Oldest Stories

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► Tell us about you and your podcast

I started this show almost on a whim. The original concept for the show was to go through the world's oldest literature, but I quickly realized that all of the world's oldest literature comes from ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, and there was already a fantastic History of Egypt podcast (by the fantastic Dominic Perry), and so I ended up just doing Mesopotamia, branching into its history and delving deeper into the culture and discovering that it is absolutely far more interesting than I had ever suspected. For myself, I am nothing but an educated layman, though at this point I consider myself fairly well-read on the subject. My listeners are anyone interested in history or in Mesopotamia, and I have listeners from around the world.
 

► Why & how did you start this podcast? 

I actually tried to start a podcast about a year before I started this one, I was and remain fascinated by Philip of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great, and wrote up two episodes. But, it turns out that speaking into the microphone gave me crippling anxiety and after about a week of trying to record I gave up on it, then some life stuff distracted me. Then, in October 2019, I was thinking about that show, and thought maybe if I started by reading things that other people had written first it would be easier. I did some research and decided to start with the Epic of Gilgamesh, but again I had the problem of intense anxiety. Every minute or two I would fumble or stutter or just mess stuff up, and it was a disaster. I must have re-recorded that first episode five times, never once getting all the way through.

But then, I realized that I was recording it in software that allowed me to edit myself afterward (I use Audacity, and I recommend it for anyone doing light editing on simple shows). And so I decided that every time I messed up I would stop, take a breath, and repeat the messed up section then keep going. That first episode had nearly an hour of run time, which got cut down to just under 30 minutes, and the editing took forever, but I had finally recorded a whole episode. I repeated it for three more episodes, the anxiety not diminishing in the least, but I was out of work and had literally nothing else to do with my day, and after about two weeks I started releasing episodes. And then, without really noticing it, the nervousness started to fade, I slowly got better at the recording side, and as I write this I am working on episode 88 and though I still make mistakes and have to do light editing on every episode, I have the confidence to record without nervousness.

Of course, I tried doing a live story telling not too long ago on a discord group and discovered that I still get that anxiety, but at least I am doing the show with confidence now.
 

► How'd you find the time and funding to do this podcast?

I am blessed to have a very interesting schedule in regards to my day job. I am a merchant marine, working for four months straight, 12 hour days 7 days a week, but then I get four months completely free. I never really stop reading and researching, but in my long vacations the podcast pretty much becomes my day job. While my wife is at work, I try and get the notes and recording for two episodes done every week, which if everything works out means that I can go to work without worrying too much about getting more episodes out. Things get dicey at the end of my work contracts, because I don't always finish up on fixed dates, but so far I have gone 92 weeks without missing a single week. I fund the podcast myself, though thankfully the costs are pretty low on the technical end. My biggest expense is books, and more than once I have had to skip over stuff because it was gated behind some hundred dollar obscure volume, and I have grown to despise academic publishing. I am considering putting out a call for donations at episode 100, but I also quite like the idea of running a podcast that is completely free for everyone with zero advertising. It is a history show, and my hope is that people will still be finding the show and enjoying it a decade after it finishes or even more.
 

► What do you gain from podcasting?        

Like I said, I am quite proud that I run the show with zero advertising and zero calls for donations. I understand why other podcasters need to get a bit of income from their shows, but being able to do this show purely for myself, with nothing between me and the story, is very satisfying. This show does nothing for my career, and I am too lazy to get involved with social media, so I haven't really built much of a community. I do welcome the few emails I have gotten, and I have a contact form on my website where I have gotten a few good notes.
I won't lie though, watching my listener counts rise is insanely satisfying. When I started out, I remember being so excited to see my third listener appear, which meant I was being heard by someone other than my wife and my father. Now my new episodes usually get a bit over 500 downloads in the first 30 days, I just crossed 90k total downloads, and listens every day fluctuate between 250 and 600, with a good proportion of those being folks going through my archive. It really feels amazing to see that I am reaching so many people.
 

► How does your podcasting process look like? 

Research and note writing takes the vast majority of my time. Writing a single episode usually takes a day or two, as in a 8-5 full time day, and this doesn't include all the reading I am doing in the background to develop an idea of what is coming next. The actual recording at this point is pretty easy, I have a tiny travel microphone, for which my wife knitted a cute little pop filter to stick on top. When at home, I put my laptop literally on a shelf inside the closet, on top of some folded clothes, and I talk into the clothes, which cuts out most outside noises and gives good sound quality, at the cost of feeling a bit silly for having my head stuck in a closet while I tell the Oldest Stories. I have done a few episodes on the ship while at work, but it is much more difficult, both in terms of finding a quiet place and time and in terms of the noise reduction I have to do in editing.

I edit with audacity, pretty much just removing places where I stumbled over words, because no matter how experienced I get, I still can't seem to get through an episode without a few mistakes. When I do mess up though, I stop for 3 seconds, whistle for 3 seconds, then take a breath and start again, which makes finding the mistakes easy when I go back to edit. They appear visually distinct on the wave form when I do like this, and editing has gotten much quicker since I figured this out. Then I also create video files for each episode, literally just the audio of the episode put on top of a static card with the episode name that I build in VSDC Free Video Editor.

My editing is simple because I don't use any music, sound effects, or other embellishments. The show is just me talking for half an hour, and the editing is just places where I messed up. This works well for me, and even though other shows have slicker production values, I am quite happy with the sound of Oldest Stories.

Also, I have no guests, so I don't need to worry about that side of things.
 

► How do you market your show?

I host my show on Anchor.fm, which apparently there are people that don't like it, but I haven't had any problems, possibly because I simply don't have all the bells and whistles other shows have, like advertising and fancy social media stuff. According to Anchor, I am 48% Spotify, 16% other 13% apple poscasts, 6% podcast addict, then a bunch of smaller services. Nationally I am 51% USA, 7% Canada which is basically the same thing, 7% UK, and then a whole bunch of smaller countries. I like to look through and see what tiny islands are listening to my show lol.

As for marketing, I have a bit of a bronze age attitude towards social media. I wasn't even on facebook when I started the show, though I have since re-activated a facebook account I had back in high school and did a bit of marketing there. I got engaged in a discord channel, which was quite a lot of fun and a good place to point people looking to engage with the show. I don't think discord helped me to widen my listener base very much, but it did let me go a bit deeper with a few very interested folks. I ran 2 $10 dollar ads on facebook, both of which gave me a spike in listeners for about a week, but few of them seem to have stuck around for long. My most effective advertising has been on reddit, which is free, but takes a large amount of effort on my part, and it is rude to the communities to spam, and so when I have a very big episode I will post it on a few ancient history subreddits. It is sort of a crapshoot which posts will get noticed, but the few hits I have had on there have translated into the largest listener growth I have seen.

For a show just getting started, a $20 facebook ad, targeted towards folks likely to engage with your content, as well as reddit posts in relevant communities, will balloon your show. Of course, then the show has to be good to keep it up, but I have found that just by getting my show past a certain number of listeners makes me seem established and gets more listeners through the various listings and apps.
 

► What advice would you share with aspiring (new) podcasters?

I think I have already covered the recording anxiety thing, if you are nervous about talking into a mic, just do a whole episode, pause at every mistake, restart, then go through later and edit it down to something clean. Your first episodes will take a long, long time, but if you are not dedicated enough to get over that hump, then you probably aren't interested enough in your show to make it over the long run.
I would also say that you shouldn't even think about revenue, advertising, and all that nonsense until at least ten episodes in. Make a bunch of episodes while no one is listening and establish that you can, in fact, produce on a regular, consistent schedule. When people come to see your show on whatever app they are using, there are thousands of shows that start two or three episodes then vanish, and no one has time for that, but if you already have ten, put out on a weekly or at least consistent schedule, then people will take your show more seriously and be more likely to subscribe. But more importantly, these first episodes are to prove to yourself that you can do it. So I would say not to promote your show seriously until about episode 10.

Also, attitude is important. There are people who get rich podcasting, but if you go into it thinking it will be an income source, you are way more likely to produce something soulless that you don't like, audiences don't like, and never makes you any money. Make sure that before you start you actually have something to say that you care about and you aren't just doing it because it is the new big thing or because you want to get those big advertising dollars.

There is a reddit community, /r/podcasting, that is a pretty solid thing to scroll through for a couple of weeks, since a lot of questions get posted on there that will help you to think about ways you can improve your own show.
 

► Where can we learn more about you & your podcasts?

The main website is oldeststories.net, and you can check out Oldest Stories on pretty much any podcast player or on youtube and subscribe there to hear the stories of ancient Mesopotamia's history and culture. As I write this, we are pretty late into the bronze age, so there is a ton of stuff already put out, and we are a few months away from getting into some of the most exciting tales of the ancient world, and even a bit of biblical Israel.

Or you can listen directly from the podcast host, anchor, at this link: https://anchor.fm/oldeststories