How to co-host a podcast without ruining your friendship
A rant on joint creative efforts and doing things for fun
Highlights from today’s newsletter: Some weeks are just bad weeks. Sports teams really love giving Tamagotchis to their players right now. I’ve edited 29 episodes of my podcast and have 30 fans to show for it (and that’s okay).
it’s just not my week
I’m having one of those weeks. You know the kind: starts mediocre, slowly inches its way down, ends in a pit of unhappiness so deep you start genuinely asking “Why, God?” despite not usually being the type to intentionally draw God’s attention.
Lately a lot of my weeks have been more bad than good. Or, well, maybe not bad, but definitely more not good than good. It’s brat summer in the sense that I’ve been feeling petulant and am terrorizing everyone in my life. I want to wake up in the morning, open my window and yell to my neighborhood, “When is it going to be my turn?!” Except unfortunately the window in my bedroom has a screen sealed to the frame with some sort of adhesive…all to say, it can’t be opened in any satisfying way.
Things I’m ready to blame this week on:
Mercury retrograde
The disgusting heat wave that blasted NYC for the first half of the week
~*The state of the world*~
A curse from one of my enemies
Other people getting a chance at the W
Things I’m not ready to blame this week on:
My own professional experiences, ability to interview, and, most importantly, personality as perceived by recruiters and hiring managers
God (I think He’s probably indifferent on this one)
Karma (point me to what I did to deserve this!)
But, hey. Things won’t always be this way. They might someday be worse. (Kidding!)
it’s tamagotchi summer and we’re just living in it, baby
I’ve been thinking about tamagotchis a lot lately. I don’t remember ever having one as a kid, even though I’m the perfect age for it (the original released in 1996 and I’m, well, in my 30s). Call it 90s nostalgia or a happy coincidence benefiting from the Labubu-forward keychain resurgence…but whatever reason, they’re very back.
The worst part of tamagotchi summer is that I noticed it through sports crossovers, which is forcing me to reevaluate if I’ve accidentally become a sports girl. I’m not a sports girl. I promise it’s not in an I’m different from other girls because I actually don’t like sports at all way; I didn’t grow up in a playing or watching sports household and missed the opportunity to develop lifelong interest, I think.
Anyway, this week I got served a TikTok where the Carolina Panthers give tamagotchis to their players. My first thought? EF Pro Cycling did it first for their riders at the Tour de France — and they didn’t just give the tamagotchis, they did an entire social media series providing updates (spoiler alert: they all died because, well, their owners were out riding bikes for 5hrs/day).
I can’t help but wonder: Did someone on the Panthers staff see EF’s video (and if so, did it organically pop up for them via some shared sports algorithm, or are there cycling fans on staff)? Is it purely a coincidence that two teams in different sports came up with the same idea? Are there any players that actually want to receive this gift?!
I predict all athlete-owned tamagotchis will be dead within a week. Unless of course they pass it along to their children, who I have much higher hopes for.
how to co-host a podcast and not ruin your friendship
This week also marks the release of the 29th episode of my comedy podcast, Based on Opinion, where my co-host and I are working diligently to categorize everything in the world as either in or out.
You can listen to it on Apple Podcasts or Spotify!
29 episodes might not feel like a milestone, but I started the bi-weekly (as in, every other week) show last year as a solo project and never thought it’d last this long. Bringing on a co-host after the first few episodes, especially one who has been a friend of mine for over a decade, was a little scary at first. I was so worried we’d kill each other, or ruin the friendship, or both (I guess). It’s been great (or we wouldn’t still be doing it), but here’s what I’ve learned
:
The friendship comes first: Any joint creative endeavor with a friend is kind of like becoming roommates: it can go well if you both have the right disposition for it, but there’s also a lot more to lose. If I thought that doing the podcast together was going to negatively impact our ~13-year friendship, it’d be done tomorrow. Thankfully it’s made us closer by, well, actually speaking to each other week-to-week (instead of sporadically every 8 months for a multi-hour or weekend-long burst). People — schedule time talk to those who matter to you!
Make sure you have the same goals: I love my podcast. I figured out how to do everything from scratch (and YouTube). I frequently haul microphones 40 minutes uptown on the Q to record in person. I spend hours every week editing each episode (and simultaneously Googling ‘how to fix ___ more easily in Adobe Audition’).
And I don’t care if nobody listens to it.
The goal was — and still is today — to provide a space for me and my friends to laugh together, riff on jokes, and, probably most importantly, give our parents something fun to listen to. Not popularity, or fame, or money.
There are times where my co-host or I are too busy to record / edit / promote / etc. If we weren’t aligned on the same goal of having an absolute blast, I could definitely see this creating tension between us. We do our best to make time and take it seriously but sometimes life happens, and the podcast isn’t #1 priority for either of us.Pick a partner who complements you: There are a lot of moving pieces if you’re not supported by a podcast network. I genuinely applaud solo hosts who figure out how to do every piece of it on their own. Me? I hate promotion and social media. I’m not good at it and I don’t want to be. Luckily, I found a co-host who works in the marketing/media space and takes care of everything for our Instagram. And she gets a partner who’s willing to deal with all of the recording and editing technicalities.
The sort of insane Instagram material that my co-host makes for us
We also have complementary personalities (it’s what makes us great long-distance friends and just-okay group trip buddies, namely because I’m a nightmare who needs dedicated personal space): I’m structured and Type A; she’s lively and spontaneous. I lean on my pessimism and play the straight man in comedy; she’s a hopeless idealist who can burst into a character voice at any moment. We’re both good at riffing and playing the bit.
Anyway, if you won’t take my advice at least go give the podcast a listen (or 5 stars — I’m told those matter). Someday it’ll have a billion followers and then, just like with this Substack, you can say that you were there in the beginning.