Latest / Moey's Laboratory of Extraordinary Stories / STORYTIME: YVE's Origin Story
Transcript
- 0:00SPEAKER_03: Okay, so we don't have a theme song.
- 0:02SPEAKER_03: We don't have a theme song.
- 0:03SPEAKER_03: We don't have a sting.
- 0:04SPEAKER_03: We don't have anything.
- 0:05SPEAKER_03: This is gonna be really funny.
- 0:06SPEAKER_03: I feel like I'm leaning into the vulnerability.
- 0:08SPEAKER_03: I might as well.
- 0:09SPEAKER_03: If I'm gonna hate doing this episode and recording this, let's just go the extra mile.
- 0:14SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I guess I'll just like make a theme song off the top of my head real quick.
- 0:18SPEAKER_03: Let's see.
- 0:19SPEAKER_03: I was thinking of doing like a do do do do do do.
- 0:24SPEAKER_03: But then I'm like, is that the melody of something?
- 0:26SPEAKER_03: Is that weird that I'm just singing a theme song?
- 0:29SPEAKER_03: What about a do do do do do do?
- 0:33SPEAKER_02: Or I could do a do versus everybody.
- 0:42SPEAKER_03: Nice.
- 0:43SPEAKER_03: Oh I hate being on the mic.
- 0:46SPEAKER_03: Hi, I'm Moe, and I'm an audio engineer.
- 0:49SPEAKER_03: I've been in the podcast industry for a while, and I'm typically behind the computer making people sound good and putting episodes together and doing music stuff and sound design stuff.
- 1:02SPEAKER_03: Let me play you some samples.
- 1:05SPEAKER_01: The number one hit podcast, The Royals of Malibu, is back with season two.
- 1:11SPEAKER_01: Once again, I've tried to run away from my problems, but they seem to find me no matter where I go.
- 1:17SPEAKER_01: Away from me!
- 1:18SPEAKER_03: You better watch your We're back.
- 1:20SPEAKER_00: Did you miss that?
- 1:22SPEAKER_00: Because we missed you.
- 1:25SPEAKER_00: I'm confirmed, and we are back with season three of We Have the Receipt.
- 1:30SPEAKER_00: And this season is unlike any other.
- 1:33SPEAKER_04: I think my reason for being here was to find from the world of Dragon Age.
- 1:38SPEAKER_04: Comes the new tale.
- 1:40SPEAKER_04: Aya Karcosta, wanted by the Ventor authorities for crimes of theft, high treason, and murder.
- 1:47SPEAKER_04: So who the hell is Aria Karkota?
- 1:50SPEAKER_01: Oh, what's the mark?
- 1:52SPEAKER_04: Ayevkafiska.
- 1:54SPEAKER_03: What in the world is the This is my first time being on the other side of the microphone.
- 2:01SPEAKER_03: So bear with me.
- 2:02SPEAKER_03: I've half edited this episode once.
- 2:05SPEAKER_03: And now you're gonna hear me kind of tap back in and explain things that I did a bad job of explaining the first time, okay?
- 2:12SPEAKER_03: So let's start off with why I'm making this podcast.
- 2:16SPEAKER_03: Here's the story.
- 2:17SPEAKER_03: So what is this thing?
- 2:19SPEAKER_03: You versus everybody, a listener-made show.
- 2:21SPEAKER_03: What is this?
- 2:22SPEAKER_03: This is the culmination of my dreams.
- 2:26SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I wanted the first episode to be me talking to you, i.e., all the future hosts and readers and participants of this show.
- 2:34SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I figured I'd give you the history and then you can take it from there.
- 2:38SPEAKER_03: So let's see.
- 2:40SPEAKER_03: Okay, you know what?
- 2:41SPEAKER_03: I was originally gonna do this episode just like totally bone dry.
- 2:45SPEAKER_03: But no, I'm gonna I'm gonna produce this a little bit.
- 2:48SPEAKER_03: Let's throw in some music.
- 2:50SPEAKER_03: I grew up pretty musical.
- 2:52SPEAKER_03: Oh my gosh, we're not gonna go this far back.
- 2:55SPEAKER_03: I started making music my first stint at college because of a breakup.
- 3:01SPEAKER_03: This guy, he was like a producer, and then when we broke up, I was like, I can produce too.
- 3:06SPEAKER_03: It was like ethereal bedroom pop, basically.
- 3:10SPEAKER_03: Before I knew it, I made my first album, started performing, made a second album, I plateaued, and I decided, you know what, I've been making music for four years.
- 3:19SPEAKER_03: This can't go to waste.
- 3:20SPEAKER_03: I've obviously built the foundation for something.
- 3:23SPEAKER_03: So I decided to go to school for music production, full sale university, and I really fell in love with my audio classes.
- 3:31SPEAKER_03: And at the time, 2015, podcasting was starting to get really big.
- 3:35SPEAKER_03: I was a huge fan of Radio Lab and Love and Radio.
- 3:40SPEAKER_03: So for my senior thesis, I asked if I could produce a podcast episode and recorded a friend's story about a paranormal experience, and it felt really good.
- 3:51SPEAKER_03: And I felt like, okay, maybe this is the thing.
- 3:55SPEAKER_03: That's when this seed was planted.
- 3:57SPEAKER_03: Podcasting felt like this niche storytelling thing, but I was like, storytelling is so human.
- 4:02SPEAKER_03: Like, storytelling is in the fabric of who we are.
- 4:06SPEAKER_03: Can't we just stick a microphone in anyone's face and it would be entertaining?
- 4:10SPEAKER_03: Like, I wanted to figure out how to help make storytelling via audio more accessible to everyone.
- 4:19SPEAKER_03: That took me down a long journey of being a freelancer and starting my own business and then finding a really cool podcast to work on, and then that company hired me full-time, but doing like a creative thing for work and getting paid for it that comes with its own baggage.
- 4:35SPEAKER_03: So, yeah, it's been two and a half years since I left a corporate podcast job, and I have been trying to find my sound and my thing, and decided to build a nonprofit production exchange.
- 4:51SPEAKER_03: A production exchange is basically this giant production storytelling machine with lots of levers that I had created to try to service people who needed cheap production with people who needed more avenues to build their skills and build up their portfolios.
- 5:08SPEAKER_03: And in the midst of all that, there were a lot of ways for other creatives in the audio and entertainment industries to also build up their portfolios and have more access to storytelling.
- 5:22SPEAKER_03: It had a lot of potential.
- 5:23SPEAKER_03: And I thought it was a genius idea, but I do not have capital.
- 5:30SPEAKER_03: So I did my best.
- 5:31SPEAKER_03: I built it, I launched it, it kind of worked and then it didn't.
- 5:34SPEAKER_03: And I rebuilt it and then I relaunched it and it didn't work, and then I rebuilt it and I relaunched it and it didn't work.
- 5:41SPEAKER_03: And then I finally found a team.
- 5:43SPEAKER_03: I found two people who were like, we like what you're doing and we want to help you.
- 5:45SPEAKER_03: And I was like, thank God.
- 5:47SPEAKER_03: And then once people were involved, it made me ask some of the harder questions of Am I ready to be a CEO?
- 5:53SPEAKER_03: Am I ready to do what it takes the rest of my life to make this work?
- 5:58SPEAKER_03: And the answer was no.
- 6:00SPEAKER_03: I just want to make stuff.
- 6:01SPEAKER_03: I just want to make stuff and I want to help other people make stuff.
- 6:04SPEAKER_03: And then I was like, oh, this is just a podcast.
- 6:08SPEAKER_03: At one point, I like wrote a prompt on my TikTok.
- 6:11SPEAKER_03: Eight months later, I signed back onto TikTok and I'm like, wait a second.
- 6:15SPEAKER_03: People have been responding to this one writing prompt.
- 6:18SPEAKER_03: And that's when I had this moment of realization.
- 6:22SPEAKER_03: Prompts might be the solution of my problem.
- 6:25SPEAKER_03: They provide a starting point, they offer a low-stakes challenge, and they give people permission to play and remember what it's like to use your imagination.
- 6:37SPEAKER_03: Something that we grow so far from as we get older and have more responsibilities on our plate all the time.
- 6:45SPEAKER_03: So this just felt like this was a perfect avenue for storytelling.
- 6:49SPEAKER_03: Now I have this container to make storytelling accessible to anyone.
- 6:54SPEAKER_03: Hopefully, I think.
- 6:56SPEAKER_03: Some of my fondest memories from college were these music prompts that they would give us.
- 7:01SPEAKER_03: Do a cover of a holiday song, but you can only use bells.
- 7:04SPEAKER_03: Create a walkthrough anthem for a new wrestler, a WWE or something.
- 7:09SPEAKER_03: Seriously, I really nailed that one.
- 7:12SPEAKER_03: So, prompts, man.
- 7:14SPEAKER_03: We can do prompts.
- 7:15SPEAKER_03: Okay, now that you understand how we got here, let me explain how this actually works.
- 7:21SPEAKER_03: Each season, we're gonna have a whole batch of prompts, a ton of writing prompts, some voice prompts.
- 7:27SPEAKER_03: Those are gonna be some of the episodes where we just chill and hang out and listen to really cool stories.
- 7:32SPEAKER_03: We're gonna have sound design prompts, and then we're gonna do music prompts because there's just a buttload of music producers and music composers out there that I'm sure are stressing out all the time, unsure of how to get people to like hear what they're up to and what they're doing and what they're capable of.
- 7:50SPEAKER_03: I just hope that this can be a place for people to get heard and get feedback and have fun.
- 7:57SPEAKER_03: We're also gonna have show building prompts.
- 7:59SPEAKER_03: Someone's gonna make the next theme song of this podcast, maybe the intro music, outro music, the audio logo, the sting, a thumbnail.
- 8:08SPEAKER_03: I want people's creativity to literally help mold this show.
- 8:13SPEAKER_03: So people can point to this and say, I made that theme song, or I voted for that theme song.
- 8:19SPEAKER_03: And how cool to have this weird little social experiment on the internet in your RSS feed where humans are just making things for themselves and for other humans.
- 8:30SPEAKER_03: And then humans get to decide on those things.
- 8:33SPEAKER_03: You get it?
- 8:33SPEAKER_03: You get it?
- 8:34SPEAKER_03: That's the show.
- 8:34SPEAKER_03: You listen to the show, you can respond to a prompt if you feel like it.
- 8:38SPEAKER_03: We'll pick the finalists of that prompt, we put those all into an episode, and everybody listening gets to vote on who wins.
- 8:46SPEAKER_03: And here's the other side of our collaborative game show.
- 8:50SPEAKER_03: When I built my first company, there was one group of people that were really excited, very enthusiastic, and signed up immediately to my first launch.
- 8:59SPEAKER_03: And those were voice actors.
- 9:01SPEAKER_03: There were just so many people who were like, I've always wanted to do voice acting, or I'm trying to be a voice actor, but I don't know how to break into it.
- 9:08SPEAKER_03: If you don't know where to go, and if you don't have that first connect or maybe that bit of luck, you don't know how to even start walking towards that dream.
- 9:19SPEAKER_03: I really just hope that some of you can find a home here or a stepping stone here to help you get from, I think I want to do this, to oh yeah, I'm definitely good at this.
- 9:31SPEAKER_03: Therefore, I want people to get involved in the reading of the show as well.
- 9:35SPEAKER_03: Voice actors, they can narrate writers' stories, and listeners can just get involved and read parts of each episode.
- 9:42SPEAKER_03: You can sign up every week to be the person that's gonna read the credits, or be a host, or be a voice actor, or you can get on the wait list to do any one of those things, and you get to be the host of the show.
- 9:59SPEAKER_03: All of you out there that are like, hell yeah, pass me the mic.
- 10:02SPEAKER_03: All of you, you get to, you get to be here.
- 10:05SPEAKER_03: Okay.
- 10:06SPEAKER_03: And did I mention we've got a hotline?
- 10:09SPEAKER_03: I think hotlines are really cool.
- 10:10SPEAKER_03: First and foremost, I hope our listeners go, oh, this crazy thing just happened to me.
- 10:16SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna call you versus everybody.
- 10:19SPEAKER_03: But like also just as someone who has experienced a lot of hardship and isolation and black sheep syndrome in my own life.
- 10:30SPEAKER_03: This hotline is also a place for anyone to just call if you need to vent.
- 10:35SPEAKER_03: Get something off your chest.
- 10:37SPEAKER_03: Our number is there it is, 802-308-3131.
- 10:44SPEAKER_03: That's 802-308-3131.
- 10:48SPEAKER_03: If any of this sounds fun to you, you can literally get involved right now.
- 10:53SPEAKER_03: There's 15 prompts open at you versus everybody.com.
- 10:56SPEAKER_03: That's y-o-u-v-s everybody.com.
- 10:59SPEAKER_03: So you can pick one, you can make something, you can challenge yourself, you can have fun.
- 11:04SPEAKER_03: I've already responded to a few, and I'm like, oh my gosh.
- 11:08SPEAKER_03: Writing is so much fun.
- 11:09SPEAKER_03: It's like so corny, but I can't wait for other people to feel that.
- 11:13SPEAKER_03: So I think that we have basically covered everything.
- 11:16SPEAKER_03: Here's what's coming up next.
- 11:18SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna go ahead and share every prompt for the season with you, and I'm gonna get deep and vulnerable and talk about all my fears.
- 11:26SPEAKER_03: Stick around.
- 11:28SPEAKER_02: You versus everybody, you versus everybody.
- 11:34SPEAKER_03: You versus everybody.com.
- 11:37SPEAKER_03: Here we go.
- 11:38SPEAKER_03: You scroll down just a little bit.
- 11:40SPEAKER_03: Prompt one, the attic.
- 11:43SPEAKER_03: Fuck.
- 11:44SPEAKER_03: It's the third night in a row that I've heard this weird sound.
- 11:47SPEAKER_03: I think it's coming from the attic.
- 11:48SPEAKER_03: The attic I haven't stepped in for two years, three months, and five days.
- 11:53SPEAKER_03: Prompt number two is the rear view mirror.
- 11:56SPEAKER_03: Did I just see what I think I saw?
- 11:58SPEAKER_03: I quickly pulled over and turned my engine off unwittingly.
- 12:01SPEAKER_03: I lean forward, fixated on the distant shape in my rear view mirror.
- 12:05SPEAKER_03: Prompt number three, the wedding.
- 12:08SPEAKER_03: My wedding is in 26 hours.
- 12:10SPEAKER_03: Someone just knocked on my apartment door.
- 12:14SPEAKER_03: Writing prompt number four, the trash night.
- 12:17SPEAKER_03: Halloween edition.
- 12:19SPEAKER_03: It was just after 1 30 a.m.
- 12:20SPEAKER_03: on November 1st.
- 12:22SPEAKER_03: The night of Halloween, just to clarify.
- 12:24SPEAKER_03: I remember because I had just walked past my kitchen and glanced at the microwave clock.
- 12:28SPEAKER_03: It was at 129.
- 12:29SPEAKER_03: At which point my feet just soaked green and remembered it was trash night.
- 12:35SPEAKER_03: There are a few problems that were trying to align with the holidays.
- 12:44SPEAKER_03: The last time I took a psychedelic was over a decade ago.
- 12:48SPEAKER_03: Drinking coffee and scrolling through the news cycle on my back radio.
- 12:52SPEAKER_03: When I hear the testing hard classic, I look up and experience a strange picture of surprise and reality shattering confusion.
- 13:01SPEAKER_03: Someone has just stepped through the tree line at the back of my property.
- 13:05SPEAKER_03: Standing there looking at me impatiently clipping the cradle in one heart.
- 13:13SPEAKER_03: The last radio station.
- 13:21SPEAKER_03: Until you're greeted by the familiar resident voice.
- 13:30SPEAKER_03: An audible exhalation of smoke can be heard over the airwaves as a warbly 808 beat begins to fade in.
- 13:37SPEAKER_03: Alright.
- 13:38SPEAKER_03: Taking it back to the early 1980s for the next hour.
- 13:44SPEAKER_03: But first, let's hear from whoever's left.
- 13:47SPEAKER_03: Caller number one, you are on the air.
- 13:51SPEAKER_03: We're gonna have four voice prompts, and these are gonna be recurring every season.
- 13:56SPEAKER_03: I don't think I've mentioned this, but we're gonna be producing your submissions.
- 14:00SPEAKER_03: So what that means is we'll take the submission that you wrote, or we'll take your audio recording, and we'll make you sound like a guest feature on a freaking famous podcast, and we'll wrap your story up with music and sound design.
- 14:12SPEAKER_03: I'm hoping to get audio engineers and music producers involved in helping with that process as well if they need to beef up their portfolios, but that'll probably be down the line a little bit.
- 14:23SPEAKER_03: So, okay, back to the four voice prompts.
- 14:26SPEAKER_03: Have you ever experienced something paranormal?
- 14:29SPEAKER_03: Tell us your most legendary or peculiar piece of family lore.
- 14:33SPEAKER_03: Share the turning point of your life, a moment, experience, or realization that left you different than you were before.
- 14:39SPEAKER_03: Go ahead and tell us your greatest love story, or simply one you'll never forget, and all that came with it.
- 14:46SPEAKER_03: Oh, our sound design prompt! I'm so excited as a sound designer.
- 14:52SPEAKER_03: I just feel like scene, and I think this will be stellar.
- 14:56SPEAKER_03: So our first sound design prompt is called the pet.
- 15:00SPEAKER_03: You're in your house or your backyard and you call for your new pet.
- 15:04SPEAKER_03: The one you just bought from another world.
- 15:07SPEAKER_03: Blank canvas creature sound design.
- 15:10SPEAKER_03: The possibilities are endless.
- 15:11SPEAKER_03: Our second sound design prompt is the door.
- 15:14SPEAKER_03: No words here.
- 15:15SPEAKER_03: You are sound designing the experience of the listener.
- 15:19SPEAKER_03: They walk up to a door, and when they open that door, it's not what they expect.
- 15:23SPEAKER_02: Again, I'm so excited.
- 15:26SPEAKER_03: If you're like, I don't get it, what's so exciting about these two sound design prompts?
- 15:30SPEAKER_03: Just you wait until you hear how creative sound designers in this world can be.
- 15:36SPEAKER_03: And now let's go on to the music challenges.
- 15:38SPEAKER_03: The first music prompt is going to be a recurring premise called the commercial break.
- 15:44SPEAKER_03: So for this, for our first one, it's 1986.
- 15:47SPEAKER_03: A new deodorant promises to transport you to a meditation retreat filled with romance to compose the music for this commercial.
- 15:55SPEAKER_03: And our second music challenge is one that I had to do in college.
- 16:00SPEAKER_03: I loved it.
- 16:01SPEAKER_03: It was one of my favorite challenges.
- 16:02SPEAKER_03: A brand new holiday movie's coming out, and your job is to score its trailer.
- 16:06SPEAKER_03: So you pick the holiday, pick the genre, and envision the trailer of your imaginary movie.
- 16:11SPEAKER_03: Compose an original piece of music for its cinematic trailer.
- 16:14SPEAKER_03: And finally, we have one show builder prompt.
- 16:18SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I can read the rules.
- 16:19SPEAKER_03: All of the prompts have rules, by the way.
- 16:21SPEAKER_03: This is a big time portfolio building contest to create an original 60-second theme for you versus everybody, plus a 30-second version.
- 16:28SPEAKER_03: And a sting that feels like it belongs to the same sonic world, it should establish our personality and stand on its own, and this will most likely be placed in the credits.
- 16:36SPEAKER_03: And then we want the 30-second version, which we'll actually use at the top of the show to get our listeners settled into the views.
- 16:43SPEAKER_03: And then the sting, a short signature that belongs with your theme that we can use for transitions, announcements, reveals, and other moments throughout the show.
- 16:51SPEAKER_03: And what should you versus everybody sound like?
- 16:53SPEAKER_03: That's your call.
- 16:54SPEAKER_03: Weird is welcome, so is beautiful, stupid, dramatic, scrappy, polished, playful, unsettling, or something we haven't thought of yet.
- 17:01SPEAKER_03: Make us hear the show the way you hear it.
- 17:04SPEAKER_03: Those are the prompts.
- 17:05SPEAKER_03: Get on it.
- 17:13SPEAKER_03: Alright, here we go.
- 17:15SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna do a little editing to this section so you get to have a front row seat to my fears and anxieties.
- 17:24SPEAKER_03: Sorry.
- 17:26SPEAKER_03: Yesterday was Sunday, and I knew that today is the day that I would have to put this thing together once and for all, this episode.
- 17:35SPEAKER_03: And I had the Sunday scaries real bad.
- 17:38SPEAKER_03: I've just had moths and butterflies flying around my stomach the last few days.
- 17:45SPEAKER_03: I'm just afraid.
- 17:48SPEAKER_03: As I've just read you all of the prompts that we have for this season, I have to tell you that not one person has responded to any of those prompts yet, besides me and my buddy Maddie, who helps with the show, who is a writer.
- 18:04SPEAKER_03: So by the time this episode publishes, I will have five days crossing my fingers that a few people out in the world somehow respond to some of my prompts.
- 18:20SPEAKER_03: You know, you come up with an idea, and then you realize that you're like sitting in a void shouting about your idea, and there's billions of other people shouting about their ideas next to you.
- 18:32SPEAKER_03: This past week I did like a daily posting and that didn't work.
- 18:36SPEAKER_03: The algorithm does not like me, and I don't know why, and that's okay.
- 18:39SPEAKER_03: I found a writing hub on Discord, and I'm trying to break in and figure out the most respectful way to promote the show.
- 18:47SPEAKER_03: I've reached out to my alma mater.
- 18:50SPEAKER_03: I have reached out time and time again to some of the biggest, most connected podcast listservs.
- 18:57SPEAKER_03: I've reached out to old colleagues, I've reached out to my friends and family countless times.
- 19:04SPEAKER_03: It's starting to feel a little embarrassing.
- 19:07SPEAKER_03: Episode two will be the first real test.
- 19:11SPEAKER_03: So next Tuesday is when I have to present prompt submissions and voting can commence.
- 19:20SPEAKER_03: At least I have two prompt submissions from me and Maddie, so there will be something to vote on.
- 19:26SPEAKER_03: I'm scared.
- 19:28SPEAKER_03: But there's a part of me that just wants to be like, Moe, just keep doing it.
- 19:33SPEAKER_03: If I keep showing up and if I keep publishing these episodes, even if there's barely anything to listen to and barely anything to vote on, someone will like it, right?
- 19:42SPEAKER_03: And someone will stick around and want to see if we succeed and get somewhere.
- 19:47SPEAKER_03: I don't really see a world in which this could actually fail unless I just get really sad and stop doing it.
- 19:54SPEAKER_03: So I might as well not let myself get sad and do it no matter what.
- 19:59SPEAKER_03: So it's funny, I really built up the show to be a podcast where I never have to be on the mic and I can guide everyone to make this thing.
- 20:10SPEAKER_03: But at this point, I'm I have no idea what the success of this show looks like.
- 20:16SPEAKER_03: So you'll probably end up hearing from me more than I would like in the next few episodes.
- 20:21SPEAKER_03: Until this show becomes what it's supposed to be.
- 20:24SPEAKER_03: Wish me luck.
- 20:26SPEAKER_03: You can find everything you need on our website.
- 20:29SPEAKER_03: That's y-o-u-v s everybody.com.
- 20:32SPEAKER_03: I'm really excited to make stuff for you, and I'm really excited for you to make stuff with me.
- 20:37SPEAKER_03: Okay, that's it.