The show opens with the three hosts thanking you for listening and giving a bit of a description of what the show is going to focus on. Pretty quickly, they move on to their first segment, which has been a long favorite game of mine and Mark's. They want to know who would win in a fight...Superman or the Hulk? This is a great way to garner a bit of geek cred and eases the listener into the show with familiar ground. At some point in time, everyone wonders about two characters doing battle and which would be the victor.* In case anyone from the podcast were to ever stumble upon this review, I want you to know that the Hulk would win. I'm not preferential to the Hulk as a character, and I don't really care much about Superman either. What defines the winner of this tussle is their basic defining characteristics. The Hulk is essentially a rage monster, with no real inner voice to tell him that tearing someone to pieces is wrong.** Superman is a pretty good guy and would hold back. You either kill the Hulk or you die. Superman will end up in pieces. Will he survive it? Maybe. Does it matter? Nope...he still loses.
After discussing important battle issues, they moved on to news. There were stories that I didn't find particularly geek-centric, but I still found them interesting. In particular, they discussed buying votes with sandwiches. Unlike myself, they have more faith in the voting public, saying a sandwich probably won't sway voters. I beg to differ; I've met some people who really, really like sandwiches.
The show also included an interview segment with an author by the name of T. C. McCarthy. He has written a couple science fiction novels, which I now want to read. The interview portion of the show was recorded at the X-Con convention here in Myrtle Beach. The author seemed quite nice, and the interview flowed fine. The only rough part during this segment was the volume seemed to jump up a bit. It was probably just a by-product of the additional background noise from the convention. Frankly, I was quite happy the sound was so good. Both the author and interviewer were easy to hear, not always an easy feat.
I'm not going to cover everything the podcast did; if you want to hear all of it, give them a listen. It's their first episode, and I'm sure they would be excited to have more listeners. The podcast also covered transparent tvs, a game for your iWhatever, and a more in depth explanation of who your hosts are and what they do.
There are a few things a podcast needs to have to get me to listen to it.
- You must talk about something I care about. - I think this is pretty obvious. Someone that never reads is not going to listen to a podcast about literature from the 1800s. As these gentlemen were discussing a variety of nerd-type and pop culture related topics, I was avidly listening. When they talked about the transparent tvs, my mind wandered a bit, but that is just because I am not that big into technology. When I heard them comment on 3D television, I was right back, avidly listening.
- Your podcast needs to have good production values. - If I can't hear or understand what is being said, I'm not going to listen. Instant Geekery's production values are quite good. They were on par with pretty much any other podcast I've listened to in the past. As I stated before, the only odd part was the volume change when the interview began, and that was not the end of the world. I just turned it down a bit.
- The hosts need to sound engaged. - A host that is bored by his own show is going to chase me away. If the host doesn't care, why should I? When listening to Instant Geekery, you can tell how much these guys enjoying talking about the subject matter. It's just as apparent that they're having fun doing the podcast. In particular, Daniel has an excellent voice for this kind of work. He sounds like the offspring of Scott Johnson*** and Chris Hardwick****.
I really have no complaints about this podcast. There were only two small suggestions I could make to the hosts, and I really had to think about it. If anything, they need to make sure the volume is consistent, and they need to make sure they explain who people are. At one point, they talked about Eduardo Saverin, whom I was unfamiliar with. They did eventually explain who he was, but I was getting ready to look him up. As I said, they did explain who he was, so I don't even really have that as a criticism.
If you're looking for a new podcast that you can get in on before its cool*****, check out Instant Geekery. You can visit their website or look for them on iTunes. I'm impressed enough with this debut episode that I only expect it to get better. I knew it was my kind of show when Daniel thought WI was the abbreviation for Wyoming; that's something I would wonder about.
*My favorite hypothesized battle was between Wally, who was our boss at the time, and Godzilla. Eventually, Wally was given the ability to fly and breathe fire, but I believe he still lost to Godzilla.
**As evidenced by the time he tore Wolverine in half.
***Scott Johnson hosts the Morning Stream, which I have never listened to. However, I used to listen to a World of Warcraft podcast he did back in the day. He always struck me as a bit dopey, but he put together a well structured podcast. The dopey impression came from his experiences in World of Warcraft. At the time, we were pretty big into raiding, so he never sounded to us like he knew what he was talking about.
****Chris Hardwick hosts the Nerdist podcast, which I have gushed about before. We were going to go see him live but were prevented by a funeral. Someday, I will take Mark to see him, and all will be well.
***** I figure that might get all you hipsters to go check it out. You can tell people all about this cool podcast they've probably never heard of.
This sounds like an awesome podcast and I better check it out now while it's still hipster. Really love this review though. I will definitely check out some of the other things on here. Very cool.
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