New Podcast!
The last couple of weeks have been more unnecessary tension than I’ve seen in quite a while.
Why? Because I had to take my podcast idea seriously, for once.
I’ve been planning the notion of a podcast since 2017. I know, because I have the notes for it: a piece of steno paper that says “podcast?” Some day, that will be worth some pocket change to collectors. I knew that I wanted the podcast to have something to do with Size Fantasy and extreme sexual dimorphism, but I didn’t know what, specifically.
Articles kept coming out about macrophilia, as in “holy shit, readers, check this freaky shit out.” Podcasts would do one-off episodes along the same lines. I started collecting these, and then I thought I’d do a podcast about these skittish, intolerant people and their misconceptions of our fetish. But as I scripted one episode, I knew I needed something meatier than “boy, are they mistaken.”
Recently I took a course in podcasting. My city offers community education—which, after chatting about it online, I realize not every city offers—and when I received the new season’s course catalog, I circled a bunch of courses I’d like to take. I’ve done this before, and I’ve learned to make orange marmalade, Chinese dumplings, and Cajun dishes. I took a one-day course on learning the settings on my DSLR camera (to my wife’s relief, because up to now I haven’t been doing much with my camera), and I finally got to practice the basics of watercolor.
But yes, in the new course catalog, among the courses I’d circled (for shit ’n’ giggles, because you never know) was Start Your Own Podcast, being taught by a journalist from a local news organization. I don’t know if other cities have this, but we have a couple regular mainstream newspapers, but we also have news that used to come in large, square brochures and now are exclusively online, that focus on political events and alternative entertainment. I don’t know what that’s called.
But the course instructor works at one of those places, and over four weeks she taught us the basics. How to come up with an idea, how to brainstorm a title and tagline, where to get it hosted, etc. On the first night, I swear she said that we would develop and play our trailers on the third night, so I immediately learned Audacity through YouTube videos, and practiced sound engineering with the condenser mic I got on Temu. This was not my best idea since the condenser mic is way too sensitive and I live under several flight paths for our local international airport; the mic on my phone works just fine. By the second class I actually had a two-minute trailer ready, but I waited another week to present it… though what she had in mind was that we’d share our finished products on the fourth session.
So that was a lot of needless tension and excitement. Oh, and the other, obvious thing: obviously, as we brainstormed in class about topics and material, I had to reveal to a dozen strangers that, yes, I’m doing a podcast about a bizarre sexual fetish they’ve never dreamed of. They heard the name of my podcast before anyone, and they heard my trailer before anyone. They also started dropping out week after week, which the instructor says is normal and likely had nothing to do with me. In the end, there were only four of us sharing our trailers with each other, and they were encouraging and supportive of my work, as I was of theirs.
The class ended, and I wondered how I’d sustain the momentum and motivation to see this project through to completion. One way, I discovered, was to announce to a small group of friends that yes, absolutely, I’m about to release a podcast. See? Here’s the trailer, and that means in two weeks I will definitely have an episode—no, wait, let’s make that two episodes to share with everyone! Yes, brilliant: nothing guarantees success like getting your little community whipped up in anticipation of your project, with the threat of incredible disappointment looming over your head like a sword.
Or, in my case, like a pretty woman.
But I did it. I saved my place in the podcast platforms with my trailer, got my RSS address, plugged that in to WordPress so that any time I set a post (containing an audio file) with the category “podcasting,” it would shoot that episode out to iHeartRadio, Pocket Casts, RadioPublic, iTunes, ListenNotes and others. (I have to manually upload them to Spotify and Castbox.) And then I scripted two episodes: the first is a fresh new short story I wrote to introduce outsiders to macrophilia, paired with my autobiography, and the second represents what most episodes will sound like. It focuses on one topic and ends with a Size creator or fan answering two questions—how’d you get into this, and what does it mean to you?
My wife, the English major and former teacher, helped edit and refine my copy. I used the song I wrote with friends for the intro and outro music, and Pixabay provides the special effects I use. With some remorse I’ve had to go back into social media, starting accounts with X, BlueSky, and Facebook. I will spend only as much time there as it takes to promote an episode and attempt to convince former Size contacts that, yes, it’s really me. On the plus side, I started my own Mastodon instance, but to get the word out I have to aggressively federate (follow users on other servers) to get the word out in any meaningful way. Soon, I hope to invite some friends there too.
I built up as much hype as I could, before the episodes dropped on Wednesday, November 1, and I searched for other things to busy myself with in the meantime. Scrubbed out the bathroom, did all the laundry, read a book (or tried to), stuff like that. I couldn’t even focus on Minecraft, but I redirected my nervous energy into making Chat GPT write Size Erotica, so that was satisfying.
The two episodes are out now. You can search for “zHeightgeist” on nearly any podcast platform and find it, and you can find them all on the zHeightgeist website. The next episode drops on Nov. 15, and every two weeks for as long as I can keep this up. If you like it, you can write a review wherever you listen to it, you can write to me through the website, and best of all would be to share it with people you know. I know, you think only certain people would be interested in this, but I’ve shared it with my friends who have never dreamed of shrinking down and curling up in the broad, soft, warm palms of a loving partner, and they’ve been kind and supportive. You’d be surprised, is all I’m saying.
In Her Shadow,
Aborigen
©2024 Aborigen/Size Riot