How to Make a Podcast Part 2 What Have We Learned Reflecting on Ninety-Nine Episodes

A little different type of episode today. The guys are joined by Spenser as they take some time to reflect on making it to 99 episodes (and beyond). Another takeover by a guest. Make sure to let us if you want more episodes like this, or if you guys prefer us to stick to book discussions. 

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Creators and Guests

Host

Jonathan

Host

Slava

What is The Side Quest Book Club Podcast?

Join Slava and Jonathan as they discuss the books they are reading. Explore world-building, characters, and story development—and share some laughs along the way. Side Quest Book Club — a literary adventure podcast.

099 What Have We Learned: Reflecting on Ninety-Nine Episodes
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Spenser: All right, good morning, good afternoon, or good evening to wherever you are listening from. Welcome back to this 99th episode of SideQuest. We are glad that you've made it this far. If this is your first time joining, it's going to be a bit of a different episode. We're going to be kind of talking about, the history a little bit of the podcast.

We're also going to be, talking about, yeah, the journey that, is this podcast. And, and so if you're looking for, you know, some episodes on, on some of the books, um, maybe you want to jump back a little bit before this one, just kind of get, get an idea of what the podcast is about, but, we are glad you're here.

My name is Spencer. I am standing in as a moderator today and we're going to, well, I'm going to ask, Jonathan and Slava, some questions about the podcast and they're just going to talk about their journey and we'll go from there. But, yeah, we're glad you're here. So as we jump into this, uh, I remember Jonathan talking to me a little bit about this, as kind of an idea, as a concept of a podcast, and it was something that he's been wanting to do for, for a while. And, um, And so, uh, it's actually really awesome now that they are 99 episodes in, and, um, it's really cool to see.

so, Jonathan, I want to ask you, how did this, idea for a podcast come about? And, and maybe what was the inspiration behind this?

Jonathan: great to be here, Spence. Thanks for having me on the podcast. Good, good. Thank you. Thank you. The podcast really started, Slava and I have been friends and known each other for God knows how long I, I, I really don't, but I'm sure that he does. and we were texting, we'd, we'd reconnected cause we lost touch because move cities and different jobs and you know, life happens and, uh, We were chatting and I was like, Oh yeah, I've been reading these fantasy books, really digging them.

And he's like, ah, fantasy is garbage. And I was like, well, these ones are different. So, uh, you're wrong. He's like, nah, it's only Stephen King for me and Philip K Dick. That's all I want is the King and the dick. So, um, I was like, that's quite the, it's quite the statement, Slava. And, uh, then he's like, well, how about we do a face off on a podcast?

And I was like, why do you talk like that?

because my Russian accent might actually get me stabbed. That's why. but anyway, so no, Slava and I were chatting and, and, uh, I can't remember if it was, did you mention it or did I mention it? I don't

Slava: I mentioned it, I

Jonathan: You mentioned it.

Slava: and while you were thinking about podcasting and this whole concept that Spencer mentioned, and I'll let you finish that because I think that's an integral to the story. I was listening to an X Files podcast, it was like in the middle of COVID, I had to drive in. Because I was running webinars for an organization that was putting out information, on COVID for, you know, the first responder community.

So I was running those webinars. I had to be on site. I had to make sure I was the producers for them pretty much. And I was listening to this podcast and I really loved the camaraderie between the hosts. And I'm like, I love X Files. I love hearing these two guys talk about X Files.

I also like books. I wonder if I can find a buddy that we can just talk books with and do the same things, break apart the books, like, uh, Dean and, I forget the co host, he left the show a while ago, but Dean and his co host, how they broke apart the X File episodes. And right around this time, we had reconnected because I was also reworking the whole IT. Department for this organization. And you know more about it than I do. So I kind of picked your brain about it. And as we were doing these weekly calls, I was like, Hey, have you ever thought about starting a podcast? And you said, well, actually, yes, I have.

And that kind of precipitated, you know, further discussions.

And here we are.

Jonathan: yeah, I've also as a, as a bit of history, I have a film and video background and have produced other people's podcasts. even ones with, pretty big names like, uh, Jim O'Hare from Parks and Rec, uh, had him on as one of the season finales for a podcast that I produced. So, like, full familiarity with it, but had never made one of my own.

And Slava proposed the idea and I read so many audio books. I've lost count of those as well. I said, all right, well, let's do some of the stuff you like, some stuff I like. And let's do a test episode with name of the wind. And we're like, we can banter back and forth all day. Like this be easy. No big deal.

Not a problem. Uh, it was a problem. I hope to God you never hear the first episode that we never released

Slava: wherever that is in cold storage on zoom, let it stay there.

Spenser: Hmm, I might have to do some digging and see if I can find that.

Jonathan: Oh, it was rough.

Slava: was hot garbage.

Jonathan: and the thing is the first five episodes where we did short stories are also rough, but this was worse.

Slava: Yeah.

Jonathan: If I can say that.

Slava: I wouldn't call them a hot garbage. They were rough. But that very, very first test episode, I think you, Jonathan said, so how was that? And I could feel trepidation. And even the way you, you asked me like, like at that moment, he knew that he fucked up by agreeing, to do a podcast with Slava, but then we did it again and again, and then we took, I think, what, another six to eight months to rework the whole thing and practice again, uh, And then we recorded the five episodes.

Jonathan: Mm hmm. yeah, well, I, I have, uh, mildly matured from the original times when Slava met me and, I tried not to assume, I knew it was bad. I knew it was awful. But, I was like, well, what do you think? How do you think it went, Slava?

Where, where's your self awareness?

Slava: yeah, without hesitation, without hesitation, I said, yeah, that was absolute garbage. That can't never, ever be repeated what

we

Jonathan: Never, never to see the light of day.

So that's, that's how it started. But as it's grown, and this is just the last, the last thought that I wanted to bring forth for the audience is as it's grown, the brand has evolved. And, we just recently came off of a break and we did a little more back and forth and the new direction.

For SideQuest is not, uh, net new in the terms of like, you're going to be really surprised where we're going. it's more actually just refined. So SideQuest is now this little paragraph I wrote, SideQuest is a casual book club for readers and audio book listeners who want to discuss their favorite books, but don't have a group to discuss them with.

With this in mind, we've built a new framework. To go deeper into story, story elements, world building, character development and more. And we're glad you're here.

Slava: I think the rework of the episode framework was a pivotal moment for us. It was kind of key because we had then by that time built up almost 70. Some episodes and we begin reworking the framework and we still continue to the old framework for a little bit and as we're recording it, it's, you're still hearing the old framework when this is being recorded, I think next week or the following week actually is when the new framework drops in the past, it will be name of the wind redone with Spencer on.

Not hot garbage, actually a pretty, pretty good set of episodes. And as we were doing this episode framework rework, we're also analyzing downloads and analyzing audience retention.

and we landed on this point where we're like, well, what are we trying to do? Because we've been recording episodes on books for, by that time, 78 episodes, somewhere around there. When we come back from break, how do we want to move forward? Without blowing this whole thing up without doing a major rebrand because we like what we're doing And kudos to Jonathan because 98 percent of it is his baby. I'm specifically talking about the paragraph he just read to you. That's what's going to focus the next 100 episodes. For us, I think. And when we were at 50 episodes, we did a similar show like we're doing now, and we just talked about the journey up until then, and what we saw the future as, episodes later, we're refining again.

what I like about it is it's a slow, incremental, refining improvement. It's not, you listen to 70 episodes and then all of a sudden it's a different show. You kind of get into it and then at episode 120, all of a sudden the guys blow it up again. There's a constant drum beat, if you will, of us reading books, us discussing books, but the way we do it is, is what we're improving.

Spenser: yeah, very cool. awesome to hear about your journey and, and, um,what your vision is for it. So, and so you, you've kind of touched on this a little bit. one thing I just kind of wanted to ask, is, Kind of in the early stages or maybe even in some of the later stages.

Are there any memorable, let's say bloopers or sort of maybe technical issues that you guys had that kind of, stood out to you or kind of maybe was sort of a, maybe like a defining moment that maybe kind of changed. Change the course of any of the

Slava: Every show has bloopers. Because I am the Elaine. if you guys know kind of the backstory of Seinfeld, Elaine, her character would, well, Elaine, Elaine is the character, the actress that playing Elaine would constantly break. So I am the Elaine of this podcast.

I, we have to take so many takes for me to get a sentence out. Part of it is because English is my second language. Part of it's because I guess I'm just. That goofy. So bloopers all the time. But I think when we did those five episodes and fast forward to the following year, no, same year, because that was in January.

So fast forward to the fall of that year, we wanted to revisit short stories again. And we did a scary book all through October was the exorcist. And then every other episode, which dropped to a week was a short, scary story by Stephen King. And that was fine, but we realized that wasn't really that really wasn't the best use of our time and talents, where that was just a little bit too much, and we couldn't focus on one thing, because we're talking about The Exorcist, and then we're recording a short story by Stephen King, that's dropping the same week, and we felt like that broke up the whole rhythm, so, For me, that would be learning that that's not the way to do it.

We should do weekly, episodic, you know, covering of books. And if we want to do something special, it should be indeed something special. Even if it's going to drop two episodes a week That's, that's one moment for me where I remember, Oh, we learned something and we pivoted and then we moved forward with lessons learned.

Spenser: Yeah. Awesome. Very cool. Jonathan, what about you? Or is there any moments that maybe set out to you in the beginning or I guess anywhere along the journey?

Jonathan: yeah. For bloopers. The bloopers for me are always, you guys will never hear them, but it's every time Slava gets irate, uh, a few different things. The first thing is himself, uh, because he's like, why can't I speak English? And then he'll have a glass of bourbon, even if it's Saturday morning when we record and he'll be fine afterward.

that's the first thing. The second thing is when the technology doesn't work and he gets just as irate. Facts. because he just expects that, um, you know, all of these things that we pay for should be Fully produced software. And I constantly remind him that that's not how software works anymore. People just sell half written code, things that sort of have a mild UI and then call it good and charge you lots of money for it, and you just have to deal with it until it's six years old, where they've actually worked out the kinks.

Uh, but that doesn't change his being irate.

Slava: No, all I want is B work. I'll be good with B work. And when either our hosting platform or recording platform, all of a sudden shits the bed and it's not even, Approaching a C minus. I'm like, why am I paying good money?

Jonathan: You can hear it. Can you hear the irate? Can

you, he's starting.

Slava: right. It's not five bucks a month. I'm not using the free version of, you know, Google meet or something.

we're using state of the art professional software. And when that doesn't work, oh, it just really chafes my, my

Jonathan: You, do you guys hear it? That's exactly what I'm talking about. So it's, it's more than that, but that's a, you get a little taste for you. it even happened on this episode where he couldn't get into our recording platform.

Slava: Yeah. Well, because the damn recording platform is telling me I'm incognito mode. I'm not in the I

used incognito mode since I was like 14. why is this showing me in incognito mode? And it just pissed me off.

Jonathan: Cause it knows what's on your browser history.

Slava: There you go.

Jonathan: So that's, that's the bloopers for you. Those like, and I just sit there and let them just badger and vent because it's the only way that he'll feel a little better. Uh, and it's, it's just, is what it is.

Slava: You learned the valuable lesson that my wife did just let Slava bitch for about five minutes and he'll get out of his system and then the show will continue.

Jonathan: right. As for other learnings, cause you asked kind of a two part question. I like the thing you mentioned about the short stories. We definitely learned a lot about that. I think, uh, something that I learned is, there's a lot of unknown books out there that actually are pretty good.

That I've never even heard of. And I constantly go back and recommend to people roadside picnic. That was actually early on. I think it was episode eight or nine. Maybe it was before way of Kings, which was our first like long, long book, which I think was episodes 10 through 20 or something.

Slava: I think so.

Jonathan: I was like, Oh shoot. Like I've never even had the opportunity to come across a book like that because I just, I've never looked into Russian authors outside of the Dostoyevsky and you know, the, um, who's the other big one?

Slava: Tolstoy.

Jonathan: Thank

you. Yeah. those are the big Russian authors that I've ever heard of, right?

Like, I never looked up contemporary Russian authors. And that was just an eye opening moment for me. Because I was like, oh shoot, there's like a bunch of books that I don't know about. Because I just live in the fantasy realm, primarily. And I was like, this is really good storytelling. It's really engaging.

so, yeah. that was just like a nice moment for the podcast where I'm like, all right, not every book we read is going to be a winner, hashtag city in the city. but there will be some that are just like, Oh shoot, this is like really good. Same with, Project Hail Mary that you recommended to us, Spencer.

Like I had seen ads for it and I was like, Oh, okay, I mean, I'll get, I'll get around to it. Right. But then you're like, Hey, actually, this is a book that I want to do for my takeover. I was like, okay, great. We'll finally read it. And it was blew it out of the water. It was fantastic.

Slava: Yeah, I'll, I'll pile on that because it was the reverse for me, where my cup of tea is speculative fiction, Philip K. Dick, the two brothers that wrote Roadside Picnic, Stephen King for horror, Exorcist is a standalone for horror.

That's my jam. my exposure to fantasy was Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit. I liked them when I was a kid, but then I tried some other fantasy, which was probably some unknown fantasy, maybe mass paper book fantasy stuff, and then probably some well known fantasy of the day. I went on a little fantasy journey, and by little, I mean like maybe five books, and I couldn't get through any of them.

And I was like, this is just dragons and medieval England. And I think I got my fill with Tolkien for that. I've never even finished Narnia because I've, I read like the first two books and I'm like, okay, this is great, but not my jam at all. So when you introduced me to Sanderson, Specifically, and, but the first one was, and the Kingkiller Chronicles, and then Sanderson, I was like, Oh, there are fantasy novels that, Yeah, Rofus has a dragon in his, but they're beautiful worlds.

They're well rounded characters. It's not a copy and paste. It's not somebody trying to be Tolkien. It's really good storytelling. So same for me only in reverse.

Jonathan: hmm. Spencer, did you want to re chime in with how much you hated Name of the Wind?

Spenser: oh yeah, name of the wind for me was, my least favorite book that we've done on the podcast or as far as like what episodes that I've been on. That was a fun thing for me to be able to, to do and experience on the podcast. A good friend of mine, he, he loves Sanderson.

We read a lot of the same stuff and he introduced me to The Name of the Wind. He's like, oh dude, you're gonna love this. You're gonna love it. So good. It's like, all right, all right. I read the whole book and I was waiting for the moment it was going to hook me and it just never did. And uh, so it was, but yeah, that was, it was just fun to talk about on the podcast.

Jonathan: Wait till we get you to read book two, and then you can complain about it a second time.

Slava: I guarantee you're going to hate it. Cause I've started book two and I've put it down because there's so much other things that I have to do for the podcast. And I want to keep podcast reading as one section of my week. And then fun reading is another section of my week. I probably read two or three books at a time.

one for the podcast, another fiction And something that's nonfiction and I put it down, not because I hated it, but I was like, this is just too dense of a book for me to read alongside stuff I need for the podcast and then something else that's fun just for me. So I'm willing to bet you're going to hate it, Spencer, but

Spenser: good.

to know. Thank you for the heads up. Uh, I'm sure I will also complain about it because, uh, Sanderson will probably churn out the entire Stormlight Archive before Rothfuss writes Book 3,

Jonathan: Whoa! Shots fired.

Spenser: So, that'll just give me more reason to complain on the next episode that we do for that one. So, looking forward to it. Yeah, so, so we've had some fun, uh, just talking about, the journey and some, some funny moments, some, some bloopers and, and whatnot. I'm curious, uh, how, and Jonathan, I think you might have touched on this already a little bit, but how has the podcast sort of, developed from the beginning to kind of where it is now?

Like, what is your goal? What is your vision for the podcast? like, who is it for? Uh, and, and where do you see this thing going?

Jonathan: Yeah, I tried the vision earlier, and I didn't. So the vision is currently, to Slava's point, like the next hundred episodes is based around this vision where, we've refined it where we're a casual book club, for people who don't have other friends in their lives to talk about the books that they love.

And this happened for me, like, even before you and I became friends, Spencer, I was reading all these books myself. I mean, shoot, you didn't even know about the Cradle series. And I basically strong armed you to read it because I just wanted to talk to

Spenser: Dude, I swear it was like once a week. You're like, Hey, I got a book for you. And so like finally gave in and yeah, it was an amazing series.

Jonathan: right. It's a good read. And so, you know, credit to, uh, to Will White for, for writing it. But yeah, sometimes you got to pressure your friends to read books. But that, that's kind of where this birthed out of where it's like Slava wants to talk about speculative fiction with people. And I want to talk about fantasy with people.

And so it's like, well, We made a casual book club. That's really what this is. so even though this is an episode about kind of like the reflection of building a podcast, if you're here and you're your regular listener, engage with us, we want to talk about the books with you. And at some point we'll probably do a fireside chat.

Maybe we'll do a live episode, who knows, we want you to engage with us because this is your book club. So That's the vision for the next a hundred episodes is casual book club for readers and audio book readers. due to our schedules, we're going to strictly stay with any book that is an audio form.

and so if you recommend a book, that's not an audio form, it's just going to have to wait because, uh, we're, we're both swamped with daily life and it's kind of nice to. be able to go about doing the other tasks we have to while listening to books, whether it's to and from work or whatever. So, that's kind of the vision for the next a hundred episodes, unless I missed something.

Slava.

Slava: Now you hit it right on the head. I'll add something to that. I know two people, one of them who binged listened to like, I think 40 episodes, or somewhere in like, maybe 30 episodes, somewhere in between there, and he's not a reader at all. He's a buddy of mine, and he listened to it because he liked the banter, first of all, and second of all, it's like books you'll never read, but he got a deep dive into it, because as we say in the introduction, this is a spoiler heavy show, so we go into the story.

And for him, it was nice to listen to it on a drive because I think he was doing sales still this time. So he was driving like eight hours,

uh, across the state's pier, my state and surrounding states, and he just listened to a crap ton of episodes. And for him, it, You know, kept him awake, kept his mind engaged, and he learned something about books that he would never ever read, because he's just not an avid reader.

Um, the books he reads, it will probably be more non fiction, more politically slanted books, for lack of a better term. So for him to listen to The Hobbit, for example, because he remembers that From his childhood. He listened to those. He listened to Stephen King stuff because he's a King fan ish kind of he, you know, he's probably I'm not misquoting him.

He's probably watched a lot of the movies that were made from King books, but he's never sat down and read a King book. So for him to go through the it series, he understood now having to watch the two movies that came out, the recent ones in the last five years, he's like, Oh, there's so much more depth to the story than just what was put on screen.

Although. The last two movies are pretty, pretty damn good, considering how people sometimes screw up King books when they're making adaptations. And I'm not throwing shade at Kubrick. I'm talking about people who are trying to be not, not factual, but be favorable. Literally, yeah, favorable to the adaptation, be more in line with exactly what King had in mind, and they sometimes fall short.

Some of them are fun because they're so bad, but some of them are just, just bad.

Spenser: Yeah, perfect. Jonathan, you'd kind of mentioned, starting the podcast. you know, maybe for someone who's kind of interested in starting a podcast, Do you guys have any advice on how to start a podcast? Maybe, talk about that a little bit.

Jonathan: Slava, you want to take a swing at this one? Start.

Slava: Yeah. So I would just say just start and the easiest thing to do is start, record yourself, do a test episode and publish. But at the same time, you should be prepared. There's some prep work that I think you should do. You want to figure out what you're saying, who you're saying it to, and how you're going to say it.

Meaning, is this going to be a weekly episode? Do you want to do 15 minutes once a month? Like a guy at work, he's, uh, retiring and he wants to talk about the industry. And so he wants to do 15 to 30 minutes once a week, talking about hot, hot button issues or trends in the industry. So I helped him. We talked for about a good hour and a half.

I helped him figure it out. Another guy wants, he's a reservist. He wants to talk to his reservist, fellow soldiers and how they can navigate working in the professional world and being a reservist.

So that's something like an hour long episodes. So all that is an example, figure out what you're saying, who you're saying it to, and how you want to say it. And then write out an episode, And just do it and record.

And just push an episode out and see what happens and then keep doing the second one and the third one. And by the 10th one, you will be much better than you were in your first one. And on your 40th one, you'll be much better than you were in your 10th one.

Jonathan: That covers it pretty well. but I'll, double down on Slava's point. You just need a small plan. You can literally scratch it on a napkin. Hey. we tried to do the name of the wind in two episodes, found out it didn't work, didn't air them. So then we go, how do, can we make sure that we just do something short enough, talk about it, and publish it?

Well, let's do short stories. Let's do five short stories. Can probably bust out. I think we busted them all out in one recording morning. Didn't we?

Wasn't it just one or

Two.

Okay. But we did five episodes in two mornings, for our first five episodes, because we picked something small, it was attainable.

And we also had a failure episode. Uh, actually I think we did two failure episodes. We did Warbreaker. And then we did Name of the Wind.

So we did, four recordings. The first two we didn't even edit because it was so bad. Uh, that was Warbreaker. And then we did Name of the Wind and we did edit those. And we're, we're like, okay, we actually don't know what we're doing.

which is weird because we can hold a conversation. And the thing is, we weren't even, um, shy to get in front of the microphone, which some people deal with. We just like, didn't have a direction. We talked about all the normal things that we talk about, but this is, I guess this is a bonus tip, your inside jokes don't matter to anyone else.

So don't use them. that is a huge piece of advice just because you and your friends think something's funny, doesn't mean the, the internet will. And so don't use those jokes

Slava: Yeah, staying, staying on point is very difficult. that's why it's so important. What are you saying? Who are you saying it to? How are you saying it? Figuring that out, and it can be on the back of a napkin, that's for sure. keeping that small target and constantly aiming for it, you'll be fine.

You'll be fine.

Jonathan: and just accept that the first, A hundred are going to be bad. I mean, this is episode 99 and we still know that there's ways to improve, but we want to do this because so many people are go, Hey, how do I make a podcast? And we go, well, there's a lot to learn. Uh, and so we make these episodes so that you guys who ask us those questions, cause a lot of you reach out and go, I want to start a podcast, don't know where to start and here, here's the tips.

Here's all the failures we learned because I mean, we don't make any money from this. We literally spend money hand over fist to try to just make this happen because we enjoy it.

Slava: Yeah. And for us, it's, you know, easy to spend that money because this is a hobby for us. It's become an outlet. for me, it's kind of like an anchor for the week where I know I'm going to be doing this. I'm going to be talking to my buddy, Jonathan. We're going to have some friends on for certain episodes like Spencer and Matt and all the others that you've, uh, you've met.

And so for me, I'm willing to spend that money because this for me is an, a creative outlet. It's a, it's a hobby helps me stay grounded. So I'm not, you know, mildly not doing nothing on Saturday morning, watching YouTube videos. I have something to look forward to. And it, you know, sharpens my marketing skills.

It sharpens my reading skills, my analytical skills. So I guess be prepared to spend some money. if you don't have the money. There's cheaper alternatives, even free alternatives, but just keep doing it, and I think you can grow into something if you're committed.

Jonathan: now Spencer, because this is a casual book club, you did want the novel version of every answer, right?

Spenser: Yes, I did, actually. You guys are doing great.

Oh, that's version of how to start a podcast.

Jonathan: Oh Lord. It's

Spenser: great metaphor. definitely some good advice there. I think, Jonathan, I liked what you said about, not using inside jokes. I mean, there's nothing worse than when you're in a conversation with some other friends, and there's two people who are, you know, constantly inside, you're using inside jokes with each other, and you just kind of feel left out.

Yeah. when you hear that on a podcast, I imagine it would invoke similar feelings. And so, um, yeah, that's something, you know, I wouldn't have considered, but, um, yeah, great advice there.

Jonathan: what's ironic to me. Spencer is that I literally have those inside jokes with you in our community, probably every time I see you.

Spenser: You

know what? That's a fair point.

Jonathan: funny that you said That

Spenser: is a fair point, but I've also, I've also been on the receiving end, so like, I don't know,

Jonathan: but granted we do invite people. We like, look. I will sit here for 45 minutes and tell you about these 20 books that are all connected.

And they go, I don't actually care. Okay, that's fine. I invited you in. Don't say I didn't invite you to the inside joke. There's an invitation.

Read the Cosmere.

Slava: there's always two sides to that coin, where if you're in a group of friends, or acquaintances, and you two have an inside joke, it's, That's something that bonds you. You can say that and laugh and everybody else will be like, okay, whatever. That's just Spencer and Jonathan. or whatever their reaction is.

It doesn't matter. But for what you're saying, Spencer, it's, purposeful exclusion of somebody that's in the circle of whatever's going on, the conversation or a party or, you know, a card game, a D and D game when somebody's purposely doing it, that's bad because the other guy feels left out. But on the internet.

Maybe an audience member will feel left out, more so than that they'll be turned off because there's no, they can't connect with the host. It's just an internal conversation that two guys are having and the guy's like, I want to talk about, you know, Shallan soul casting a ship, like, that's kind of cool.

Why are these two guys spending 30 minutes talking about what they did at the, farmer's market and laughing about stuff that's irrelevant? Yeah. And we've made some of those mistakes where we, in a few of the episodes in the beginning were, well, how was your day? And well, I did this at work and I did this at work.

And people will listen to you because they like you and they're fans. So they want to hear Slava's funny rant about how he went to the farmer's market and couldn't find any tomatoes. But if that's like 40 minutes of your episode, nobody's going to listen. You'll just lose people left and right.

Jonathan: Now you know how I felt when we met and you mentioned that stupid strawberry joke.

Slava: There you go. Yeah. Never let it down.

Spenser: Yeah, thanks for touching on that. great, great points. one thing I'm curious is, I mean, you guys are 99 episodes in here. How do you stay motivated and consistent? I mean, I sometimes I wonder if maybe, do you ever feel burnt out? Or like, maybe you run out of ideas? I know there's millions of books out there you could probably read.

But how do you stay motivated and consistent when you while doing the podcast?

Slava: That's a very good question.

Jonathan: it's so much work. Uh, it's a lot of work and I work at a startup, so it's like double the work for me. Yeah, it's, you got to read the book, you got to take notes, Slava and I, I don't know, do we have 25 threads on WhatsApp?

Slava: We do.

Jonathan: Each thread is a different chat, whether it's with a, a guest or it's, um, the analytics chat or about the website or our non podcast chat, or it's, it, you got to stay organized.

It's a lot. It's, it's really a lot. And I don't think that I felt any non motivation. I certainly didn't bring my best in a handful of episodes. cause it was a rough week or, uh, whatever, but I think I prioritized consistency. It's like, well, we just have to do the episode. and there were some weeks where Slava and I, the only free time we had was evenings.

And evenings is when you have the last amount of your energy for the day. And so, like, he just finished cooking for him and his wife. And then they've cleaned up and now we're like, it's 9pm and we need to record two hours of a podcast. And, like, I can tell that his energy's not there. And he's doing worse than like the Saturday mornings with just flubbing stuff and I'm like saying stupid things.

I'm like, Oh, right. No, that's not the character's name in more than I had, but like we did the episode and then just have a lot more editing on the backend. one of the things that we just implemented and we just came back from is a break. that's kind of a new thing going forward where we had to, have creative disagreement because Slava didn't want to take a break when he'll talk about that in a minute.

But, I was like, we have to take a break. it's unreasonable. Like I'm going on my honeymoon. You're going to a wedding in a different city. You're not bringing your podcast set up. Like we have to take a break. and unless we take a break, we can't build the website. We can't do, the social media strategy.

We can't do all this other stuff that we know we want to do for the podcast because it's literally just two of us. shout out to anyone who wants to come and volunteer and help us. We will probably take you up on it. Anyway, Slava, what, what, what about you? Motivated and consistent.

Slava: for the reasons I mentioned earlier, I don't have any issues with being motivated, even when I'm tired, this has become such a vital part of my life that I'm constantly motivated, even when I'm losing it at nine o'clock and on Thursday night trying to record a two hour episode.

So consistency is key, but flexibility matters also. So yes, we have to put out an episode a week. That's just the only way for this kind of thing to work. Now your podcast, you might need to put out an episode a week. Every other week, but you want to do it consistently, even if you are hating your life in that moment.

But that flexibility also matters where, you know, the creative differences that Jonathan and I had about the break where he turned out to be right. You have to be able to pivot, whether it's on topics or adjusting release schedules or taking a break, you're constantly looking to improve as we've said earlier, and you will.

Improve the more you do it, but you have to be able to turn on the dime where something's not working. you have to be able to switch and go a different way. or if you have a co host, you have to be willing to listen to them because maybe they know more about one thing than you do. So a great podcast isn't just about individual talent. It's about chemistry, collaboration between the hosts, working with Jonathan and means, We balance each other's personalities. We have to play to each other's strengths. Jonathan is much more organized than I am. I'm a, I'm much better at research and putting together like a cohesive pamphlet on a book that anybody can walk away and probably teach the book to somebody else if they read it, obviously.

Where Jonathan is much more organized. He's better at creating the templates. Like we use Google Docs to. Put in notes and our calendars in there, our schedule, all the books that we want to do in 25 and 26 are all in these docs, he's much better at doing that. So he, he just takes care of that.

And I take care of what I would take care of. And we both are in marketing. Although our journeys in marketing are quite different. different industries and different aspects of marketing. So we, we have to be able to turn on a dime when things really are like in front of us. We're like, oh crap, how do we deal with this thing?

But also be adaptable to each, you know, to each other, each other's schedules, needs. And trust each other to have the best for the podcast. And I get egos bogging down the process because that's so easy to do. And luckily, even the strongest agreements we've had, neither of us came to it with, Oh, well, this guy's ruining the podcast, you know, flips table walks away.

It was never like that. And we had some pointed. Disagreements, but it was always because we trusted each other as friends. We were able to have those conversations

Spenser: yeah. Good stuff. Slava. Um, I wonder though. So if I'm, if I'm going to be, you know, starting on my own podcast, what are, how do I find and attract an audience? Is there something that you guys do? Jonathan, I feel like this might be a good question for you. what are some things that you do to like find and attract an audience?

Jonathan: Slava mentioned this a little bit earlier. You need to have an idea of who you want to talk to, to go back in time. When we started this podcast, Slava's original premise was books, movies, anime, video games. And I want to say there was something else. Um, he wanted to discuss everything. He wanted to discuss, I think it was music, uh, everything under the sun on this podcast, that's what we were going to do.

I mean, that sounds fun, but each of us only has 24 hours a day. and because I've done B2B marketing for a long time, it's like, well, you need to pick an audience. Who, who are you talking to? And so we both like books. So we said, all right, books. So the people we're talking to read books. That's who we're talking, that's our main audience.

And that's why part of the, the new vision is, well, the people that we're talking to read books and don't have people to talk about those books with. And so we've added some details because frankly, you do want to start in a niche. Spencer and I have a friend, she is a designer, she's a professor and she just started her own podcast and her first episode had double what our largest download did. Why? Because she's, she's talking specifically to designers about research that is, not yet really documented. Well, there's like one book out about it and it's stuff that people kind of hound about in their conferences. But she's in such a niche where all of her episodes are for designers about research, about this one topic.

That's it. It's like super niche, but you know what? She got double downloads of our top episode download. On her first episode and she did zero advertising, except for like, Oh yeah, I'm kind of working on this little project. It's podcast, blah, blah, blah. But it's because she knows exactly who she's talking to.

And so the people that get value from what she's saying are this specific design community or the specific community of design. And so like, super proud of her for doing it. She put a ton of work into it. you find an audience simply by picking the audience to start. And then you do market tests to go, Hey, we're a book podcast.

And Slava and I, for a while, we're like, well, we're not a casual book club. We're not even a book club. And then, I mean, after this break, I'm just like, bro, we're a book club. That's what we are that's really what this is. It's getting friends together to talk about the books. It's a book club, like, let's just call it what it is and just being honest about what you're actually making, whether it's, Oh, Hey, we're doing a cooking show.

I didn't want to admit it, but like, this is a grilled cheese cooking show, whatever it is, like you pick the audience because your content should dictate who you're talking to. Now, if you were making stuff and no one's showing up, you're either not marketing it correctly. And not attracting the audience, or, your audience isn't large enough.

to make a silly example, like, we're going to make a podcast about emu farmers in North Dakota and it's like, okay, well, there's four of them, so, uh, maybe don't pick that as an audience because there's only four of them, right So

Slava: I think you're absolutely right Jonathan. You you want to be niche and You want to be very specific again, to use that term, which I use at work when people come to me and say, Hey, we have this rollout and we want to talk about X. And then they're like, we want to tell the whole American people about it.

I'm like, well, that's not how it works. So what are you saying? Who are you saying it to? How are you saying it? And in my industry, it means, what are you saying? Okay. Uh, let's just say I'm going to make something up. A new medical. Procedure or advancements in medicine. Okay, that's good. Who do you want to say it to?

We want to say it to 18 year old to 25 year old males because it's specific to them. How are you saying it? Well, we Have b roll and we have some clips from a conference of a doctor speaking And we have this, uh website that goes into detail with everything you need to know and lists all the specialists in your area.

Okay, so it's probably a video product, it's probably a call to action to this website, and it's probably, you know, on Instagram, probably, Maybe on LinkedIn, if you know, depending on the audience, uh, of this particular stakeholder, probably on your LinkedIn, definitely on your Instagram because you're talking to 18 to 25 year olds.

You probably want to use YouTube because 18 to 25 year olds use YouTube as Google. The way boomers use Google, 18 to 25 year olds use Instagram, uh, use YouTube right now. You want to keep it under a minute. This is how you use YouTube. How you execute this product effectively. Translate this into a podcast.

Okay, you want to talk about books? What type of books? Oh, fantasy books, speculative fiction, sci fi, horror, the different genres, but If you're reading one, you probably have read one of the other genres, or like us, now you're reading all of them. So, okay, books, you know, fantasy, Okay, so you have now books, you have fantasy, you have book nerds, and then you constantly refine that as you go further into your journey, and you find yourself where we found ourselves.

Alright, so this is books, fantasy, etc., etc., And now it's a more casual book club because it's for people who will read these books, don't have anybody to talk to about them, or they just want to hear others discuss the same book because they want to nerd out as they're driving to work. And that's how you kind of peel back the onion layers of your idea.

Spenser: Yeah, I think, uh, you know, obviously 99 episodes kind of speaks for itself and I'm sure you guys have learned a lot along the way. what are maybe, Slava, maybe you can start this time, what are maybe some top 5 things that you guys, that you have learned, about creating content and, um, or even about yourself along the way?

Slava: for sure. So I wrote five down, I actually wrote six down, but two of them can be combined. And I've touched on some already, so I won't. Go into detail for two of them. 'cause I, I just mentioned them in the previous segment, number 5.1, trusting your co-host and being able to embrace new ideas.

As Jonathan and I have had these pointed discussions, and some of them were not that pointed. They were just collaborative brainstorms. Like the, one of the biggest lessons I've learned or something that was reinforced was trusting your co-host. Now, it's easy to trust Jonathan because we've known each other for 17 years, and when you're trying new formats, or new ideas, or new topics, you have to step out of your comfort zone, like he did with the speculative fiction, and Stephen King, like I did with the fantasy stuff, and some of the most unexpected and successful moments on our podcast came from taking risks.

And it's kind of true in life, I think, too, whether you're diving into a new genre, trying a different discussion format, taking a break, all that was a risk, right? And we saw that it worked because the download numbers don't lie. The metrics don't lie. It works. So, we retained An audience, some probably fell off, but those who are with us from the beginning or joined us in the middle who are like, Hey, I kind of like this.

We, we retained that audience. So that was a success. Number five, being in sync. So one thing that Jonathan has said numerous times when we've had disagreements or brainstorms, or some of those, again, pointed discussions, he said, well let's table this, think about it, come back to it tomorrow, because before we move on this, we have to be in sync.

We can't wing it for the next couple episodes and just hope this thing works out. Bad news is not like wine. It doesn't get better with age. You want to fix the crap. And you want to be on the same page for whatever you're doing. Number four for me would be brand development or program development.

However you want to phrase it is an ongoing journey. the evidence for that is the five episodes that we first mentioned that when we tried for our first, October, where we did a scary book and then short, scary, short stories inter spurs between the coverage of the scary book that wasn't really working.

And fast forward to the break we had to take fast forward to the website we worked on fast forward to. We're now a catchable book club. That's all an ongoing journey. So building something that's recognizable like, uh, like a podcast brand, it goes far beyond a catchy name or a logo. It's about defining and consistently reinforcing the podcast identity, the podcast voice message across all episodes, making sure the stuff you're putting out on social media is on brand with how you talk on the podcast.

Making sure that if you're switching something up and trying something new, that it's not new every week. So there might be, well, we're not doing this any longer, but there was for a time where on our socials we would post Just our episodes, just announcing the episodes. And then once in a while we'd post something fun, like a reel or you know, upcoming stuff.

And then we kind of scrapped that and we said we're just gonna do, behind the scenes, we're gonna do segments of the episodes, boil down to what's consumable on social media. And once in a while we'll announce an episode if it's really a special episode. So figuring that out is gonna be an ongoing journey.

Spenser: Yeah, thanks. Um, yeah, Jonathan, maybe if you could just share, share a couple first and then I, and then I'll jump in, uh, after that.

Jonathan: Sounds good. I'm, I'm looking forward to hearing what you have to say, Spencer. So I'll try to make it brief. my fifth one was similar to Slava's, but different. Cause we actually ended up writing our answers separately and then bringing them to the table. Mine was, if you have a co host, cause not every podcast does, right.

You have to be aligned on your vision. And that sounds great, but what it really means is you have to have difficult conversations until you reach agreement. And so, if you've been here for at least an episode, you know that Slava and I have a very open candor with one another. And We both believe that the other person wants the best for the show.

even if we don't understand where they're coming for, or we actually violently disagree. And I say that a little colloquially, but I also say that truthfully, because if you've been there, it gets really heated. Like, uh, I don't know how to describe it outside of, um, Superheated without going into the details, which I won't bore you with.

but you have to be aligned. There's no reason to move forward on something if you guys aren't aligned on it, because you, you're doing the project together, you, you need each other's strengths to quote Slava and that starts with being willing to listen and then consider maybe the other person's right.

And then collaborate like, okay, well, maybe they're right, but they're not right in this area. So like, how do we collaborate on that? And I purposely don't use the word, um, concede or, or, um, uh, what's the other C word? It's not collaborate. It's when two people have a disagreement and they're trying to, what's the word, someone help me.

It's People tell this to people in marriage all the time. They're like, oh, well, if you can't agree on something, just why don't you guys just both, uh? It's not concede. It's another word. What's what's the other word

Slava: Hold on.

Spenser: I'm not sure.

Jonathan: when you hear the word though? You're gonna be like, oh, yeah I know exactly what you mean Anyway, he'll

Slava: Seed. I'll concede. You seed, hand over, turn over,

Jonathan: No No, it's like a phrase that people say like oh, well when you're

when you're in a disagree with you Well, it's not, it's, it's a C word. and the reason I know it's a C word is because I, I had thought a long time about this and then I can't remember the frigging word. Uh, cause I was like, well, it, it means both of you coming together to make something less as opposed to collaborating, which to me is, coming together to make something new and fresh and, and, and build up instead of like settling.

It means settling. It's a C word that means settling.

welcome to the podcast where Jonathan doesn't know the words. Thanks for being here. It's like door of the Explorer, except it's me. And I, English is the only language I speak.

It's also not the other C word that you like to use. Slava. So anyway, we'll just move on. So, I'm, I'm a big proponent of collaboration because it's two people coming together to build something better, not settling. Uh, and I just don't think you should do that, which means you have to fight it out.

that's the big point here for number five. And then for number four, you have to build in breaks for your work. Like we said we were going to do every episode for, or we were going to post one episode a week for a year. We did that and then we kept going and Slav and I fought about this. He's like, we're not taking a break.

We have to re we have to preemptively record the episodes. And I was like, we have to take a break. I, I, I can't let this go. We have to take a break. Um, and so it took a while, but, uh, he came around because he also had an event that was immovable. Like I'm going on my honeymoon. I'm not bringing podcast equipment, not bringing my laptop.

I'm not recording while I'm gone. And he had a wedding to go to, which you guys heard us talk about, but like breaks are good, even if they don't feel like it, cause you're like, well, I got to keep doing whatever. And you can pre record stuff and leave it. But at the end of the day, like you are giving energy to putting out episodes or putting out content and you're losing other areas of the project if it's just you, so like, cause you only have so much time and this is not a full time.

Uh, this is not a full paying gig. It's. You have to do your day job. You got to do your chores. You got to spend time with friends and family, and then you're still doing this. we didn't have time to build the website. We didn't have time to build our social strategy. We didn't have time to do a bunch of other stuff that we've talked about because we were putting out an episode a week and it takes a lot of time.

So you have to build in breaks and you go, Hey, I'm not doing content right now. I'm doing this other thing. And then you come back. And the thing is, it's actually really good for the audience because your audience misses you. So like, Oh man, I really hope to make another episode. That's what we've heard and we are we're back.

We're making more episodes, but like it builds anticipation in your audience So those are my five and four Spencer. What about you? What are your thoughts on this for us?

Spenser: my first one that I'm going to share, is kind of interesting because you just kind of threw this at me and honestly, I wasn't expecting to share top things that I've learned, you know, my time on the podcast. so, so the first one is be prepared.

Jonathan: Surprise

Spenser: had like 30 seconds to come up with his answer.

I think it is good though, because, There's going to be lots of things that you want to talk about, and if you're not prepared in the things that you specifically want to say, at least in my case, like, There's things that I've forgotten that I wanted to say and then at the end of the episode, I'm like, oh, yeah I wanted to say that and totally forgot So I think that is key And I can't remember if you guys touched on this or not But just having notes having or yeah, you guys touched on this you have a spreadsheet that you guys work off of And I think that's really helpful Because I mean, if you're talking for, you know, an hour, maybe two hours, you're, you're probably going to forget things.

So, for me, it's been very helpful to, to have a lot of notes, and, and to just be prepared for, for anything that you want to say. and then, my next one would probably be, uh, it takes a lot of work, uh, and you guys have definitely touched on this as well, but I just kind of want to maybe echo that again because, you guys have said this, your first episode is going to suck, and I feel like that definitely, happened with me on, you know, my first guest episode, I, You know, wasn't as prepared probably as I should have been.

I had never been on a podcast before and yeah, it felt really awkward for me. So, it's going to take work. You're, you know, your first one was going to suck. It's just, you gotta put the time and the effort in. Jonathan constantly talks to this about, about this to me where, you know, it takes work, you just got to put in the work And eventually things will start to take shape. So, yeah, those are just a couple of mine that I had come up with you in the last, you know, few seconds. So, Slava, I'm going to throw it back to you. What are, couple more things that you've learned, while doing this podcast?

Slava: my number three is I wrote down success takes time, patience, and experimentation. we discovered, well, we all discovered this in life, in anything that we do. That growth is gradual. And for us, specifically for the podcast, there are no overnight successes in podcasting.

Now, if you are a well known podcaster, Personality, you have a media department behind you. You have a company that is pushing out ads for you. You've done this for 30 years. Let's say you're a comic and you want to start a podcast. Sure. You automatically walk in and you're going to have an audience, but for the rest of us, normies, it's going to take time.

Even your friend with the research for designers podcast. Yeah. She had better numbers than us, of course, because of the reasons you said, but for her to build a brand and a sustainable brand and a podcast that will have repeat listeners for the longterm is going to take time. knowing that I think will ground you we might need to do 500 episodes before SideQuest is of any.

Note. Now that doesn't mean the audience that's gonna stay with us until then, or the current audience is less than the audience that I'm hypothetically saying is gonna explode at episode 501, but it took us in this hypothetical 501 episodes before PsyQuest became a known entity. And just being okay with that and putting in that work, knowing that, hey, this can't be an overnight thing because nothing in life is, some people get a lucky break and that's great, but 99 percent of people have to work really hard.

And if you do get a lucky break, it's not like you can just, you know, put your feet up and say, well, I'm going to ride this out because that'll be over in a couple of months. Success takes time, it takes patience, and it takes experimentation. And mine are all sort of connected. There's like a, you know, there's a gradual buildup from five to one.

And there are, there's like sinew in between them. So, the experimentation for me again was taking a break. And then seeing, that hey, this is not such a bad idea because, I was able to, Work with Jonathan on a website, and then he got kind of busy with some of his stuff. So it gave me a lot of time to build out most of the website.

And then he came in and, you know, provided feedback as a professional designer who's done websites a lot longer than I have been doing websites and it came together. But that's because I took a risk, and experimented with it, fine, we'll take a break, and saw that it worked out. So that's my number three, and I think I'll throw it back to you, because my number two is not as, there's less sinew in between it and the rest of them.

Spenser: Jonathan, you haven't talked in a sec.

Jonathan: Well, that's true do you want to comment on on on Slava's wisdoms or fool foolery Tom foolery Before I, before I rant.

Spenser: Um, no, because I'm not gonna lie, I wasn't. I was kind of distracted for a second. That

Slava: I'll just mute my mic guys, you carry on.

Spenser: sounds good.

Jonathan: All right. So you better be listening now, Spencer. You've been called

Spenser: alright.

I've been called out. Thank you, Jonathan.

Jonathan: yeah, you're welcome.

Slava: In the comments audience, just tell Spencer why listening is key on the episode recording.

Jonathan: Yes. Yes. Hey, uh, if you're hosting, make sure you're paying attention.

Spenser: Yes, that'll be my next thing I write. That's what I learned.

Jonathan: Here's another little bonus for you. If you don't know what the person just said, go. I that's a really interesting way to look at it. How'd you start thinking that way? It literally means nothing, but you've thrown the back, the question on them. So feel free to take that to work if you want Spencer.

Spenser: Awesome.

Jonathan: So. My number three is your brand will grow weeds unless you are intentional and prune it to grow it in the way you want it to.

So this gets into a few things I've touched on, which is like Slava's original idea, which I was for like, Oh, we'll do podcasts and movies and, and books and, music and da da da. And like, we didn't have time. one of our early brands, which we haven't talked about this in a hot minute, we called the podcast here.

H E R E here, a podcast, and it was going to be synth eighties, style with neon colors and it's going to be fun. Kavinsky was a heavy theme if you've ever listened to his music, but we worked on that brand for probably eight months and it just wouldn't work. this was no episode. This was just brand work and the branding was too broad.

I did some market testing with people that I know, some, some other people who've made podcasts and they were like, okay, I mean, it's kind of cool, but like, what's it about? And I was like, uh,

yeah, uh, that's a, you feel like a real big dummy if someone goes, what's your podcast about when you've told them the name and you just have to again, drink the Kool Aid and go, this is actually not a good idea. It's actually a terrible idea. It's not a good idea at all. And. You just have to admit that and be honest with yourself or, and I know some people who've done this because I also did this when I was young.

You can say they don't understand I'm an artist and I'm just going to go for it. I'm going to make this happen. They'll see, I'll show them. And oftentimes 99. 9 percent of the time that, uh, that actually fails because they were right and you were wrong because they're your audience. If your audience doesn't understand that you have to recommunicate.

And so started as a book podcast, and now it's just a casual book club for readers and audio book listeners to discuss their favorite books with people on the show. Or on the, on the socials. So your brand will grow weeds if you don't intentionally prune it, which means cutting things that aren't working.

Slava: Agreed.

Jonathan: back, back to you, Spence,

Spenser: Thanks, Jonathan. I appreciate what you said about being willing to change and change kind of your, your ideas or As far as the branding goes, yeah, Slava, uh, as we continue to talk about, some things that we've learned, what would be the next thing, uh, on your list that you have, you've learned on this journey?

Slava: Right. So number two, this is why I said it doesn't have a lot of sinew. Cause this is kind of like a, it has connection to the rest of it, but this is also something that, in some way stands apart from the rest of the list. and this was something that was reinforced, not necessarily something I learned because for me, this is so essential in anything you do.

And again, my industry is marketing, product development, video development. I do storyboards. I write scripts. I put together Narratives that like span, you know, months, sometimes, sometimes weeks, whatever I cover conferences for my organization, there's a narrative that we want to tell the behind the scenes story, the stories from the floor.

Then we want to talk about the people who are headlining the conference. So I, this is not just something that I thought of of last week, It was reinforced during this podcast, presentation matters, specifically audio quality, because podcast, and not everybody has access to the programs and platforms that we use.

That's fine. It doesn't take that much to create a quality podcast with GarageBand and a free editor online. It really doesn't, but you have to put in that work as best as you can strive to make your work A Don't phone it in. There's a podcast that I listen to and this guy also covers books, covers a specific author and he is covering all the books in order of publication for this author.

I really like his insights. His voice, his presentation is great. His editing is kind of shit. 85 percent of the time, it's passable. The other times, he like coughs and sneezes, blows his nose and just continues talking. You're like, dude, cut that out. Like literally edit that out. Or there's like noise in the background.

And it's not that big of a deal, but it kind of is. And his fans, including me, will continue listening to him and I'm not going to give him a three star review and troll him on why, why did he sneeze in episode 104, but try to avoid that. You are making a piece of art, if you will, you're making a piece of content.

Even if you don't want to go that route, let's, you know, I don't want to sound like I'm up my own ass I'm an artist because I have a podcast, but you are creating something and you want to do the best you can. With the tools available to you. take some time to research, audio editing. I have Jonathan, I edit our episodes, but I have Jonathan who actually has like a degree in this.

To check my work, do quality control. the way I was editing episode one. Is completely different than when I edited episode 104

Jonathan: that's a that's a weird statement, but

I mean, that's

Slava: we'll edit, episode 104 or, you know, the way I edited episode 89. Make sure that you're putting out a good product. They say content is king.

But I've seen how small improvements in audio quality and presentation, like a better mic, a thoughtful episode structure, smoother transitions, make a big difference. So it's performance, it's presentation, but also the quality of your audio. again,

Jonathan: What, one other thing, Slava, just to interrupt, it's not just audio quality, it's also, your host listening so that he can respond. Oh,

Spenser: invited me

Jonathan: he's listening. Oh, he's listening. Oh, okay.

Slava: that's going to be, that's going to be

my number one. You spoiled it.

Spenser: guys, that's it for today. Gonna wrap things up.

Jonathan: He's shutting the episode! He's just shutting the episode down on me because I'm

throwing him under.

Slava: and this type of, uh, this type of presentation, this type of approach, I should say, let me put it this way, this type of approach to your editing, to your presentation, builds credibility I think, and this is personally for me, I feel better about myself if I know that I've done the most that I can when I'm editing.

this might mean that you have to spend a couple of bucks on a good microphone. So you don't sound like you're in a tunnel and it doesn't mean you have to buy the 300 microphone and the ones we have are about well about that.

Jonathan: I was going to say, we spent 300 plus an amp

and some

Slava: so we probably spent a good five to 600 on our setup respectively. that's because we had the money By God's grace, we were able to afford it. But if you do your research, there are 50 mics that you can start with, that are going to sound just fine, but continuously working towards a better product is key, and that means you have to save some money and by year two of your podcast, you're, you're, you're. Reworking your whole setup. You're redoing everything and you're improving it. So be it. It doesn't mean you have to be like us and start with these mics. It means you have to give 100 percent of what you have. that's key. Absolute key. Especially if you're putting out a product. Or whether it's art, whether it's content. You can just phone it in.

Spenser: Yeah, I think that's a great point Slava. I think presentation doesn't matter. I mean even just in the small things. You know when I'm at the store and I'm looking for problems. For some, you know, food to buy, and I see a damaged box, like, I'm not gonna pick that one, because, like, sure, nothing might, inside might be damaged, but, because the box looks bad, I'm gonna pick the next one over.

so yeah, I mean, presentation really does matter, I think, even, even in something, that small, but, Jonathan, uh, why don't we, you know, toss it back to you, I think we still got a couple more here left, um, Yeah, what's another thing that, that you've learned along the way?

Jonathan: Well, the first thing is I learned that word that I was trying to remember earlier. It's compromise. When you disagree with someone and neither one of you is going to budge, you have to compromise, which is both settling for less, which I hate. That is unacceptable. And will not happen. I will not compromise.

We can collaborate, which is building something new, but it will not compromise. so that was the word that I was looking for earlier. So I, I, I learned a word. I relearned a word that literally a common word that the three of us. The three of us. 'cause I invited you guys to correct me and neither of you knew this word.

Uhhuh.

Slava: in our vocabulary. We don't compromise.

Spenser: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Uh huh. Yeah. I see what you did there. I see what you did there. Um, but my, my second of my top five learnings was building a book podcast requires a lot of planning. Slava mentioned earlier about like, I'm the, the planning or analytical side of our, of our cohort here, but we have to ask, you have to ask so many questions.

Jonathan: And even if you're not making a book club podcast, you have to ask questions that are relevant to you. Here's just some examples that we've had to go through. What books will we read? Okay. Simple enough. What books will we not read? Which we've talked about briefly on a couple episodes. It's like, hey, you know what I don't want to read?

Spenser: The name of the wind. Harloton's Smut. No, Spencer, we do want to read Name of the Wind. Uh, romance novels. We don't want to read romance novels. That's not for us. It's not part of this podcast. You'll never get us reading a novel that is strictly romance. It's just not what this show is about. We're also not going to read any like gore porn type stuff.

Jonathan: Like we're not gonna read that. This is not going to be on the show. how many episodes per book? Is it one? Is it seven? Is it way of Kings? Is it 10? And it's like, and 10 is short for the way of Kings. So is that not long enough? And then another question we've touched on briefly, will we read novellas?

What about short stories? Are we reading books? Are we going through audio books? Are we discussing the full book on the episode or are we chopping it up? Are we going chapter by chapter or do we do large sections? These are all questions you have to figure out when you're determining what your podcast is going to look like.

And this is just like episode framework. But you have to come up with this beforehand, because otherwise you do what we did for 40 episodes or whatever, where we just banter. And one of the biggest pieces of feedback people gave us were like, Hey, I like the show, it's engaging, however, you mentioned these four things that you'd come back to, and you didn't come back to them, ever. Not in the next episode, not in the book after, you never came back to them. And it's like, ooh, that one's on us, that's on us, um, and by us I mean Slava, so, yeah, that's my second one. Back to you, Spence,

Spenser: Awesome. yes, planning, planning is key. But that is, that is for sure.

Jonathan: all parts of life.

Spenser: all parts of life. Yes, absolutely. Slava, why don't we, uh, you know, toss it back to you. We've got, I believe, just one more. And, uh, and then I'll share mine. And then Jonathan, you can share yours last.

Jonathan: that's cause I threw you under the bus, huh?

Spenser: Yep,

Jonathan: Okay.

Slava: So the number one thing that I learned And it's a two parter. One of them, again, is something that I've

always,

Jonathan: two parter with Slava.

Slava: is, and I've touched upon this already, so this is gonna be a little bit of a repeat, so consistency is key, whether it's weekly episodes, bi weekly episodes, weekly episodes.

The genres you're covering, and we cover about four or five genres really if you want to parse it out, but you pick those five and you stick to them, you ask the questions that Jonathan just referenced, you win it down, you, you know, take out the weeds, all that stuff, but flexibility matters. And for me, that was the whole break thing.

So being able to be flexible, and it took a while Jonathan to convince me, And it's not that I'm not flexible in most things in my life. I think I'm pretty chill, but there's some things that I firmly believe and I will not budge until I am given enough evidence or somebody wears me down. Jonathan did both. And so

Spenser: Sounds about, sounds like him.

Slava: being flexible is key, but that goes back to trusting Jonathan. and no point during our conversations did I think Jonathan had ill intentions for the podcast or was so off base that he was gonna just tank the whole thing and how could he and he, you know, I know better and he's dumb, at no point was that the issue, but I was very, I was very convinced And I wouldn't budge for a long time,

Jonathan: He was convicted that, that it was the wrong move.

Slava: but I was able to take that chance, the experimentation that I mentioned in three, and then in four and five, knowing this is an ongoing journey, Having trust in Jonathan and trying to embrace new ideas, this is what I mentioned, that all of these have sinew in between them, they're all connected, that all led to the greatest lesson, lesson number one for me, is being flexible in certain matters, and it paid off for us, because again, we have a website, I can see on the back end the metrics, the talking points, so don't miss it.

And people, visiting the website, what pages they're visiting, what pages they're dropping off on, there's three pages of the website, but still I can see the downloads increasing the day after the website goes live, and some of those are our friends obviously, but now SEO game is being played, people are searching this stuff because we know that there's plenty of nerds out there, it's not just three of us who read Brandon Sanderson, and we see now people revisiting the older Less good episodes, but hey, that's great because they're also probably listening to the new episodes and the new episodes have seen an increase in same day downloads and then a consistent increase in Seven days later or ten days later people are discovering these things These things, these episodes and listening to them.

So because I was able to be flexible on this thing, I saw success yeah, Jonathan was able to go on his honeymoon. I was able to do the wedding, which I was a best man of, was a week of best man activities and then driving about 14 hours back and forth between the state because it was cheaper to drive than take a plane.

Again, long story for not this episode,

Jonathan: I don't know if you'll be able to share the episode, uh, or, or share the, the details of it from what you told me. So.

Slava: nope, nope, nope. so the point is because I was flexible on this thing, there was success, tangible right there. website went live on September 14th, September 17th. We saw a heavy increase in episode downloads. And by that point, I'm pretty sure it wasn't our friends, clicking on the website.

Cause this is now downloads of episodes, not just visits to the homepage. So, that'll be my number one. Number one lesson learned.

Spenser: Yeah, it sounds like you've, you found a good balance there between your, um, between your consistency and flexibility. yeah, that's, that's really great. for me, I'm going to take a little bit different direction for, for my own, uh, Kind of top takeaway that, you know, that I've learned.

And for me, it is that confidence is key. when Jonathan first invited me to be a guest on the podcast, I was very hesitant. I had never done anything like this before, and I don't remember if I said no, but, you know, You know, the first time, but I was, kind of eventually gave in.

I just never really felt confident in, you know, the things that I had to say. And, when we got to the name of the wind, Jonathan invited me onto it and I was like, well, let me tell you, my opinions are not going to be the same as yours and Slava's on this book. Uh, and he was like, perfect.

That's exactly what we want. and I was like, oh, um, okay. And just because it created. good dialogue and, good camaraderie, you know, between us all. And that was something. You know, for me personally, I'm sure other people might be different, but that was something that I, you know, found really, yeah, really helped, make the episode for myself better, you know, picking an opinion and sticking with it, yeah, I had a really good, really good time on that episode, Just by disagreeing with everybody.

Slava: Nice.

Spenser: um, yeah, I think that's probably, probably my takeaway or my top takeaway anyway, for while I've been on the podcast or at least my guest episodes. So, um, yeah, Jonathan, uh, we'll wrap up this little segment here with you. What is your top takeaway? Like the top thing that you've learned, while on this journey?

Jonathan: before I get into that, just want to say, I think that's a, a great lesson for a lot of people, Spencer is that, uh, your voice matters. I'm pretty sure I've said that at least in a few other episodes, the thing is it's, it's like, specifically for podcasts, it creates drama. It's a nice, moment of conflict to have like, Oh, you know who we're going to have on the podcast?

Someone who actually hates this book. So I can't wait to have a little back and forth about why you hate this book. honestly, I'd love to have our friend Colin on to read a Sanderson book because he's so anti Sanderson because it makes it intriguing. Cause you're like, Oh, he's making good points. Oh, but the guy who likes it's also making good points.

Right. So it's really cool to hear that, by doing something difficult and honestly, just fumbling through it, you know, and taking the risk for yourself that you got to grow and. And confidence, both in your life and like podcasting. So

Spenser: sure.

Jonathan: happy to hear that. my top takeaway is creating quality podcasts is work.

And again, might feel like it's simple, but, until you make a hundred episodes, like you don't understand the level of work. If we were to calculate the hours, lava, I would say, uh, It's three hours recording a week minimum. Let's say it's, 12 hours of reading. So it's 15 hours. let's say we chat, let's round down.

We'll say that's three hours of chatting throughout the week. So that's 18 hours. And then a little bit of solo notes is an hour, let's call it 19. plus some of the research, we'll call it another hour. So let's call it 20 hours a week. Of work on this. And that's not, I was gonna say, and that's not editing, right?

so

20 hours a week to record,

Slava: Right.

Jonathan: to prepare and record and 52 weeks a year. Right. So, that's 1, 040 hours just from that. That's not, that doesn't include editing. and you'd edit on Sunday afternoons usually, and it's probably like four to five hours a week. Um, so that's another 52, we'll call it by four.

So 208, so 1, 248 hours for one year's worth of podcasts, which is only 52 of them, and we're coming up on a hundred. So we can basically double that. we're almost at 2, 500 hours. probably pretty close to that just because we started this well before we ever. Started putting stuff out, but it's like, this is 2, 500 hours.

Like you guys are hearing the lessons, the failures, the wisdoms of 2, 500 hours of work. creating quality podcasts is work. You need to know what you want to talk about, what you want to focus on, how you want your episodes to be structured, how often you want to release episodes, what audio quality you're comfortable with, where will you host?

Will you have guests? Who is a good guest? Who is your audience? All this stuff takes time and trial and error, and you may try something and it doesn't work and that's okay. Not every episode is going to bat a thousand. Every time we'd finish an episode in like, let's call it episodes 40 through 60, there was a few of them where I was like, how do you think that went?

And we're both like, eh. It's not our greatest episode. And it's like, yeah, that's true. And we edit it and we put it out because you just have to you can't go, Oh, well, we're not going to put out episode three of this book because it just wasn't good enough. no, that we did it. It's gotta be consistent.

They might not enjoy it. They might hate it. Like Spencer, like he just hates those episodes. Okay, great. Well, maybe he'll like the next one. project Hail Mary. So.

Slava: Yeah. And I think that's where that flexibility comes in. Yeah, you want to be consistent. Yeah, you want to put in your A game. Don't phone it in. Get good equipment. Keep working on platforms and programs or in platforms and programs to bring up your editing game. You always want to put out your best work.

But just because you might feel that this is B plus and not your usual A plus, don't scrap it, because then you lose the consistency of the uploads, you lose the consistency of a brand, you lose the momentum. So, be willing to put out some stuff that might not be A plus work, but always strive for A plus work.

And that is, that is where the, some of the hard work comes in too, and the hard decisions. I also want to say like the metrics and all the analytics works that we do, that could be another two or three hours a week and the prep work that we did, this might be a little too generous, but if we're going to round up by the hundreds from the first time we talked about it to today.

Today, meaning when you guys are hearing this episode, it's probably been 3, 000 hours of work

Jonathan: Yeah, I think that's fair.

Slava: us planning this thing out was a crap ton of discussions and research and, watching other people do podcasts, video podcasts, listening to other people do strictly audio podcasts, reading best practices on podcast, doing research from podcast platforms, testing out different podcast platforms.

It's a lot of work.

Jonathan: The only caveat I'm gonna say to what Slava just said about like, sometimes you just have to put out crappy episodes, the only time we've scrapped an episode after we started publishing was a bonus episode just after Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Because we tried to talk about something that was completely off brand.

Slava: Yeah.

Jonathan: it was so bad. we sounded like bumbling fools. it was, an oral response to Philip K. Dix, do you do Android stream of electric sheep? And we got into this heady, like philosophical area in our conversation. frankly, neither of us did the level of research that would be required to have an intelligent conversation on it.

And we listened to it and we were like, I told Slava, I was like, we can't, we can't put this out. We can't. that's the only time we scrapped an episode because it was so off brand. this isn't even about a story. It's a response. the philosophy and, meta ethic of like androids because AI was coming out, like.

I was like, we can't, we sound like fools. we don't know what we're talking about. Neither of us has done any sort of ethical research on this. We can't, it's just not part of the podcast. And so we, we have it, we recorded it and it's, it's, we just didn't put it out. that's the only time I'd say you do want to scrap it.

If, if it's so completely off brand, but you have to, the thing is you still have to record them. Because you don't know it's off brand until you do it, but you don't have to publish it. So that's my only caveat.

Slava: Good stuff.

Spenser: Yeah, those are, those are some great lessons. yeah, definitely a lot to take away. I think a lot to maybe, consider, you know, in, in, in whatever you do, not maybe not just in a podcast, but in other areas of life. So, yeah, thanks for sharing those, those thoughts, guys. yeah, as we move, uh, kind of towards the end of this episode here, uh, I just want to ask you guys, what are, maybe three favorite moments, uh, that you guys have had while, um, while recording the podcast?

And Jonathan, I'll kind of throw this one over to you to start.

Jonathan: So my number three is when Slava read Lies of Locke Lamora and he just started, talking like Locke to me moving forward and quoting the book back at me. unprovoked. I'd be at work and he'd just be like, nice bird, asshole. And just quoting whatever he read in the chapter that day. Um, not even asking questions.

He's just, he's just throwing quotes at me.

Slava: Yeah, and I'd work in quotes from the book by Locke into everyday conversations with Jonathan. So it'd be like, so what are you cooking for dinner? I couldn't tell you exactly what I said because it was like a year ago. But I would take a quote and tweak it just a little bit and somebody who's a fan of the book like Jonathan, he'd know the reference and I'd just give him a sarcastic response and rest of the day and the conversation will just devolve into insanity.

Jonathan: A hundred percent.

Slava: for me, my number three, it just stands out to me because we had so much fun and we, it was such a lively, like, boisterous episode. It was when we first read, And I think the second reading too, but I think the first one was a little bit more spontaneous, uh, of a, of a segment was reading The Cradle Bloopers. For some reason, that stands out to me and we, and then the first cradle book that we did, we read all the bloopers. I think you were there too, Spence, and we were just like dying laughing. I had to, there was like us cackling like idiots for like 10 minutes, which I just cut out of the episode because I'm like, well, this is. This is just, this will be for us. We can revisit this, uh, fever dream later, but that's a fun moment for me.

Spenser: Yeah, nice, very cool. Yeah, that was, that was a fun episode. I think, honestly, I can't remember Jonathan or Slava if that was my first one, but, um, yeah, it was a,

Jonathan: What was surprising to me is that you guys

didn't know

there were bloopers.

Spenser: Yeah,

I had no idea.

Jonathan: you were both like, there's bloopers. And I was like, Oh my God, that's literally one of the funniest things

about what Will did.

Spenser: yeah, I don't think they had on. There was one of the audiobooks that didn't have it.

Jonathan: I think it's unsold.

Spenser: Yeah.

it might have been the first

one Yeah, and so I didn't, I didn't catch it. And then all of a sudden, you're like, on the next book, you're like, Hey, there's bloopers. I'm like, what? And then I listened to them, I'm like, oh my goodness, these are hilarious.

Jonathan: Yeah. And it's such a brilliant, and I said this before, but Will, like, if you, if you hear this, genius to take movie type stuff that you'd get in extra DVD content and bring it into literature, bravo, my man, bravo,

Spenser: Yeah, that was, that was awesome. Jonathan, what would be your number two, top favorite moments?

Jonathan: it'd definitely be the podcast takeover where you led us through Project Hail Mary, Sometimes I can get a feel for a book and go, Oh, I'm going to really enjoy this. And then sometimes I'm like, Oh, okay. We're just reading the book and it's fine. I don't know if something, I think it's because I never read a, um, a white room novel, is that what it's called?

Right. White, white room novel. Um, I haven't either read one in a long time or read one. Well, no, it'd be a long time. Cause we did discuss like hatchet and things like that, that we read in school. So I haven't read one. It's so long. I was like, Oh yeah, this is like deeply introspective and also set in space and has like a bunch of unique flavor points to it.

I was like, Oh wow. And then I was also kind of blown away at the level of research and like, uh, the leading you did in the podcast takeover. So I was, I was super thrown, in a very positive light for how well you brought us through that book. So really big fan of that.

Spenser: Awesome, well thank you. nice to be included there. Yes, Lava, uh, what is your top, oh my goodness. Brain fart. What is your second top favorite moment?

Slava: It would have to be diving into the Cosmere because of the reasons I mentioned already about fantasy books and, uh, Not only this episode, but numerous ones preceding this one. When I read Warbreaker, I was instantly in love with Sanderson. And then we scrapped those episodes, but

then we're going to do Way of Kings.

And I began, Reading way of Kings and then doing all the research and Jonathan pulling his hair out like you can't go out You can't read ahead. You can't do this You can't do that because there's gonna be Slava reacts to way of Kings type of thing And finding out CopperMind, CopperMind? CopperMind.

net, this Wikipedia of all things Cosmere, and then going down rabbit trails, or, what's an animal in the Cosmere, whatever that is, trails,

a Chell Trail, and finding out so many cool little things, and now that I'm reading Words of Radiance and seeing them. how intricate and how robust the world is, how much time and thought Sanderson has put into this world that he's building that opened up a new, a whole new world for me when it comes to fantasy.

So that was a, definitely a, a key moment for me in the podcast story and podcast journey.

Jonathan: Wait till your first reread.

Spenser: Yeah,

Slava: Well, I read, I reread Warbreaker now, three times. So

Jonathan: Spencer, do you want to explain my comment to him?

Spenser: yeah, I think if I understand what you're going for here. I'm on my fourth reread, I think, right now of the Stormlight Archive, just because book five's coming out here, uh, in a month or so. it is crazy the amount of things that you will see, that are foreshadowed in, uh, Even the first prologue of the Way of Kings, and by the, and we're only on book four right now, book five's coming out obviously, and so I'm sure on my next read through after book five comes out I'll be like, oh my goodness there's even more that he foreshadowed, um, uh, the man is a genius I think when it comes to foreshadowing,

Jonathan: It's ridiculous.

Slava: Well, I'm reading Words of Radiance now, and the prologue has all these kind of quips, like to the word surge, like it surged outta her. And I'm like, wait a minute. Surge binders surge. And maybe I'm overthinking it. Maybe that, maybe it's not a foreshadow, but I'm like, what the hell? What's going on? You know, what is, why is he saying this?

And so it's. Yeah, anyway,

Jonathan: And so, just for the audience's, purview, I recently released Slava to have fair game for reading anything else in the Cosmere besides reading ahead on the Stormlight Archives, just because it takes so long for us to get to through all the books because this isn't strictly a Stormlight, podcast.

And so, if you're a Stormlight fan, Slava has the opportunity to read Mistborn Era One, Two, The Secret Projects, things like that now. I have released him. and it's gonna get wild.

Slava: that it is, I have some hot takes, for Words of Radiance and they're all positive hot take, they're not like disagreeing with, you know, or, or crapping in the book, but, uh, I, I have maybe Slava reacts and guesses stuff, but now I have more, more content to work with, so I can make more reasonable

assumptions than

just like, hey, I don't know, you know,

Jonathan: Yeah. More data points for

Slava: More data points.

Yeah, I'm still pissed that fricking Yassin is dead. Pisses me right the hell off.

I

don't care. Like I told, I told Jonathan, I think you too, Spencer. I'm like, thanks Sanders. So now I have a spren who's going to bind to me because you killed off the, you know, one of my favorite characters, you bastard, like in like the chapter seven or whatever, probably not chapter seven.

Uh, but, but close

enough. I was

like, Yeah. I was like, Oh wow. They're going to shatter planes and they're with their, you know, pirate friends or their sailor friends. And then there's a new guy that comes in the ship. And I was like, fuck this, this is bad. And then she's dead. Like in the next chapter. I'm like, of course, of course, this is how it's going to be,

Jonathan: yeah. Well, it's, the thing is he, Sanders doesn't pull any punches. Like he wants us to love these characters. And then he, he slowly takes some of them away.

Slava: Well, that's why Kaladin is so morose and depressed all the time, because Sanderson just tortures a shit out of this poor bastard. What else could go wrong in this man's

life?

Jonathan: he's like, but I'll never kill you. Callin,

Slava: There's no reprieve for Kaladin.

Spenser: He always survives,

Slava: Right.

Jonathan: yeah.

Slava: He wouldn't let him kill himself even like yeah Kaladin could have had peace like in the first few chapters the way of Kings like nope

Jonathan: Wow.

Slava: see that's my hot That's the version of the hot takes I

plan on making Nice. I look forward to the other ones. It'll be fun. All right, Jonathan, what is your top favorite moment on the podcast?

Jonathan: I kind of foreshadowed it myself earlier and I'm sure this will be, not, it's not a big surprise, but my favorite moment so far has been in the city and the city episode where I confront Slava about having an opinion. Because he honestly, I've never in our entire friendship ever encountered a time when he was like, Oh, well, I don't really have an opinion.

And I was like, Yes, you do. You do have an opinion. You're just not sharing it. And I don't know why, but you have an opinion and your opinion is you don't like this book. Just say it, just admit it to the audience. You don't like this book. And, uh, that's just a real big win in my heart. I have it etched on my wall.

My wife keeps trying to cover it up with paint, but I keep writing it back up there in blood.

Spenser: Perfect. I love it. All right. Slava, we'll wrap this, section up with you. What is your top favorite moment on the podcast?

Slava: well It's actually a series of moments, I really like the segments, and they're so far and few in between That's why I chose them. I really like the kind of Some of them are scripted, some of them are impromptu, I really like the moments where we, like, we break each other's wishes, uh, what we did for the monkey's paw, and then a couple of other episodes.

We're asking questions because we're talking about world building. So, what kind of world would you like to live in? And we ended up on one episode discussing it as we applied the principle of breaking each other's wishes to this question, we quickly realized how crazy impractical and deadly, the worlds we wanna live in Wood Beach. For us, we're like, eh, maybe we don't wanna, you know, live on it.

And the spontaneity of those kinds of moments, I think it gives the audience kind of a peak guy in the curtain to who we really are. Because no matter how you want to slice this, there's a public persona and a private persona to both Jonathan and I.

It's just because we're performing when we do this. And that's good. That's, you're supposed to do that. That's how this thing works. That's how movies work, TV works, radio. There's a persona that you put on, and if you do it well, you'll still be authentic. You're playing a part for, for lack of a better term.

So when that kind of breaks down, and it breaks down in the best possible way, and you get these spontaneous moments. I think it shows how much we care about the stuff we're reading and the stuff we're talking about, and how much we really do love world building. It makes for a fun moment, but also gives the audience a little extra morsel.

So those moments, there were probably a handful of them, but I've Reread listening to them during the edits and you know like being in the middle of it as we're doing I'm like man. This is great. This is this is a really great moment for the podcast. So that's my number one.

Spenser: Awesome. Yeah. Thank you guys for sharing that. That's, that's fun to, to kind of hear about that. And yeah, I just kind of see, see a little bit behind the scenes. Alright, yeah, so there's a couple questions I just want to ask us on our way out here. Uh, this is kind of a fun one. If you guys could interview any author on the podcast, who would it be and why?

Jonathan: Does it have to be an author? We've already read a book of,

Spenser: No, no, any author that you guys have read.

Jonathan: Hmm. I like want to go flip through my audible catalog catalog let me tell you people, I would not want to interview or have a chat with Sanderson. And you want to know why?

Spenser: I do want to know why.

Jonathan: Cause I'm going to sound like an idiot. Spencer and I get together usually about three days after a book releases because we've read it and we sit down, we have a cocktail or something and we're talking like, Oh, wasn't this a thing?

Oh, well, I don't remember. And we're both just kind of like staring at each other. Like, I think that's. What happened in, you know, era two of Mistborn. I don't remember, but there are people who are real experts at this. I'm so, so much a novice. So, yeah, definitely would not have him on, you know, what? Ah, I might regret saying this. I, I would actually like to get China Mayville on.

Slava: I knew it

Jonathan: I just, I

just want to

know,

like, what were you think, like, that's actually, that's my answer. that's my answer.

Spenser: amazing. I love that.

Slava: I was about to interject to make a joke because I thought you're gonna go serious

Jonathan: I mean, that is serious. I do, I want to understand, like, when did, because the, we talked about this, the concept's a 10. It's even a 15, like, the concept's there. You just didn't edit it enough. That's it, like, ugh, anyway.

Slava: So for me, it would have to be Stephen King And I'll tell you why. And I mentioned this on a podcast,

Jonathan: I thought you were going to say Scott Lynch.

Slava: no, it had to be Stephen King, and I'll tell you why. I mentioned this on previous episodes, Stephen King, for me, was an escape during a very, very rough time in my life, and yeah, I like horror, and he's a horror writer, and he's a really good horror writer, but he also has other books that are not necessarily horror, some are even like fantasy esque, like the Dark Tower series, but reading Stephen King was an outlet for me.

Specifically him. I read a lot of other books, R. L. Stein, Dean Koons, Clive Barker, for young adult and not so young adult horror books, but for some reason, Stephen King always was a favorite. He stood out the way he wrote kids, the way he wrote characters, female, male, the worlds that he built.

And Sanderson's Cosmere, but nonetheless, the worlds that he built. Provided such a needed escape for me. So I would want to talk to him and I wouldn't ask him, where'd you come up with your ideas? I just want to chat with the guy, like on a podcast with a fan and Stephen King having coffee, smoking cigarettes, whatever, having a cocktail, just talking to the kid, the kid, goodness,

excuse me, just, yeah, just talking to the guy, just talking to the guy for an hour would be just a. Would be great for me. It would be, uh, uh, yes, that, that, that's the answer. I don't know what else to say.

Spenser: Yeah, no, I love that. I think, um, being able to sit down with, with an author that you really admire would be, would be amazing. Um,

Jonathan: Who would you say Spence?

Spenser: Yeah, yeah. So for me, um, yeah, Jonathan, I would definitely pick Sanderson. I mean, I know I would probably be like in awe or, you know, um, I don't know what the word I'm looking

for is, but yeah, fanboying, you know, all over.

But, um, yeah, I'd definitely love to just kind of pick his brain a little bit and just like where he draws inspiration from. How does he have so many good ideas? Um, yeah. And yeah, just try to maybe just chat with him, you know, on a personal level for a little bit, I think would be awesome.

Jonathan: So you guys both want to have personal conversations with these really talented authors, and I want to interrogate and grill a guy.

Slava: that's

it.

Jonathan: Thanks guys.

Spenser: yeah, of course.

Jonathan: Great.

Slava: Yeah. So I can imagine if all three of us got our wish at the same time and we were at the same cafe, it wasn't a podcast thing, we would just like Spencer and I would like probably pull tables together, King and Sanderson are like having a great old time. We look over, Jonathan's like flipping a table, pointing, pointing fingers at China Mabel's face.

China Mabel's Corner crying,

Spenser: Spit flying out of his,

you know, the corner of his spittle, yeah, foaming in the mouth,

Jonathan: Wow. Thanks.

Slava: Just, you can just hear obscenities from that corner just one fucking edit,

Jonathan: I've got the book with like highlights and, and then I pull out like a murder board with like yarn attached to it. Like this character didn't even come back

Spenser: So many potholes. I don't,

I

don't actually know. Uh, that's great. Awesome. Well, thanks guys for sharing that. Since we're talking about Dreaming, What would be your guys dream podcast setup? Like, if there were no limits, if you could have, you know, Any equipment, any location, a studio, whatever, What would that look like for you guys? What would be your dream setup?

Slava: can take this first. I've actually daydreamed about it, if money was no object, I'd either want to buy like a house in the woods far away from everybody, have, a palace unto myself. I would turn the basement into a studio, honest to goodness, recording booth, actually get, A professional, well, I use a quasi professional editing software, but get a actual professional editing software, take the time to learn it, or just hire somebody to teach me.

The, the actual intricacies of the program, because one thing that like turns me off from learning premiere or any of the other, programs is the basic stuff is like, well, this is how you upload the episode and then you go file select and I'm like, just tell me how to set up the tracks and how to edit for a particular type of industry.

So I would, that's an aside and I won't. I won't start ranting about that, but that's what would be my dream is to buy a new object. I buy a house far away from civilization, but close enough to buy groceries, you know, within a 20 minute drive, I just turn my basement into, and turn my basement into an actual studio.

at that point, maybe have guests, you know, interviews with authors and have something that is presentable, not just my basement with my books and my. elliptical here. So have a nice professional presentable studio. That would be, that'd be a dream of mine

Spenser: Awesome. Jonathan, what about you? Oh

Jonathan: about having a nice podcast set up, you know, you want, you want the nice equipment, you want the nice space. So definitely a custom curated space. mine would have. It'd be two things, the first idea that came to me when you asked that is, setting up a space in something like Times Square and it's a building.

Like I, I would take land and just, I would own it and it'd be like a glass building, like the Apple store in New York, that's all glass so that people can kind of look in like, Good Morning America. But it would be double or triple paned. So you can still see through, but it'll prevent the, audio from getting through the, the outside noise.

Slava: or from China. I'm able to shooting you for insulting him.

Jonathan: Uh, that's what the bulletproof glass is for, in, in the, uh, what's the thing from the book in the, uh, the in between the, the, whatever it's called, the blur, the blaze. What is it? It

Slava: No

clue.

Jonathan: Yeah. So you don't remember either. Uh, but

The

Slava: between. Yeah. Okay.

Jonathan: It's, it's called something though. It's the, the, the blasé, the blaze, the whatever. it's a, again, it's a B word. I know that this word, Spencer doesn't know he's read the book, but anyway, um, the breach,

Slava: There it is.

Jonathan: the breach,

Spenser: yeah, that's what I was gonna say, but I just,

Jonathan: yeah.

Okay. so my real answer is it's actually a full building. And each room is a podcast studio, so you can pick and choose which room you want to go to. And so there's a, there's a dynamic, element to it where like, Hey, there's one with couches set up, right?

And cameras and whatever. And then there's one that's a little more intimate where it's like across the table from one another, like we see on some like one on one. Podcasts, and then there's like a round table fireside chat. That's like 12 seats, right? Mike setups on each one of them and each room has a unique look and vibe to it.

yeah, and that way you can have any sort of, number of guests it looks dynamic and there's a quality video element to it as well. but mine would not be in the woods in the middle of nowhere. It would be, probably in the middle of a city, or nearby, just like 10 minutes outside of a city.

So good question.

Spenser: Yeah, I love the, uh, just the complete opposite. Like, ideas that you guys had there. Slava wants to be as far away from civilization and Jonathan wants to be in the smack dab center of it, so,

Jonathan: Facts. perfect. Alright, well guys, thank you so much for, uh, sharing your thoughts with us, and, sharing about your journey on this podcast and all the fun moments that you've had.

Spenser: it was nice to be able to hear and, and kind of see, see a little bit behind the scenes of what goes on, you know, with the SideQuest podcast. All right. Well, next time on SideQuest, episode 100 is coming up. So stay tuned for that. I know there's going to be something special, that the hosts are going to be doing for that. so make sure you are subscribed so that you never miss another episode of SideQuest.