Discovering the Hilarity Hidden in Classic Works of Literature.

My co-host, Rachel, and I were roommates at a summer camp for huge nerds in high school and we've been best friends (and, yes, huge nerds) ever since. In keeping with our origin story, Rachel came up with the idea for our podcast after telling anyone who would listen how funny it would be to do a podcast called "Fire the Canon" about critiquing classic literature. Yes, the punny title came first, and the idea for the show second. We roped in a third friend from nerd camp, Theo, to be our producer and co-co-host. Together, we created a podcast that uses book discussion as a scaffold for humor - we aim to be both fun and informative, and love digging up weird details of authors' lives, plot points, and the histories of the books. In a typical episode, we introduce some background about the author, the work, and its significance in the canon, before launching into a carefully curated plot summary. The goal? Listeners, even those who haven't read the books themselves, will be able to join in on conversations about them instead of feeling left out. Also, they will have hopefully laughed a lot in the process.

We primarily want to appeal to two kinds of listeners. The first group would be people who haven't read many of the works in the Western canon, and who may feel self-conscious about that but are intimidated by these famous books or may not know where to start. The second group consists of those who are familiar with the works discussed, but are mainly listening for the comedic value of the discussion. We try to break up long, depressing, or difficult books by telling stories from our own lives - anything in our discussion that prompts a funny memory, or a related anecdote, or simply an observation that makes our fellow co-hosts laugh, is fair game.
 

Although we joke that the initial motivation for the podcast was Not Wanting to Waste a Good Pun, in reality we each had reasons to work on this project that we didn't even consciously realize at first. We recorded our first episode in October 2020, and launched the show in December. For Rachel, who suffered a fairly severe Covid-19 infection in the summer of 2020, working on this podcast was a welcome distraction from focusing on the things she had lost: she loved to cook, but could no longer do so after Covid took her sense of smell. She had no stamina to be able to exercise, and due to the quarantine, could rarely see friends. Reading became about the only thing she could do, and creating the podcast based around all that reading became a healthy outlet for her energy and creativity.

For myself, October 2020 saw my boyfriend of 6 years move across the planet to pursue a work opportunity, leaving me alone in a house far too big and quiet for just one person. I had no idea at the time, but working on Fire the Canon gave me a sense of purpose and something enjoyable to work on when I might have otherwise felt isolated and lonely.

Theo, our producer, simultaneously found himself ending his nearly quarter of a century-long schooling, having finally finished undergrad, a master's degree, and finally a doctorate of fine arts, with what he soon realized was a lot of uncertainty and free time. In short, this project filled a hole in each of our lives, and it became extremely dear to us very quickly.
 

We release a new episode each week, and in the past have sometimes even released two in a week (for example, one normal "main feed" episode and one bonus episode or Patreon exclusive episode). It's astonishing to us, but since starting the podcast nearly 18 months ago, we have never missed a week. The time it takes to produce an episode varies - if Rachel and I have to read War and Peace and make an outline about it, that's going to take weeks of preparation, versus if we're just talking about a poem or short story, which we can prepare for in a matter of hours. We never script our dialog or plan any jokes ahead of time, and we actively avoid telling each other our stories outside of the recording so that we get a natural reaction live in the moment!

In general, we record for anywhere from one and three hours at a time, which usually ends up being cut into an episode about half that length. Theo edits the show fairly heavily - never changing the context of the discussion or creating misleading clips, but removing mistakes, awkward pauses, jokes that fall flat, or simply any plot summary that isn't necessary for understanding the book and doesn't create joy. It takes him 5-12 hours to edit an episode, depending on how many changes are needed.

How do we find time for it all? Two of us are employed full-time at unrelated jobs, and one is not. We all spend an equal amount of time on the show, though - and, personally, I find the time because I genuinely enjoy it. In my day job, I'm a healthcare worker and I see and hear some pretty distressing stuff. It's rewarding work, but it could not be more different from working on a comedy podcast! Getting to sink myself into podcast tasks when I come home helps me relax and come back to myself after a mentally taxing day.

We do fund the show ourselves. We have a couple dozen patrons now, and with those funds we've paid for hosting, cloud storage space, small patron gifts, etc. We've done a tiny bit of advertising on social media, and I pay for that out of pocket.
 

We currently have no sponsors, but now that we are seeing slow (but consistent) growth, it's something we want to look more into. Our Patreon is where we focus most of our energy when it comes to generating income. We only make just under $200 a month currently - not enough to quit our jobs for sure, but for us the patronage we receive is more about knowing that there are people out there who value what we do enough to give us something in return. That is huge for us and we find it so humbling and amazing that people appreciate listening to us just be silly with each other. Because the feedback we've heard, time and time again, is that people don't really listen or patronize us for the book discussions. They come back because they enjoy the chemistry that the three of us have on the show - our vulnerability, our longstanding friendship, the bantering and even sometimes bickering. We make fun of each other and ourselves, but it's clear we love each other deeply. We've been told that it's clear how 'real' we are, and that listening to us feels like hanging out with friends. We've been told what we do makes people feel less lonely and allows them to laugh at difficult stuff. To hear feedback like that has truly blown our minds. We never expected to mean anything that deep to anyone, but each time we hear something like that, it feels like we are being given a gift.
 

Our basic set-up has stayed the same since the beginning: we all have Blue Yeti mics, set up on a hanging stand that clamps onto a desk, with a pop filter in front of it. Honestly, the Blue Yetis have been a challenge. They're great little mics and very easy to use, and very high quality for the price point. But they can be really tough to use if you don't have a perfect space to use. They're powerful - they pick up sound from sooo far away, and getting a recording that doesn't sound echoey or white noise-y or muffled has been hard sometimes. But we've gotten used to it, mostly!

We record using Audacity, and edit with Reaper. Both are free (though Reaper accepts donations). During recording, because we all live in different states, we video chat with each other over Zoom so that we can see when people are speaking; this also helps with rapport and makes storytelling more natural and fun. We record the Zoom videos, especially when we have guests, but haven't found time to actually edit those videos for use yet.

Rachel is our guest-finding guru. She locates likely guests (authors, scholars, other podcasters, poets, etc) on Twitter or other social media, then emails or DMs them or their publicist and tells them a little about our show, why she likes them and their work, and why we'd love to have them as a guest. We don't prepare questions ahead of time, preferring to keep the conversation natural and let it flow where it will, but of course I'll spend some time familiarizing myself with their work so I can be respectful of their time and ask appropriate questions. If they've done interviews elsewhere or appeared on another podcast, I'll read or listen to those so that I don't repeat questions they've already answered in other places. Rachel sends each guest a set of instructions ahead of time: make sure you have headphones on, download Audacity, etc. We then interview them over Zoom.

Preparing for guest episodes takes much less time than preparing a book summary episode, and they also help us grab new listeners.
 

According to our host site, Transistor, the vast majority of our listens come from Apple Podcasts, with Spotify in second place, and other sources making up a small portion of the downloads.

Where we market depends somewhat on the subject material - we always promote our episodes on our social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram), but for certain subjects we'll also branch out and find a likely subreddit or other online community to post to. For example, for our Pride and Prejudice episodes, I promoted them on the r/JaneAusten subreddit, and got a very positive response back with many people commenting about the show and how they plan to keep listening. However, this strategy can be fraught. Reddit is notoriously anti-self-promotion (understandable), but that can sometimes make it hard to share things with communities that might genuinely appreciate them. If you try Reddit, be sure to participate actively in whatever community you post to so that you don't seem like you're just a passing vulture looking to promote yourself and dip. Also, pay close attention to the rules of each community so your expertly-crafted post isn't instantly removed. The same is true of niche Facebook groups, discussion forums, etc.

We did that the two most useful marketing methods are having popular guests post about their appearance on our show, and targeting well-thought out and engaging posts to niche communities online. Growing our Instagram and Twitter followers is fun and helps our listeners feel closer to us, but we don't expect many people will start listening to our show just because they saw us post a funny meme.
 

Natural is best. When we first started, I would be so anxious that we wouldn't be able to be spontaneously entertaining that I would think of little jokes to say ahead of time, or ways to explain books that would be funny. That quickly fizzled out, because it would sound kind of forced and unnatural, and if your co-hosts don't laugh at your jokes, the audience definitely won't either! If you are doing a comedy podcast with other people, the number one most important thing is to enjoy yourselves. There's a reason old sitcoms always use a laugh track - everything sounds much funnier when people are already laughing at it. If for whatever reason your jokes aren't landing, or one of you just isn't in the right mood or headspace, take a break and come back later.

Sometimes a light template or structural frame for the recording is a good idea, though. We've re-recorded a couple of episodes because we just didn't feel that they were good enough - either they meandered and were boring or they were just too serious to be entertaining. The most notable example I can think of is our first episode on The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. It affected us more than we thought it would, and the depression and trauma that Holden Caulfield experiences hit differently than it did when we'd read it fifteen years ago as teens ourselves. That episode just had the wrong vibes and it was clear we weren't having fun on the recording, so we re-did it. This time, we pumped ourselves up beforehand and had a plan: to break up the dreariness of it all, we would regularly intersperse the plot discussion with funny stories about each of us when we were Holden's age. The second attempt was much better, and we still consider that to be one of our best episodes to this day. We never aim to make light of the difficult stuff in books - the punch line is not "an awful thing happened to this character", but rather "sometimes, there is humor to be found even in darkness."
 

Website: www.firethecanonpodcast.com
Facebook: www.Facebook.com/FireTheCanonPodcast
Patreon: www.patreon.com/firethecanon
Twitter and Instagram: @firethecanonpod
Email: firethecanonpodcast@gmail.com