So I'm thinking about doing an interview podcast...

If you're into the idea after you read this, definitely let me know!

I used to have a podcast.

It’s been so long since I’ve done a new episode that it’s probable that a lot of you don’t even know that I did it, but I did, and I really enjoyed doing it.

It was called Obscurity Knocks, and it was a completely goofy premise: I interviewed actors and pointedly asked them about the most obscure things in their back catalog, with the concept being that they were the things that they were least likely to have been asked about before, which therefore theoretically meant that they probably had stories about those experiences that they’d never had the opportunity to tell before. I even had a little bit of a game show element to it, in that they could pick three projects on my list and more or less avoid talking about them.

As I said, it was goofy, but I enjoyed doing it…and yet I also kind of hated doing it, mostly because it seemed as though I was constantly having issues with my recordings, resulting in the episodes being of wildly varying quality. This led to delays between episodes as I either struggled to make them sound better or just didn’t want to deal with the fact that I’d done a great interview that sounded like shit. It also started getting hard to find guests who wanted to follow the format, so I finally just kind of let it wither on the vine, even though every single one of the 13 episodes featured great anecdotes from some very familiar faces.

These were the first nine guests:

In case you need a little help, the top row is Mackenzie Astin, Bruce McGill, and Kurt Fuller, the second row is John Kapelos, Barry Primus, and Peter Gallagher, and the third row is the late John Heard, Xander Berkeley, and Curtis Armstrong. The subsequent four guests were Richard Riehle, W. Earl Brown, Clancy Brown, and between Messrs. Armstrong and Riehle, I did a out-of-format interview with Ike Eisenmann, one of my favorite young actors when I was a kid.

So, yeah, I had a blast doing it, but I don’t think I can stick with that format. Instead, I’m thinking maybe I just want to do a straightforward interview podcast, since - to borrow a line from Ralph Wiggum - that’s where I’m a Viking.

Why now? Well, hell, why not? But to be honest, “now” has become such an incredibly exhausting time to exist on this planet that I really think I ought to be doing something that I enjoy as often as I possibly can, and since I’m constantly struggling to find paying gigs that allow me to do that thing that I enjoy most (at least in terms of pop culture journalism), then it seems like this would be a good way to do it more often.

Even better, it wouldn’t involve having to transcribe anything, which is definitely a plus. And by just doing a straightforward interview podcasts, I don’t have to limit my guests strictly to folks with an IMDb page. It could be actors, writers, musicians, other podcast hosts… Literally anybody is an option.

I already have the perfect name for the podcast, so that’s already one thing out of the way. And Zoom is so much better than it used to be when it comes to recording, so I’m hoping that I won’t have the regular nervous breakdowns I was experiencing from audio screwups. I’ve also had someone offer to help me on the technical end if I need it, so if I end up doing this, I’ll definitely be reaching out to him.

So let me know your thoughts about this. Let me know if you think it’s a good idea and, more importantly, let me know if you’d actually listen.