On this day

October 17th

Structure with Moe Poplar

October 17, 2023

Structure – with Moe Poplar

What are the essential considerations for independent podcasters to enhance their show’s quality, define its purpose, and create a meaningful connection with their audience?

Moe Poplar shares his expertise and insights on format, structure, and connecting with your audience.

[…] what service are we providing to our audience? I think if you know what goes into your show— if your show has a format— You also can start building a level of trust with your listener so that they understand your agreement. Because nobody wants to listen to the podcast that says this is what we’re gonna talk about, this is what we’re gonna do, this is what we’re not gonna do… You know? We’re looking for people like us, who say the thing in a way that we would say it, so we can understand it.

~ Moe Poplar 24:38

Moe Poplar brings his experience in producing and editing podcasts, as well as his various podcast projects, to this conversation. He highlights the importance of defining a clear format and structure for podcasts, emphasizing the role of a format in establishing a contract with the audience. Moe also touches on the significance of the host-listener relationship, where setting expectations and creating a rhythm in the podcast can enhance the overall listening experience.

Takeaways

Podcast Format and Structure — The importance of defining a clear format and structure for podcasts. Having a structured approach establishes a contract with the listeners, setting clear expectations for what to expect in the show.

Host-Listener Relationship — Building a strong host-listener relationship and the significance of creating a rhythm in the show, using music cues, and setting a comfortable tone.

Production and Editing — Experience in podcast production and editing underscores the value of a well-organized and thought-out podcast.

Resources

Podcasts Hella XP, Bunn Amigos and The Class of 1989

Moe Poplar’s web site, Ashy Feet

(Written with help from Chat-GPT.)

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Reading

October 17, 2023

Reading must occur every day, but it is not just any daily reading that will do. The day’s reading must include at minimum a few lines whose principal intent is to be beautiful—words composed as much for the sake of their composition as for the meaning they convey.

~ Mandy Brown

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Emotional flooding

October 17, 2022

Whenever I hear about these incidents, I think of the best life advice I ever got, from my older brother: “Don’t freak out.” He was giving me a parenting tip, but really, it applies to everything in life. Freaking out—“emotional flooding,” in social-science jargon—never seems to make matters better, and we nearly always regret it. The fact that freak-outs may be happening with particular frequency right now is an opportunity to understand the phenomenon in ourselves and learn to manage our emotions better. If we do, we will be equipped with a skill that helps us be better friends, parents, spouses, and professionals, even when the pandemic is nothing but a distant memory.

~ Arthur C. Brooks from, How to Stop Freaking Out – The Atlantic

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I truly hope you’ve not experienced flooded emotions, recently or otherwise. For me, this is a big part of how my atypical brain works. I don’t have an emotional range. I have two settings labeled zero and eleven. Eleven means I love sappy movies, can get really engaged in helping people, and much more. But, I had to learn how to disengage when my emotions flare; I had to become a master at pausing while deciding what I want to happen.

But having a level–zero non-response to most everything means I can function very well under duress. For example, if the roof of the house is mid-repair, it’s been raining hard for hours, the ceiling is leaking in various places, and then the hard-wired fire alarm shorts out (ie, goes off) when water gets into a sensor, the deafening, in–house klaxon sounds, my cellphone rings as the monitoring company reports there’s a fire… Well, level-zero means I can repeatedly work the keypad to disable the fire alarm, even though it goes off again in a few seconds, give the person on my cellphone my alarm code to avert the fire department’s being dispatched, and then quickly work to physically disable the alarm system (even though it’s intentionally tamper– and disable–resistant.) All without my heart–rate rising; while actually feeling bored by it all.

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Forced simplicity

October 17, 2021

I’ve talked previously about simplicity. In particular, the idea that imformed simplicity, following from a beginner’s mind which has moved through understanding the complexity of a topic, is the hallmark of mastery practice. But forced simplicity is an entirely different animal.

Occassionally, I really need to stretch out and tear into some hard work. This week I did 8, long-form recordings in 5 days. Driving, sometimes eating, more driving, arrive, set up, record, drive, sleep, and on and on. At night I’m trying to quickly come up with a plan for the next day; I have to be where, when? …drive time? …traffic? And before I can be comfortable I have the next day under control, I need to get to sleep. Small bits of online work need to be done here and there—

I’m literally sitting by a campfire. My Mac is wifi’d to my iPhone’s cell service. I’m uploading a 90mb audio file to Movers Mindset’s project management system, as I type this blog post.

—then it’s time to sleep. Then jump up and leap into the next day. Organize the van. Is there time to shower today? (This is a real decision, and the answer was not always, ‘yes.’) Can I do my journaling? …not this week? My usual reading? …not this week. Everything I did for 6+ days was laser focused on what happens between when I press “record” and “stop.” Arrive at the location and bring my A-game. Under- or over-caffeinated, sleepy, prepared or not, … game. on.

Forced simplicity can be brutal. But, I got the good tape.

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Breathing Room

October 17, 2020

To abstain from all information about the world at this current moment would be a betrayal of your civic duty. On the other hand, to monitor every developing story in real time, like a breaking news producer, is a betrayal of your sanity.

~ Cal Newport from, Focus Week: Give Your Brain Some Breathing Room – Cal Newport

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This tension is not only real, it’s necessary. You need to have this tension; it’s a critical component of how you assess the world by choosing what to filter in and what to filter out. The difficult part, of course, is if you don’t intentionally manage this balance.

How many things just pop in front of you each day? Are you happy with that amount?

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Begin with the end in mind

October 17, 2019

Each part of your life can be examined in the context of the whole, of what really matters most to you. By keeping that end clearly in mind you can make certain that whatever you do on any particular day does not violate the criteria you have defined as supremely important, and that each day of your life contributes in a meaningful way to the vision you have to your life as a whole.

~ Stephen Covey

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Practicing mindfulness

October 17, 2015

(Part 15 of 37 in series, Study inspired by Pakour & Art du Déplacement by V. Thibault)

Mindfulness is an inward directed practice of contemplation. It is a continuous process of being present. For me, because it was initially unfamiliar, it was more difficult to approach than the obvious physical activities such as running, jumping, and climbing. But after some practice, it became a critical part of the foundation on which I’ve placed many other parts of Parkour.

There are many ways to practice mindfulness at large in one’s life. For example, Leo Babauta, of Zen Habits, has a great piece titled, 9 Mindfulness Rituals to Make Your Day Better I am a firm believer that mindfulness across the full breadth of daily life yields big benefits. But in this post, I’m focusing on the practice of mindfulness within Parkour.

In many ways, mindfulness is like any other skill that you can practice intentionally. But unlike other skills, failing to be mindful leaves me with blindspots. These blindspots, which are closely related to the Dunning Kruger Effect, create space for “unknown unknowns” to lay hidden.

Worse, lack of mindfulness is akin to: Failure of attention, which leads to injury; Failure to notice moods and emotions, which leads to loss of interest in the short term and training plateaus in the longer term; Failure to notice signals from my body, which leads to chronic injury and developmental imbalances.

Options for practicing mindfulness

One option would be to set out explicitly to practice mindfulness. (“Today, instead of practicing vaults, I’m going to practice mindfulness.”) Unfortunately, I would need to be highly mindful in order to stay on task working on being mindful. But, if I could be that mindful, I wouldn’t need to practice being mindful. (Which is a Catch-22 that makes my brain hurt before I even start doing anything.) In the end I find that saying, “I’m going to practice mindfulness,” is simply too vague to be motivating.

Another option is to passively rely on fellow traceurs, or coaches, to call me out for “not being mindful”. (Or for them to set up specific “mindfulness practice.”) But mindfulness is too important for me to simply rely on other people to hold me to it. It’s much better for me to practice it intentionally.

To make the options more complicated, it is not at all clear how I switch from being NOT mindful to being mindful enough to notice that just-a-moment-ago I was NOT being mindful. Heavy stuff that. In reality, I usually notice my mind has wandered, (“I’m paying attention to irrelevant things around me,”) or I notice my practice has become unmotivated, (“When did this get boring?”)

Shoelaces

So how do I practice mindfulness? I think of it like tied shoelaces. It’s important my shoelaces be tied, but I don’t obsess over them by constantly checking my shoes. I simply tie them when I notice they are untied.

I practice mindfulness when I notice I’m not being mindful.

My mindfulness drill

So when I notice, what can I do, exactly?

I locate a small jump. The jump needs to be well within my ability; not something risky or overly tiring. I want a relatively easy jump that I know I can do without thinking. It must be any easy jump, because there can be no nervousness or doubt. I’m purposely selecting a jump to set myself up to be lulled into NOT being mindful.

I physically prepare to jump. I position myself, arrange my limbs, engage muscles, etc. Eventually I arrive at that point in space and time which would normally be the last point before I jump. At this exact point, I wait. I am poised, comfortable, ready, willing and perfectly able to jump. I know I’m in at the correct point when I suspect that if someone startled me, I would jump involuntarily.

I find my thoughts are like birds flitting around a cavernous room. Some thoughts are on-task as they seem related to the jump: The way my body feels; The anticipation of being in the air; The expectations of the landing. But depending on how mindful I am, there are more or less other “off-task” thoughts flitting about the room.

The sky is blue.
How much time is left?
I’m thirsty.
There’s an ant where I’m going to land.
What’s for dinner?
People must be looking at me funny.
…and on and on and on.

I am alone with my thoughts, and I am simply an observer in a room with these harmless, incorporeal, flitting birds. I notice as many of the thoughts as I can, taking special notice of the ones that I believe are related to the jump. I don’t fight with the thoughts, because I cannot catch nor chase away any particular bird. In fact, chasing them is worse than useless because they simply loop around to become “the thought about the thought I just tried to chase away.”

Gradually, some of the extraneous birds fly away. When I think the number of extraneous thoughts in my head has reached a point where it’s as good as it’s going to get . . .

I jump.

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Our federal government has failed

October 17, 2013

The problem is not the problem.
The problem is your attitude about the problem.
Do you understand?

~ Captain Jack Sparrow

I think we need to reframe the problem so more people understand.

Civics 101: Are we on the same page?

I’m not going to discuss political parties. I’m not trying to sneak in the idea of “republican” to later make a case for a particular political party.

A federation is a government composed of several independent states. Each of the 50 current members of The United States of America are sovereign states which, through the process of their joining the union, have agreed to pass certain of their powers to the federal government. We, the individual people, are not members of the federation; The states are members of the federation. (May I recommend Wikipedia’s article on Federation?)

The distinguishing principle of a “republic” is that the activities of the government are public. To be a republic, the government cannot be arranged below a monarch, dictator (benevolent or otherwise), or some other (for example, a secret inner circle of corporations) inscrutable font of authority. (May I recommend Wikipedia’s article on Republic?)

The distinguishing principle of “democracy” is self-determination of the governed. To be a democracy, we need features that derive the government’s power from the governed people and that foster equality of each participant’s contribution. (Again, may I recommend Wikipedia’s article on Democracy?)

A pure democracy is one where the governed people may be fully involved in all decisions. A pure democracy of 300+ million people is absurd. But from the absurdity of pure democracy springs the idea of “representative” democracy. In this form of democracy, representatives are empowered to participate in the democratic process on behalf of the governed people.

The United States of America is a federation.
The United States of America is a republic.
The United States of America is a democracy.

By the way, “I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the republic for which it stands, one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”, is the original 1892 wording adopted by Congress.

The Federal Government Has Failed

Yes, exactly! Craig, I know what you’re going to say…
Our military is too big! (nope.)
The 1% is getting all the benefits! (nope.)
Too many people live in poverty? People can’t afford health care?! (nope and nope)
Look at the national monuments being closed!
…the IRS tax system?!
…immigration reform?!!
(nope nope and nope)

My definition of, “the government has failed” is: When I am expending increasing amounts of my time “on” the government. We, the governed people, are spending increasing amounts of our time on our federal government, and I put it to you that this is the ONLY thing on which every single American can immediately agree.

I want to be very clear: I’m not talking about spending more time interacting with the government. I’m not talking about time spent filing your federal taxes, or waiting in line at some federal agency. I am talking about time spent watching news about the federal government, reading posts, (including this one,) and debating federal policy, activities and programs with other people. Wouldn’t you rather spend your time doing, well, anything other than spending time on the federal government?

Some people have “tuned out” of the whole thing. This saves their time in the near future, but turns them into freight stored in the cargo hold of the ship; Their future remains coupled to the success, or failure, of the country.

As a democracy, a distinguishing feature of our government should be that it enables self-determination. If I’m spending increasing amounts of time on my self-determination, then I have decreasing amounts of time to enjoy the fruits of my self-determination.

Is this definition of failure useful?

If we can agree that the government has failed, then I think we can start a new discussion.

Instead of discussing any of the topics on which we’ve recently focused, we could instead discuss the very nature of our government. It would be a discussion which we – those of us alive today – have never actually had.

At some point, you were told where to register, and were told to “do your civic duty” by voting on certain days. But aside from a wee bit of civics required in high school, did you take the time to learn and care about the nature of our government? (I admit that I did not.)

If only we could agree on the nature of our government.

My hope…

My hope is that you’ll try to change the topic of discussion the next time some hot political topic comes up.

The current discussions are an endless train of political topics. Last year it was [this topic], before that it was [that topic], and next year it will be [this other thing.] You must know by now that in 5 minutes at the water cooler, you are not going to convince that other person to fundamentally change to your view of the current political topic. So you are clearly wasting your time “on” the government by participating in political discussion of the current topic.

Change the topic.

Talk about the nature of our government. Talk about why our government exists. Talk about the origin of its powers. Talk about what specifically are those powers.

…and if you don’t feel comfortable discussing the nature of our government, then why are you comfortable being governed by it?

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