Pod help me, I’m doing all three shows
Thanks for taking the podcast survey! The results are in, and there’s solid interest in all three proposed shows. So starting Jan 1, I’ll be producing episodes for three podcasts every week — How Music Does That, Raising Freethinkers, and The Lucky Ones.
How Music is already 10 episodes in, so you can find that on iTunes, Spotify, etc. The others will need 3 episodes each to propagate to those services. So to goose the process, here’s one more preview of Raising Freethinkers for the holidays.
Thanks for listening!
Listen to “2 – Santa Claus, The Ultimate Dry Run” on Spreaker.
Pod help me, I’m doing all three shows
Thanks for taking the podcast survey! The results are in, and there’s strong interest in all three proposed shows. So starting Jan 1, I’ll be producing episodes for three podcasts each week — How Music Does That, Raising Freethinkers, and The Lucky Ones.
How Music is already 10 episodes in, so you can find that on iTunes, Spotify, etc. The others will need 3 episodes each to propagate to those services. So to goose the process, here’s one more preview of Raising Freethinkers for the holidays.
Thanks for listening!
Listen to “2 – Santa Claus, The Ultimate Dry Run” on Spreaker.
Music, Secular Parenting, Mortality – Which of These Podcasts Would You Listen To?
In September, I launched a podcast about music to support a book proposal on the topic. But something unexpected happened: within a few weeks, the podcast overtook the book for me. It’s the perfect way to talk about music. But I also fell hard for the medium in general, especially in a storytelling mode, and creating and publishing continuously is SO much more satisfying than the two-year timeline of the average book from proposal to print.
So I want podcasting at the center of my creative work for the coming year. HOW MUSIC DOES THAT is now 10 episodes in, and I’ve recorded pilots for two new shows: RAISING FREETHINKERS, about raising kids without religion, and THE LUCKY ONES, about an aging atheist’s complicated relationship with death (humor and philosophy). Now I need to know which of the three shows are worth continuing.
If you can take a bite of the three episodes below, then complete the survey, that’ll help me decide whether to re-launch in January with 1, 2, or 3 shows. Thanks for your help! – Dale
RAISING FREETHINKERS
Listen to “1 Origin Story” on Spreaker.
HOW MUSIC DOES THAT
Listen to “Ep 1: The Evolution of Cool” on Spreaker.
THE LUCKY ONES
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Where Should I Put My Energy in 2019?
In September, I launched a podcast about music to support a proposed book on the topic. But something unexpected happened: within a few weeks, the podcast overtook the book for me. It’s the perfect way to talk about music. But I also fell hard for the medium in general, especially in a storytelling mode. And creating and publishing continuously is so much more satisfying than the two-year timeline of the average book, proposal to print.
So I want podcasting at the center of my creative work right now. And if I could move continually among my three favorite topics — music, secular parenting, and mortality — that’d be ideal. So I put the music podcast on hiatus to design and record pilots for two more shows: RAISING FREETHINKERS (raising kids without religion) and THE LUCKY ONES (an aging atheist’s complicated relationship with death). Now I need to know if the interest is there for one or both of these new shows, as well as HOW MUSIC DOES THAT, now on its 10th episode.
If you have the time, please sample the three episodes below, then complete the survey. Depending on the results, I’ll re-launch in January with 1, 2, or 3 different shows. Thanks for your help! – Dale
Raising Freethinkers
Listen to “1 Origin Story” on Spreaker.
How Music Does That
Listen to “Ep 1: The Evolution of Cool” on Spreaker.
The Lucky Ones
>POLL NOW CLOSED, thanks. Results here!<
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Podcast Ep 10: The Music That Broke My Heart
- November 05, 2018
- By Dale McGowan
- In Emotion, Podcast
- 0
With nothing but vibrations in the air, Barber’s Adagio reduces people to tears. Ep. 10 of HOW MUSIC DOES THAT.
Listen to “Ep 10: The Music That Broke My Heart” on Spreaker.
Podcast Ep. 9: Every Note is a Chord
- October 28, 2018
- By Dale McGowan
- In Podcast
- 0
It’s a hidden key to music’s emotional power. And it’s not all that hidden.
Listen to “Ep 9: Every Note is a Chord” on Spreaker.
Ep 8: The Moment I Surrendered to John Williams
I had never felt so tangibly dropped into another world.
Listen to “Ep 8: The Moment I Surrendered to John Williams” on Spreaker.
God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.
I think most nonreligious parents would really enjoy the first two chapters of The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell (“Childhood” and “Adolescence”). Among other things, this section recounts his transition from a Christian upbringing to agnostic atheism.
But another passage much later in the book would have been worth reading the whole thing just to find:
Ever since puberty I have believed in the value of two things: kindness and clear thinking. At first these two remained more or less distinct; when I felt triumphant I believed most in clear thinking, and in the opposite mood I believed most in kindness. (vol 2, p. 232)
Nonreligious folks are not unkind. Many are the gentlest and kindest people I know. But in our meetings and conferences and blogs and social media, we sometimes overlook the topic of human emotional needs. We focus instead on the need for clear thinking — until we are feeling “the opposite of triumphant” and find ourselves, as individuals, hoping for a kind word or thought or deed. Russell’s first value rushes in.
As a parent, I find myself more upset by the unkindnesses my children do than by any fuzziness of thought. And I find it harder to forgive my own lapses in the former than in the latter.
Kurt Vonnegut circled around the same idea in God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. The protagonist is asked to say a few words for the baptism of his neighbor’s twins. What do you say to welcome new lives into the world? Here’s what Vonnegut found fitting:
Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies—God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.
Ep 7: The Most Hopeful Music in the World
- October 13, 2018
- By Dale McGowan
- In Podcast
- 0
Even starting this piece was an act of pure optimism. Now to finish it.
Listen to “Ep 7: The Most Hopeful Music in the World” on Spreaker.
Ep. 5: The Masterpiece I Never Heard Of
This was no ordinary professor. She was a brilliant composer with an encyclopedic grasp of All Human Knowledge, or so it constantly seemed, and a mission to ferret out the ignorance of others, often publicly, with unforgettable shock and zeal. For many years afterward, I struggled to shake a really bad habit: the inability to admit that there was something — anything — I didn’t know.
Listen to “Ep 5: The Masterpiece I Never Heard Of” on Spreaker.