Professor Theo shares wondrous sci-fi tales and stories of heroic animals and kids in a podcast produced by the Joy family

It's a collection of short stories that I write (often with the help of my son) for the Ashland Beacon newspaper in Eastern Kentucky, adapted for audio.

The show revolves around a mysterious West Virginia town that is home to kid superheroes, kid astronauts, time travelling teens, kids that can quantum leap into video games, and much more bizarre activity.

We have thousands of listeners from all over the country, mostly young ones age 5-12, though I know some families listen together. I have also heard from elementary school teachers that share the podcast with their students from time to time.
 

A good friend who knows a lot about podcasting planted the seed three years ago. He suggested that it would be a good way to preserve our stories that had been printed in the paper and possibly grow our audience beyond our hometown, and he was right. Our first episode was released in September 2018.
 

We did an episode a week for a long time. Now we usually publish three episodes a month. The average episode is only about ten or eleven minutes long, so it's not a huge time commitment. And it doesn't cost much at all. If you have a laptop and a microphone, you're good to go.
 

Our podcast is first and foremost a family affair. It is something fun my son and I can do together. We have had a few sponsors, though we don't do this primarily for money. Just for fun. It's also a cool way to preserve our voices and our stories, especially since there's little bits and pieces of autobiographical work in there.

We average about five to six thousand downloads a month now, which absolutely blows my mind. I didn't know what to expect in terms of listeners when we started. I think we had a thousand downloads in our first month and I was thrilled. It just keeps growing from there.
 

Audacity and Anchor have been a big help. I don't know what we'd do without both. They make the process so much easier to navigate, both in terms of recording and editing.
 

We use facebook and twitter, and I think a lot of our listeners have found their way to us by way of one or another. Word of mouth has been a big help. Nearly half of our listeners come from iTunes. I think a lot of them found us by perusing the Stories for Kids category on there. Fortunately, we have also been mentioned or featured, recommended, in more than a few articles online. Those always draw in a lot of new ears.
 

Have fun. Be consistent. Know that you will get better as you go. Keep at it. Get Audacity and and the McElroy brothers How-To Podcast Book. It's titled Everybody Has a Podcast (Except You): A How To Guide From the First Family of Podcasting. It's awesome - entertaining and thorough. Will walk you through, step by step.
 

ProfessorTheo.com
or wherever you listen to podcasts. We're probably there.