If you’ve been following the podcast, you know that we haven’t released a new one for quite some time. The truth is (and this is Rajan speaking), the editing work became too laborious for me. We would often record hours of content and I would spend further hours, listening and editing and as time went on, it got harder and harder. I have ADHD, and it seemed like a task I wasn’t suited for, and in all honesty, it began to kill my enthusiasm for doing the podcast. I love the discussion part, but the behind the scenes work, the uploading and listing and publishing in addition to the editing, became my nemesis for a time.
At the same time, I missed the idea of talking to writers and other creative types, of having a drink together, especially in the COVID era, when many of us were stuck at home and when in-person gatherings were few and far between. I considered possibilities over the gap, but nothing really changed until I was the guest co-host for the KGB Fantastic Fiction reading series, normally based out of the KGB Bar in New York City, but which had been streaming during the height of the pandemic. I won’t go into the details, but they recorded the readings and easily posted them to the web where they could be viewed, and I realized that we could do that. We could meet with other people, and share a drink, while seeing one another. And with video conferencing being more commonplace these days, we could also reach people we might not have before. Plus, we could record more regularly without the need to find a space to do it in (something we struggled with before).
So, the podcast is back, but as a video stream. We will be recording with guests for roughly about an hour and putting the videos online with little to no editing involved. As we get things established, we may even start livestreaming the actual discussions and taking questions from the public. But for now, the recordings will be available on Youtube.
And I’m excited to say that our first guest of the new era is none other than Mercurio D. Rivera, one of my favorite science fiction writers, and a friend. But he deserves his own post, so let me take care of that…
Spirited Discourse Podcast 