Latest / Caught on the Mike... / 2023 NEW YEARS EVE- SPECIAL EPISODE

Transcript

2023 NEW YEARS EVE- SPECIAL EPISODE · Caught on the Mike...

• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: January 31st, 2023, Happy New Year's Eve to all of you.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: Chances are you are listening to this long after it's been recorded.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: Most likely, that's a fact.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm recording this episode to bring all of my friends, my listeners, people that have been involved with Caught on the Mic in on some behind-the-scenes stuff, and maybe give you an advanced sneak peek into what 2024 has in store.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: So, in many ways, this can be your 2023 year in review or 2024 sneak peek, but it's a little bit of both.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: More than anything else, I want to share kind of some of my perspectives and some of my changes in perspectives that have taken place over the course of the last year.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: 2023 in many ways was a massive growth year for Caught on the Mike, and I think a lot of my perspective changes in my personal life kind of lent to that, and I think will help me hone my focus to create a better show in 2024.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: When I have talked to a lot of friends and people that have listened to my show for a period of time recently, I tell them that you can kind of hear this cadence shift take place in some of my more recent episodes.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: Caught on the Mike has always been a guest-driven show that exposes the humanity and some of the commonalities that we have as individuals.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's never been predicated on a person's accomplishments as much as it is on what led that person towards those accomplishments.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this can be applied to some of the fighters that I've had on the show, musicians, actors, actresses, comedians, you get the point.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: And recognizing this shift in identity has made me take a pause and audit a lot of the stuff that I've put out there, clean it up, delete some things.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: There were a lot of personal episodes that I had put out there that I have since removed.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: And quality control is going to be a huge focus for me in 2024.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: When I started this podcast in 2020, I just did it as a creative outlet.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: I knew that there was going to be some opportunities that I would have based on my past history to have some pretty big guests on, but I never expected to have as many amazing people on my show as I've had.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: Which lends to this recent shift in mentality where I have to handle this with a lot more care than maybe I was previously aware of.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: So circling back to the self-audit portion of all of this, I have gone through my episodes that have featured guests, and I've spent a lot of time.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: Like, where are they now?
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: Who are some guests that I've lost contact with?
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: Who am I still interacting with on a pretty regular basis?
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: Now that the show has grown and I'm a little bit more established, who would I want to have back on?
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: Who do you guys want to hear more from?
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: One observation that I have made during all of this auditing is maybe also making sure I'm doing a better job vetting who I have on the show.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: While I pride myself in the idea that every single individual has a unique and important story, I also don't want to leave myself vulnerable to somebody's grift or to some influencer not being who they say they are, and there may have been a time or two where that has happened.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: I wouldn't say it if it hadn't.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I do not put enough faith in people, but sometimes I put too much faith in people, and that can kind of be reflective upon how I feel about myself or how I end up feeling about myself in that moment.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: So it's always important to make sure I am doing a better job not only telling a person's story, but also acknowledging how that person might be a reflection of the cod on the mic brand.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: I know that sounds super egotistical, but those of you that get it will get it, and those of you that don't, I don't give a shit.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll tell you, a large part of my story for 2023 was weeding out a lot of negative white noise and teaching myself to not give a shit and just focus on the end goal.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: The last thing I want to do is contradict myself and use this podcast episode as a personal therapist, but I did have a lot of crazy things happen in the personal life that had an adverse effect on the podcast and gave me a lot of fodder for making content, and some of that is a lot of coming to terms with mortality.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: I've talked about it on my one-minute videos that I try and distribute every weekday, but let's not focus on that.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: We've set the table for long enough.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: Let's take a step into what 2023 looked like, and we'll start from the back moving forward.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: As I have muddled my way through the holiday season, I realized that there was kind of a global phenomenon that I thought was just happening to me, but it was happening to a lot of people.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: Where the holiday season and the holiday season, meaning Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas season, really just didn't feel like the holidays.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: I'm maybe it was something that was here in the Midwest because it was unseasonably warm.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe there's just this lingering hangover from the COVID years.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's the acclimation of social media simultaneously occurring with us coming to terms with getting older, but the holiday season just didn't feel like the holiday season until now.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like this period of time that's usually floating in the abyss between Christmas and New Year's uh has felt like a revisiting of the normal Sarcadian rhythm of a New Year's celebration.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: So it's really what inspired me to sit down and record this episode today because I do feel like there's a promise of something new and something good and something fruitful starting, even though the calendar, as I've said many times before, is just a human construct.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: There is something about the collective consciousness of us heading into this new year and what it could mean for us individually.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I say all of that to say that the last few guests that I had in the year 2023 are very reflective of that mindset.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: Whether it be Sean Kanan from Cobra Kai and Karate Kid 3 or Elliot Marshall from Eastern Training Centers, he does great TED Talks, he trains some of your favorite fighters.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: I think a lot of perspective kind of came into shape in the last few months of the year.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: If 2022 for Caught on the Mic was the year of the mixed martial arts fighter, 2023 was a lot of revisiting my roots in music.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: I get to have two of my favorite bands on the podcast over the summer and early fall, and that be Letter Kills and Audio Vent.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: I had some great music content episodes with Patrick Hicks and everybody's favorite 90s music reaction guy Jacob Gibbons.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: I got to have some great conversations in regards to Midwest hip-hop with King ISO or my friend Joey Cool.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: We got to talk modern horror movies with actress Rebecca Kennedy and director Stephen Cognetti.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of fantastic figures from the MMA world also made their presence known this year on Caught on the Mic.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: A couple of local guys, Brady Minner, Mike Tyson, as well as some of my elevation friends, JJ Aldrich, Lauren Murphy, and Sean Madden.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: We ventured into the strange talking about topics like Bigfoot, UFOs, and more paranormal with Mike Fomilant, Rob Christofferson, and my friend Mike from Charm City Paranormal.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: We also had lots of laughs with Stand-Up Comics, Nick Allen, Cameron Logsden, my friends Levetti Vegas, Terence G, and George Zilla.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: But all in all, it was all about perspective and moving the narrative forward.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: And moving forward is what we will do in 2024.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: I've made some equipment upgrades.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'm getting a little bit more comfortable with the video aspect, so I'm hoping there may be a video element coming to us in 2024.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: But let's talk about guests.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: I do have one episode in the can that I've been kicking around, whether or not I deem it releasable.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, again, this kind of goes back to the vetting thing and the quality control.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: I just don't know how I feel about it, but I have a very exciting first recording for 2024 happening on January 8th.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: I will be welcoming Rob Harvilla from the podcast and accompanying book 60 Songs That Explain the 90s.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: I'm really excited about that.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: I've also been in the midst of having some ongoing conversations with some other musicians, some other fighters, some other interesting people that are going to shape 2024 into a record year for Caught on the Mike.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: And this is where I give my pitch to you.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: If you've ever listened to an episode or sent me feedback about an episode, if you know a guest that has been on the show, if you've enjoyed a guest that has been on the show, I need your help.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: This show is not easy to run, and quality control is going to be contingent upon growth.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: The only way I can continue to grow is if my audience helps me grow.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: So if you see something I post online, make sure you like it, comment on it, share it.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: It would mean the world to me.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: If you have a friend or an acquaintance that might be interested in a specific episode, please share that with them.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: We are an algorithm-driven world, and the algorithm is kicking my ass.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: I don't admit that lightly, and honestly, it would probably be a lot easier for me to peacock a bunch of falsehoods, but I'm not going to.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: We've already proven that we can be.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: I just need your help growing it.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: I also have a merch um store online, so please help me out if you want to buy a t-shirt, a hoodie, something along those lines.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: Every little bit helps.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: It helps grow the show, it helps grow brand awareness, and I appreciate all the support.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: I do not make any money off of doing this show.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: So it's all based on listener support.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: I appreciate everything you guys have done for me.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: You have helped build this show into being something that is bigger and better than I could have ever expected.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: 2023 was a great year for the show.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: 2024 is going to be even better.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: I can promise that.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: So I sign off with one final thought, and that's to ask you to make sure you check out www.codonthemic.com.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: Make sure you're following me on all social media platforms.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: Email me, coton the mic at gmail.com, and I leave you with the words of Samuel Levitt himself.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: And with that, the 2023 season comes to an end.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: Good night.