Sacha reached out to me on Facebook Messenger. She wanted to ask me some questions about podcasting. Here are my answers that I wrote her. This podcast is the oral answers to the same questions, but come off differently. In a way, these are questions that many people have asked me over the course of making Oscar Mike Radio.
Question One: Why did you start making podcasts? What were your inspirations?
When I was thinking
over the concept of Oscar Mike Radio, there was a lot of things going on in the
Veteran Community. There were issues around Veteran’s Suicide, and other
Veterans were trying to build their lives after serving their country. I wanted
to do something that would provide hope, allow Veterans to connect with each
other and tell stories about the military one wouldn’t hear anywhere else.
I liked radio
growing up. However doing a conventional radio show would be costly with no
real idea if it would even be effective.
I met a man named Keith Hayes at the Ist Annual Dale Dorman Media day and he said go for it. We got together later and he showed me how to do podcasting and not quit!
Question Two: What do you think is the hardest part of the process? (uploading regularly? Coming up with content ideas? Finding people to collaborate with?)
Doing anything with
sound is very technical. I did not have an audio engineering background so
learning what equipment did and did not work was frustrating. It is much easier
now, but I am always learning. So I would say learning about making sound technically
good is hard.
The other difficult
part is making a story or situation connect with people that listen to my
podcast. It can be challenging making a story about a military aircraft
appealing to someone who doesn’t know anything about military airplanes.
The rest is simply being adaptable, open to learning, and not quitting. I can’t say this enough. There are times when the process (story search, audio setup, editing, blogging, and promotion) is challenging, but not quitting is the key to overcome any difficulty.
Question Three: In your opinion, what makes podcasts stand out from other formats such as radio shows or blog posts?
I don’t believe
there is any other format that allows someone to connect an idea, advocate for
cause, or tell a story like podcasting. You can take a simple recorder or an
advanced sound studio and tell a story your way. Your way, how you want the
story to be told on your terms. 1 person may listen, or 100,000 people might
listen, but the point is, they chose to listen to what you produced. You can
take a podcast and use it to effect change locally, be that ripple in the pond
that keeps going. Look at this answer now, I don’t know why you reached out to
me, but if I wasn’t podcasting we would have never crossed paths. Maybe,
something I am doing here will allow you to move your podcast forward. There is
a possibility you may learn something from my mistakes that allow your podcast
to shine.
You can’t connect
like this with a TV show or movie. YouTube is one thing, but people get
distracted easily looking at their phones.
Blog posts are
great, and I do one for every podcast, but nothing beats the sound of the human
voice in your ear. There is simply nothing like podcasting.
Question Four: Do you make any money making podcasts? Does your listener count matter to you? If not, why do you still do it consistently?
I do not make any
money at this point in time. That is not to say I wouldn’t like to get a
sponsor or sponsors;). Wishful thinking is I will be the next “King of All
Media”, but I learned something from guest I would like to share with you.
I asked Steve for
some feedback about his experience. I told him it was to improve and grow.
Steve looked at me and said if I approach guests with the mindset of adding
value to their lives, cause, or business, the rest will take care of itself.
Sure enough, when I quit worrying about downloads, subscribers, Facebook Likes,
and ensured my podcasts were about adding value people gravitated to what I am
doing.
This method keeps me
honest and constantly looking to improve what I am doing while having fun doing
it.
Now, I don’t know if this is for real. I haven’t seen where the Marine came forward. So again, I have no way to know if what happened in the article is true.
Many people weighed in on the bride’s question. Some said she was right to ask him to leave, others thought she was in fact an a$$ho!3.
What do you think? Was this bride right to kick this Marine out? Let me know!
I saw this video on US Military News and was intrigued. You can watch the video below.
I had no idea what an elephant walk was or where the term originated. Good old Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephant_walk_(aeronautics) said that this term originated during WWII when up to 1000 planes would take off at a time.
Elephant walks require planning, coordination and teamwork to pull off. Even in peacetime, it is good to practice to do operations like the one here to keep skills sharp and demonstrate capability to project force. I thought it was pretty cool.
Upcoming Stuff
Keep checking out all the intel on social media and here for things that will be taking place over the summer. If the scheduling holds, I will be doing Livecasts every month from April through October this year. Good stuff.
I read the story about the defacement of a WWII Monument in South Boston, and got mad. Really mad. This podcast was to express my frustation with this cowardly act.
The men and women who served in WWII, answered to call to defend our country from people who were trying to destroy us. They deserve better than this disrespect.
I am going to go to the monument this weekend. It is my desire to see the ones who did this brought to justice. Nothing more to say.
As I said in the podcast, I was watching a Sopranos episode when this got me thinking. Tony, Paulie, and Christopher were in Italy, and when an Italian found out Paulie was an American, he said something to the effect, “Your plane cut our ski lift.” and walked away.
That got me thinking, and then looking around. I remembered this happening while I was in the Marine Corps. A USMC EA-6B Prowler cut a ski lift line in Italy and killed all 20 people on the lift. It was significant because the pilots were found not guilty of involuntary manslaughter and negligent homicide. https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/marine-jet-severs-ski-lift-cable-in-italy
Not guilty? No guilt at all for killing 20 people? The pilot, Captain Richard J. Ashby was flying about 300 feet off the ground. 300 feet was well below the mandated 2000 feet for operating in that area. Also, the pilot, Captain Ashby and navigator, Captain Schweitzer destroyed the video flight recorder.
While they were acquitted of the charges for manslaughter and homicide, they were found guilty of obstruction of justice. The end result being they were kicked out of the Marine Corps.
Captain Ashby argued that equipment failures on the aircraft led to the ski lift being compromised. Suffice to say, the Italian government did not see it the same way. I would say that an experienced pilot knows the difference between 300 and 2000 feet altitude wise.
The fact that the flight video recorder was destroyed leads me to believe that there was some measure of guilt. I don’t know, and I can’t really understand how these pilots were found to be not guilty. I am sure the families involved still have a difficult time answering that question. OMR sends
