Talk About Politics & Make People Stay On The Right Side Of History

The three hosts of our show are Chris, Matt, and K. All three of us work regular jobs while we try to get this podcast off the ground. K is a Machine Repair Tech, Chris works as a buss driver to pay for his Masters in History and Sociology, and Matt works for a hospital system as an Informatics Analyst.

We are three leftists from Southern California who are passionate about politics and making sure people stay on the right side of history.

Our podcast is called The Alt Left, and each week we discuss general, and current, political topics from the perspective of a Liberal, a Communist, and a Progressive. We also try to provide as much history and facts as we can so that our audience is as informed as can be.

Our target audience would most likely be anyone on the political left, but we honestly find discussions with the right to be some of the most engaging. I guess our audience is anyone with a taste for politics and a desire to understand what the political left in the US actually thinks.

It's a format that is easily acceptable to the "every-day person"

We all listen to quite a few podcasts. The ones we have in common are The Skeptics Guide to the Universe, and Time Suck. Matt probably listens to the most as he regularly engages with other podcasters and hosts a pretty large Facebook group for the podcaster community

The three of us have all been friends for years. Whenever our (rather large) friend group would gather for parties, we would eventually begin talking about politics. Every single time we did this, it would draw a crowd. Matt is the one who initially pushed for us to try out a podcast, and eventually, Chris and K agreed. One of the things we have always been frustrated by is the lack of representation in politics and media for true progressives and their ideas. Our goal with this podcast was to give those ideas a platform

Our first episode went live on November 19th 2020, and from deciding to start the process to actually posting our first episode took about 4 months. Seems like the hardest part of starting this venture was simply recording the first episode. After we did that, everything else just started falling into place.

We release a new episode every Monday morning, and we typically record each episode the Wednesday before it is released. We edit, make clips, and create artwork and promos throughout the week so that we are ready to go when the episode drops.

The bulk of our podcast work is in the evenings and on weekends. As I mentioned previously, the three of us each have day jobs. We slip this in whenever we have a spare moment.

We spend a few bucks here and there for promotion, but nothing to extravagant. This is all done out of pocket, so we try to keep costs low.

We would absolutely be open to sponsorships, if any became available, but our views aren't exactly mainstream. I don't think we will be seeing any sponsors any time in the near future.

Like I said, no sponsorships yet, but we are open to them!

Not sure how to find sponsor, but from what I have heard and read, once you hit about 1000 subs and about 4000 hours of listening, the sponsors start to seek you out.

It give three friends an excuse to hang out, a voice to be heard, and a chance to make common sense ideas more mainstream. It is hard to explain, but we all agree that doing this feels like more than just a hobby. We believe in what we are doing and truly think we have a chance to help advance the cause of progressive and common sense political policy, if only we can make our platform big enough.

We are pretty bare bones. We each invested in a decent quality mic, we use Zencastr to capture all of our audio, we use Audacity to edit. To make video versions of our clips, I use HD Movie Maker, and we use Podbean for hosting.

We have only interview a small handful of people and all of them were found by reaching out through social media. We enjoy interviews, but we see them more as "bonus content" than a part of our normal format.

We decided on our next topic at the end of each recording session. Matt draws up a basic outline and creates a source list for all of our research. All three hosts will research the topic throughout the week and come up with specific points they want to make. From there, we each add to the outline and source list so that it is as up to date as possible. The day we record, we all work of of those documents in our share drive. We use them mostly as a guide to steer the conversation. No matter what, we prefer to go as free form as possible rather than a scripted format.

Whenever we have guests, we send them our link for Zencastr. For those that want a video element we invite them to our discord server, but its Zencastr that captures all of the audio. I think we will probably stick to this method even when Covid-19 restrictions ease up. At least until we are big enough to actually record in some kind of a studio.

I think social media has been the biggest boon for growing our audience. Specifically, Twitter. We are on just abut every platform you could name, but I believe Twitter has helped us the most. As for a source break down, Podbean gives us a little of that, but honestly, it barely scratches the surface. According to them, the bulk of our audience come from web browsers and Spotify.

As I stated before, Twitter has probably been the single most useful tool at our disposal. Right behind that is our audience. They have been absolutely amazing at getting the word out and bringing more listeners to our podcast. Engaging with them each week is probably the most rewarding part of all of this. It reminds us that we aren't alone.

First and foremost is to remember that building and audience IS A GRIND. It requires a lot of work and constant engagement with potential listeners. Anyone offering you a shortcut or quick path, is most likely trying to take advantage of you. Don't listen to them. Do the hard work and accept that it will take time. Beyond that, always try to a have a few episodes prerecorded and ready to go. Life happens and you never no when you might have to take a break. You don't want to lose any momentum, so having a bid of a cushion for those situations is always a solid bet.

As far as resources go, the Podcast Nation Facebook group is probably one of the best I have found. Its a great community that will give solid advice to any newcomers. It's also heavily moderated so you aren't going to be dealing with non stop promos, and people trying to take your money. For anyone trying to make sense of how to start, that should be their first stop.

Our link Tree has links to ALL of our social media accounts and all of the main places that users can listen to our podcast. Check it out and don't forget to leave us a comment to tell us what you think. We try to respond to all of our commenters at the end of each episode.