Zooier Than Thou
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S5E7 Dear Non Zoos - Pirate Radio
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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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SHE6 Oops! More Emails!
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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!
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SHE5 Zoo Pride 2023!
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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!
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SHE4 A Zooey Crossover Episode!
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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!
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SHE3 Oops! All Emails!
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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.
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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!
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SHE2 Zoo's Line
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Thoughts About the Episode
This was fun to do. It’s been a busy month, so I’m glad I’m still on break. Pushin’ that 10 hour limit this month. I’d like to get more of my own shit done this month, but next month is gonna be kind of labor intensive for the podcast.
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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!
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You can subscribe to our RSS feed using your favorite podcast application: rss.zoo.wtf
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You can subscribe to us on Twitter @ZooierThanThou, @OneBigGrumpyRat, @ACatWhoLovesYou
You can contact us using the anonymous web form at zoo.wtf
Listen @ zoo.wtf
SHE1 Calzoo Interview
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Thoughts About the Episode
Hiatus is going well, really enjoying myself. Clocking in under 10 hours, so this is working out well!
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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!
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You can subscribe to our RSS feed using your favorite podcast application: rss.zoo.wtf
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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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S4E12 Over the Hill
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Thoughts About the Episode
This will be my last full blog post for a while. Six months to be exact. I’ll still update and let you know a new episode is out, but in the spirit of taking a break, I won’t be getting into the nitty gritty of production or thoughts about the episodes.
This was a good episode to ease me into hiatus. I’ve spent just over 20 hours on it, which was mostly spent recording and producing. Our new writer had sent in a really absurd but touching “Airplane Sketch” a long time ago that I’m glad we were able to work in, because it turned out really well. Also, just got access to a cool new tool: competent AI voice acting. Check out the stewardess. She’s pretty impressive, no? Outside of producing the skit, it was just shooting the shit and going over emails. Nothing taxing or overblown. I hope that you enjoy what we have, as simple as the content may be.
I apologize in advance for the long political discussion during the emails. It seemed as good an episode as any to tackle that kind of email, and I hope you’ll appreciate how significantly I pared down what was originally a 30 minute discussion on the topic.
We’ve already recorded the next episode featuring Underdog and Gar of the original CalZoo from the 1990’s. It was a pleasant conversation, and I’m hoping that the appeal of hearing their stories of zoo history is a good signal that the hiatus doesn’t mean it’s time to tune out.
Beyond that, the goal is less than 10 hours a month, so don’t expect a whole lot of production, but I hope we’ll still be able to entertain in the interim. I really, really hope this hiatus is enough to recharge the batteries and kick into high gear for season 5. I’m nervous it might not be enough time, or that I’ll end up pushing too much with getting an episode out every month that it won’t feel like I took time off. But I’m hopeful. The first thing I’m going to do is clean my friggin’ house from top to bottom so I have a restful space to spend the break in. I also plan to travel and see folks throughout the year, so that will be nice.
We’re also considering a radical format shift, in terms of how we release episodes. No announcements yet, but based on some feedback about what people have enjoyed this year, we wanna make sure we continue providing really high-quality content.
Well, I guess that’s it. I’ll see you in 6 months, my friends! Stay defiant!
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Are you a fan of the easy breezy conversation episodes? 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!
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S4E11 I Fought the Law
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Thoughts About the Episode
Usually I write these journals after I’ve posted the episode, but after working for 11 hours straight through the night to finish this beast up, I wanna get as much done as I can before I pass out.
This was an absolute beast of an episode to put together and produce. Planning dates back to March, but we really began in earnest in November, when Aqua and I met with Bojack and hashed out what we wanted to do. This episode focused on a somewhat litigious antagonist, and we wanted to make sure we had all our ducks in a row and worked with some modicum of journalistic integrity — as best as laymen, zoo non-journalists can manage at least. Bojack put in a ton of time and effort gathering up citations, newspaper articles, YouTube videos, and legislative documents, and mapping them out in a mind-mapping tool for us to reference.
Once Aqua translated the mindmaps to English for me, I dove into referencing and pulling quotes and put together an outline. I worked up a script draft and set up interviews with a couple of super awesome French zoos who volunteered their time and voices to the project. We were able to pull together voice actors from all over the western world for this one.
These story episodes are very front-heavy — recording actually doesn’t take much time at all. But I’ve discovered the biggest time sink for this kind of an episode isn’t the writing, or even the planning stage. It’s finding the right god-damn music. Holy hell, more than half the total time spent on this episode went into the past three days. I’d already started picking out and collecting potential music before starting to save myself time, but sometimes you realize some of the music you picked doesn’t actually work, so you gotta go hunting — blindly, I might add, because there’s no way to know what keywords to search for — and trying things out to see if they fit. It is incredibly time consuming. That, and waiting for audio to process. One of our fancy programs gets rid of room noise and stuff like that, and basically everyone needed it
All told, I’m currently sitting at 67 hours into the production of this episode, and that’s just the time *I* put in. Aqua and Bojack put a ton of work into this with me, and it wouldn’t have been possible without all the voice actors who stepped up to help. I think it shows, and I’m pretty happy with how this episode turned out. It’s always rewarding to have a polished end product that you can be proud of. But shit, I haven’t gotten much sleep this week at all, and I’m gonna spend the next week cocooned in a blanket on my soft, soft bed.
So what’s next? Well, we got next month’s episode, and I’ll definitely be taking it easy as we wind down into the hiatus. Can’t do two big episodes like this one in a row. This is exhausting! However, I’ll also be putting together our first hiatus interview this month, and I think it’s going to be a good one. My goal is to convince you that just because we’re on hiatus doesn’t mean you shouldn’t keep tuning in every full moon!
I’m really looking forward to the break, though. Knowing it’s coming up has really motivated me to put everything I have into these last couple of episodes. I plan to get really good at Fall Guys and catch up on a ton of extracurricular activities I haven’t had time for over the past four years. Looking back, I have no idea how I juggled two episodes a month with all the other shit I had going on that first year.
Stay defiant, fellow zoos.
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What did you think of this true tale? Do you have an idea for lightweight content you want to hear during our hiatus? Let us know in the comments, or e-mail us!
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S4E10 A New Home for the Holidays
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Thoughts About the Episode
Greetings from the other side of MFF! I had such a blast! Met a bunch of new zoos, including ZC’s own Zooby Dooby Doo, and some other folks from Zoo Twitter and the DSI telegram network. You know, for all the bluster and bombastic threats, I gotta say the “antizoo” presence was milquetoast at best. They brought some poorly designed stickers with red text on a red background with difficult-to-read font and referenced a zoo flag most people don’t even use. Our sticker game was on point, and everyone behaved themselves, which made the one or two people posting antizoo stickers look like complete assholes. I’m very pleased with how things went overall.
But I digress. Let’s talk about this episode! A couple of months ago, I took a weekend offline out in the woods and managed to read the entirety of The Other End of the Leash from cover to cover. It’s amazing what you can get done when you don’t have access to electronics or the internet. I definitely recommend unplugging any opportunity you get. It’s a good book, and with the exception of some potentially out-dated references to alpha wolf theory, it’s got a lot of solid advice and thoughts about dogs and how they perceive our behavior. One part I thought was really interesting was about how people tend to go for looks instead of considering what kind of breed of dog would actually be compatible with their lifestyles. I felt that mindset really applied in dog zoo space, as well. I know we all find huskies and GSDs strikingly handsome, and I’m sure many of us have other particular features from different breeds that make us swoon. All of that is really superficial, though, and there’s a lot more to consider, for sure. I brought the idea to Steeeve, and he immediately echoed some of my own sentiments before I even brought them up, so I knew we had something worth discussing.
I had the idea of maybe doing an infomercial or something, a creative way to convey the information rather than just discussing it. I brought our new writer in on it, and we all tossed around ideas until Steeeve shared this old VHS tape with Rue McClanahan and a stiff, uncomfortable English vet who traded awkward flirting back and forth. We laughed over the cheesy Italo Disco music and goofy video tropes, and I tasked our new writer with coming up with a base scenario. Boy, did they deliver! Steeeve and I took the framing and fleshed it out, but the narrator and the hapless zoo protagonist sections make me laugh so hard. I found it unusually difficult to find stock Italo Disco, so I went with that cheesy 80’s aesthetic instead. Steeeve found a video cassette artifact Kontact plug-in, and man, I think we REALLY nailed the aesthetic. So pleased. Steeeve felt it might be one of the best things we’ve written!
On top of that, our new writer put together a goofy skit about Santa wanting dog cookies, and I loved how it really felt like a first season skit. I kind of blushed the first time a read it, because we don’t really go there that much anymore, so I’m stoked to really dive back into that original sex-positive, subversive energy from before. I got some of my voice actors to do some really goofy character voices, and I think they really made it shine. Our writer wrote a part for Brad from the phone skit in Dear Non-Zoos, and of course, Lovecat took the material and ad-libbed stuff we could never have put down on paper. He really nails that character, and it made the whole thing, a perfect way to end. There was originally another ending, but we cut it and just ended on Brad, and I think that made for a stronger overall presentation.
I thought this poem was a perfect match for transitioning into Zipwok’s wistful song. It’s one of the many sonnets and poems our writer submitted way back before they formally joined the staff, and it’s very touching and warm. Zipwok had already released the song we used, but he let us use it for the episode, and I think it’s a solid end cap to an otherwise wild episode.
I finally announced the hiatus officially, but I hope you’ll all stick around, because I’ve got some neat things planned for the break. I’m excited to have some of my free time back, though. This next episode is two months in planning and execution, and we’re going to be working long hours to get it done right. I’m clocking in at around 25 hours for this episode, which ain’t bad, but I expect the next one will take as much as the Howloween episode. I’m hoping we’re able to pull it off, because it’s perhaps somewhat ambitious in scope for what we have to do in the background. For now, though, I’m gonna enjoy the rest of my vacation visiting zoos and other friends before diving in for writing week.
Thanks for listening!
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Did you learn anything useful from our feature video presentation? Do you have an idea for lightweight content you want to hear during our hiatus? Let us know in the comments, or e-mail us!
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You can subscribe to us on Twitter @ZooierThanThou, @OneBigGrumpyRat, @ACatWhoLovesYou
You can contact us using the anonymous web form at zoo.wtf