Zooier Than Thou

Zooier Than Thou

Aqua, Steeeve, and Lovecat discuss the downfall of Dean Foods, the specter of carnism, the meat industry's 24/7 digital command center, and the burgeoning meat alternatives which could help save our planet -- and the lives of the animals that we share it with. Plus, Eggshell recites a zooey sonnet that heralds the springtime.

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Thoughts About the Episode

Awoooo! I promised myself I’d get this blog post done in a reasonable amount of time, because I think it might affect when people engage with the podcast. I need to get back into the regiment, which I haven’t fully been able to do consistently since the break. But I’m starting to miss steps in my release cadence, so it’s time to get rigorous!

So, this episode seemed for a little bit like it might not come together, but I’m very pleased with the end result. Steeeve originally pitched the idea to do an episode about Dean Foods and how their fall was indicative of a change in consumer demand, but as you’ll hear in the episode, that’s not the story he found once he did the research. LoveCat expressed interest in being involved in the episode, and because Aqua’s been a voice on a lot of our meat-based topics, I suggested they get involved as well.

My goal was to be as hands off of this as possible and let Steeeve and the others do what they wanted, though after Aqua talked to me about the discussion they’d had during the outlining meeting, I did pitch the idea that it would be really cool to do this one as an essay format episode. While folks gave the thumbs up, there didn’t really seem to be a lot of buy in for getting this episode done that way, and this led to some confusion as to the direction of this episode. It meant we had Eggshell twiddling her thumbs on a Saturday, ready to write, but with no material to work with during the hours she had available to do it, and there were moments where it seemed like key folks were out of pocket without any notice as to what was going on. I interpreted this as a rejection of my idea, but if that interpretation is correct, it would have been nice for folks to speak up on it rather than just being AWOL. Mostly, though, I think there just wasn’t a clear leader driving this episode home, so no one knew what was going on.

We quickly ran out of time to put together an essay-style episode and regrouped. Eggshell took some of her original ideas for the essay episode and put together some bookends based on the topic outline, while Aqua, Steeeve, and LoveCat recorded a normal, discussion-style episode. It was down to the wire, but it DID get done on time. Much to my delight, it’s clear everyone did their research and knew what the fuck they were talking about, and it turned out to be a really solid discussion — substantive enough that I said to elk with the hour-and-a-half time limit. All of it was super interesting to me as someone who hadn’t been involved in planning the episode, and the bookends were really well-done. Plus, the email discussion was super interesting as well, and I think this is one of those episodes you could really show to a curious non-zoo and be like, “This is what we’re about. This is what interests us — in addition to thinking animals are totally fucking hot.” All in all, I feel really great about how this season finale turned out. It’s a solid episode that was worthwhile, and once it came time to record, everyone brought their A game.

This is the first real episode I had someone working on editing for me without me watching over their shoulder, and I gotta say, I’m super thankful. It made my job as the final editor a LOT easier and faster, and I got to focus my time on content rather than minutia. I cannot understate what an immense help this was. It does mean I don’t know a lot about what they cut, but they generally took the approach that their job is clean-up and my job is content editing. This process also meant that I wasn’t working all the way through production week, which honestly, was a huge relief. Blocking out an entire week where I do nothing after an 8 hour workday but podcast work has always been a huge source of burnout. It was very freeing to personally only have to work on podcast production for three days to get it all done — and not to have to take a day off work to finish things up on time. — Yes, if you were wondering, there have been a LOT of episodes that I actually had to take off work to get done. I don’t talk about this a lot, because I don’t like to even hint at my work life outside of studio work, but that’s been a pretty big issue for me for a while.

The next episode is gonna be WAY more involved for me, but I think having an editor to slice all the best takes together will free me up to work on writing the content, finding the right music, and polishing it to a glowing shine without burning out. I’m very excited about what season 6 is gonna hold, and the quality of life improvements with people helping with production makes me feel up to the task. Thanks again, ZooTT crew, for all that you do! I’m super appreciative of your dedication and rigor.

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What are your thoughts on the existence of a 24/7 meat industry social media surveillance system? Let us know in the comments, or e-mail us!

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The Internet is getting shittier. Aqua and Toggle are joined by Tarro to discuss the decay of Internet platforms, a process known as enshittification, and how it affects zoos. Plus, join a party of adventurers as they fight against the Cult of Belial to save a unicorn goddess!

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Thoughts About the Episode

My procrastination on writing these up has gotten out of hand. I need to just commit to doing it the day of release, but it just adds extra time to a multistep process, and sometimes I just can’t be arsed. But I do think it affects our engagement, so I’m gonna make it a priority.

So, this episode was pretty fun to do, all things considered. We had originally slated something else for January, but we wanted more time to do it, and Aqua had already suggested talking about enshittification in like October or thereabouts, so we did some shuffling to accommodate. A week or so before released, there was a tweet about how enshittification was the word of the year for 2023! So I guess we had pretty good timing for this one.

We considered having Tugs from Fur What It’s Worth come on, as both an ABDL entrepreneur and former podcast host/producer, but he was busy traveling for FC until the day we were set to release, so we couldn’t get him. However, with Tarro having experienced some of the stuff we were talking about and having a stake as a zoo content creator, they made a natural fit.

We ended up talking for almost three hours, which was a massive time investment, and also a lot of audio to edit! Fortunately, this was the first month I trained a new staff member on editing down the audio. I walked through everything with them for the first two hours of audio, basically there to answer questions and provide real-time advice, and then let them work on their own for the last hour. They got it down to about an hour and forty five minutes or so, and then since they’d done the grunt work, I was able to come in and mercilessly cut giant chunks of discussion without having to worry about the minutiae. We got a whole bonus episode out of it, which you should check out because I think that part of the discussion was a ton of fun! Even there, tons of stuff got taken out, so this episode’s topic was very heavily edited!

Having someone who I can get to do all the precise work allows me to come in afterward and clean up, which saves me a lot of time, and I’m excited to put that into full practice this upcoming month.

Lovecat had mentioned wanting to do a Zooey D&D skit, even as we were doing one for Howloween. Without any prompting from anyone, LC and Kynophile wrote up a really fun skit and presented it even before writing week was done! It took me pretty much all of one day to put together, but it was fun to see that come to life. I think it’s got good timing and is a lot of fun to experience, and even for all the silliness, it does feel like an actual D&D group playing a real campaign. Thanks to everyone who participated, and thanks to LC and Kano for organizing that and getting all the parts divvied out and recorded!

While we were putting this together, I started really looking into hosts where one could potentially set up a GeoCities-like service for zoos. There’s not a lot of practical purpose for doing this, but I had some fun looking into old zoo websites on the Internet Archive and thought it was so cool how people just had their own space online, instead of everyone gathering around on giant platforms. I found a few potential hosts, but I’m waiting for some responses from their abuse teams. They might not get back to me x3
Lykon, being Lykon, saw that we were talking about this and just went, “Let me prototype that,” and then banged up a working demo of such a service. So I mean, if that’s something you think would be cool or useful that you’d use, let me know!

Thanks for listening! I’ll try to be diligent about posting on time, since there’s probably some people who look here but aren’t aware we post a new episode every full moon.

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Do you have stories about your own trials with enshittification? Let us know in the comments, or e-mail us!

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Everything goes sideways when Jaime's dad finds his notebook. Steeeve and Lovecat interview two zoos for whom the specter of homelessness is all too real, and discuss what they could do if they were to face their nightmare scenario.

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Thoughts About the Episode

Allllright. So, December always means MFF, and MFF means having sex, meeting with zoos, and catching up with old friends. And it definitely delivered on all three accounts! There were feral events every day of the con, even Thursday! I got to meet so many people I have trouble remembering all of them. It was a good time, and then I got to spend some time with friends in the midwest on the way home.

Unfortunately, my trip was cut short by a family emergency, and that basically dominated the rest of December for me. I suggested we pushed back the episode due to the holidays, but that was only partially true. I prefer not to go into it, but December was a little rough. No part of me wanted to make an episode this month. It was a major struggle getting through it.

Fortunately, I’d already left Steeeve in charge of putting together the episode, so I wasn’t trying to organize the episode on top of everything else. Unfortunately, he had a lot of trouble getting younger zoos to interview on the podcast — which one supposes would be expected, given that they were being interviewed about their fears of losing their homes for being exposed as a zoo. I told him to just do text interviews, but they ended up being pretty short. I think they got the general point across, though, brought some real humanity to the issue, and both interviewees were very open and honest.

Steeeve also worked with Eggshell to put together a three-part skit about someone who was going through the scenario of losing their home after being outed. It was important to him to have some Hispanic representation on the show, seeing how many of his stickers were going to Latin American countries. He had his Hispanic friend play both Jaime and his dad, and we essentially allowed him to insert Spanish where it felt natural for an angry parent to slip out of English. I think he did a good job of playing two separate roles that sound nothing like one another, so that was neat! Steeeve also handled facilitating recording, gathering voice actors, and hosting. We originally wanted to have Canis on to bring insight into his experiences with homelessness related to being outed as a zoo, but he wasn’t available. Lovecat gracefully stepped in, and they were able to put together a topic succinctly. Steeeve has a knack for bringing both brevity and entertainment, so I was able to pass him five emails to knock out in addition to a topic and several skits and interviews.

Now, if you thought the skits were bleak when you listened to the episode, the original ending was basically a coin flip between finding a homeless shelter and committing suicide, with our protagonist cold and alone on the streets, and I was like, “Guys, what message are we sending here?”

I want to stop here and share part of the ensuing conversation, because I think it’s worth documenting the kinds of considerations that are made when we put together an episode or a skit. We have a message and a mission, and sometimes we have to make sure what we’re doing is in line with that message.

“These are nightmare scenarios that are presented, but the message should be that you can survive even the worst nightmare. Especially in light of someone recently committing suicide… None of us who are listening to or participating in this podcast are actually alone… There will always be someone who can forgive you or accept you. There’s someone you can confide in who won’t run away or tell everyone… It’s our duty to remind people of that. Because the narrative that everyone will hate you and your life will be ruined already exists. We exist in large part to counter that narrative. So if we’re going to show the nightmare scenario, we have to have a counter to it… When we touch on really tough and depressing topics, there’s gotta be a light at the end of the tunnel. It’s kind of our MO. ‘What do we do about this shitty situation? How can we make it better?’ …So that’s what I’m thinking. Be careful about how much credence we give to the nightmare, because we’re giving it a lot here, and we have to be careful we don’t undermine ourselves. We should acknowledge these skits embody our worst fears. And we should make sure we end with the understanding that even when it feels like there’s no hope:

We are not alone.
There is nothing wrong with us.
And we are worthy of love.”

We tossed around a few ideas, like having Jaime’s mom reach out and provide some kind of comfort, but Eggshell went with having an unexpected friend reach out and offer some help, and I think it was a very good note to end on.

So, I should be honest about my state of mind with this episode. Maybe it’s because I had very little hand in creating the episode or overseeing the development of the topic, or maybe it’s just because I’m burnt out and was dealing with a bit of depression, but I was struggling with confidence in this episode. I worried maybe it would be too negative, or maybe it wouldn’t address the main issue adequately, or maybe the skits weren’t going to come together and be impactful, or maybe there wouldn’t be enough content, or maybe there would be too much content. In the end, despite a few minor issues with missing voice lines and a couple of things that required a return to the recording booth, everything turned out fine, Eggshell did some good work, and Steeeve and Lovecat held it down. The team got all of their parts done on time, and it really just came down to me dealing with December and getting everything done. I think there’s enough on the table to revisit this topic in the future, but that’s a good thing, I think.

One thing I wished we’d realized before finalizing production was that not all homeless youth resources online actually take the time update their friggin’ links. It’s kind of alarming, and it would have been good to address on the show, but I tried to make sure my liner notes talked about the issue. The resources exist, they can just sometimes take a little more time than clicking the first thing you find on Google. Pretty disappointed with Pittsburgh’s resource websites, though, and I’m gonna try to find someone to complain to. Also, in case you’re reading this like, “Why are you talking about youths?” Please keep in mind that LGBT youth resources are traditionally designated for people 18-25. It can be confusing to hear “youth” and think “young adult,” but that’s how these websites are set up, and this is the terminology they use almost universally.

I had a therapist appointment during this production cycle, and I basically expressed to my therapist that I didn’t want to do this episode at all, and I worried that this might just be the feeling from now on. Even though I only had to do production on this episode, I just didn’t want to do it. She said pretty frankly that it might be time to either find help or cut down on the number of episodes per year — that 12 was a lot. I said I didn’t really want to cut down the number of episodes — people always want more episodes, not less — but that if something didn’t give, that might be what I had to do. I expressed this on Twitter, and I want to thank a couple of people for offering to provide some assistance on production. The people who reached out have some experience with audio production, and I have confidence I can train them to do what I do. Because of their help, I think it’s gonna take a lot of the burden off of me over time, and I think we won’t have to do anything like cut the number of episodes per year next season. It also will mean I can focus more on other parts of putting things together that I actually enjoy like music or writing, or other important aspects like researching topics, without it requiring so many hours of my time. I’m excited to get these folks up to speed, but there’s no guarantee that they’ll be available every episode, so if you’re someone with audio production or podcasting experience, production help is really appreciated. Obviously, there are certain considerations that have to be made before giving someone access to podcast resources, but this is the type of work I think we really need.

I think that’s about it. I’ve been working on this during my lunch breaks all week, so I apologize for the delay here this month and last month. Things are looking good for this month, and I’ll be working with some of these new folks to produce this one! Exciting times!

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Did you find this episode speaks to a situation you find yourself in or worry about? Let us know in the comments, or e-mail us!

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Our special guests Harvey and Amoronaut join Toggle to discuss the current state of affairs for transgender people in the zoo community. Plus, a genderqueer zoo offers some perspective, a video conference goes awry, and Zipwok lists off the zooiest ways to die.

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Thoughts About the Episode

I startled awake one night in December with the realization that, in my haste to get the episode out before MFF, I’d forgotten to write a blog entry! December was a lot, so I’m only just now getting to it. More on that next entry.

This episode almost didn’t happen! As we approached the end of writing week, we hadn’t heard from any trans people who wanted to be involved. I wasn’t about to do an episode about trans people without trans people involved, and I wanted fresher perspectives than the people we already have in our crew. Fortunately, Amoronauts saw our request right here on ZooCommunity and got in touch just in the knick of time! Eggshell and I took time to meet with her and come up with an idea of what we wanted to talk about. We had a very robust conversation, so finally we had the confidence we needed to go ahead with this topic. Right around recording week, as we were struggling to decide who should host, Harvey got back to me about being involved, and everything fell into place. I felt it was also nice to have a trans-masc perspective represented — we hear a lot from trans women when it comes to these topics, so that extra bit of diverse perspective was welcome. Plus, it was his request in the first place!

Recording the topic was tough, though — mostly because we had a TON to cover, and I was wary of taking too long to do it. I tried to strike a balance between moving things along and letting the actual trans people speak, but I still kind of feel like too much of it is me talking and trying to guide us through everything we had to touch on. Overall, I think it went well, I just would have liked to speak a bit less.

However, disaster struck during the recording process. We’ve been in the process of moving over to Squadcast, as it’s a service that’s provided free with other tools we’re using. However, we ran into two major issues. First, Amoronaut’s audio for the topic discussion was completely fucked — something that wasn’t evident while actually recording. We didn’t hear all those audio issues during the session, but rerecording a two hour discussion isn’t really feasible, so I had to make do. I only hope that your ear started to tune it out after a few minutes like mine did.

And then, when Harvey and I did the introduction, we ran into a technical issue that prevented Harvey’s audio from uploading. No problem, we’ll use the online backups, right? Think again: the back-up audio is mixed down into one channel, which means a nightmare for post editing, and it sounds like crap to boot! And if you want it separated, you’ll have to settle for audio at a pathetic 48kbps. This was entirely unacceptable. So we re-subscribed to Zencastr and rerecorded the entire 20 minute intro session a second time. That’ll teach us for trying to save money and change tools! Thanks to Harvey for being’ a good sport with a grumpy rat.

By the way, HUGE thanks to Eggshell for taking our loose notes and compiling them into an outline. That was a major relief for me and can’t be overstated.

Amoronauts mentioned she had some skits and stuff she’d written that we might like to use for this episode and sent over the Kiss and Tell script. It was very silly, and we liked it a lot. As you can hear, Amoronauts’ audio is much better there, so no idea what the deal was during the topic discussion. I also think it’s kind of cool to have the special guest contribute creatively to the episode as well! Finding animal noises for smooching was surprisingly difficult!

Finally, I don’t know whether or not the author wanted to be credited for the On Beauty and Euphoria piece, so I’ll leave that out for now. They told me they wanted some kind of 90’s music in the background, but they hated the original, upbeat grunge piece I picked at first. Their original manuscript was a bit longer and included some darker moments, so that may have contributed to their desire for a slightly darker background tone, but it was kind of funny how we had to go back and forth because I just didn’t get it x3 Much appreciated for them contributing this perspective. I think it ended up being a positive addition.

Finally, we took our original song for Howloween by zipwok and featured it here. Somehow, it still doesn’t feel out of place :3

Everything fell into place, and I think things turned out well. I’m pleased we didn’t get up to the 2 hour mark, as well, despite all the extra content. We ended up getting some transphobic pushback from one or two zoos, but fuck ‘em. We got a ton of emails from trans zoos in the following month, so it seems this one resonated the way we wanted it to.

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Did you learn anything new about trans issues? Have your own perspective as a trans person? Let us know in the comments, or e-mail us!

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Journey to a town on an alternate plane of reality in this zooey take on the popular podcast series "Welcome to Nightvale." Featuring an Alfred Hitchcock parody, a tense Dungeon and Dragons session, and our annual Samhain Ritual, this episode is equal parts horny, Halloween, and heartrending.

Listen @ zoo.wtf
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Thoughts About the Episode

I wanna start with a small apology for three things:
1) The length of this episode got away from us. We had a lot planned without knowing how long the segments would actually be, and it ended up being a 2 hour episodes.
2) This episode is incredibly dog-centric. All the contributors really really love dogs. I hope other zoos still get something out of this one, though!
3) It came out about 20 minutes too late to be on time, due to several last minute changes that came through on the last day. Worth it, though.

And also, 4) sorry this took so long to post. Writing this takes time, which I haven’t had a lot of since the episode came out.

We came into this episode having no idea what we were gonna do for Howloween. Our regular contributor for The Eigen Ground hadn’t been able to come up with something this year, and we flirted with the idea of a Scooby Doo themed episode, but that was going to prove difficult. Then, early early in the month, Eggshell toyed around with a parody of Welcome to Nightvale, starting by using the framework of The Eigen Ground as a way to transport into an alternate place. I ran it by the EG writer, and they felt it didn’t really fit the universe they wanted to create. Their suggestions for changes didn’t sit with our writer in terms of the points they wanted to make, so we went with what we had and elaborated on the idea of this radio station from an alternate plane of existence and put some ideas for EG in the tank for next year.

Welcome to Nightvale is familiar to me as a quintessential example of “popular podcast.” Back when I never had heard a single podcast episode before in my life, this was the only podcast I knew existed, so it was interesting to hear this one come back up. I listened to it for the first time to prep for this episode, and once I heard it, I told Eggshell, “Kyon would be the perfect person to give this kind of delivery,” and they agreed. Kyon definitely delivered, and he was available for feedback and retakes, and I really appreciate his work this episode.

If you haven’t heard it before, it’s a strange narrative fiction podcast masquerading as a public news radio station that revels in traditional American horror tropes like aliens, clandestine government agencies, and inexplicable supernatural occurances. While there’s a canon, a lot of it feels like strangeness for the sake of strangeness, though occasionally it seems to touch on something profound, perfect for a Howloween episode.

We had a couple of skits in the bank, including this wonderful tabletop sketch that I thought was pretty touching. Aqua had suggested doing a Rear Window parody some months back, and Eggshell also tried their hand at a more traditional horror skit, but I didn’t feel like that one landed. Rear Window was also one I wasn’t personally familiar with, and at first the idea of Peeping Toms felt a little uncomfortable, but once I had the context, I thought the subversion at the end was pretty good. Eggshell mentioned that Hitchcock’s Rear Window heavily relies on visual storytelling, so translating that to audio came with its own challenges. I also considered cutting a couple of lines suggesting that the non-zoo couple might wanna get a dog, but it felt really more like banter than anything else, and the ending didn’t quite work without it. In the end, the performances were solid for all the skits, and I think they turned out wonderfully. I’m consistently pleased with the voice talents at our disposal. You’re all wonderful. I wanna take a moment to really thank Kynophile for contributing both his vocal performances in a pinch, as well as our convention crew from the last episode making another cameo appearance in the cold open.

During writing week, a friend of mine sent me a skit he’d written about dealing with the loss of a partner. I reckon as his dog gets older, it’s something on his mind, and it was a pretty impactful read. He gave us permission to use it, and I felt it was perfect timing, but we had to figure out how to work it in. I had a random idea of having the narrator begin with something absurd, and then get interrupted by static and start over with something more absurd, and things get more distorted and more horrific and nightmarish until it cut to silence, and the narrator would say something like, “There are some nightmares that are much closer to home.” Eggshell ran with that idea and came up with the running “choir of doom” story beat that ties the whole episode together and ends in this giant, emotional cacophony, and all of it came together.

The Losing a Friend skit was the last to come together, at the VERY last minute. I had a friend who was going to help put it together, but they got really sick and didn’t get a chance to do it. I had a couple of people read for Sal, and I want to take a moment to thank the other people who took the time to do readings for me this episode that didn’t end up getting used. Your help in a pinch was super appreciated. In the end, I went with the performance that I felt captured the subtlety of the emotions I wanted conveyed. Some folks gave great narrative reads, but I needed the sense that this was a conversation between two actual people. Angus’s performance was great, especially in that he took some more awkward lines and changed them around to feel more natural. A very moving skit all around.

I spent some time touching grass this month, and in that time, I wrote a sort of guided meditation to enter into the Samhain ritual. I wanted to link the idea of this outer-planes radio show with the ritual and put it in a physical place people could go, so it wasn’t just tacked on without working with the narrative we created. I also liked the idea of letting people be swept away with it, or letting them just sit and listen if that was more comfortable for them. I think a big part of those kinds of things being successful is a willingness to participate and having some agency in the scene.

A big thanks to everyone who submitted their eulogies this year. I really hope hearing them was cathartic for folks. I don’t know what to say here. It feels weird to expound on this part, but the ritual isn’t a ritual without people to participate, so we’re thankful that this community feels this is important enough to contribute to.

Originally, I was going to use Zipwok’s “Zooey Ways to Die” song as a silly Halloween song to play early in the episode, but once the script was done and the song was put at the end of the Samhain ritual, I felt the song he submitted last November, “I Need You So,” better punctuated the themes of loss and memory. We waffled back and forth, with Eggshell liking a change in tone to end the episode, but in the end, there was overwhelming support for “I Need You So” among the crew.

Incidentally, I should mention that “The Weather” is always Nightvale’s musical segment, which is why this section is introduced that way. If you haven’t heard the podcast before, it’s like 20 minutes long per episode, so it’s an easy listen.

All in all, “Equal parts horny and heartrending” seems to be the perfect tagline for this episode. So far, people have seemed to find the execution successful. Big thanks to everyone who contributed, participated, and took the time to listen to this long episode.

Timekeeping was weird for this one. It’s somewhere around 50 hours, but I fucked up several times keeping time.

I suppose that’s it! We’re really looking for trans perspectives for this next episode, so if that sounds like you, please reach out!

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Is there someone you were thinking about during the Samhain ritual who’s special to you? Let us know in the comments, or e-mail us!

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Avast! The ZooTT crew returns! Tune into 106.6 The Ark, a zoo pirate radio station broadcasting from the Baltic Sea just in time for Eurofurence! Plus, Aqua vents some frustration in their recurring segment Dear Non-Zoos. Featuring new music from Kiss Me Kabar, Shiv, Zipwok, and Rave Pup.

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Thoughts About the Episode

Holy shit, I was not prepare. This has been a rough production cycle, at over 51 hours not including work I did on the song prior to this month. We were editing things down to the very wire, and I’m up much later than I want to be writing this blog entry. But it’s done! And I’m happy with it! Let’s break it down, I guess!

Canis had an idea a long time ago to do an interstellar pirate radio podcast, but never had the time to put it into production. They brought it up again, with the idea being to have a 24-hour streaming radio station of old ZooTT segments along with zoo music. It’s still a cool idea, but not one we’re ready to implement. However, we thought it would be cool to shift from a college radio station to pirate radio for this year’s Dear Non-Zoos episode.

I wanted to try to get stuff done well in advance, but that just didn’t happen. I was too busy in my last month of hiatus, and things just weren’t lining up. Me, Aqua, and Eggshell got together and watched The Boat That Rocked for inspiration. While Pirate Radio was a term well before the 1960’s and referred to any illegal broadcast, it’s interesting to me that the pirate radio stations in Britain were on actual boats! I was originally gonna be broadcasting it from the Allegheny River here in Pittsburgh, but Aqua had the idea of actually broadcasting to Eurofurence, since it was just a few weeks ago. We weren't sure what to call the radio station at first, but The Ark was so incredibly fitting we knew immediately that no other options stood up to that standard. I chose 106.6, since The Flood story begins in Genesis (Book 1) Chapter 6. Also, the station isn't being used in Hamburg.

Since we were basing our pirate radio station off of The Boat That Rocked, I decided to revive our rock theme song and completely re-mix it, and I switched out our typical jazz and lo-fi themes with rock music.

At Anthrocon, I had the distinct pleasure of meeting our charismatic Australian friend who played Stuart and André, and he was the first person who came to mind to host our pirate broadcast. His style of delivery is a bit cooler than a lot of American radio broadcasters, but he’s got a swagger about him that sells the role, in my opinion.

Writing this episode was pretty labor intensive for me. I had help from co-writers throughout the process, and I couldn’t have done what I did without Eggshell’s framework and Aqua’s foundation, but man. I forgot how much work this is. It’s… a lot of work. Holy shit. I’m letting Eggshell handle the Howloween episode this year. She’s got a great work ethic and an even better turn around time, and it’s a real asset to be able to rely on that.

We knew we were gonna bring Brad back for this episode. Originally in the cold open, it was just gonna be hidden in the background, but it was both too gold to not feature, and the cold open was a bit stale without a little humor to spice it up. Lovecat is upset I didn’t get in one of his favorite lines, but I couldn’t cram the whole bit in. Maybe I’ll release it as a bonus.

Let’s talk music. I wrote the riff for Worlds Apart several months ago, and it sort of sat in limbo for a long time. I wanted to make sure to include Kynophile in the writing process, so I started by letting him come up with a melody, and then I refined it. He also chose the them and wrote the first draft of the lyrics. I passed back my ideas for changes, and I wanted to give him the final word on the end result. Alas, life got in the way for Kynophile, so I finished it up this month and we got it taken care of. I had a bit of a eureka moment with the bass line late in production, which was previously bland and boring. I’m pretty fucking happy with the end result. I’ve basically finished 4 tracks for the upcoming album, which is looking like it’s gonna just be an EP. I’m trying to finish two more. I had more planned, but time is not on my side.

Konny of Shiv sent me his first draft of Sheep Shagger Blues, and I really liked the lyrics. I took the time to help him refine the mix. He’d send me progress, and I’d give him some suggestions, like doubling the guitars and EQing the guitar and bass, and I processed his drums with my drum programs. I would have liked to refine it even more, but Eurofurence cut our time short. Frankly, though, having heard how far it came from start to finish, it turned out really fucking well.

Zipwok sent me a few different songs, including a short version of the one I used which had some extra arrangement. I’ll use one of them next month for Howloween. I really like the sleeping dog song, though.

I needed one more song, and a couple of people I asked either turned me down or didn’t get back to me. So I reached out to another friend of mine, who I was surprised was very excited to contribute. They wrote an original song for the podcast in a mere couple of days, which is pretty impressive considering it’s quite lovely.

Dear Non-Zoos was inspired by a bunch of things that happened this past year, involving a puppet-wielding fox with some bad habits, an animal control podcast who wasn’t prepared to deal with us, and a criminologist who appeared on said podcast and completely showed her ass. These segments were the very very last to come together. Typically we have a production cycle to keep things on time, but we didn’t actually start on writing these until production week, which is not ideal. I literally spent the past 24 hours putting them all together. I’m just glad they actually came out as well as they did!

There was a phrase that Aqua picked up from another zoo that he used to succinctly describe what our podcast says: “You are not sick. You are not alone. And You are worthy of love.” I repeated it to my therapist the next day, and she said, “You should put that front and center so people can easily find that on your website.” So I did! And some adaptation of the phrase is repeated three times in this episode. I don’t know if the zoo wants me to shout out their name, so I won’t, but thanks for the inspiration!

Also, I got FULL use of some AI voice actors, and they turned out pretty fucking well! I used EVERY allotted character I had in the bank for this month, down to the very last one, and JUST finished the lines I needed without having to pay for more. This can’t replace all voice acting, but it DOES help pad out voices we can’t do ourselves, and it’s really great when I need something at the last minute and I have no one I can call upon.

Finally, say hello to our shiny new website, at long last! Same layout, new foundation. We’ve shed our annoying Wordpress site, which had become a liability, and now we’re completely static. This allows us to turn off CloudFlare’s Attack Mode, AND it loads way faster! Let us know if you find something broken. I’m really pleased, and incredibly relieved to have this finally taken care of.

We also have finally made the jump off of Twitter! We’re now on Bluesky @zoo.wtf. We’re still looking for a Mastodon server to join. We want one that’s too large for people to block federating with, but whose Terms of Service we can unambiguously follow. Let us know if you know of any!

Remember, Samhain is around the corner! If you have a lost loved one you want to dedicate a message to, reach out at howloween@zoo.wtf! We’re also interested in speaking with trans zoos for an upcoming episode!

Alright, I think that’s it. Being back in the swing of things is… hard.

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Which song was your favorite from this episode? Let us know in the comments, or e-mail us!

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You can subscribe to our RSS feed using your favorite podcast application: rss.zoo.wtf
Don't forget to subscribe to our Bonus Content feed: bonus.zoo.wtf
You can subscribe to us on Bluesky @zoo.wtf and @toggle.zoo.wtf
You can contact us using the anonymous web form at zoo.wtf
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The ZooTT Hiatus concludes with another deep dive into the mailbag! Once again, three pairs of host (And Aqua twice!) take on as many emails as we could fit into an hour and a half!

Listen @ zoo.wtf
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Thoughts About the Episode

The final hiatus episode is finished, and I got it done in a reasonable amount of time. I’m pleased with that. Thanks for all your emails!

Unfortunately, I think this experiment ended up failing. I don’t really feel like I was able to rest during the hiatus, and without the impetus of a task at hand, we weren’t able to really bank any work either. While the workload was lighter, I still ended up having to typically spend a full week every month doing the part of the work that’s the most labor intensive — the production. And when I’m doing production, getting anything else I want to do done doesn’t really happen.

Ultimately, I wasn’t able to devote time to the things I wanted to, and I didn’t really get the feeling of having a break. Luckily, I at least have one full month with no production work whatsoever, so that should be helpful.

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What kind of content do you want to hear when we come back from our break? Let us know in the comments, or e-mail us!

_________________________

You can subscribe to our RSS feed using your favorite podcast application: rss.zoo.wtf
Don't forget to subscribe to our Bonus Content feed: bonus.zoo.wtf
You can subscribe to us on Twitter @ZooierThanThou, @OneBigGrumpyRat, @ACatWhoLovesYou
You can contact us using the anonymous web form at zoo.wtf
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The ZooTT Hiatus continues, right on into Zoo Pride Month! Toggle, Mike, and Aqua host an episode featuring throwbacks to ZooTT Pride celebrations of the past, new messages from the zoo community, and plenty of nonsense!

Listen @ zoo.wtf
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Thoughts About the Episode

Happy Pride! Sorry for the delay. Since I wasn’t at home, our YouTube account wouldn’t give me access.

I definitely went over my 10 hours, even if you don’t include all the time spent finishing up the song for this episode — which I don’t, because it was just convenient timing that I was working on it anyway at the same time. I’m at AC typing this, so I don’t really wanna spend to much time here. Still, very pleased with how the music is turning out. Awooo!

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What kind of content do you want to hear when we come back from our break? Let us know in the comments, or e-mail us!

_________________________

You can subscribe to our RSS feed using your favorite podcast application: rss.zoo.wtf
Don't forget to subscribe to our Bonus Content feed: bonus.zoo.wtf
You can subscribe to us on Twitter @ZooierThanThou, @OneBigGrumpyRat, @ACatWhoLovesYou
You can contact us using the anonymous web form at zoo.wtf
The ZooTT Hiatus continues, and while the rat is away, the raccoon will play! Tarro and Eggshell from Zooey.pub take over this episode to celebrate one year of the online zooey 'zine!

Listen @ zoo.wtf
_________________________

Thoughts About the Episode

This is the first time ever that anyone else has taken over production of an episode. Tarro from Zooey.pub organized and produced this episode, with a little oversight and help from me. I’m still clocking in at 6-7 hours, but considering that this could be the clocked time for a regular episode, it would be nice to do more often.

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What kind of content do you want to hear when we come back from our break? Let us know in the comments, or e-mail us!

_________________________

You can subscribe to our RSS feed using your favorite podcast application: rss.zoo.wtf
Don't forget to subscribe to our Bonus Content feed: bonus.zoo.wtf
You can subscribe to us on Twitter @ZooierThanThou, @OneBigGrumpyRat, @ACatWhoLovesYou
You can contact us using the anonymous web form at zoo.wtf
The ZooTT Hiatus continues! This time, the mailbag is overflowing, so three pairs of host (And Aqua twice!) take on as many emails as we could fit into an hour and a half!

Listen @ zoo.wtf
_________________________

Thoughts About the Episode

I went WAAAAY over on my hours for this month. Over 20 hours this time. Ahhhhh! Well, hopefully I can make up for it next month.

----
What kind of content do you want to hear when we come back from our break? Let us know in the comments, or e-mail us!

_________________________

You can subscribe to our RSS feed using your favorite podcast application: rss.zoo.wtf
Don't forget to subscribe to our Bonus Content feed: bonus.zoo.wtf
You can subscribe to us on Twitter @ZooierThanThou, @OneBigGrumpyRat, @ACatWhoLovesYou
You can contact us using the anonymous web form at zoo.wtf
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