Though I’m constantly floored that anyone would ever want to willingly listen to my voice, as many of you know, I’m the co-host of a weekly podcast. I very much enjoy doing the show, and over time, I’ve met some wonderful people¹, learned the basics of audio recording and post-production, and though it may not always sound like it, we’re always trying to produce a better and better “podcasting product” (to use the cheezy marketing parlance, even though we don’t and never will accept advertising on the show itself) and to give everything we’ve got to our listeners.

Point is, we put a lot of effort, love, and devotion into what we do. And we mostly get back wonderfully kind words from our audience. They send us articles, they call in with voicemail, they write with email, and they even give us money to keep the whole thing afloat. We love them, and our show would be impossible without them. Yet, there are listeners that write with complaints annoy me that generally fall into a few broad camps:²,³

“Can you please stop cursing? It makes the baby jesus cry / it alienates people from your message / it makes you look uneducated / my kids hear it / it offends me / [insert podcaster’s name here] effectively delivers a vegan message and does not curse.”

Responses, in order: No. Good. It only alienates people who are uptight. Bellylaughs. The world isn’t kiddie-safe, neither are we. Don’t listen. Listen to them.

Seriously, though, I curse in real life. I curse on the show. Americans are way too uptight about this stuff, really. Relax. De-clench that sphincter; do breathing execrises. And listen when your kids aren’t around. We’re not kid-safe, and we never will be.

“Can you [insert technological impossibility here]?”

These folks often think that they’re the only people listening to the show. Often listening on some kind of ancient MP3 playback equipment that holds 28MB or something, they want the show ripped as a 2 megabyte file so it’ll fit on their player. Or, they want the show split. Or, they want us to somehow radically and fundamentally alter the way we do things — not because it is technologically sound, or more efficient, or smarter — no, they want things radically altered because it would work perfectly just for them — forget about the thousands of other listeners. Thing is, most of what these people want could be done on their end, and I often tell them that, but they aren’t interested. They want us to do it for them.

::sigh::

“Here’s how you do good radio.”

We’re very happy for suggestions and ideas about how to improve, but I sometimes get the sense that most people think because they can speak, they can do a compelling podcast — and I think a lot of people think this without ever having picked up a microphone. We very much appreciate thoughtful suggestions, but oftentimes, I think people underestimate how hard it is to do a show, what goes into it, how it requires writing and preparation, and that it isn’t as easy as it sounds, especially if you want to be consistently decent.⁴ Point is, lots of people think they’re experts, but they’re not. You can listen to NPR all day and masturbate to the sound of Linda Wertheimer’s voice, but this does not make you an expert on what makes good radio. Again, to be clear: well-phrased, polite, and thoughtful ideas are always welcome. We could, however, do without the condescending tone we sometimes get.

* “You are my podslave, you must produce!”

This is a mixed-blessing in a lot of ways. I’m incredibly flattered that we become part of anyone’s life so much that they look forward to the show, but we’re human too. We need time off on occasion, we get tired, we have full-time jobs beyond podcasting, and we occasionally like to see each other for things that aren’t related to vegan activism. Yet, some people get really pissy when we don’t produce on-schedule, and we hear about it. In all honesty, we love listeners that are so loyal, and we very much appreciate the love, but the show is sort of a performance — it requires a lot of energy, and some weeks, the energy or time just isn’t there.⁵ Forcing it just makes us grumpy with each other, and leads to work that we feel unsure about, so when we need a week off, we take it.

I don’t mean to sound like such a primadonna — we’re lucky to have as great an audience as we do, to have people that care enough to complain or to write to us, and to help us stay afloat. In fact, I’ll pretty much bend over backwards for donors (if you are one, I will actually help you split MP3s, or do whatever you need along those lines) but as you might have guessed by now, the people who complain the most loudly are those would never contemplate chipping in even a tenner to keep our server up. Still, we’re exceptionally fortunate to have such a dedicated and caring audience, and though I complain here, I love podcasting, and these small annoyances would never begin to outweigh the positive effects that I know our show has had not only for us on a personal level, but also for a bunch of our listeners.

1. some of them, as recently as this past weekend. [↩]
2. I think I wrote a post about this here long ago — consider this an update to that if you read it. [↩]
3. This will probably sound pissy, but that’s life sometimes. It is worth noting that these kinds of listeners are actually a very tiny minority, but they can be vocal. [↩]
4. People do podfade for a reason — podcasting is hard work! [↩]
5. Though it has come to my attention recently that our listeners like it when we’re having a bad day. How evil of you all. [↩]