HOW I STARTED A PODCAST

Part 1 - The idea

I’d been listening to podcasts for a few years.  I don’t remember how I first heard of podcasts but I do remember that the first podcast I ever listened to was This American Life and I was hooked.  

You see, several years ago, my wife and I were on holiday driving down to San Diego from LA and started listening to a local talk radio station.  LA was in the midst of a mayoral election campaign and the station had challenged the two front runner to race to the station.  The first one in the studio wins.  Of course, both candidates were caught in LA traffic but called in with their progress.  It made for great radio.  It was entertaining and informative and I got to thinking that there was nothing like this back home. That memory never left me and when I started listening to podcasts I felt that I had finally found what I was looking for.

I’m just like most avid podcast listeners in that the more I got immersed the more I thought to myself, I should do one of these.  I came up with plenty of stupid ideas that surely would have fizzled half way through recording the first episode.  On the other hand, I did come up with what I thought were some good ideas for friends and colleagues, but those never went anywhere.

Skip ahead to a couple of years ago.  I was watching Anderson Cooper on CNN.  I don’t remember exactly what he was talking about (probably Donald Trump) but at one point he used the term “creationists” and I immediately had my “a-ha” moment.  Yes, I know what people are referring to when they use the term “creationists” but in that moment it meant something completely different to me.

When I was a kid, I watched a documentary about Pablo Picasso on TV.  At one point they placed the camera behind his easel and we watch Picasso create from the point of view of the canvas.  Ever since then I’ve been fascinated by creativity.  When ever I would go to an art gallery I would stare at a painting trying to understand where the first brush stroke was.  Later in my career, as I worked with various musicians I would be curious about how they wrote their songs - whether the lyrics or the music came first.

That evening when Anderson Cooper said the word “creationists” it suddenly dawned on me what my podcast would be about and what it would be called.  The Creationists would be a podcast about people who create.

And then I procrastinated...