(upbeat music)

- How much is that?

(grunts)

- Welcome to the Podcast Editors Mastermind,

the original podcast.

I think there is more now,

but the original podcast dedicated to the business side

of podcast editing.

And tonight we have a very special show for you.

Something that I don't think we've done before.

So we're really excited about this,

but before we get into it,

a little introduction to who we are.

I am Daniel Abendroth.

You can find me at rothemedia.audio.

My co-host tonight.

- Jennifer Longworth of Bourbon Barrel Podcasting.

- Unfortunately not joining us tonight is Bryan Entzminger.

He had to do some parenting thing,

like be there for his kids band thing.

I don't know.

You think this would be priority,

but allow it. - Oh well.

- You can find him at toptieraudio.com

and delightful long distance Yeti, Carrie Arick.

You can find her at carrie.land.

And tonight we have a very special guest who,

if you are familiar with the show

and I've listened to it for any amount of time

or seen the stream,

you would recognize probably our most consistent viewer.

I would say it's almost always,

it's weird whenever you don't show up.

But tonight we have none other than Patrick Keller.

Patrick, thank you so much for joining us.

- I'm excited to be here.

Thanks for having me.

- Why don't you start off by telling us

a little bit about yourself.

I know you've recently had kind of a big life update.

So why don't you tell us a little about who you are.

- Yeah, I am a retired music teacher,

public school music teacher.

That's a little unusual.

I'm a little younger than the average retired music teacher

or teacher in general.

But I had the opportunity and the ability

to purchase some years toward retirement

and put the math together and figured out

that we could make it work and have a supportive husband.

And so I bought four years, if I didn't already say that.

And so I started looking into editing my own podcast

has always kind of been my jam

and the background behind the scenes stuff.

And so I began looking for,

and I honestly don't remember how I found you.

I don't know if it was a Steve Stewart recommendation,

but I found your show, I'm gonna guess like a year

and a half ago around then.

And well, not long after you started, I guess.

- Been four years now.

- Well, then it wasn't that long ago.

It was a couple of years ago.

- Yeah, because I binged, I binged a whole bunch.

That's why I feel like I've been there the whole time.

And so I totally loved it.

I nerded out.

I felt like even before I caught up

with watching live shows, I felt like I knew you all

and just love learning.

I love some of the early shows.

I love a lot of your earlier shows

where you all really got into a lot of the nuts

and bolts stuff on how you did things

and what your processes were.

Those are my favorites.

So hint, hint, you should have some more of those.

I absolutely loved those.

But anyway.

- Well, my process has totally changed

in the last three months,

so I could probably do another one of those shows.

- Yeah.

I feel like I'm pretty-

- Upstate.

- Yeah, yeah, definitely.

Okay, I made a note to address that in an upcoming episode.

- Awesome.

Yeah, well, then I began thinking about

whether I wanted to kind of start my own business,

editing business, and assumed that's probably

what I would do.

And I guess that could still be in my future.

But I ended up interviewing for a contractor position

for a nonprofit education association,

a fairly large organization, and got that.

And so, and that position has kind of grown.

And so it's just the perfect amount of work for me.

I produce and edit two shows on average a week,

as well as like the behind the scenes

kind of recording it live.

One of them is a live show.

The other's a prerecorded show.

One of them uses StreamYard, just like we are now,

and the other, we're on Riverside.

And I work with a team, which is cool experience.

And that started this last summer.

And so it's been my first experience of doing,

having a lot of the volume of editing

and editing things that aren't my own podcast.

And I'm loving it.

I absolutely love it.

I, you know, like a lot of podcasters probably,

we think we, oh sure, I know everything now.

I know everything there is to know about editing.

And then all of a sudden you, you know,

get a job like this and like, just kidding.

I have lots to learn still.

And I've made, I've learned from mistakes.

And you know, as a teacher, you know,

you work in teams and things in education,

but it's a lot different than like the kind of corporate,

nonprofit environment.

And so that's been an interesting learning experience.

And it's just been, it's been really fun.

It's the perfect amount of work for me

and allowing me to still do my own podcast,

which I do about every two weeks.

- Awesome.

Well, I didn't actually specify what makes tonight special.

So instead of like having an expert on or somebody on

to talk about a specific topic,

we wanted to bring on just like members of the community

or other podcast editors and just kind of talk about,

so I guess we call it like community highlight,

but just highlighting other editors in this space.

- I'm the community.

- Yeah.

So that's what tonight's all about.

And we're really excited to have Patrick on,

in case you couldn't tell already.

So why don't we start by telling us like,

what got you into podcasting in general?

- My husband introduced me to podcasts in around 2008.

And so for a couple of years,

I had like two podcasts that I listened to and that was it.

But I listened to them.

- Do you remember what those were?

- Yes.

The Paranormal Podcast by Jim Harreld.

And probably it was really just his

for at least a year or so.

And I would, you know,

religiously watch the calendar and the time

and wait for him to upload the podcast.

And you know, at that time I was sticking my iPod

on the computer and loading it in iTunes and all that.

I don't even remember how all that worked,

but I remember it was a lot more work than it is now.

And so I was a huge fan of just one to two shows

and was very devoted to those shows.

And it was partly his inspiration in talking to him.

At the time he had a little podcasting course,

it was short-lived.

He didn't have it for very long,

but I think I was his one and only graduate

of his podcasting course.

And that was in like 2013, I think.

In 2014, I started my show and since then

have been obsessively passionate about podcasting in general

and geeky about all the podcasts about podcasting podcasts.

And you know, I use Overcast.

My Overcast has so many podcasts in it now

that it's ridiculous.

And I don't very often empty out my player

and I go in and out of phases of,

and now that I'm doing more work like this,

the more you edit a podcast,

the less time you have to listen to podcasts, which is-

- Oh, you figured it out.

- Yeah. - Yeah.

- So I'm way behind, I'm way behind.

But that was my, you know, the paranormal and nerdy.

I had a paranormal investigation team

for a couple of years, got very into, you know,

paranormal research and tons of reading

and still do a little bit of that from time to time.

And of course that's what we nerd out about and chat about

in my podcast, The Big Séance Podcast.

- I was just gonna ask you to tell us about your podcast.

- You know, the paranormal gets super nerdy

and is a huge umbrella of a lot of nerdy geeky things.

We don't typically go down the Bigfoot road

or the aliens and UFOs.

And there's, I mean, there's lots of things in paranormal,

if you think of coast to coast, you know, AM like that.

But we pretty much stay focused on spirit communication.

I know I probably get a lot of eye rolls now or giggles,

psychic mediums, paranormal investigation,

ghosts in general, that kind of thing.

I could talk about those.

The afterlife, what happens when we die, that kind of thing.

And I can, you know, chat about those topics

for hours and hours and hours.

- Have you done, was it the limp mansion in St. Louis?

- Yes, I have stayed there probably three times.

And one of the times I stayed there,

I was pretty much by myself, like literally by myself,

no husband, just me.

There was one other couple that stayed there,

but I never saw them.

They were on another floor and that almost made it creepier

that I knew that there was someone else there,

but I never saw them.

So like walking around, like not knowing

who you were gonna bump into or what they were doing

was almost creepier, but yes, I have stayed there.

- So I presume this is some sort of local

that you two knew about that I have no idea

what you're talking about.

- Sorry, you're a little too local.

- This is the limp mansion, the famous kind of tragic

limp family, millionaires from the early 1900s,

beer barons, you know, lots of death and suicides

in this one mansion, but it's very cool and spooky.

- All right, so what DAW do you use to edit?

- I use Adobe Audition.

- Yay.

- And love it.

I'm sure I don't get close to the capabilities

that are there for me to use,

but I feel like every now and then I will discover something

and be like, oh, cool, wish I would have known that.

But I use Adobe Audition and iZotope RX-10.

Since I've started my current position,

I've been using it a lot more as the standalone editor.

I learned from Carrie, took her RX course,

and I took a lot of practice and experimenting.

So yeah, I do most of my processing.

You know, sometimes I'll spend,

depending on how big the show is or how many guests,

I'll spend 40 minutes to an hour just in RX-10,

making it sound good before I put it into Audition.

Before that, I used to use a ton of plugins,

you know, that was slowed down Audition.

And so that's what inspired me to use RX as a standalone.

And it's so much better, I feel now, but it took practice.

I couldn't just open it up and start using it.

I remember sending Carrie a few of my tests

when I first started using it.

And she'd be like, oh, honey, let's try that again, okay?

- Aw. - Try that again, shall we?

- Oh, that's so great.

- Bryan is catching this from the comments tonight,

so maybe we will hear some from Bryan.

Hey, Bryan.

- Hi, Bryan. - Welcome in.

And if you're listening to the recording of this

or to watching the video later on,

and you wanna be a part of the live stream,

just like Bryan is tonight,

and the great thing about this is being able to interact

and ask your own questions

and just have like a little community kind of group feel.

And if that's something you're interested in,

then we do this, we live stream this

pretty much every other Thursday at 805 p.m. Central time.

And you can just check out our Facebook page group

or YouTube channel.

- But sad, sad news, Daniel.

Facebook is shaking things up,

and you're gonna have to find us on the YouTube stream.

I think YouTube will still stream us live,

but Facebook won't.

Okay, so yeah, check us out on YouTube.

Just do a search for Podcast Editors Mastermind,

and we'll put a link to our YouTube channel

in the show notes, as always,

that you can find at podcasteditorsmastermind.com.

So Patrick, what, well, I guess this seems kind of,

I think we kind of talked about it a little bit,

your switch from editing your own show

to editing for somebody else.

Tell us like how that came to be

and like how that experience has been.

- This has been probably the biggest part

of what I have learned

and the majority of what I've been learning

is when I edit my own show,

I have always been pretty obsessive and detailed,

and I'm not diagnosed,

but pretty obsessive compulsive about things.

And I was always known to spend 10, 12 hours

editing a podcast, just an interview,

but also putting little bells and whistles and segments

and I really nerdy about intros

and creating a story and my intros and outros.

And so, I mean, I just love doing it.

And so I would spend way too long,

but it wasn't work, it was my hobby.

It was love doing it.

And so I went into this job knowing

that they're not going to want me to spend 15 hours

on an interview podcast.

So I knew that that was gonna be my first big challenge

to speed up that process and pick my battles,

but learn how to do the most important things quickly.

And so that has been the biggest challenge

and I'm getting a little quicker.

I feel like in a way I'm getting better,

not sitting there and stewing on certain things,

but I am pretty picky.

And I mean, you guys know there's kind of a science to it,

what you leave, what you modify,

what crosstalk you separate, what crosstalk you,

what interjections you just say,

do I need the host to say, mm-hmm, 72 times,

you know, in an interview, can I leave a couple of them

and get rid of a couple of them?

You know, that kind of thing.

- Oh, that's a trigger for me.

It's like the constant mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Especially when they do like a single track recording

and I can't do anything about it.

- And I tend to, you know, like when I do my own show,

like sometimes I get in this rut of, not really a rut,

because I like doing it,

but like sometimes every little minute cut,

I'll be like, okay, now I have to duck it and fade it

and fade it and move it and shift it.

And it's like, get over yourself, just cut it.

- Just cut.

- Yeah, just cut, make sure you don't hear a pop,

but cut it and, you know, duck it a little bit and move on.

- Do you ever ask your husband to listen to it

to see if he notices it?

- I think probably in my own show years ago,

I did that a lot, but I used to be,

okay, don't laugh, but you guys may have done this too.

I used to do a car test every podcast episode

that I produced.

So after I, I actually would do it before I published it.

So like in Lipson, I would schedule it

so the file was there and then I would get,

jump in my car and I would drive around

and at least listen to half the show

and figure out what it sounded like in a car,

because it's different than headphones.

And in those days, before I was using Audition

and learning about how to do normalization better

and maximize volume and all of that,

I would very often hear something and be like,

ugh, and then come back up to the computer

and re-edit and re-explore and, you know,

balance the music with the, you know, that kind of thing.

But yeah, I'm sure I did have, to answer your question,

I'm sure I did have my husband do that.

You know, I do too many nerdy things like that now.

He'd be like, I don't have time, I'm working.

He does help me out though with graphics and things.

He's like a good marketing, advertising person.

And so all my graphics for my own show,

he's very supportive of that kind of thing,

but I don't think he listens to too many of my shows.

That's not his jam.

- Yeah, that's fair.

Yeah, so many times, like I'll be struggling with this edit

and like, I'm trying to make it sound natural,

but like I can hear it.

But like, and I call my wife in,

I'll play it for her over and over again.

And she's like, I do not hear what you're like, stop.

We can just move on.

This is ridiculous.

- And does it ever bug you all?

I'm sure you guys have talked about this

and I'm sure I'm forgetting,

but you work so hard and are so passionate about,

even with this company that I'm editing for,

I want them to be like, oh wow,

I noticed the six hours of blah, blah, blah that you put,

but it's supposed to be so smooth that you don't know.

- You don't know we were there.

- And so when somebody says, oh yeah, great work.

That was good.

I'm like, but where's the paragraph of acknowledgement?

- I'll say it's bittersweet that like my best work,

you'll never notice it.

Because like there'll be times like I'll take,

like a client will mess up

and have like three different versions of like the same word

and I'll like take a bit of each word

and like piece it together into like this smooth thing.

It's like, nobody is ever gonna know I did that.

- In the back of my mind, I'm always like,

I really should do a comparison and put that out with that.

Just so everybody knows exactly how much of a God I was

in this episode that I.

- Yes, we should do that.

I have thought about doing like,

Mike Wilkerson, he does like his El Moro role or whatever.

But just like, there's one client who makes

like really funny noises whenever she messes up.

And I want to take, just make like a super cut of her

just going like, blah, oh yeah.

Every time she messes up.

- That's fine.

So I was just gonna ask how you found this mega client.

- I found this fabulous company actually

through the Editor's Mastermind group.

- Oh.

- And I think it was Bryan, I think,

who actually connected me or reached out.

- 'Cause you know that's the number one question.

- I didn't even think to mention that.

- That's awesome.

- Everybody wants to know how you find your clients.

So Bryan is chiming in, he says,

it's all about knowing me to find your clients.

I can't find my own clients, but I can probably find yours.

- Well, Bryan, you wanna send some my way.

- This particular client would not have been for everyone.

I remember looking at the, you know, the company's wishes

and kind of the requirements of the, you know,

like I said, fast turnaround.

And it hasn't ended up being,

they wanted really fast turnaround.

It hasn't been as fast as I thought it would be.

So I do have some freedoms with that,

but it is like the live show.

We record every Sunday night.

And so it's a couple of hours of producing it,

recording it, being there on StreamYard,

doing, you know, the video side of things,

and then late into the evening, editing that,

and putting it up for the audio version.

So that's the fast turnaround, but I'm a late nighter.

And when this is your only gig now,

and you get to sleep in and enjoy sleeping in,

I just stay up late and I do it

and sleep late the next day.

- That's so nice.

'Cause like, yeah, I don't think I could,

I'm a night owl, but I'm not productive at night.

So like, my productivity, like my work is like mid morning

to early afternoon.

So like, if I have to work late, it's just, it's a slog.

So like, I couldn't do that.

- See, I'm the off-visit,

and that's why retirement works better for me.

You know, how many years did I,

21 years that I taught not being my best

and most productive during the first part of the day,

and then I wake up in the evenings and I'm like.

- Mm-hmm.

I will say I'm also productive late afternoon

if I've gotten a nap in.

- Yeah, Bryan says, yeah,

there's no way I could have met their needs.

- They've been more flexible on those needs though, Bryan.

I think that once they understood more kind of,

they were kind of new to the podcasting space.

And so learning how to, it's a new podcasting network.

It's a podcasting network for this company.

And so it's been a growth for them too,

and we've done it together.

And so it's not been as, I was worried about that too,

but was willing to, you know,

take that challenge to try to do it.

And it's been cool.

- And Bryan says, that's great.

Super happy, it's more flexible than originally expected

and a great purpose behind the shows.

So you handle, like you participate in like,

not just the editing and post-production,

but actually like in the production of the shows?

- It's changed a bit.

When I first started the first couple of months

this last summer, it was interesting.

I still don't get it,

but they had a backlog of unproduced episodes.

So interviews, just raw audio

from a couple of different shows,

going back like a year in some situations.

And they just didn't have an editor.

And so what I did for two or three months

was just edit at whatever speed I could,

edit a whole bunch of podcasts,

which was good experience

before we jumped into a regular schedule.

So none of, there wasn't any live

or prerecorded anything yet for me.

And then as we got into a schedule

and picked up doing them live again or prerecording,

for the most part at the beginning,

I was just there for the recording

and making sure everything sounded as good as possible,

being kind of the contact for the guest

and emailing and giving them a StreamYard link

or a Riverside link, giving them recommendations,

kind of instructions.

And then the live show is quickly turning

into more of a traditional kind of producer prepare,

fill the host in on what they need.

It's getting to be a little more of a traditional,

I guess, broadcasting producer role,

light version of that.

So that's been interesting.

And so we've been, the team has been talking about,

what does that need to look like?

And what does the pre-interview,

what do we need from the pre-interview

so that our hosts no longer will have to do that,

do the whole, it's a big company and they,

with budgets and so we don't need to be doing,

like we're just hobby podcasting

at the last minute cramming stuff.

It's like, we need, we can do this

and be more of a production and a network.

And so we're streamlining who's gonna do this,

who's gonna do that.

So yeah, I'm gaining every couple of weeks.

I feel like I gain a few things that fall on my duties.

- Has Go creep been an issue in that regard?

- Has what creep?

- Scope creep.

So like whenever you first like,

whenever you first like come to terms,

like agree with like how much you're gonna be paid

versus for like what work you're doing,

then like a client might be,

hey, can you also do this, do this, do this.

One of my early clients, before I was charging,

I was charging way too little back then.

And so like I was doing like just editing a show

and then he wanted to add in like video

and then he wanted me to start doing the show notes,

but I never charged him more because it's just like here,

here's one little thing that at the time,

not a big deal to add onto my plate,

but then like as you start adding on more and more,

now you've doing like way more than you're getting paid for.

- I'm remembering now you all talking about scope creep.

For me, it doesn't apply because I'm hourly.

- Oh, perfect.

That's one way to solve that.

- Yeah.

- So what have you learned through this process?

You know, the more you learn,

the more you realize what you don't know,

but what are some of the things you're picking up on?

- I jotted down a few things like that.

One of the things was we already talked about

was learning to do what I do kind of on the clock

and because it's hourly, right?

That's I guess one of the main reasons

why it's important for me to do

what I was doing better and faster.

You know, other things are like working with a team,

obviously I don't make every decision necessarily myself.

And so there's this collaborating thing

or waiting for a response,

or you might get a, and it's different than like a client,

right, I might get a, hey, can you take another look at this

and maybe edit this or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?

So that kind of thing, collaborating.

But also I've learned that sometimes I overprocess things

and what somebody might not necessarily contact me

on my own show and say, you know,

this seems a little too processed or too, you know,

compressed or S's are too harsh or, you know,

just whatever, sibilance or whatever it is.

As I've learned RX, I got really excited, right?

Oh, look at all these tools I have to me now that I'm,

and so I've learned that I,

there's a side effect to processing too much

and that is degrading the audio quality, right?

And so that combined with me trying to get faster,

you know what I'm saying?

Like, so in the back of my mind, I'm always thinking,

okay, I've got to hurry, I'm on the clock.

I can't take four hours to do this.

I'm learning to do it faster, right?

And there have been a few times where it's like,

I should have gone with my instincts and reprocess this

before I started editing.

But then after you process it and then you start editing

and you're two hours into editing,

the last thing you want to do is start having second

thoughts and go back and start all over.

And so I went in doubt, I actually process less now.

And I always pull the slider down a little bit

on each thing.

That's been a more recent kind of lesson.

- That's kind of part of the downfall.

Cause I have a similar workflow to you and to her.

Like I start in RX and do a lot of my processing there.

And then I bring it into my DAW to do all the editing

and whatnot.

And I'll do a little more tweaking there.

But then I find like, if I did something in RX,

like too harsh or like I messed it up,

you've kind of already processed the audio.

But what you can do is like go back in RX,

redo it and just overwrite the file that you're looking at

in your DAW.

Does that make sense?

- Dude, send me the instructions on how to do that.

What?

- Yeah, yeah.

You can do that.

- Yeah, with the other track of editors.

Did I use Reaper?

I don't know exactly how to do it, but like.

- It's the same thing.

- Yeah.

So you out, you export the audio from RX somewhere,

bring it into Audition.

- Please hold writing down this note.

(laughing)

- Yeah, it works for Audition too.

- Cool.

- Yeah.

So then as long as you either keep the project open in RX

or actually save the RX project,

it'll keep like your entire processes.

And then you can just like undo

and then like redo whatever you messed up

and just overwrite that same file, the same name.

So whatever Audition goes to check that file,

I'm assuming it works the same way.

Now it's looking at the newly processed file.

Now we don't have to go back

and fix all your edits from before and like redo everything.

- Stop it.

Neat.

So I'll be hooking up with Jennifer later

so she can show me how to do that.

(laughing)

I need to do a video on that for Reaper.

- Yeah, you're just renaming the file

that just save the new file

with the same name as the old file and then poof.

So like when you're uploading to your media host

and you don't wanna lose your downloads with the new file,

you have to name it the exact same thing.

Yeah, same type of thing.

- Okay, cool.

But yeah, before I started doing this,

it wasn't a problem because I did everything with plugins.

- Yeah.

- Right?

So if you're an hour into editing something

and you realize there's an issue,

you can just adjust the plugin.

It would be cool if you immediately noticed a problem

at the beginning when you're editing,

but you don't always notice it right when you start.

- Right.

- And Alejandro is popping in with the hi guys.

For those that don't know,

Alejandro is the person who edits this show

because even though we're podcast editors,

we don't like to edit ourselves

and he does a fantastic job.

So if you're listening to the audio version of this podcast,

which will be dropping a week after the live stream,

you have Alejandro to thank for the quality of it.

- Thanks, Alejandro.

- So another trick, does Audition have RX Connect

or anything like that?

- I don't know what that is.

- I don't know what that is.

- So I think RX Connect is, it's like a plugin,

but you can like, it connects like your DAW to RX,

standalone RX.

Reaper doesn't have that direct thing,

but basically what I can do in Reaper is like click on

the file I want to process more,

and then it'll open that file in RX.

I can make do more processing and then save it in RX

and it'll update automatically in Reaper.

Very similar to what I kind of mentioned before,

but basically it just connects RX to your DAW

so you can kind of work on them simultaneously.

Very cool stuff.

- See y'all, come be a guest on Podcast Editors Mastermind

so that you can get professional development

and learn to fix what you're doing wrong.

- On that one, I do have a video on how to do that in Reaper.

So is the network you're working for now,

is that your first professional client

that's not your own show?

- Yes.

Other than, you know, over the years,

I have helped a few people get shows off the ground,

showing them how to use Audition,

or I'm sure I've edited a few things here and there.

I've created a few intros for people, that kind of thing.

But yeah, as far as like professional editing,

this is the totality of my experience outside of my own show,

which I've been doing for about 10 years.

- Do you want to do more?

- You know, I've been thinking about that.

I think I would be open to it,

but I'm so used to this process now

and this whole hourly thing,

that I don't know if I would do it the same way, you know,

just do an hourly type thing.

I think in the right situation, I would.

You know, it's not like I would be looking

to start that business.

You know, if I found the right person who needed my help

and wanted to pay me, I'd look into that, I think.

Yeah.

- Okay.

- Are you recruiting there, Jennifer?

- I'm just asking, just asking.

Always kind of like finding out, you know.

- Keep those angels out there.

So do you consider yourself like,

is this something you're just going to do as part of,

like as an individual,

or do you consider yourself like a business?

- I think that I am liking this contractor,

world.

Does that make sense?

- Yes.

- Like I, as someone who does not have a business background,

I'm liking what I'm doing,

and I don't have the whole stress out about a business thing.

- Yeah.

- I also, I also am not in a situation

where I absolutely have to have the work.

You know what I'm saying?

Cause I'm getting a pension.

It's not the largest pension in the world,

but you know, I'm getting a pension

and this is just to kind of help me, right?

Does that make sense?

- Yeah.

- If I can manage to keep doing this

and stay in this kind of contractor world,

I think that probably suits me.

- I love that.

- And I don't know how much I'm getting paid

compared to other models, you know,

business models or whatever.

I'm sure I'm working way too hard,

but you know, like I don't necessarily, you know,

and I don't leave the house much.

I'm a, I've always said I'm a recluse in training.

So this is my activity.

And then I go watch TV a little bit.

I don't have kids and.

- You enjoying your life right now?

- I'm enjoying life.

I'm enjoying staying up late and sleeping in.

I do a few piano lessons on the side too.

So I have that to keep me busy a little bit.

- I love the life that like this profession,

whatever you want to call it, like lets me have,

because like I'll stay up super late playing video games

whenever I want to and like sleep in the morning

and then do my work whenever I want to.

And just, it's a very enjoyable life.

- Yeah, there's, I don't mean to get fluffy,

but I miss a lot of things about being a teacher

and education in the last, even before COVID,

things in education have changed and it's gotten harder

and more stressful, not in a good way.

And educators are leaving the field in droves.

And I was just fortunate to be far enough along,

at least in my state where I could afford.

And I had a 403B, which is like a 401k for public workers.

And so that was the one of the smartest things I ever did

was have that because that allowed me to buy the years.

And it was my body already.

Like I, you know, sometimes some teachers have to wake up

at 4.30 or 5.30.

And when you're not a morning person and you know,

you can't just calling in sick is a little different

when you're a teacher and you have to make,

spend four hours doing sub plans or,

but I guess what I'm going to,

the stress and the mental health situation was not good.

And so it was kind of a put the mask on yourself first

kind of situation and take care of myself.

Now I have unintended side effects of now I'm not getting

as much activity when you sit down and work more,

when you're not working with middle school kids

up and about and everything,

I had to remind myself more to get up

and go get some exercise or touch the grass,

sit on the deck, take a walk.

And I'm not doing a very good job with that right now,

but mental health, much better.

I'm like a completely different person.

So like you're saying, yes, this is the right,

this is the perfect world for me right now.

- That's amazing.

- And I just wish everybody was in a position

where they could figure out how to make that work.

'Cause I know not everybody can, I'm very fortunate.

- Do you see a possibility of like mixing the two

as far as like doing some sort of podcasting class,

like teaching in school districts?

- Actually did for a number of years.

I have always taught vocal music for half the day

for all 21 years that I taught.

Half the day I taught vocal music choir.

And for like the first 12 years,

I taught piano keyboarding for the other half of the day.

And then for like at least eight years,

the last eight years that I taught,

I helped to me and another colleague put together

and produced a music production course for middle school.

And at the time it was one of the only,

there aren't a lot of middle schools for sure

that have a program like that or a lab.

And our district is,

we have five middle schools in our district.

It's a large district.

So it needed to be a program that could be

in all five middle schools.

It took us a couple of years to put it together.

And we took some,

a couple of us went to some field trips

on different college campuses or different high schools

that had similar things.

And at that time I was just getting started podcasting

or had been a year into it.

And I was totally geeking out and I was like,

we are gonna have podcasting

in this music production course.

So for at least one or two classes a day,

once a quarter for like a week or two,

I did a podcasting unit.

And so four times a year got to teach this podcasting unit

for a couple of classes, loved it.

And I like to think I got some young Gen Z

or whatever gen at the time interested in podcasting.

- That's so cool.

- Yeah.

- 'Cause there's somebody else,

like another podcast editor in the community

who does something similar.

She has like, she teaches in school,

like she just podcasting in schools.

I think that's just the coolest thing.

So all those things like I'd love to do,

but I have no idea how to get started.

That's kind of where the ambition dies.

- And that was that.

- Yeah, oh well.

- Yeah, I remember my husband a couple of years ago,

or I guess several years ago, that was one thing.

He was like, well, you should look into like

one of the community colleges,

pitch doing something like that.

And I never did, but that would have been,

I guess there's too many elements involved,

having a lab and what's the technology like

and who's it for.

And that's the other thing,

like I did not expect in my life as a music educator

that 10 years ago I would also be teaching computer skills.

'Cause that's really what I did a lot of the time, right?

Was computer skills.

And at that time, 10 years ago, and now for sure,

middle school kids will come in the room

and some of them will look at a mouse and be like,

excuse me, what?

And because everything now is touch screen or on the phone.

And you also have kids in middle school

that sometimes look at, we have our Cisco phones

and they're like looking at the receiver,

like when they have to call home.

And so I have to pick up the, you put this,

because a lot of them haven't seen those things, right?

So we assume that our kids now are techie peeps.

The younger generation is always up with the technology,

except for when it's an old school computer or iMac.

I was constantly teaching them how to grab the file

and put it in a folder or right clicking on something.

Or they were like, what Mr. Keller, you're so smart.

I'm like, no, I'm just old.

And this is what we used when I was your age.

- I saw something about that where it's like,

millennials and like Gen X are more tech savvy

than Gen Z and younger.

Because when we were growing up, things didn't just work.

Like one thing is like,

kids don't know about coding or anything.

It's like, yeah, 'cause like millennials

like coded their MySpace pages.

And it's like, our computers like mess up all the time.

We had to know how to go in and fix it.

Whereas now like with the advanced technology,

your phones just work as expected.

So you don't need to problem solve

and like really get into kind of like technical aspect of it

because like things just work.

I also saw this thing.

It's like, it was like comparing like Gen Z to millennials.

Like make a hand motion to like call somebody.

And so of course like millennials would do this,

but Gen Z would do like this or something.

- Well, and rolling a window down on the car.

- That was another one.

(laughing)

Or like, what is this like a save icon

on a document or something?

Like, they just don't know what that icon is.

- Well, another example of that is like in my kids

would use GarageBand 'cause it was a Mac lab

for our music production class.

And so I would tell them, just press stop.

And they're like, what?

Like, what's that?

And like, I'm like, the stop button.

And they have no idea that square is stop.

They have no idea that the triangle is play sometimes

or how to go back, like the rewind button.

And they're like, what?

And I'm like, just hit the space bar.

Okay, just hit the space bar.

- All right, so this is the last question I got for you.

Outside of podcasting, and I know you are into Supernatural

and all that fun stuff, but outside that and podcasting,

what are some hobbies that you enjoy?

- Hobbies, I love reading.

I go in and out of reading though.

Like I'll read a book every couple of weeks

for like a couple of months and then I'll be like,

oh, I'm done reading.

And then I'll listen to more podcasts, right?

Or like right now I haven't read in a while because,

and if my husband's listening to this, he will laugh.

He's very concerned about me

because I have been obsessively watching old game shows

on the buzzer network.

Like check me in to a facility obsessed.

So if I'm not editing something right now

or giving a piano lesson,

I've got my phone in front of my face watching concentration

or password or the match game.

- That's great, that's great.

- But yeah, I'm obsessively collecting books.

And I have to own the book that I read.

So I love the dead tree versions of books

and have a shelving ceremony.

Every time I finished the book, it goes on the shelf.

That's probably my, that's currently my nerdy

outside of paranormal hobbies.

- I love it.

- Well, you're familiar with our show

and you know that at this point of the show,

we traditionally gone to the pod decks question of the day,

but we went through the pod decks

and we're repeating questions.

So now we have powered by AI, the chat GPT random question

of the day.

- Oh, so excited.

- So here we go.

If you can visit any place in the world,

real or fictional, where would you go and why?

- And if you are watching this live,

feel free to leave your answer in the comments,

or if you are listening to this or watching this

in the future, be sure to leave a comment wherever you can

and let us know what your answer is.

- I'm gonna be really dorky and give you a answer

you probably didn't expect.

I would go into a fictional Goonies world.

I wanna go to, what is it Astoria in Goonies,

like in Oregon.

And, but I wanna go back to like 1984 Goonies.

I want to break into that cave and see the giant ship

and jump in the food coloring, blue food coloring water

and ride my bike, of course, and not be a fat old man,

but ride my bike down the hill to the cave on the coast.

- That's great.

- If I had more time to think of,

I'd probably come up with something else.

But like the first thought that came to mind was like,

I've always wanted to spend a year in Alaska

or even like somewhere like in Scandinavian countries

or something.

So I wanna experience the Northern Lights,

but I also want to experience like the six months of night,

six months of day kind of thing.

So I'd wanna live like super North for a year

to have that full experience.

- That is interesting.

I don't know that I've heard anybody say

they wanna experience that.

- I don't know.

It's just like something that I thought of

for a very long time.

Like I think it'd be cool to like spend

like that six months in darkness.

- You don't have any like winter depression mood things

going on, that's in my family.

There's a lot of that.

So I don't know that I could do that

for a long period of time.

- I don't, at least I don't think so.

I guess that's one way to find out for sure.

Yeah, but I know that never happened

because like my wife is staunchly opposed to that.

So it'll forever be a dream.

- But my answer, the first thing that popped in my head,

because I saw a meme about it recently,

but I'm gonna stick with it,

is the Shire from Lord of the Rings

because it's so green and friendly and happy.

- And green.

- And green, very green.

- Yeah, well, thank you so much

for coming on the show, Patrick.

If people want to reach out to you

or listen to your podcast, where can they go?

- They can go to bigseance.com, which is my website.

Patrick@bigseance.com, if something happens

they want to email me, I guess.

That's it.

It's been an honor.

Thank you for having me as your community on.

And I look forward next time to jumping in the chat room.

- Well, Jennifer, if there's somebody else

that wants to be highlighted on our community highlights,

what can they do about that?

- They can go to podcasteditermastermind.com

and click be a guest.

I wanted to keep talking about Patrick's big seance

'cause it's a bear I'm looking at,

but no, go to podcasteditermastermind.com,

click be a guest.

- Awesome.

Well, thank you, Patrick, for coming on

and thank everybody who is here live

and anybody in the future who's gonna be listening

to the recording of this.

And this has been an absolute pleasure

and I can't wait to do it again.

So I'm hoping people take us up on this

or we can find somebody else to highlight

'cause it's so cool just being able to talk

about other people, other editors who are doing this.

They've been absolute.

- Love you, Bryan, love you, Carrie.

- Yes.

- Well, thank you so much for watching and listening.

I'm Daniel Abendroth and you can find me

at rothmedia.audio.

- And I'm Jennifer Longworth.

You can find me at birminghambarrelpodcasting.com.

- And as Patrick has shouted out,

our other Yetis, Bryan Entzminger,

you can find at toptieraudio.com.

And then our long distance Yeti, Carrie,

you can find her at carrie.land.

- Her Facebook says Caulfield.

- Okay, there we go.

Carrie Caulfield.

Thank you so much.

(upbeat music)

- How much is that?

(upbeat music)

(grunting)

(gasps)

- No.

(upbeat music)

[music]