I was on a podcast!
And I probably never will be again [LISTEN / WATCH BELOW]
Otters,
I hope your Mother’s Day was splendid. Moms are wonderful. Wrote a poem about mine last night. Not that she’ll ever read it. She says reading my poems (or any poems, for that matter) makes her fall asleep.
I don’t really email y’all on Monday afternoons anymore—somehow when Sunday night rolls around and I don’t have a post ready to go I usually just tend to say “whatever, I’ll write something tomorrow and get it up Tuesday morning” and then you get something in your inboxes on Tuesday morning. But this week I had to make an exception to this “rule,” because, as you can tell from the title of this post, I have made a very rare on-camera appearance!
I am used to being the one interviewing people (and Significant Otters will be back sooner than you think!) but anyone who Googles my name will be able to find said on-camera appearance (to my understandable disgust and dismay) so I might as well address it now to clear my name, as if I was Drake except he actually stood a chance against Kendrick rather than throwing his entire reputation away into a new stratosphere with every new diss track.
Now, do you remember when I told you last month that I was going to be on a podcast? For the first time ever? Maybe you don’t. That’s fine. I don’t remember 95% of the things I write here anyway.
But today I’m writing to you to share that that podcast episode is out today! Thanks very much to Carter Ponce for inviting me onto Voices of Vic, which to my knowledge is the only student-run podcast at UofT. All the links to listen and watch are at the bottom of this email, but it would be very out of character for me to not needlessly ramble on for, like, 800 words about the experience of being on this podcast beforehand.
The episode is only an hour long but I think it gives you a good idea of how my silly brain works and the 3.5 things it’s sort of okay at talking about. No mention of Things You Otter Know, sadly. We barely talked about any of my writing, and maybe that’s a good thing.
I did a little bit of prep beforehand in terms of watching back some episodes of the show and then also thinking of stuff I could say about certain things that wouldn’t make me sound like a complete doofus. Most of what I said was off the cuff, though, and I think you can tell. Carter and I hadn’t met prior to this taping and we still managed to banter back and forth all sorts of things thanks to his excellent facilitation of our conversation. Though I def said cringeworthy stuff about all of those things. I almost don’t want to send out a post about this so that SEO just lets it get buried.
Watching it back, I’m honestly kind of proud of myself? I survived! In one piece!
Yes, my take on the Leafs-Bruins series aged horrendously,
and yes, I said completely incorrect things about Noah Kahan that will probably get me flamed on TikTok when Carter turns my comments into a viral clip…
and yes, when I’m old and grey I will still be having nightmares about everything I said in here that may ruin my career because the Internet is forever.…
But at the same time,
I did have a couple of good jokes,
and I only said “um” and “like” a million and a half times (instead of my predicted two million)
and I didn’t even swear ONCE! Okay, maybe one “hell”. And a “goddamn”. But that was about John Oliver so it was totally warranted.
Lots of hockey stuff, as I think I mentioned, but you can just skip those parts if you’re not interested.
On the other end of the conversation spectrum, Carter is an economics major and therefore likes his chats about AI and Elon Musk (as would any podcast guy) and I think I held my own on those things, despite now having a fear that Elon Musk and the Duolingo mascot will both publicly come for me now that I have personally insulted them on a public forum.
And then I also complained a little bit about why public transit needs to get better, and why Ticketmaster needs to be fired into the sun, and why sports betting ads in Toronto are getting out of hand, and I hope I expressed my frustration in a humorous way
Being on camera is still kind of scary even though I have been in many a recorded Zoom, and I know my stupid hand gestures are not very smooth and fluid despite me whipping them out every five seconds.
But watching it back last night I realized that I don’t hate the sound of my voice anymore! This is huge progress for me. Or maybe a sign that I’m talking too much and need to shut up more. Y’all tell me.
Man. This feels unnatural. I don’t consider myself a public figure in the slightest. Touching grass, as the kids say, is a big deal for me. Especially on the Internet.
One of these days I’ll probably go long on why having this Substack (and all of my published poems and also all of my social media accounts) under my real name was a big mistake. But for now I’m going to be proud that I actually agreed to do the show and then actually did it. Even just two years ago, I would’ve likely said hell no to an opportunity like this. And my reasoning (my excuse, really) would be that I wasn’t ready, or that I said “um” too much, or that I was uncomfortable with going on camera.
But now? When Carter reached out to me and asked if I would hop on, I said yes without much of a second thought.
That’s growth, Otters.
You’ll hear me say this to him on the episode, but at this point I’m trying to be me everywhere I go, and hopefully it will catch on with people one day. Maybe this episode is the start of that.