The Podcasts are Back!

As I’ve mentioned a few places lately, I’ve been working on getting both of my podcasts, Systematic and Overtired, back up and running after a long hiatus. I’m excited to announce that both are now going full steam.

ESN was great as a host, but the onus for sponsorship had fallen on me, and I just don’t have the stamina to produce and edit two podcasts and deal with sales. I’m excited to be working with BackBeat Media now. They’re handling sales, and I get to just focus on making great podcasts.

As part of the move, both podcasts have new homes on their own independent sites. Find Systematic at systematicpod.com and Overtired at overtiredpod.com. Both sites are running on WordPress using the Blubrry PowerPress plugin. And (I know I’ve mentioned this before), in the process of building the sites I was able to restore the first 120-some episodes of Systematic that were lost in the move from 5by5. There were some great guests in there, and I’m excited to have those episodes back in the archives.

I decided to call this season 2 of both podcasts. Since the episode numbering for Systematic was already in the 200s, I’m not following any prescribed numbering format there. The first episode of “season 2” is #234 with guest Merlin Mann (whom you may recall from such movies as “everywhere on the internet”, but most recently podcasts including Roderick on the Line and Due By Friday). As a side note, every podcast is listed on the website with a tag based on the guest’s name, so you can easily navigate to all episodes from a particular guest. Merlin holds the record for most return appearances, and you can find all nine of them at systematicpod.com/tag/merlin-mann.

I have the first five Systematic interviews in the can already, so I can take my time with finding new guests and doing more quality interviews. The first couple months of Systematic are going to be spent catching up with more of the guests that I’ve really enjoyed from season 1, some of whom I haven’t chatted with for over 7 years. It’s been great, and I have a renewed energy for keeping it going.

Systematic does tend to get pretty topical, and I have a couple of interviews coming up that I’m really excited about. These include Sarah Johnson, a mental health professional with the YMCA, talking about mental health and the pandemic. That one will be up in a couple of weeks, hopefully not too late for everyone who needs to hear it. I also have return appearances from Jared Rodriguez and Mary Jo Klinker on the books, both ready to talk about — among other things — current events and their impact on topics of justice and equality. Watch for new episodes every Thursday.

Speaking of falling out of touch, Christina and I are catching up on Overtired after over a year of very irregularly-scheduled episodes. Just in time for a new Taylor Swift album. For anyone not familiar, it’s not actually a podcast about Taylor Swift, she just became a frequent enough topic that we essentially branded the podcast as the only Tech Podcast About Taylor Swift. Or a Taylor Swift Podcast about Tech. You’ll see. We’re keeping the Mental Health Corner segments, and — apropos for quarantine — the usual talk about TV and Movies.

We’re back on a weekly schedule, and the first episode is live now. New episodes will be coming out every Wednesday.

Both podcasts are now listed on Apple Music, Spotify, Blubrry, iHeartRadio, Google Podcasts, and Deezer, with Pandora and the new Amazon Podcasts hopefully coming soon. But if you listen to podcasts, you probably know how to find them. If you don’t, both sites have subscribe pages (Systematic, Overtired) with all the links you could desire.

I’m looking forward to the new seasons. Please enjoy!