all I'm doing is seeing fun Skyrim videos. And I'm like, I gotta play Skyrim again. That is as far as I've gotten back into playing video games. I am not currently playing a game. It can't all just be not baby shit for Adam. He has to have fun. I know. I know.

I just, I have my fun doing other stuff. I, uh, yeah, I don't make time for video games the way, the way I should for a thing that I genuinely like. I do like playing video games. It's just, uh, it just gets knocked down on the list of things I like to do. How's your, uh, how's your nerve pain and your leg doing? Are you back on the bike or are you still? I am. Oh, that's good. Yeah. As of, as of a couple of weeks ago, I'm back to 100 again.

And like, it's never 100% gone completely, but it's totally manageable in a way that I'm back to normal life, which I was cranky and sad for six weeks, just not able to do anything. So now I'm back to doing the things I like. That's great. I'm back on the rowing machine after just feeling like it was a bad idea to exert myself that much,

given how tired I was. As of like last week, I've been on like three times. And yeah, it does feel like a return to normal that I really needed. Wendy, do you play video games? I got the most wonderful gift at the holidays last year. It was from DeFested, actually. Whoa. Who is obviously-

DeFested gives great gifts. Yeah, gave me the most wonderful gift. They gave me a completely legal- I love that that's how you start. So there's no serial numbers on this gun, but like I am in a state where that's permitted. I have to stress that this is not a pyramid scheme, Ben and Adam.

They gave me a completely legally reconstituted Wii, which has so many games on it, like built in, you know? Totally legal, I assure you. Amazing. But they gave me the skip, so I've been playing a lot of Wii lately, and it's so fun.

It's like- There was a moment, the Wii moment, I'm sure we all remember, where it was like, omnipresent, everyone played it, people who weren't video game people played it. It was the best. Do you bowl? I love that bowling game.

I haven't been bowling, I've been playing lots of Scrabble. There's a Scrabble game on there? There's a Scrabble Wii and I've been playing, there's a collection of old Mario games, so like the original and then all the iterations of Super Mario Brothers, I've been playing that which is you know My wife and I have been playing a lot of Scrabble actual Where you have to do the math?

So if you're playing Wii Scrabble are you using the controller to grab a tile and then release the trigger and place it on the board? You got it. That sounds so tedious. What? No It's great. And do you play multiplayer? Yeah, you can play multiplayer or you can play against the computer and there's like different levels of Scrabble genius on the computer. But you know what? It's a computer. Like it's just a fucking dictionary. Like what are they? They're not choosing a word. They're just looking at the dictionary and the computer and putting that thing. So anyway, but sometimes I can win against the computer players.

That's amazing. When we were in the Wii moment, I had a Wii and I had a friend that worked for MTV and he was able to grab something out of the promotional closet and send it to me, which was the big box rock band set with two guitars and a microphone and the drums. And for a little while it was set up in my like

little tiny piece of shit apartment in Brooklyn. And then like my downstairs neighbors came up and they were like, come on man, what the fuck? And I was like, oh yeah, I guess me like doing- No one likes smoke on the water as much as you. Yeah, like the bass drum is like right above your heads in your living room. So we took it up on the roof

and had like rock band roof parties. Nice. A bunch of times and man, that was so much fun. Missed those days. It's good times. Did you ever play it in the rain? Yeah, it didn't last very long, you know. That was the last one.

Fond farewell. When a little like Walmart TV just melting. There's a sound that lives rent-free in my head from that Wii bowling game, because there's like, you can bowl 10 frames, or you can do 10 pins, 20 pins, 50 pins, like on your on the way to 100 pins. And whenever the level changes to add more pins, there's a sound that game makes that is like perfect.

It's like innocently intense. It's like the perfect Nintendo sound. I hear it in my mind all the time. It's so great. There's so many surreal trippy things about Nintendo. It's like, it's so weird. I love it. But yeah, I've been playing lots of Mario Kart Wii too.

Really good at that for no reason. So good. Yeah, it's a classic. Great game. Yeah. So shout out to DeFested for being awesome. Hell yeah, DeFested. Always shout out DeFested shout out to DeFested for being awesome. Hell yeah, DeFested. Always shout out DeFested.

But also DeFested, like what are you doing going into the dark web and getting this totally illegal Wii situation? It's completely legal Ben. I already said that like twice. Wendy, you contain multitudes because like before you told me you were this video game nerd, I was like, oh yeah, Wendy likes playing with Dirty Ring.

Big Dirty Ring. Big Dirty Ring. That's what Wendy likes. No one knows. I'm as lost as the listeners are when it comes to Big Dirty Ring. And I've been sent videos to try and clarify what Big Dirty Ring is. Does not make it any more clear. Big Dirty Ring. Wind is rolling around in the Big Dirty Ring.

Ha ha ha. Mm-hmm. Should we say more about that or no? Let's just leave it a mystery. Maybe for the next Q&A. You know what? This is going to invite a lot more Qs for the next Q&A. Pero que?

Que es el big dirty ring? So we're going to take it out on a business question here. This is from Reddit as well from user odin45mp. OK. Member of parliament. Nice to hear from an elected official. These usernames got further and further away from being pants related as we've gone. Or lack thereof. Odin45MP asks, how is the pod business with Uxbridge-Shemoda being a fairly

mature and established pod company. I know I continue to throw scarves monthly, whether I agree with the subjective hilarity of long running bits or not, because the shows are a weekly listen and a bright spot of laughs for me more often than not. Do you see upticks or drop-offs in subscribers with each new series? And also what percentage of Podshop.biz products are runaway bangers? Whose pillows sold more? Oh man, we should look up whose pillow sold the most.

Oh, Ben, I have. Oh, you have, great. Breaking news, I've gotten a report from the Podshop about pillow sales. Are you ready? Actually, before I tell you, Ben and Wendy, we sell four pillows in the Pod Shop. One of them is the Adam and Ben. One of them is the Adam. One of them is the Ben.

One of them is Polo. Polo or Pollo? Now, of those four pillows, can you rank them in terms of sales? Which do you believe is the highest selling? Which would you believe to be the lowest selling? Ben, you don't have to answer the question. I'm going to assume that you think your pillow is the least selling one. Yeah, obviously. Is the two of us the highest selling? Correct. Adam and Ben is the top selling pillow.

Wow. Followed by Polo Polo or Pollo. Followed by Adam. Followed by... Oh no. Tied with Ben. See, I teased it. I teased it. We're tied, Ben. Wow.

It's really the only way that that could have ended well. Yeah. I do have questions about the person that orders one, but not the other, you know? Yeah. Like, I don't know if I would feel bad to have been last. I understand it, actually. I would understand it completely. There are Ben people and then there are Adam people, and then there are Ben Adan people. I guess so. I think that Podshop.biz is due a, like, viral crossover product.

Like, I think that there are a couple of things on there that had that potential. do a viral crossover product. I think that there are a couple of things on there that had that potential. Every so often we come up with something that I'm like, man, if this got posted by someone to the Star Trek Reddit, not the greatest gen Reddit, but the Star Trek Reddit, and it just kind of ripped through the Star Trek community, I could see us showing up at STLV next year and just seeing a million of these because it's such a good idea. And there have been three or four times

that we've put a product up in the store that's felt like this is not just a good reference to our show, but it does also like, it's also generalizable to people that enjoy Star Trek. And it hasn't happened yet. And so we're announcing here today that we are shutting Podshop.biz down. Shut it down!

Oh, no. As a 50% partner in the business, I don't agree. It's staying open. At least until I sell one more pillow than you. OK, fair enough. And then we can do it. What has been the biggest banger in Pot Chopped Up is, do you know? I think that the mouse pad designed by Paul Hammond is kind of perennially one of our

most popular items. And the bomber jacket also a big seller. The hot Cylon summer towel, I thought, was surprisingly appreciated. Yeah. I do like that as a place that one of us can just kind of get a wild hair and go pursue an idea and get a design up pretty quickly in a way that is,

it's fun to see what hits and what doesn't. Going back to the question though, like the, I would say that the pod business is like steady and that is something that is really gratifying after 10 years, you know, or almost 10 years. We're like, you know, nine and something years into this and still making like a, you know, a decent middle-class income from

yelling into microphones about Star Trek and, you know, Wendy gets to have a full-time job and there's, you know, you know, Bill and Rob and a bunch of people that we work with at Experts Shimoda that get part-time work out of it and that's really incredible. But it's also like I think podcasts that are as long running as ours have a bit of a problem. I was talking with a friend about this this morning that like when a new listener steps up to our listing on Apple podcasts or whatever and sees that there's like 500 plus episodes, I think that's potentially very intimidating. So it's not like we're in a growth period in terms of our like listenership.

And that's something we think about a lot. Like what would or could we do to change our fortunes there because we're really ambitious about this show and we want it to like do great things and reach a lot of people. And you know, I think a ton of our potential remains untapped, but we are in a different, a different world than we were when this show started. And so much of podcasting is so celebrity driven now, like, and you know, Adam and I not being celebrities makes it hard for us to

sell ourselves, I think. And being established makes it hard for us to sell ourselves. There's no news hook to the existence of the greatest generation like there was when we started. Like we got news coverage when we started this show. Ben, are you saying you want to make the news again at some point? I could make the news. Would that help? Yeah, could another co-host of mine become the main character of Twitter? Please? I'm ready. I'm so ready. How about new? I'm going to answer like directly a pretty direct question. Do you see upticks or drop-offs in subscriber with each new series? Yes, to both. Like, every time we start a new series,

we get an uptick, and then things slowly drop off over time, much like every year for us. Like, the Max Fun Drive drives a bunch of interest and support and listenership, and then every month after that, it's less and less. We lose money every month on this show, until The Drive, when it picks back up again to the level that it was a year ago, and then we lose it all over again over the course of the

next 12 months. And that's just the reality of the business that we're in. That's why, Ben, when you talk about the interest slash the necessity of having one thing that either puts us in the news or a product that makes us extremely popular or a 10-hour YouTube video that becomes viral. That would be really useful to sort of change the script that we've been on for, I think, the last four or five years. There's good and bad parts about that. Like you're saying, the predictability of this, like podcasting should be fairly unpredictable as an income source, but like the stability

of what we have here is really great. It allows for a kind of normal life for the three of us, which I think is great, but it also has over the years, made it seem as though this might be just the lane that we're in. And I can also appreciate that too. Totally. I think it would be disingenuous for any of us to say that we're not extremely grateful

to be where we are, because it's the best job ever. Three of us are grateful, one of us is also very guilty. The community around the show continues to just be the greatest part of it. And you're also just like, oh man, it would be nice to grow. Growth feels positive. We're neck deep in a culture where if you're not growing, you're dying. So it's hard to take the plateau-ness of being just pretty successful as anything but a, like, oh man, maybe we need to do more. But maybe we should just accept what we've got as the great thing that it actually is.

One thing I've noticed over the last couple of years is that when I first started, there were always ads booked on both shows and that has changed over the last three years. I'd say probably like a year and a half ago, there was a pretty marked downturn in ad bookings. And I think that goes to what you were saying, Ben, about celebrity podcasts. Cause when a show pops up and it's instantly got a million fans, because of a pre-existing celebrity involvement, it is so much easier for an advertiser to jump on to an opportunity like that than to go with a smaller shop like Max Fun and the shows that they have to offer advertisers.

It's hard not to take that personally from our friend and agent who like is responsible for the creation of all of those shows. Yeah. Like almost at us. Yeah. Like when we talk to our friend and agent about what he's up to at work, it's like, oh, cool. So you're why Casper doesn't call us anymore.

I've created another six podcasts surrounding 80 sitcom rewatched, hosted by the stars of the shows that they're watching. Yeah, that's just like a way the economy of the business works thing though. When you are Procter and Gamble and you would like to go get you know 800,000 impressions in the market and you can go to one show for that versus going to the like 25 shows that you would need to cobble together from the non celebrity driven podcasts, like there's so much less work in just going to the one show and then like doing your diligence of making sure that they read your ad copy the way you wanted it to

and didn't like swear or like, you know, talk about something problematic during the ad read, you know. I mean, Maxphone won't let us sell Dinger pills and that's a huge market in podcasts, so. Yeah. That's why your support right now, friend of DeSoto, is so important.

You know what? Try to fill in the gaps left by the lack of hog pill ads on the show. Yeah. Pay for that lack of hog pill ads, you know? Yeah. You can raise your level of support too, if you're an existing member, don't forget.

Whistling Just trying to make a boner're an existing member, don't forget. Just trying to make a boner joke there, but I don't know if you'll find that. I liked it. I got it. But yeah, in all seriousness, membership support is such a huge part of how you guys make the show. Max Fun Drive is like around the corner, so this is in part an effort to like, let people see more about how you guys do what you do and why membership support is so important. Yeah, we couldn't do it without the support we get. That's real talk. Everything we get from this is so deeply appreciated,

as are you, Wendy Pretty. It has been such a treat to get to work with you over the last three years on this project. Same. You've brought so much to it and have really like come into your own as a third comedic voice on the show in a way that is just so fun and such a delight every time we get to hear a Q&A. So yeah, we're awfully grateful for all of this and those of us who probably think about wrapping this thing up.

All right. Thanks guys. Thanks Wendy. As this episode's editor, you get to decide.