Zooier Than Thou
- Author TogglesHappyZoo
- Creation date
- Featured
Listen @ zoo.wtf- YouTube
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.youtu.be
_________________________
Thoughts About the Episode
Man, this was kind of a weird production cycle, but in a good way. I guess I’ll try to go chronologically sort of? We’ll see how this ends up.
I had the idea for the chorus for the Kiss Me Kabar song back in October of last year or so, and I’d jotted down a few notes for some lyrics, but I never really had time to touch it again in earnest until July. I’d done some guitar sketches, and I knew I wanted to go for a Father of All Motherfuckers sort of vibe, and I finally started recording a week before production actually started.
One of my favorite things about this song is that I went to like 15 different people and asked, “Do you wanna participate in a chorus chant about how we wanna fuck the bear from Baldur’s Gate 3?” And the response from basically everyone was, “FUCK YES!” Not even just zoos — some regular furries, too! So there’s a ton of people’s voice melding together during the chorus. In the end, it sounds very unified, but it doesn’t actually sound like any one of the individuals who contributed, so that’s neat! Konny let me know Cookie was getting onto him for belting out the lyrics in their apartment x3 Sorry Cookie!
I brought my original lyrics to Kynophile to get his input. He gave me a rewrite of the lyrics, but they didn’t quite fit the melody I was working with. However, I had to admit a number of his suggestions just made more sense, so I revamped the lyrics with his ideas in mind. One line I really liked, about teeth clicking together as they shove their tongue down your throat, got cut in favor of a more digestible line about their heavy weight making it hard to breathe — it’s kind of an intense song x3 Unfortunately, Kyno couldn’t provide vocals this time around, and I’d written the falsetto stuff with him in mind. I think I managed to pull it off OK for now, but I’d love to get a version with him singing when we release it on Spotify.
As I was starting to jump into production, Steeeve messaged me and was like, “Can you please use real drums in this song?” And to me, I was like, that is an impossible request, delivered as if I could just easily and casually meet that request. Drummers are hard to find as it is, let alone drummers who have a recording set up and are also cool with participating in zoo music. So I said, “If you find someone who can play drums and has all the equipment to record them, let me know,” expecting that to be the end of it. Eventually Steeeve came back with some musicians on Fiverr, and I was like… I don’t think this will work — asking a professional musician to play music for our song about fucking a bear seems like a bad idea. But there was one option that specified we’d have all commercial rights to the recording, so I said, “OK, why not?” The next problem is that I don’t know how to MIX actual, live drums, so I had to figure that out really quickly. I kind of hacked and slashed my way through getting them to sound good, but I think I managed to make it happen!
As for the episode concept, we knew we wanted to do late night radio for the next radio session, but what I had in mind originally was very different, and had The Stallion featuring extensively. Sometime a few months back, Eggshell pitched an entire script for this episode to me, but it was during an off-month, and I didn’t really have time to go over it, but I was skeptical about what had been described — something with Will and Akito doing the hosting, and Amoronauts taking over the Dear Non-Zoos segment. I kept tryin’ to go back and read the script, but I just didn’t have the time for it until it was time to do the thing.
So I got Eggy and Aqua in a room and we discussed the episode, even though me and Aqua were blind going into it. My first glance over the script, it didn’t make a whole lot of sense, but Eggshell had provided some reference material — Some Adult Swim bumps, a radio show from the 80’s with They Might Be Giants, and most notably, an archive of the esoteric, 90’s, late night BBC1 radio show Blue Jam.
Aqua seemed a little relieved not to have to do his typical Dear Non-Zoos segment, but he wanted to make sure it made sense for his character. Eggshell originally pitched it just as Amoronauts taking over the show, but Aqua had the idea of them actually stealing it from him against his will, and it actually sounded pretty entertaining. Through the course of this conversation, Eggshell mentioned that she didn’t really get the Dear Non-Zoos thing, and that actual Non-Zoos she’d had listen to the program objected to a lot of what was said. But I think it’s largely because — just like her script didn’t make a lot of sense without the context of Blue Jam to us — our segment didn’t make a lot of sense to her because she wasn’t familiar with the source material, Dear White People, so the purpose and the meaning was lost on her. Maybe it’s lost on a number of people. And maybe this episode is, too. But that’s always a risk, I guess.
So I was sitting at the car shop listening to the first couple of episodes of Blue Jam, and the whole thing finally started to make sense. If you haven’t heard it, it’s free on Archive.org, and it’s pretty neat. Some of the sketches are a little uncomfortable, and a lot of them push the boundaries of what censors would allow to air, but the dark, abstract prose set to downtempo beats was particularly interesting to me. You’ll even notice there are recurring doctor sketches that are all super bizarre, so I thought the weird Furry Hospital sketch felt apropos.
Once I had that context, I got back together with Eggshell and we hashed out the episode. There was already some bits of prose and some off-the-wall sketches in the original episode, and a lot of it made the final cut, but I wanted to add some introductory prose that would take audio elements from the songs themselves and lead directly into the tracks. We felt that Creatures of a Shared Taste, which was already in the script, would flow nicely into Zipwok’s Paw Pads. I drafted up some stuff for the other songs and we refined them. Otherwise, it really was like we were just finding things we liked or thought were funny and adding them in. Going through the script, I noticed a lot of instances of the ABCs being referenced — in two interstitials AND in Paw Pads — and I remembered that someone had sent in Zooey ABCs as an email and shared it with Egg, and that found it’s way into the episode. Eggshell had recorded herself playing the Fuck the Bear chorus on Guitar to prep for recording her contribution to the track, and it ended up kind of sounding a little like Dead Kennedys, so we threw that in there. The friend I got to do Sprank Lookmangger had this thing at the end where he went, “How’s that motherfucker?” and made a bunch of weird noises into the microphone, and that ONLY got cut because I thought it would be too jarring once I tried to fit it in. Aqua read the couch-humping dog sketch and was like, “It would be such a missed opportunity not to reference JD Vance’s couch fucking meme,” so random things like that got added. That’s a great moment for that sketch imo, that dark break from the happy-go-lucky music makes me laugh every time.
All of OUR writing was done on time, which was a huge boon, and Amoronauts got her writing to us in enough time we were able to get some tweaks to Aqua’s lines and refine a couple of spots. Generally speaking, everything came together about right on time, even the stuff that came in late, and that was super helpful.
Amoronauts didn’t want to perform the Dear Non-Zoos segment, and in fact wrote the character as someone separate from herself. AI came in handy here, cuz I couldn’t find someone to play the part quickly enough. So yeah, Pearl is just me, filtered through an AI voice. I liked that we get some dolphin zoo representation for once, to break up the significant amount of dog-based content we put out. Dogs are great, but every time Eggshell gives me an episode, I’m like, “Man… it’s just all dogs!” X3 Still don’t have anyone to write horse content for us, still open to this!
I had an idea that we should just have Brad talking over some psychedelic music, and it would be like they’d taken a recording of him calling into WZOO and set it to a track, and there’d be someone going, “Uh huh…. MmHmm…” like they were waiting for him to get off the phone. It seemed like the right vibe, so I pitched it to Lovecat, and he came back with this trippy story about coyote, and I thought, “Well, this isn’t random rambling, it’s a whole story,” and I happened to find a track that fit almost exactly the length I needed, with a trippy introductory speech to boot, so I just did the whole thing. Turned out pretty well.
The Stallion was as awesome as ever. He gave me a date he was available, and we were able to get everything to him in time. I gave him a sample of how I’d deliver The Bear, and he was like, “You just want me to fuck you with my voice, don’t you?” And I was like, “Basically.” That was the first audio I completed, and when he heard it back to back with the song, he was like, “This needs to be released somewhere on its own.” And now it has been, on SoFurry and Inkbunny! FurAffinity pending because of the hack.
Shiv actually sent us several tracks to choose from, and all of them were good, but I liked the guitar riff and the general tone of the song as a contrast for other silliness in the episode. I got Shiv to send me stems for their track and grabbed the section with their guitars going back and forth, distorted them, and stretched them out… and I took the organ for their chorus and washed it out in reverb, and set the performance of Voiceless, Invisible over top of it, and that turned out really well. Shout out to the person who performed it, and also all our other performers for coming together and putting on this weird show x3
For Creatures of a Shared Taste, it was a lot longer, so I blended three downtempo songs together, and then got Zip to send me some instrumental versions of Paw Pads that I could loop underneath the ending to lead into his song. I’d noticed during Blue Jam they’d use a loop of the beginning of REM’s Tongue a lot in the first couple of episodes, so I wanted to play with that idea. Also, Paw Pads is such a banger for real. I listened to it on repeat for a while.
I asked Rave Pup if they wanted to contribute to the episode, and they asked for a general vibe they should be going for. I sent them the Puppy Steps prose, and they thought it was very touching and kept that in mind while writing their piece. Gotta say, they work pretty fast and produce some really incredible work. They were like, “I hope this isn’t too weird,” and I was like, “No, this is fucking beautiful, are you kidding me?” They weren’t able to send me stems, so I found an ambient track I thought would fit. When I tried to fit them together, I realized they were jumping a tritone from the end of one track to the beginning of the next, and it was jarring, so I bumped the tuning up a whole step for the stock track, and it fit like a glove. Later, playing it on loop, I realized the segment ends and begins on the exact same chord, which is a neat coincidence!
We got this episode out on time, which is a nice change of pace, and I even had enough time to personally go over the transcript and make sure it was 100% correct. In doing so, I realized right at the end we’d messed up a few things. There were audio cues in the Multilingual skit (Lost in Translation in the chapter markers) that I’d completely missed, but I liked them, so I went back and added in animal noises with lots of reverb and panning. I added some other sound effects to other places last minute, too, but things like The Stallion saying “midnight hour” instead of “3AM hour” just had to stay. No way around it. I was really aiming for an hour and a half to an hour 45, but an hour 50 was fine, considering some content got a bit extended like Brad’s skit.
Shout out to Zooey for appearing in our intro, as well as Konny, Cookie, and Brass, and thanks to Akito for helping host. Mike the Dog as Spot makes me laugh a LOT, and Sprank Lookmangger’s yooper accent is hilarious. Thanks to LC for being available to record last minute corrections to his lines. Major shout out to Ryder, who spent like two days on a tight timeline before going on a business trip making my life easier. Production was really a breeze with everything arranged ahead of time. Considering how much went into this episode, the fact that it came together so easily is impressive.
I gotta say, I’m loving the one-month-on, one-month-off thing. I really came into this energized and ready to go, and I’m looking forward to an entire month off next month before Howloween. My husband seems a lot happier, too. Ultimately, I think my goal is to get everyone to a point where they can do this all on their own, even the tough stuff like skits. I don’t think I wanna still be doing this when I’m 40 x3 but I do want it to continue, and to be excellent, and to maintain its compass well after I move on to other projects. A bit of a tall order — everything tends to decline after some point, and not everyone is going to have the same vision as I do for the direction of the podcast. But I think the real key to longevity is going to be continuing to get fresh perspectives. Even if production values slide, good content is good content, and we have so many tools at our disposal now to create good stuff. We all just need to know how to use them! Three things I want to maintain: positive zoo perspectives while being unafraid to look honestly at actual issues the community faces, a focus on animal rights and animal welfare, and important community things like the Samhain ritual that bring us together and give us catharsis. That’s what I’m thinking in this moment, anyway. Hard to imagine letting go and not steering the ship, but I should eventually be able to pass on the title of captain for this vessel and trust that it will stay afloat. Arrrr!
Anyway, my dog is pleading for my attention, so that’s all for now!
----
Do you wanna fuck the bear? Do you have a favorite sketch from this really weird episode? Let us know in the comments, or e-mail us!
_________________________
You can subscribe to our RSS feed using your favorite podcast application: rss.zoo.wtf
Don't forget to subscribe to our Bonus Content feed: bonus.zoo.wtf
You can subscribe to us on Bluesky @zoo.wtf and @toggle.zoo.wtf
You can contact us using the anonymous web form at zoo.wtf
Listen @ zoo.wtf- YouTube
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.youtu.be
_________________________
Thoughts About the Episode
Eggshell here! With another not-Toggle episode overlapping with that Zoo Pride time of year, it was time for some zoos who are NOT named Toggle to gather around and mostly just chat. Listening to the other zoo pride episodes, they have been largely conversational, along with a produced segment in the middle that has a variety of zoo voices talking about what it means to have pride in being a zoo.
Tarro, Lovecat, Ryder, and myself had a planning meeting for the episode, and figured out who would be hosting, the kinds of conversational topics we might want to cover, and what our produced segment would be. For topics, Tarro wanted to have a theme of discussing how zoosexuality intersects with other forms of being queer. For the segment, I suggested doing a produced, casted version of an article I’d written for ZDP recently, that takes place in a world where zoosexuality is normalized: I thought that the article was well received by readers, and that it might be good, related to pride, to show a world where zoo pride is fully integrated throughout mainstream culture. Plus it would get a variety of voices in there, like previous Zoo Pride episodes.
Production was a mess on this one. Without any explicit person at the helm with this episode to make sure everyone was on the same page and on task, the team was behind the schedule that we try to shoot for. A big part of the problem is we didn’t keep good track of where tasks were at: Has a script for the skit been written or not? Has this voice actor recorded their lines, yes, no, yes but didn’t upload them yet, yes but someone else has them? The day before the episode was set to go up, I was sitting on a couch kitty-corner with Toggle as he was looking at our team’s progress tracking tool. Seeing from his perspective how it’s a mystery how much has been done on the episode if it’s not in that tool, really highlighted to me why it’s a problem to just keep track of things by mentioning them in an ongoing group chat or individual dm’s.
But, we got there! And now Zoo Pride and also Christmas and Halloween and New Year’s Eve are saved forever, I think. Shout out to our special guest Canidae, who has been a sunbeam in the community and an excellent pick out of all the actual hundreds of zoos Tarro could have chosen to invite. Thanks for coming on Canidae!
Zoo Pride Saves Lives! Zoo Pride World Wide!
We’ll see you in the next episode, where we will be returning to the high seas. Arrrrrrf.
Or, uh. Arrrrrrg.
----
Is there anything you want to say about zoo pride that we missed? How do you predict that zoos will fit within the picture of LGBTQIA+ going forward? Let us know in the comments, or e-mail us!
_________________________
You can subscribe to our RSS feed using your favorite podcast application: rss.zoo.wtf
Don't forget to subscribe to our Bonus Content feed: bonus.zoo.wtf
You can subscribe to us on Bluesky @zoo.wtf and @toggle.zoo.wtf
You can contact us using the anonymous web form at zoo.wtf
Listen @ zoo.wtf
S6E4 Media Mastery 2024
Subscribe to the podcast at rss.zoo.wtfSubscribe to bonus content at bonus.zoo.wtfFollow us on twitter:@ZooierThanThou@OneBigGrumpyRat@ACatWhoLovesYou@CanisG...youtu.be
_________________________
Thoughts About the Episode
Alrighty, let’s see! So, it’s been an eventful couple of months! Originally we were going to try to reschedule our Aella Girl interview for this episode, but we couldn’t get back in touch, so we decided to put something together based on some stuff that’s been going on for the past couple of months. Some of it we can’t really talk about at the moment, but some of it you probably already know about, like the excellent Taboo Science episode on Zoophilia that we got to participate in. I won’t go into detail here since we basically lay it out in the episode, but I will say that Ashley was empathetic and totally “got it.” Like, I’d struggle to get something out and she’d just be like, “So in other words, (exactly what I wanted to say but more succinct and impactful).” One amazing moment that didn’t make it into the episode: at some point, she said, “It’s interesting to me how much of what you say sounds exactly like my sister,” who happens to be an ALF-style animal rights activist. That was really cool to hear! It made me feel like we’re on the right track with our message and our core beliefs as a podcast.
So I pitched the idea of a “media mastery” redux to Aqua, who agreed that it seemed like a good idea, and we pulled Tarro and Eggshell on board to help with planning. Eggshell wanted to frame it with three acts of skits, but I cut the middle one cuz it didn’t end up fitting with what we talked about. Tarro’s been helping keep things organized for the months that I’m not working, so grateful for their help, for sure. Plus, with the magazine currently informing AI search models about zoophilia, we felt that was a pretty impressive accomplishment, even if AI models are, as Aqua said, recommending that you put glue on your pizza to keep the cheese attached. They may be shoddy, but people do use these tools.
Eggshell had a couple of other skits she pitched for the episode, but I actually found the Office Gods sketch in our backlog and thought it was hilarious. It apparently came from a conversation with Brass Bulldog where he’d left a conversation and then returned and said “Welcome back.” Thus, “Welcome back to my presence!” Very silly! I got my non-zoo friend to deliver Asmononoth’s lines, and I gotta say, every time I hear him rumble out, “I will peer into the mind of allllll…….. goats,” I die laughing.
Otherwise, man, production week could not have fallen on a worse week this month. I had like 5 different important events and deadlines all falling on the same week, and there was just no way to get the podcast out on time without taking off work, and I couldn’t afford to this past week. So, a little late, but not bad.
Shout out to Ryder for making my life easier, and Tarro for helping keep the ship running, and Aqua for their valuable insight as always.
Oh, one more thing. During the topic, we recounted talking with RT and trying to take the bullets out of what we knew would be a hit piece. I went back after recording the episode to look it up, and it is so much worse than I remembered. Like, I swore they totally changed the title of the piece, but Wayback Machine suggests it’s always been the same, and I don’t know how I wouldn’t remember a title like “Disgusting Perverts or just Misunderstood?” Can’t go back and change the past, but definitely would not have participated in that whole thing if it happened today. Fortunately, it doesn’t appear that the article ever really found legs — at the very least, I never hear about it. Anyway, don’t look it up, it’s garbage, and I totally get why our writer who left was super pissed about it. We did learn a valuable lesson, though, as we said in our episode, and that is: we don’t have to settle for tabloid trash to tell our stories in the media. Maybe we never did. So be choosey if you have the choice — there will always be another opportunity.
Oh, also! I finally started posting in these Zoophilia telegram channels that ZT bequeathed me, but I really, really need content. Take a look at any of these channels — they’re identical. If you have stuff you think would be relevant, give us an email.
@zoophilia
@zoophiles
@bestiality
----
Have you ever had an encounter with the media? Let us know in the comments, or e-mail us!
_________________________
You can subscribe to our RSS feed using your favorite podcast application: rss.zoo.wtf
Don't forget to subscribe to our Bonus Content feed: bonus.zoo.wtf
You can subscribe to us on Bluesky @zoo.wtf and @toggle.zoo.wtf
You can contact us using the anonymous web form at zoo.wtf
Listen @ zoo.wtf
S6E3 Raising the Discourse
Subscribe to the podcast at rss.zoo.wtfSubscribe to bonus content at bonus.zoo.wtfFollow us on twitter:@ZooierThanThou@OneBigGrumpyRat@ACatWhoLovesYou@CanisG...youtu.be
_________________________
Thoughts About the Episode
Lovecat here! So this episode was Toggle's first hands-off episode, with planning and editing left to the rest of the team, and it was a mixed success. It's easy to overlook certain elements when the most experienced person on the team isn't managing production directly, and we were just about to sit down to record when we realized we hadn't typed up an intro and outro. Oops.
I inadvertently volunteered to head the episode by suggesting the theme after taking a look at zoo twitter for the first time in 7 or 8 months and not much caring for what I saw. A lot of new faces which is nice but also a lot of simplistic and troll baiting content.
The idea behind this episode was to gently encourage the community to think about how to better use our publicly accessible online activities to serve the wellbeing of animals and zoos, and to suggest some ways of doing that. In that goal I can't say we succeeded to the degree I had hoped. Even though I suggested the theme my own ideas on how to treat of it were limited and I couldn't seem to get on the same page with the other contributors. We all thought in very different directions on the subject and it was difficult to wrangle all of our approaches into something coherent. In the end I was happy with the coherency of the discussion though I still wish we'd been able to suggest more concrete actions for folks to consider. If you thought of something in that vein while listening to the episode don't hesitate to email us about it! Learning from within the community is invaluable, and the next time we pause and take stock of how we're doing we'll hopefully have developed a more insightful view and suite of tools to share.
----
Got any tips for raising the zoo discourse? Let us know in the comments, or e-mail us!
_________________________
You can subscribe to our RSS feed using your favorite podcast application: rss.zoo.wtf
Don't forget to subscribe to our Bonus Content feed: bonus.zoo.wtf
You can subscribe to us on Bluesky @zoo.wtf and @toggle.zoo.wtf
You can contact us using the anonymous web form at zoo.wtf
Listen @ zoo.wtf
S6E2 ZooTTin' the Breeze
Subscribe to the podcast at rss.zoo.wtfSubscribe to bonus content at bonus.zoo.wtfFollow us on twitter:@ZooierThanThou@OneBigGrumpyRat@ACatWhoLovesYou@CanisG...youtu.be
_________________________
Thoughts About the Episode
After the last major effort episode, we knew we needed to take it easy for a month. After all, we’ve done 7 major-effort episodes in a row! A lot of that is because we did 6 hiatus episodes to start off season 5, but back to back to back is a lot of work!
We got together and talked a little bit about how we wanted to format the episode, I gathered up emails, and we recorded it. There’s not a lot to say about the process, this time, because it was super straight-forward.
Lovecat and Eggshell did put together a very cute skit, though! Apparently there were originally more singing parts, but they got cut. Normally for a song section, I’d write the song first and then have someone sing over it, but in this more low-effort episode situation, I just let Kynophile sing and then made a quick music track to go with it. With a bit more time, I probably could have made it better, but it got the point across for the skit, and that’s really what mattered. Lovecat gave us a reference of a song from Robin Hood: Men in Tights, and Kynophile really nailed it, to be honest! Also, lest we fail to mention the return of Zooey as Deyna in the skit! I’m certain she’s a welcome voice for a lot of listeners. Zooey is hoping to get back to being more involved, but to what extent, we’ll have to see!
And I say we’ll have to see because as I announced in the episode, my husband has asked very directly that I cut back how much I’m working on the podcast. Most of the planning time I’ve spent for this episode was in working with the team to come up with a viable plan, and the introduction of someone who can act as project manager made it possible for me to step away every other episode without stopping production. In addition to actually putting things together, one of my biggest roles — and biggest time sinks! — is wrangling people together and making sure things are done more or less on time. Now that there’s someone who can do production and someone who can wrangle, all I’m needed for every month is putting the pieces together and uploading it! Maybe I’ll even get folks to do their own blogs for each episode. That could be cool!
But this also means that higher-effort aspects of each episode, like skits, aren’t really possible yet, as they require our co-producer to purchase and learn new software. If you’re someone who likes to count, the timing of my episodes coincides with the radio episodes for the past couple of years, Howloween, and Christmas, which is apropos given this fact.
So, we’ll see how this plays out! Maybe next month, instead of hearing from Toggle, you’ll hear from Lovecat!
----
How about you? Do you like the way animals smell? Let us know in the comments, or e-mail us!
_________________________
You can subscribe to our RSS feed using your favorite podcast application: rss.zoo.wtf
Don't forget to subscribe to our Bonus Content feed: bonus.zoo.wtf
You can subscribe to us on Bluesky @zoo.wtf and @toggle.zoo.wtf
You can contact us using the anonymous web form at zoo.wtf
Listen @ zoo.wtf
S6E1 Tackling Taboos: A Guide to Zoo Research
Subscribe to the podcast at rss.zoo.wtfSubscribe to bonus content at bonus.zoo.wtfFollow us on twitter:@ZooierThanThou@OneBigGrumpyRatAqua_Zeta00:00:00 - Dis...youtu.be
_________________________
Thoughts About the Episode
Oh man, I’m exhausted. After this episode was finally finished, I totally crashed for like 12 hours. But what a fucking exciting episode to be able to work on! We got two researchers to allow us to interview them about their research, and we also got Aella Girl to agree to an interview, though it seems our schedules didn’t really line up. I don’t think we would have been able to handle working another interview into this piece. It came out to be exactly the right length.
Unfortunately, as it is every time we do a big episode like this one, we really cut it down to the wire. So much down to the wire it was released about six hours later than I wanted to release it. I cannot stress how helpful my production assistant was for this episode. I would NOT have been able to get this done without them. They were able to take about 8 hours of work off my plate, which was a huge relief, especially with how last minute the final audio came in. Total lifesaver.
So let’s talk about it!
Aqua’s been wanting to do this research episode for some time. I think this was one of the earliest planned episodes, originally slotted for January, but moved because we wanted to do Enshittification and allow some extra time to focus on the content for this episode. FurScience released their 10 year retrospective in January, which allowed us to reframe our critique. An early draft title was The Problem with FurScience, but it was always intended to be more of an exploration of research in general. Even so, diving into the actual literature allowed us to be a lot more nuanced with the critique than just calling them a “problem.” Because they’re not. They’re doing their best. It’s just not hitting the mark when it comes to zoos.
We tried to pull Eggshell into the writing on this episode, and while they did contribute, it was clear this format of episode wasn’t their comfort zone when it came to writing. They did several passes at an introduction as the actual narrative came together, and the last one was influenced by how they felt filling out the most recent zoo survey.
As we planned, we decided we’d try our luck and see if we could get Dr. Zidenberg and someone from the Sigmund Freud University research team, as well as a few other folks. Aim high and see what happens! In the end, we were able to get the input from everyone we asked, even if they didn’t actually get interviewed themselves, which was super encouraging! Tugs from Fur What It’s Worth and Ashley Hamer from Taboo Science both granted us permission to use clips from their podcasts as well. It really feels like we’ve established some sense of legitimacy over the years to have the privilege of all of these people helping us put this episode together! It made making this episode really invigorating!
ZT mentioned to us that doing an interview with him about the research team was coming at a very apropos time. We didn’t know at the time it’s because he was announcing his retirement. Just remembering as I type this that I’ve been entrusted with some potentially important assets that I need to figure out how to put to good use. So much to do, not nearly enough time |3
It’s worth noting that we chose NOT to ask someone from FurScience to join us. I actually invited Nuka to join us on the Furry Fandom episode back in 2020, but he declined. As we mentioned in our episode, we get the sense that they want to keep their distance from this topic, so in leaving them out, we tried to be very fair and give them credit where it was due.
The interviews went great, and I’m planning to release them pretty soon. It’s crazy how many great, quotable lines they gave us without us prompting, like Dr. Stetina’s line about talking to the right people. Lots of moments in those interviews where I was just thinking, “Yes! That’s perfect!”
Writing the episode wasn’t all that hard, but finding the executive function to get it done came very very late, like during production week late. We knew recording wouldn’t take very long, but we definitely didn’t mean to get started on that part so late. Fortunately, both our researchers approved of the script without any changes or revisions on their parts. After my production assistant cleaned up the interviews, I went through each one and highlighted all of the parts I thought I might light to quote and got a sense of how I wanted to organize the script. Our original notes covered a shit-ton of topics, but we decided to streamline the talking points to three primary points: Trust, Motivation, and Credibility. As I wrote, I kept note of all the papers I was referencing so I could put together a bibliography. We wanted to show what kind of barriers there were for researchers in researching zoophiles, address some of the reasons these surveys sometimes sound tone-deaf, and show how these researchers in particular were actively collaborating with the zoo community. We also wanted to explore WHY they were given the access they were given, to show what’s important to us as zoos and to help legitimize the work they were doing. I’m hopeful that other research teams will be able to listen to this and understand how important displaying credibility, earning trust, and having the right motives are for interfacing with our community.
FurScience was Aqua’s section to write. We went over it together over the course of several conversations, and I definitely helped as a sounding board and as someone who could edit his criticisms down to something manageable, but they were the driving force and primary writer. You might actually be able to hear a voice shift between our sections, if you listen hard enough. In putting together the FurScience section, we did our homework to make sure what we wanted to say was backed up in the literature — though we did have to issue a small correction a day after release for something we missed — and we did find that some of our harsher criticisms about their work weren’t quite supported by the text. Sometimes you read something once and come away with one impression, and then when you go back and read again, what you thought was there was actually a little bit different. There was a lot of that as we went through what they actually said while writing. But that was good, because it allowed us to refine our critiques and address their work directly.
I put together the conclusions at the end based on our discussions and crafted an intro with Eggshell and Aqua’s input, and then we scrambled to get everything recorded. Despite our best efforts, we missed our deadline by a few hours. Thankfully, though, because my production assistant was available to put arrange all the interviews and audio clips together, I had time to gather music, which literally takes hours, and putting the whole thing together was a lot smoother than it’s been in the past.
In the end, we’re really proud of this episode, and we’re also completely wiped out. I’m totally dead, and if the interviews weren’t already basically put together, there’s no way I’d have the wherewithal to get them ready for release this week. But that’s tomorrow’s problem. Please take some time to go listen to them by subscribing to bonus.zoo.wtf, or by going to zoo.wtf/episode-list/bonus/ and downloading them directly from our website.
OK, so also, can we talk about this awesome fucking artwork? I’ve been trying to get new podcast art for AGES, and we’ve finally done it, and it’s incredible! Introducing Steeeve the tired old pigeon, Aqua the floating orb, and Eggshell the sheepdog in sheep’s clothing! I still have to figure out how to get the art to fit into the body of the site, and I haven’t had time, but that’ll get updated as soon as I can get it done. Big thanks to our anonymous artist, who was a pleasure to work with from start to finish and did an amazing job! I’m so stoked <3
I guess that’s about it, yo! See you next month for a super chill and relaxed episode!
----
Have you had any experience participating in zoo research? Let us know in the comments, or e-mail us!
_________________________
You can subscribe to our RSS feed using your favorite podcast application: rss.zoo.wtf
Don't forget to subscribe to our Bonus Content feed: bonus.zoo.wtf
You can subscribe to us on Bluesky @zoo.wtf and @toggle.zoo.wtf
You can contact us using the anonymous web form at zoo.wtf
Listen @ zoo.wtf
The Meat Panopticon - Living Under the Thumb of Carnism
Subscribe to the podcast at rss.zoo.wtfSubscribe to bonus content at bonus.zoo.wtfFollow us on twitter:@ZooierThanThou@OneBigGrumpyRat@ACatWhoLovesYou@CanisG...youtu.be
_________________________
Thoughts About the Episode
Awoooo! I promised myself I’d get this blog post done in a reasonable amount of time, because I think it might affect when people engage with the podcast. I need to get back into the regiment, which I haven’t fully been able to do consistently since the break. But I’m starting to miss steps in my release cadence, so it’s time to get rigorous!
So, this episode seemed for a little bit like it might not come together, but I’m very pleased with the end result. Steeeve originally pitched the idea to do an episode about Dean Foods and how their fall was indicative of a change in consumer demand, but as you’ll hear in the episode, that’s not the story he found once he did the research. LoveCat expressed interest in being involved in the episode, and because Aqua’s been a voice on a lot of our meat-based topics, I suggested they get involved as well.
My goal was to be as hands off of this as possible and let Steeeve and the others do what they wanted, though after Aqua talked to me about the discussion they’d had during the outlining meeting, I did pitch the idea that it would be really cool to do this one as an essay format episode. While folks gave the thumbs up, there didn’t really seem to be a lot of buy in for getting this episode done that way, and this led to some confusion as to the direction of this episode. It meant we had Eggshell twiddling her thumbs on a Saturday, ready to write, but with no material to work with during the hours she had available to do it, and there were moments where it seemed like key folks were out of pocket without any notice as to what was going on. I interpreted this as a rejection of my idea, but if that interpretation is correct, it would have been nice for folks to speak up on it rather than just being AWOL. Mostly, though, I think there just wasn’t a clear leader driving this episode home, so no one knew what was going on.
We quickly ran out of time to put together an essay-style episode and regrouped. Eggshell took some of her original ideas for the essay episode and put together some bookends based on the topic outline, while Aqua, Steeeve, and LoveCat recorded a normal, discussion-style episode. It was down to the wire, but it DID get done on time. Much to my delight, it’s clear everyone did their research and knew what the fuck they were talking about, and it turned out to be a really solid discussion — substantive enough that I said to elk with the hour-and-a-half time limit. All of it was super interesting to me as someone who hadn’t been involved in planning the episode, and the bookends were really well-done. Plus, the email discussion was super interesting as well, and I think this is one of those episodes you could really show to a curious non-zoo and be like, “This is what we’re about. This is what interests us — in addition to thinking animals are totally fucking hot.” All in all, I feel really great about how this season finale turned out. It’s a solid episode that was worthwhile, and once it came time to record, everyone brought their A game.
This is the first real episode I had someone working on editing for me without me watching over their shoulder, and I gotta say, I’m super thankful. It made my job as the final editor a LOT easier and faster, and I got to focus my time on content rather than minutia. I cannot understate what an immense help this was. It does mean I don’t know a lot about what they cut, but they generally took the approach that their job is clean-up and my job is content editing. This process also meant that I wasn’t working all the way through production week, which honestly, was a huge relief. Blocking out an entire week where I do nothing after an 8 hour workday but podcast work has always been a huge source of burnout. It was very freeing to personally only have to work on podcast production for three days to get it all done — and not to have to take a day off work to finish things up on time. — Yes, if you were wondering, there have been a LOT of episodes that I actually had to take off work to get done. I don’t talk about this a lot, because I don’t like to even hint at my work life outside of studio work, but that’s been a pretty big issue for me for a while.
The next episode is gonna be WAY more involved for me, but I think having an editor to slice all the best takes together will free me up to work on writing the content, finding the right music, and polishing it to a glowing shine without burning out. I’m very excited about what season 6 is gonna hold, and the quality of life improvements with people helping with production makes me feel up to the task. Thanks again, ZooTT crew, for all that you do! I’m super appreciative of your dedication and rigor.
----
What are your thoughts on the existence of a 24/7 meat industry social media surveillance system? Let us know in the comments, or e-mail us!
_________________________
You can subscribe to our RSS feed using your favorite podcast application: rss.zoo.wtf
Don't forget to subscribe to our Bonus Content feed: bonus.zoo.wtf
You can subscribe to us on Bluesky @zoo.wtf and @toggle.zoo.wtf
You can contact us using the anonymous web form at zoo.wtf
Listen @ zoo.wtf
S5E11 Enshittification
Subscribe to the podcast at rss.zoo.wtfSubscribe to bonus content at bonus.zoo.wtfFollow us on twitter:@ZooierThanThou@OneBigGrumpyRat@ACatWhoLovesYou@CanisG...youtu.be
_________________________
Thoughts About the Episode
My procrastination on writing these up has gotten out of hand. I need to just commit to doing it the day of release, but it just adds extra time to a multistep process, and sometimes I just can’t be arsed. But I do think it affects our engagement, so I’m gonna make it a priority.
So, this episode was pretty fun to do, all things considered. We had originally slated something else for January, but we wanted more time to do it, and Aqua had already suggested talking about enshittification in like October or thereabouts, so we did some shuffling to accommodate. A week or so before released, there was a tweet about how enshittification was the word of the year for 2023! So I guess we had pretty good timing for this one.
We considered having Tugs from Fur What It’s Worth come on, as both an ABDL entrepreneur and former podcast host/producer, but he was busy traveling for FC until the day we were set to release, so we couldn’t get him. However, with Tarro having experienced some of the stuff we were talking about and having a stake as a zoo content creator, they made a natural fit.
We ended up talking for almost three hours, which was a massive time investment, and also a lot of audio to edit! Fortunately, this was the first month I trained a new staff member on editing down the audio. I walked through everything with them for the first two hours of audio, basically there to answer questions and provide real-time advice, and then let them work on their own for the last hour. They got it down to about an hour and forty five minutes or so, and then since they’d done the grunt work, I was able to come in and mercilessly cut giant chunks of discussion without having to worry about the minutiae. We got a whole bonus episode out of it, which you should check out because I think that part of the discussion was a ton of fun! Even there, tons of stuff got taken out, so this episode’s topic was very heavily edited!
Having someone who I can get to do all the precise work allows me to come in afterward and clean up, which saves me a lot of time, and I’m excited to put that into full practice this upcoming month.
Lovecat had mentioned wanting to do a Zooey D&D skit, even as we were doing one for Howloween. Without any prompting from anyone, LC and Kynophile wrote up a really fun skit and presented it even before writing week was done! It took me pretty much all of one day to put together, but it was fun to see that come to life. I think it’s got good timing and is a lot of fun to experience, and even for all the silliness, it does feel like an actual D&D group playing a real campaign. Thanks to everyone who participated, and thanks to LC and Kano for organizing that and getting all the parts divvied out and recorded!
While we were putting this together, I started really looking into hosts where one could potentially set up a GeoCities-like service for zoos. There’s not a lot of practical purpose for doing this, but I had some fun looking into old zoo websites on the Internet Archive and thought it was so cool how people just had their own space online, instead of everyone gathering around on giant platforms. I found a few potential hosts, but I’m waiting for some responses from their abuse teams. They might not get back to me x3
Lykon, being Lykon, saw that we were talking about this and just went, “Let me prototype that,” and then banged up a working demo of such a service. So I mean, if that’s something you think would be cool or useful that you’d use, let me know!
Thanks for listening! I’ll try to be diligent about posting on time, since there’s probably some people who look here but aren’t aware we post a new episode every full moon.
----
Do you have stories about your own trials with enshittification? Let us know in the comments, or e-mail us!
_________________________
You can subscribe to our RSS feed using your favorite podcast application: rss.zoo.wtf
Don't forget to subscribe to our Bonus Content feed: bonus.zoo.wtf
You can subscribe to us on Bluesky @zoo.wtf and @toggle.zoo.wtf
You can contact us using the anonymous web form at zoo.wtf
Listen @ zoo.wtf
S5E10 Nightmare Scenario: Facing Homelessness
Subscribe to the podcast at rss.zoo.wtfSubscribe to bonus content at bonus.zoo.wtfFollow us on twitter:@ZooierThanThou@OneBigGrumpyRat@ACatWhoLovesYou@CanisG...youtu.be
_________________________
Thoughts About the Episode
Allllright. So, December always means MFF, and MFF means having sex, meeting with zoos, and catching up with old friends. And it definitely delivered on all three accounts! There were feral events every day of the con, even Thursday! I got to meet so many people I have trouble remembering all of them. It was a good time, and then I got to spend some time with friends in the midwest on the way home.
Unfortunately, my trip was cut short by a family emergency, and that basically dominated the rest of December for me. I suggested we pushed back the episode due to the holidays, but that was only partially true. I prefer not to go into it, but December was a little rough. No part of me wanted to make an episode this month. It was a major struggle getting through it.
Fortunately, I’d already left Steeeve in charge of putting together the episode, so I wasn’t trying to organize the episode on top of everything else. Unfortunately, he had a lot of trouble getting younger zoos to interview on the podcast — which one supposes would be expected, given that they were being interviewed about their fears of losing their homes for being exposed as a zoo. I told him to just do text interviews, but they ended up being pretty short. I think they got the general point across, though, brought some real humanity to the issue, and both interviewees were very open and honest.
Steeeve also worked with Eggshell to put together a three-part skit about someone who was going through the scenario of losing their home after being outed. It was important to him to have some Hispanic representation on the show, seeing how many of his stickers were going to Latin American countries. He had his Hispanic friend play both Jaime and his dad, and we essentially allowed him to insert Spanish where it felt natural for an angry parent to slip out of English. I think he did a good job of playing two separate roles that sound nothing like one another, so that was neat! Steeeve also handled facilitating recording, gathering voice actors, and hosting. We originally wanted to have Canis on to bring insight into his experiences with homelessness related to being outed as a zoo, but he wasn’t available. Lovecat gracefully stepped in, and they were able to put together a topic succinctly. Steeeve has a knack for bringing both brevity and entertainment, so I was able to pass him five emails to knock out in addition to a topic and several skits and interviews.
Now, if you thought the skits were bleak when you listened to the episode, the original ending was basically a coin flip between finding a homeless shelter and committing suicide, with our protagonist cold and alone on the streets, and I was like, “Guys, what message are we sending here?”
I want to stop here and share part of the ensuing conversation, because I think it’s worth documenting the kinds of considerations that are made when we put together an episode or a skit. We have a message and a mission, and sometimes we have to make sure what we’re doing is in line with that message.
“These are nightmare scenarios that are presented, but the message should be that you can survive even the worst nightmare. Especially in light of someone recently committing suicide… None of us who are listening to or participating in this podcast are actually alone… There will always be someone who can forgive you or accept you. There’s someone you can confide in who won’t run away or tell everyone… It’s our duty to remind people of that. Because the narrative that everyone will hate you and your life will be ruined already exists. We exist in large part to counter that narrative. So if we’re going to show the nightmare scenario, we have to have a counter to it… When we touch on really tough and depressing topics, there’s gotta be a light at the end of the tunnel. It’s kind of our MO. ‘What do we do about this shitty situation? How can we make it better?’ …So that’s what I’m thinking. Be careful about how much credence we give to the nightmare, because we’re giving it a lot here, and we have to be careful we don’t undermine ourselves. We should acknowledge these skits embody our worst fears. And we should make sure we end with the understanding that even when it feels like there’s no hope:
We are not alone.
There is nothing wrong with us.
And we are worthy of love.”
We tossed around a few ideas, like having Jaime’s mom reach out and provide some kind of comfort, but Eggshell went with having an unexpected friend reach out and offer some help, and I think it was a very good note to end on.
So, I should be honest about my state of mind with this episode. Maybe it’s because I had very little hand in creating the episode or overseeing the development of the topic, or maybe it’s just because I’m burnt out and was dealing with a bit of depression, but I was struggling with confidence in this episode. I worried maybe it would be too negative, or maybe it wouldn’t address the main issue adequately, or maybe the skits weren’t going to come together and be impactful, or maybe there wouldn’t be enough content, or maybe there would be too much content. In the end, despite a few minor issues with missing voice lines and a couple of things that required a return to the recording booth, everything turned out fine, Eggshell did some good work, and Steeeve and Lovecat held it down. The team got all of their parts done on time, and it really just came down to me dealing with December and getting everything done. I think there’s enough on the table to revisit this topic in the future, but that’s a good thing, I think.
One thing I wished we’d realized before finalizing production was that not all homeless youth resources online actually take the time update their friggin’ links. It’s kind of alarming, and it would have been good to address on the show, but I tried to make sure my liner notes talked about the issue. The resources exist, they can just sometimes take a little more time than clicking the first thing you find on Google. Pretty disappointed with Pittsburgh’s resource websites, though, and I’m gonna try to find someone to complain to. Also, in case you’re reading this like, “Why are you talking about youths?” Please keep in mind that LGBT youth resources are traditionally designated for people 18-25. It can be confusing to hear “youth” and think “young adult,” but that’s how these websites are set up, and this is the terminology they use almost universally.
I had a therapist appointment during this production cycle, and I basically expressed to my therapist that I didn’t want to do this episode at all, and I worried that this might just be the feeling from now on. Even though I only had to do production on this episode, I just didn’t want to do it. She said pretty frankly that it might be time to either find help or cut down on the number of episodes per year — that 12 was a lot. I said I didn’t really want to cut down the number of episodes — people always want more episodes, not less — but that if something didn’t give, that might be what I had to do. I expressed this on Twitter, and I want to thank a couple of people for offering to provide some assistance on production. The people who reached out have some experience with audio production, and I have confidence I can train them to do what I do. Because of their help, I think it’s gonna take a lot of the burden off of me over time, and I think we won’t have to do anything like cut the number of episodes per year next season. It also will mean I can focus more on other parts of putting things together that I actually enjoy like music or writing, or other important aspects like researching topics, without it requiring so many hours of my time. I’m excited to get these folks up to speed, but there’s no guarantee that they’ll be available every episode, so if you’re someone with audio production or podcasting experience, production help is really appreciated. Obviously, there are certain considerations that have to be made before giving someone access to podcast resources, but this is the type of work I think we really need.
I think that’s about it. I’ve been working on this during my lunch breaks all week, so I apologize for the delay here this month and last month. Things are looking good for this month, and I’ll be working with some of these new folks to produce this one! Exciting times!
----
Did you find this episode speaks to a situation you find yourself in or worry about? Let us know in the comments, or e-mail us!
_________________________
You can subscribe to our RSS feed using your favorite podcast application: rss.zoo.wtf
Don't forget to subscribe to our Bonus Content feed: bonus.zoo.wtf
You can subscribe to us on Bluesky @zoo.wtf and @toggle.zoo.wtf
You can contact us using the anonymous web form at zoo.wtf
Listen @ zoo.wtf
S5E9 Trans People in the Zoo Community 2023
Subscribe to the podcast at rss.zoo.wtfSubscribe to bonus content at bonus.zoo.wtfFollow us on twitter:@ZooierThanThou@OneBigGrumpyRat@ACatWhoLovesYou@CanisG...youtu.be
_________________________
Thoughts About the Episode
I startled awake one night in December with the realization that, in my haste to get the episode out before MFF, I’d forgotten to write a blog entry! December was a lot, so I’m only just now getting to it. More on that next entry.
This episode almost didn’t happen! As we approached the end of writing week, we hadn’t heard from any trans people who wanted to be involved. I wasn’t about to do an episode about trans people without trans people involved, and I wanted fresher perspectives than the people we already have in our crew. Fortunately, Amoronauts saw our request right here on ZooCommunity and got in touch just in the knick of time! Eggshell and I took time to meet with her and come up with an idea of what we wanted to talk about. We had a very robust conversation, so finally we had the confidence we needed to go ahead with this topic. Right around recording week, as we were struggling to decide who should host, Harvey got back to me about being involved, and everything fell into place. I felt it was also nice to have a trans-masc perspective represented — we hear a lot from trans women when it comes to these topics, so that extra bit of diverse perspective was welcome. Plus, it was his request in the first place!
Recording the topic was tough, though — mostly because we had a TON to cover, and I was wary of taking too long to do it. I tried to strike a balance between moving things along and letting the actual trans people speak, but I still kind of feel like too much of it is me talking and trying to guide us through everything we had to touch on. Overall, I think it went well, I just would have liked to speak a bit less.
However, disaster struck during the recording process. We’ve been in the process of moving over to Squadcast, as it’s a service that’s provided free with other tools we’re using. However, we ran into two major issues. First, Amoronaut’s audio for the topic discussion was completely fucked — something that wasn’t evident while actually recording. We didn’t hear all those audio issues during the session, but rerecording a two hour discussion isn’t really feasible, so I had to make do. I only hope that your ear started to tune it out after a few minutes like mine did.
And then, when Harvey and I did the introduction, we ran into a technical issue that prevented Harvey’s audio from uploading. No problem, we’ll use the online backups, right? Think again: the back-up audio is mixed down into one channel, which means a nightmare for post editing, and it sounds like crap to boot! And if you want it separated, you’ll have to settle for audio at a pathetic 48kbps. This was entirely unacceptable. So we re-subscribed to Zencastr and rerecorded the entire 20 minute intro session a second time. That’ll teach us for trying to save money and change tools! Thanks to Harvey for being’ a good sport with a grumpy rat.
By the way, HUGE thanks to Eggshell for taking our loose notes and compiling them into an outline. That was a major relief for me and can’t be overstated.
Amoronauts mentioned she had some skits and stuff she’d written that we might like to use for this episode and sent over the Kiss and Tell script. It was very silly, and we liked it a lot. As you can hear, Amoronauts’ audio is much better there, so no idea what the deal was during the topic discussion. I also think it’s kind of cool to have the special guest contribute creatively to the episode as well! Finding animal noises for smooching was surprisingly difficult!
Finally, I don’t know whether or not the author wanted to be credited for the On Beauty and Euphoria piece, so I’ll leave that out for now. They told me they wanted some kind of 90’s music in the background, but they hated the original, upbeat grunge piece I picked at first. Their original manuscript was a bit longer and included some darker moments, so that may have contributed to their desire for a slightly darker background tone, but it was kind of funny how we had to go back and forth because I just didn’t get it x3 Much appreciated for them contributing this perspective. I think it ended up being a positive addition.
Finally, we took our original song for Howloween by zipwok and featured it here. Somehow, it still doesn’t feel out of place :3
Everything fell into place, and I think things turned out well. I’m pleased we didn’t get up to the 2 hour mark, as well, despite all the extra content. We ended up getting some transphobic pushback from one or two zoos, but fuck ‘em. We got a ton of emails from trans zoos in the following month, so it seems this one resonated the way we wanted it to.
----
Did you learn anything new about trans issues? Have your own perspective as a trans person? Let us know in the comments, or e-mail us!
_________________________
You can subscribe to our RSS feed using your favorite podcast application: rss.zoo.wtf
Don't forget to subscribe to our Bonus Content feed: bonus.zoo.wtf
You can subscribe to us on Bluesky @zoo.wtf and @toggle.zoo.wtf
You can contact us using the anonymous web form at zoo.wtf