Aural Literary Review: Everybody Has a Podcast (Except You) A How-to Guide from the First Family of Podcasting

God damn, that's a wordy title, but I guess that's probably kind of the point.  I also wasn't sure about "Audio Book Review" as a header since the last audio book I reviewed was Blood Meridian back in 2018, and then I just used "Book Review."  My desire to read/listen to Everybody Has a Podcast (Except You) A How-to Guide from the First Family of Podcasting stemmed from two separate events.  First, in the "Lisztomania" episode of Sawbones, Dr. Sydnee McElroy name-drops the aforementioned book, which made me think, "Oh yeah, they wrote a book a few years ago, I should look into that."  I briefly had the book in my Amazon cart, watching the price fluctuate a few cents up and down until I considered looking up the audiobook version, hoping that it would be read by the McElroys, and lo and behold, there is an audiobook, and it is narrated by them and their respective wives during certain sections.  So rather than buying a copy of their failed podcasting book, I used a credit I had with Audible and rented/checked out the audio version of their failed podcasting book, which just felt like a five-hour podcast.

The other kicker that got me to check out Everybody Has a Podcast was the frequent mention by Chris Plante during his own podcast, Post Games, about his video game journalism course, which I have considered, if only because I'm self-taught with 13 years of experience.  I'm not against learning something new or admitting that I only have a partial clue as to what I think I'm supposed to be doing.

What's interesting about the book is that it's presented as part instructional manual, part autobiography, for podcasting, almost to a fault, since the book was published in 2021, and think of all the societal changes that have happened since 2021.  There's frequent name-dropping of Twitter as a literal hellscape of social media, but also acknowledging that it's a great way to have some semblance of free public advertising and community engagement.  Just over a year later, Elon "Pay Attention to Me/It's a Roman NottaHitler Salute/Letmeimpregnateyou Taylor Swift" Musk bought Twitter and rebranded it as X, and as of December 23rd of 2022, the McElroys stopped posting on Twitter altogether; this was also before the partial exodus to other Twitter-like sites such as Mastodon, Threads, and Bluesky.  Travis's recommendation of a Shure microphone (I've forgotten which one specifically, but it might've been the SM58) felt timeless as I looked into the SM58 as well when I was looking for a microphone to record death metal vocals 16 years ago.

While I have nearly zero interest in starting a podcast, I have been writing online articles for just over 13 years now, so I thought/hoped that there might be some information that could be transferable to amateur video game journalism.  And since this isn't a 5th-grade book report, I'm not going to give you a detailed review of the book/audiobook.  I did enjoy the presentation, though, as it seemed that the parts that each of the McElroy brothers wrote, they read, including sections by their respective wives.  It did make me wonder if the book had actual indications as to who had written each section/sentence.

Of the eight chapters in the book, the three middle chapters, which have to do with podcasting equipment, recording techniques, and post-production, weren't really applicable to my angle of video game journalism.  The sandwiching chapters of Concept to Creation, Growing Your Audience, Monetization, and Final Thoughts, I could apply to what we're trying to do here.  There was enough information that I felt that I got something out of it, even though I wasn't going into it as someone who wanted to start a podcast.  And even if I couldn't tell you all of the high points, because I was working at the time and treated the audiobook like a podcast, I at least got to listen to the McElroy Brothers deliver some material I hadn't heard from them before.  So that was nice.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Surely Must Be You