Zooier Than Thou
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S4E12 Over the Hill
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Thoughts About the Episode
This will be my last full blog post for a while. Six months to be exact. I’ll still update and let you know a new episode is out, but in the spirit of taking a break, I won’t be getting into the nitty gritty of production or thoughts about the episodes.
This was a good episode to ease me into hiatus. I’ve spent just over 20 hours on it, which was mostly spent recording and producing. Our new writer had sent in a really absurd but touching “Airplane Sketch” a long time ago that I’m glad we were able to work in, because it turned out really well. Also, just got access to a cool new tool: competent AI voice acting. Check out the stewardess. She’s pretty impressive, no? Outside of producing the skit, it was just shooting the shit and going over emails. Nothing taxing or overblown. I hope that you enjoy what we have, as simple as the content may be.
I apologize in advance for the long political discussion during the emails. It seemed as good an episode as any to tackle that kind of email, and I hope you’ll appreciate how significantly I pared down what was originally a 30 minute discussion on the topic.
We’ve already recorded the next episode featuring Underdog and Gar of the original CalZoo from the 1990’s. It was a pleasant conversation, and I’m hoping that the appeal of hearing their stories of zoo history is a good signal that the hiatus doesn’t mean it’s time to tune out.
Beyond that, the goal is less than 10 hours a month, so don’t expect a whole lot of production, but I hope we’ll still be able to entertain in the interim. I really, really hope this hiatus is enough to recharge the batteries and kick into high gear for season 5. I’m nervous it might not be enough time, or that I’ll end up pushing too much with getting an episode out every month that it won’t feel like I took time off. But I’m hopeful. The first thing I’m going to do is clean my friggin’ house from top to bottom so I have a restful space to spend the break in. I also plan to travel and see folks throughout the year, so that will be nice.
We’re also considering a radical format shift, in terms of how we release episodes. No announcements yet, but based on some feedback about what people have enjoyed this year, we wanna make sure we continue providing really high-quality content.
Well, I guess that’s it. I’ll see you in 6 months, my friends! Stay defiant!
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Are you a fan of the easy breezy conversation episodes? What kind of content do you want to hear when we come back from our break? Let us know in the comments, or e-mail us!
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S4E11 I Fought the Law
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Thoughts About the Episode
Usually I write these journals after I’ve posted the episode, but after working for 11 hours straight through the night to finish this beast up, I wanna get as much done as I can before I pass out.
This was an absolute beast of an episode to put together and produce. Planning dates back to March, but we really began in earnest in November, when Aqua and I met with Bojack and hashed out what we wanted to do. This episode focused on a somewhat litigious antagonist, and we wanted to make sure we had all our ducks in a row and worked with some modicum of journalistic integrity — as best as laymen, zoo non-journalists can manage at least. Bojack put in a ton of time and effort gathering up citations, newspaper articles, YouTube videos, and legislative documents, and mapping them out in a mind-mapping tool for us to reference.
Once Aqua translated the mindmaps to English for me, I dove into referencing and pulling quotes and put together an outline. I worked up a script draft and set up interviews with a couple of super awesome French zoos who volunteered their time and voices to the project. We were able to pull together voice actors from all over the western world for this one.
These story episodes are very front-heavy — recording actually doesn’t take much time at all. But I’ve discovered the biggest time sink for this kind of an episode isn’t the writing, or even the planning stage. It’s finding the right god-damn music. Holy hell, more than half the total time spent on this episode went into the past three days. I’d already started picking out and collecting potential music before starting to save myself time, but sometimes you realize some of the music you picked doesn’t actually work, so you gotta go hunting — blindly, I might add, because there’s no way to know what keywords to search for — and trying things out to see if they fit. It is incredibly time consuming. That, and waiting for audio to process. One of our fancy programs gets rid of room noise and stuff like that, and basically everyone needed it
All told, I’m currently sitting at 67 hours into the production of this episode, and that’s just the time *I* put in. Aqua and Bojack put a ton of work into this with me, and it wouldn’t have been possible without all the voice actors who stepped up to help. I think it shows, and I’m pretty happy with how this episode turned out. It’s always rewarding to have a polished end product that you can be proud of. But shit, I haven’t gotten much sleep this week at all, and I’m gonna spend the next week cocooned in a blanket on my soft, soft bed.
So what’s next? Well, we got next month’s episode, and I’ll definitely be taking it easy as we wind down into the hiatus. Can’t do two big episodes like this one in a row. This is exhausting! However, I’ll also be putting together our first hiatus interview this month, and I think it’s going to be a good one. My goal is to convince you that just because we’re on hiatus doesn’t mean you shouldn’t keep tuning in every full moon!
I’m really looking forward to the break, though. Knowing it’s coming up has really motivated me to put everything I have into these last couple of episodes. I plan to get really good at Fall Guys and catch up on a ton of extracurricular activities I haven’t had time for over the past four years. Looking back, I have no idea how I juggled two episodes a month with all the other shit I had going on that first year.
Stay defiant, fellow zoos.
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What did you think of this true tale? Do you have an idea for lightweight content you want to hear during our hiatus? Let us know in the comments, or e-mail us!
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Listen @ zoo.wtf
S4E10 A New Home for the Holidays
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Thoughts About the Episode
Greetings from the other side of MFF! I had such a blast! Met a bunch of new zoos, including ZC’s own Zooby Dooby Doo, and some other folks from Zoo Twitter and the DSI telegram network. You know, for all the bluster and bombastic threats, I gotta say the “antizoo” presence was milquetoast at best. They brought some poorly designed stickers with red text on a red background with difficult-to-read font and referenced a zoo flag most people don’t even use. Our sticker game was on point, and everyone behaved themselves, which made the one or two people posting antizoo stickers look like complete assholes. I’m very pleased with how things went overall.
But I digress. Let’s talk about this episode! A couple of months ago, I took a weekend offline out in the woods and managed to read the entirety of The Other End of the Leash from cover to cover. It’s amazing what you can get done when you don’t have access to electronics or the internet. I definitely recommend unplugging any opportunity you get. It’s a good book, and with the exception of some potentially out-dated references to alpha wolf theory, it’s got a lot of solid advice and thoughts about dogs and how they perceive our behavior. One part I thought was really interesting was about how people tend to go for looks instead of considering what kind of breed of dog would actually be compatible with their lifestyles. I felt that mindset really applied in dog zoo space, as well. I know we all find huskies and GSDs strikingly handsome, and I’m sure many of us have other particular features from different breeds that make us swoon. All of that is really superficial, though, and there’s a lot more to consider, for sure. I brought the idea to Steeeve, and he immediately echoed some of my own sentiments before I even brought them up, so I knew we had something worth discussing.
I had the idea of maybe doing an infomercial or something, a creative way to convey the information rather than just discussing it. I brought our new writer in on it, and we all tossed around ideas until Steeeve shared this old VHS tape with Rue McClanahan and a stiff, uncomfortable English vet who traded awkward flirting back and forth. We laughed over the cheesy Italo Disco music and goofy video tropes, and I tasked our new writer with coming up with a base scenario. Boy, did they deliver! Steeeve and I took the framing and fleshed it out, but the narrator and the hapless zoo protagonist sections make me laugh so hard. I found it unusually difficult to find stock Italo Disco, so I went with that cheesy 80’s aesthetic instead. Steeeve found a video cassette artifact Kontact plug-in, and man, I think we REALLY nailed the aesthetic. So pleased. Steeeve felt it might be one of the best things we’ve written!
On top of that, our new writer put together a goofy skit about Santa wanting dog cookies, and I loved how it really felt like a first season skit. I kind of blushed the first time a read it, because we don’t really go there that much anymore, so I’m stoked to really dive back into that original sex-positive, subversive energy from before. I got some of my voice actors to do some really goofy character voices, and I think they really made it shine. Our writer wrote a part for Brad from the phone skit in Dear Non-Zoos, and of course, Lovecat took the material and ad-libbed stuff we could never have put down on paper. He really nails that character, and it made the whole thing, a perfect way to end. There was originally another ending, but we cut it and just ended on Brad, and I think that made for a stronger overall presentation.
I thought this poem was a perfect match for transitioning into Zipwok’s wistful song. It’s one of the many sonnets and poems our writer submitted way back before they formally joined the staff, and it’s very touching and warm. Zipwok had already released the song we used, but he let us use it for the episode, and I think it’s a solid end cap to an otherwise wild episode.
I finally announced the hiatus officially, but I hope you’ll all stick around, because I’ve got some neat things planned for the break. I’m excited to have some of my free time back, though. This next episode is two months in planning and execution, and we’re going to be working long hours to get it done right. I’m clocking in at around 25 hours for this episode, which ain’t bad, but I expect the next one will take as much as the Howloween episode. I’m hoping we’re able to pull it off, because it’s perhaps somewhat ambitious in scope for what we have to do in the background. For now, though, I’m gonna enjoy the rest of my vacation visiting zoos and other friends before diving in for writing week.
Thanks for listening!
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Did you learn anything useful from our feature video presentation? Do you have an idea for lightweight content you want to hear during our hiatus? Let us know in the comments, or e-mail us!
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Listen @ zoo.wtf
S4E9 Native Americans in the Zoo Community
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Thoughts About the Episode
I was worried this one wouldn’t come out for a hot second there! We got this done as close to the deadline as was feasibly possible, which is kind of frustrating, but I’m pretty pleased with the result.
Fausty and Canis have wanted to an episode about indigenous Americans in the zoo community since season 1, and each year there’s always too much upheaval to get it done. Last month, I wasn’t sure what we’d be doing for November, and I floated the idea of having Knotty Newfie co-host an episode on the topic, and that was enough to get Canis fired up and excited for the episode.
Thanks to the contributions from multiple different directions, this was the most lightweight episode I’ve had to work on all season. Lovecat and Canis put together a wonderful little zooey skit on theme for the episode, which was short, sweet, and light on foley. We added a new writer to the team permanently — the one who wrote our very successful werewolf skit for Halloween — and I still had some of their poetry to pull from. Zipwok already had a song ready to go two months ago for this episode. All I had to do was write an intro and outro and put everything together. All told, this episode only cost me about 16.5 hours including some project maintenance, which is significant compared to Howloween’s grueling 50 hours.
I also like the lightweight length of the episode, coming in at exactly 80 minutes. I know some folks love those giant 2-3 hour beasts, but I feel like having things streamlined makes them more accessible to people who are more casual listeners. I wasn’t sure what I’d be getting out of the discussion, but as I edited, I found myself taken by some of the more salient points of the discussion. I take that as a good sign that people will get something out of this, even if they aren’t Native Americans themselves.
Shout out to Amoronauts for getting Canis in his feels. I knew that your email would speak directly to him, so I chose it for this episode. I didn’t expect that the therian points would resonate so strongly with both hosts, though, so that was pretty nice to hear.
The episode after the holiday is heavy duty, and there’s no break between this episode and the next due to MFF, so it’s going to be a hectic couple of months. With that in mind, I’d like to announce to readers of this blog first that I have decided to take a 6 month hiatus after the end of this season. That will mark 60 uninterrupted episodes with no break, so I think we’ve earned a sabbatical. This doesn’t mean we’ll halt all content production completely, though, and I’m hoping that what we put out each month keeps people engaged enough to hold on for season 5 halfway through the year. We’ll still be doing things like answering emails, possibly doing interviews, and I’m thinking of doing some retrospectives on some of the older episodes.
The hiatus will also allow us to plan ahead for seasons 5 and 6, with any luck. We’ve never been able to bank work to lighten our load going forward, so I’m hoping we can do a little bit of that, as well. I’m very excited both for a break to do other things and for the chance to get ahead for once. We’ll make the formal announcement on the podcast in the next episode.
Thanks for listening!
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Did you learn anything you didn’t know about Native Americans from the hosts’ zooey perspective? Do you have an idea for lightweight content you want to hear during our hiatus? Let us know in the comments, or e-mail us!
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Listen @ zoo.wtf
S4E8 Howloween 2022!
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Thoughts About the Episode
I’m a couple days late with my journal entry, and that’s partly because this has been a pretty hellish episode cycle for me. Things were just not coming together in a timely manner, and I felt like I was running around like a chicken with his head cut off the whole time. By the time I finish this journal and upload it, I’ll have spent close to 50 hours on this production cycle, but at the very least, the results speak for themselves. This episode turned out very well, and I’m extremely pleased with the end result.
The werewolf skit was given to us a couple of months ahead of time, so I had a lot of time to prepare how I wanted that to come out, and I think it came out pretty immaculately. I don’t suppose there’s a lot left to say, except that I’m extremely pleased with the performances on display, particularly from Arlo. The timing was good, and with all the foley and auditory detail, the absurdist humor just worked!
The second Eigen Ground was submitted, trying to take heed from some of the criticism and feedback from the prior year. They asked the team to proof it and give feedback, but I wasn’t able to collect anything meaningful before their editing deadline. Still, I think it came out pretty well and made a nice contrast with the much sillier werewolf skit that came before it, allowing us to transition to a much more somber tone for the Samhain ritual. I think we got some really good performances out of this one, too — it’s not easy to get people to yell and scream! Arlo stole the show here again, I think. Just a fantastic job all around.
I’m not sure what it was about this year’s ritual, but it seems to have been pretty effective in terms of cathartic emotional response in a way previous years haven’t been. I don’t know why that would be, but I do know that I was tearing up at some of the submissions even while sorting through them and then editing them together. It ended up being very powerful, and I think it was a great way to honor our lost loved ones this year.
And of course, I’m obsessed with the remake of 14 Werewolves. Ever since we first made it, I knew we could do better, and over time I’ve been able to release my inhibitions and just produce music the way I want to. I’ve wanted to remake this one since day one, and I’m so glad we were finally able to. Arlo gave me some fresh performances, and at certain parts of the song, there’s one guitar for every werewolf pounding Arlo’s ass. Got a nice, thick wall of sound out of them. Just before production wrapped up, I sent it to another zoo friend who’s also a music producer, and he helped me completely re-evaluate the EQ, and holy shit, it made a huge difference in the quality of the remake. You can hear all the stuff that got drowned out in the original! It’s nice and clear and it doesn’t feel crowded. I feel like this one’s good enough to ship off to Spotify, so I’m thinking I’ll work on polishing up a few of our other favorites and put something together at long last.
Originally, Canis and Lovecat were going to host together, but day after day there were things that kept popping up, until by production week they had lost power and still hadn’t been able to record anything. Thankfully, Steeeve and Flora stepped up to host at the extreme last minute. Steeeve has been volunteering to take things on and helping out a lot in the last few months, and I’m very appreciative. I had to have them record a lot of stuff throughout the whole two weeks of recording, and they were both very patient and accommodating, which was a relief.
I’m also happy with the length. Steeeve and Flora blew through 10 emails, and we still managed to come out under an hour and half when it was all said and done. I think I prefer the shorter episodes that are more to the point, and that might really start to be a focus going forward.
Honestly, though, the burnout was starting to get real this episode, so I’m gonna have to figure something out. We may need to take a break for a while soon. We’re almost 60 episodes in, and we haven’t missed a single month in the past 4 years. That’s starting to wear on me a little bit. We’ll see what we can work out.
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What were your thoughts on the skits? Did you find our Samhain ritual cathartic this year? Let us know in the comments, or e-mail us!
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S4E7 Dear Non Zoos, or How to Talk to Zoos
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Thoughts About the Episode
I’m very pleased with how this episode came together, though we really were right up to the wire with getting it out on time.
Aqua had the idea to do something along the lines of the radio show in Dear White People. For the uninitiated, Dear White People is a fantastic movie and television series that deals with the subject of race in an incredibly nuanced way. The main protagonist of the series has a radio show called Dear White People, in which she delivers scathing criticism and snappy comebacks to students who call in. Obviously, we wanted to make sure that in modeling an episode after this premise, we did so respectfully, so we did our due diligence in that regard. I think the end product is useful and ultimately productive without undermining the inspirational material. As always, we made sure to end on something constructive and positive.
As always, in season 4, we’re trying out different things, and we had the idea of actually doing the whole episode like a college radio broadcast. I reached out to ZipWok and Shiv to see if they could provide some new material for the episode, and I was already sitting on a song from Zoo’d I hadn’t featured yet. I hadn’t gotten to work with Kynophile really all season long, so I asked him if he had any ideas floating around, as well. I sketched out what the broadcast would look like, and I estimated it would be between 1 and 1.5 hours long all told. Turned out to clock in JUST under an hour, which honestly I’m pretty happy with.
Aqua put together a fairly long list of non-zoo categories of people we’ve run into, and we narrowed it down to five groups we felt we could speak to more easily. We have more if we want to revisit the concept, but some of them are more delicate to address than others. Once we had our five, we split the work and got to writing. Unfortunately, writing was happening right up until the day before release, but we managed to get everything shipped out on time.
We got a number of suggestions to replace Non-Zoo from listeners, so thanks for sending in your thoughts. Ultimately, though, they ended up being more clunky, or just derisive, so we ended up just sticking with the old, familiar non-zoo designation.
Kynophile and I started working on a new song for the episode, inspired by songs like Have Mercy on the Criminal by Elton John, and You Won’t Be Mine by Matchbox 20. Unfortunately, it wasn’t coming together in time, and I didn’t want to put something out that was rushed. So, I did an informal poll in various zoo telegram groups to see what songs people liked. King of the Pride is the one that popped up consistently, but frankly, I’ve never been perfectly happy with how that one came out. I felt like it ended up being a little too slow, and there were flaws in the background music that bugged me. I’d been toying with the idea of speeding it up and rerecording it for a future release, and this seemed like the time to try. Turns out 10 bpm makes a huge difference! I got Kyno to rerecord his vocals, and I added some of my own to the ending. A little polish, some rerecorded guitar lines, and I’m very pleased with the outcome of this little revamp.
All of my musician friends came through, as well. I felt like Astronauts really fit the college radio aesthetic, and I loved that ZipWok had such a cool inspiration for Oh My Dog to share. I worried a bit about Zoo’d’s song, because it borrows a lot of lines from the source material, which could be problematic in the future. It’s a bit too close for comfort, but in the end, I felt it was a good idea to add it. Filk and parody are definitely in our wheelhouse, after all.
The problem of who to get to host remained, and frankly, most of us are in our 30’s and 40’s. I wanted to get some actual college-aged folks to host the college radio. I had the idea to get the duo from Zoo and Me to take care of it, since I knew they were the right age, had all the right equipment, and weren’t afraid to get in front of a mic. I also thought it would be a great way to promote their podcast. Even if scripted material ended up not being their forte, college radio allows some leeway for delivery in that regard. Honestly, though, I think they did a pretty good job. I wasn’t able to be there for the recording to act as a guide, so I’m very happy with their ability to take the script and run with it without much direction.
And of course, I can’t forget to shout out to Lovecat for his brilliant ad-lib performance as Brad from Computer Science. I gave him this source of inspiration for who the character in the script was modeled after, and he ran with it miles further than I could have scripted. Fucking hilarious!
Last Week Tonight - And Now This: Some Thoughts from C-Span's Most Frequent Caller (Parts 1 and 2)
From the August 7, 2022 episode of "Last Week Tonight with John Oliver".
You may notice that the music is mixed a lot higher this time. After listening to a few college radio programs, I noted that the music is MUCH higher in the mix than we typically mix. I originally had the music a lot louder, but I got some complaints that it was tough to understand what people were saying. I’d really like to know if anyone had any trouble in that regard. Otherwise, I feel really good about the flow between different segments, and I took time to line up downbeats in the music to make it feel more seamless. LC commented that he liked the way we did sponsors in this epsode more than our normal schtick, which itself is a parody of public radio sponsors. Maybe that’s something that changes in the future.
Also, I went for a more alternative/old-school hip hop vibe, rather than the old-time radio/variety show vibe. I kinda dig it, tbh. Maybe that’s something that should change in the future, too? Let me know what you think!
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What was your favorite featured song in this episode? Do you have any other categories of non-zoos you run into? Let us know in the comments, or e-mail us!
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You can contact us using the anonymous web form at zoo.wtf
S4E6. Dog Days
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S4E6 Dog Days
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Thoughts About the Episode
The last episode was a bit hardcore — really long, a little stuffy, a lot to chew on. This month, we opted for something lighter, both for your sake and for ours. Stuff like that takes a lot of preparation, and plenty of work in the follow-through. I also spent a lot of time this month preparing a new project management tool for the ZooTT crew, so having some time and energy to dedicate to that was definitely necessary. Fortunately, a certain zoo writer has sent us a wealth of useful content, which we happily drew from this month to give ourselves a little bit of downtime, and we opted for another “ZooTTing the Bull” style of episode, since it was so well-received the first time around. A lot of the same voices come back, but I wanted to get one or two new people to join. One of them couldn’t make it, but Kynophile stepped in to join us in Mike’s place.
As soon as I read the Solitaire skit, I knew exactly who to ask to voice those characters. There’s been a recent influx of Australian zoos in my network, which has been really cool. These two blokes are wicked talented, and they did a fantastic job with the material. I don’t think it was intentional that the script explicitly called for Australian voices, but it worked our really well!
I felt like we don’t have a lot of content lately that explicitly celebrates the sexual aspect of our zoosexuality, so I felt like the poem I chose was light-hearted, sexy, and relatable. It was a good choice for an easy-going episode, and Kyon did a splendid reading, as I knew he would. I get a sense there’s a little bit of a puritanical edge building up, and I want to fight that back. Our sexuality should be celebrated. The sex part, explicitly. We shouldn’t be uncomfortable when we see people embracing that aspect of who we are. All the romance and love and platonic aspects of our sexuality are certainly worth discussing and celebrating, but if we don’t also embrace the sex part, we’re forgetting a crucial part of ourselves that is completely valid and not something to shy away from. Anyway, it’s a funny poem, and I like it a lot.
As I mentioned, this episode was the first using our new project management tool, and I’m happy to say it seems to have helped keep things timely. Everything came together with time to spare, so I’m really happy about that. Surprisingly, our informal conversation was actually a bit of a hassle to edit because of all the cross-talk. I wanted to preserve some of it, but I also wanted to make sure the main points were heard, so it was a lot of moving things around manually and stuff. Still, not too many hours were lost doing that, even though it felt like forever, and everything got done better than on time.
I really enjoy doing this style of episode. It’s fun to just sit around and talk. But boy did our conversations go to some dark places. Most of it I cut out because I needed to edit about half of it out anyway and I wasn’t sure what came from it was productive, but suffice it to say, there’s a lot on everyone’s mind as things get tense on our side of the pond. I might do a bonus episode with some of that stuff, if I have time.
Honestly, my favorite part was the silly, unrelated shit at the end about what animal we wanted to reincarnate into. It’s not substantive, so to speak, but it’s entertaining and hilarious to listen to, and I kind of prefer it, to be honest. I loved everyone’s answers. Most of them I wouldn’t have expected at all! It’s fun to just… I dunno, goof around. I don’t wanna have the whole show be like that, but it’s definitely a format to be visited multiple times a season. I just need to make sure to get some new voices in the mix. I’m starting to get tired of hearing my own voice.
And let’s not forget Tarro from Zooey.pub! They gave a fantastic interview, and they have a great voice for audio work to boot. Mike wanted to put together a spotlight which features the projects that zoos are doing as they come out. Last month, we did Epiphiny Pipeworks — who remains our sponsor! — so this month, we wanted to highlight the magazine. They’re looking for your writing, so feel free to submit! If you haven’t read any of it, I definitely recommend it.
I think that’s about it. I’m excited about next month’s episode, but it’s a bit daunting. I hope you enjoy it! Until then~~
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What topics do you want us to talk about? Do you have a project you’re working on that you want to highlight? Let us know in the comments, or e-mail us!
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S4E5 Pride Praxis
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Thoughts About the Episode
Goodness gracious, what a long episode to try to put together in the same month as Anthrocon! I definitely had a blast, and got to meet some new zoos face to face, but as soon as I got back, it was nose to the grindstone, hardcore!
The topic was originally put together by Aqua and Sigma, and they did a whole lot of research and prep for this episode about ACT UP, so hats off to their diligence! Meanwhile, Lovecat was putting together a skit about a zooey job fair, and threw out the idea of one day doing a zoo convention-style episode, where everyone gives a short panel on something that they care about and we theme the episode around it. While that idea is probably still something we’ll explore in the future, as all the pieces came together and Anthrocon was fresh in my mind, it seemed serendipitous that everything fell into place to support such a construct. We had panels, a job fair, an interview with a Guest of Honor, and even a sponsor segment to work into a dealer’s den interview. So I arranged the episode as such and played with the format a bit. Let me know how you feel about the emails being toward the end of the episode!
Gosh, there was just so much to do, and it seemed like there were more requests to have things added as we went through planning. I already had an Ask Zooey skit ready to go, because someone wrote in with that question a couple of months ago, and they reported our advice had actually made a difference in their relationship! I didn’t realize at first LC was planning to have that job skit ready for this episode, and Aqua felt it would be topical, as well. Our sponsor reached out last month, and we wanted to do a feature since they’re actually, legitimately sponsoring us — and their stuff is right here on ZooCommunity.org! It all just worked out to be a lot of content. I streamlined it as much as I could, and cut a whole hour out of our topic discussion, but it turns out there’s a lot to do at a zoo convention! Some of you will groan at 3 hours of ZooTT, but I’ve already had someone say, “This is not enough! More!” I hope it’s really informative and helpful! Also, big thanks to Steeeve for stepping up to help me host this thing! Much appreciated!
Shout out to Kalevra, first of all, for all his work interfacing with AASECT. It just goes to show that one person can make a big difference that impacts many people. We’re hoping to put something together with a few AASECT therapists for the podcast, and we’ve got a couple on board, but we need to plan that out pretty far in advance and make sure we have our ducks in a row.
And of course, obligatory shout out to Epiphiny and their horse cock bongs! They let us know this was in the works a while back, but now it’s up and running, so if you wanna get high on stallion dicks, definitely check them out! 10% of the proceeds go to help ZooTT with production costs!
Website production has stalled a bit, so I’m looking into temporary options that are static, and it’s all kind of a blur for me. I’m a WYSIWYG kind of rat, so anything more complicated to implement is tough for me. Desperately trying to get rid of the Cloudflare problem, but I have word that our site has been DDOS’d during Anthrocon, so it’s a necessary evil for now.
I’m just working on a lot of stuff at once, so I appreciate your patience, and I hope you’ve enjoyed our ridiculously long, 3 hour episode this month. Thanks for listening every month. It’s a privilege to serve this community!
One more thing! There’s a zoo magazine-style publication online, zooey.pub! They opened up shop right at the start of Zoo Pride Month, and I was fortunate enough to do an interview with Tarro, one of the main people behind the project. They’ve got several articles up for your viewing pleasure, but if you wanna contribute your own thoughts and essays, hit them up! They’ll always be looking for more zoo content!
Happy Zoo Pride Month!
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What did you do for zoo pride month? Do you have any cool projects you want to get off the ground? Let us know in the comments, or e-mail us!
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S4E4 The ZETA Principles
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Thoughts About the Episode
Sorry it took so long to write this post. Production week is characteristically very busy, and once the episode was out, I really needed to give myself some me time, to clean my house, play video games, and hang out with a zoo friend for the weekend. I’m super happy to be composing this in a clean home studio. It makes a huge difference for my mood, and it smells like freshly baked cookies to boot!
Originally, we were going to be doing an entirely different topic for this month, involving a story in Europe, but as we worked through it at the beginning of the production cycle, it became clear that this was a topic we couldn’t rush, and we needed to give ourselves ample time to prepare and let the situation play out a little more. Instead, we pushed forward our discussion about the ZETA principles we’d planned for Zoo Pride month. This ended up working out really well, so I’m happy we did it. Plus, we ended up having a bit of relevant pride month discussion that worked well with the topic.
We knew we wanted to have a discussion about how the principles had changed over time, but as we looked over the resources — helpfully accessible right here on ZooCommunity.org — we realized we actually had insight into why they were created, and that’s what really guided the discussion. Big thanks to 30-30 for posting the original 10 zeta rules along with his analysis, which gave us a good amount of insight into a time we weren’t able to be present for. And thanks to GreyWolfLover for posting screenshots from EbonLupus’s essay which featured the current ZETA principles, also invaluable insight for our discussion. Thanks to their posts, we were able to step into the mindset that guided the creation of the principles and what purpose they served, and we learned some new stuff we didn’t know before.
The other purpose of the episode was to foster discussion about how the ZETA principles should change to meet the needs of the 2022 zoo community. A few months back, there was a big kerfuffle on Twitter around the ZETA principles that was basically co-opted by zoosadists who wanted to undermine the zoo community. Even so, some interesting points were raised about the language, as well has how the principles have been used by some as a means of gatekeeping others. I really wanted to have Flehmen, in particular, come on and discuss his position on the principles as a generally respected zoo who’d felt ostracized by the principles in the past, but he basically said he’d contributed all he intended to contribute.
The other thing that became clear as we asked some older members of the community about the principles is that some of them hadn’t even heard of them until two to three years ago. While they’ve been around and they’ve been pretty ubiquitous, not everyone was aware of them, which means a large segment of the zoo community wasn’t even using them as a guide in the past.
Suffice it to say, the ZETA principles from 20+ years ago are worthwhile, but our needs as a community have changed, as has our understanding of the world around us. My hope is that we can create principles that better reflect what we need now which can be adopted by as many zoos as possible. We talked about ways we might facilitate that kind of discussion, like starting a telegram channel and stuff, but I wanted to be careful not to presume some kind of authority that hasn’t been earned or granted to us. If Mike makes a group, for instance, he’s naturally going to invite people he knows and trusts. That leaves a lot of people out of the discussion. So we kind of settled on just inspiring the conversation to happen, and we hope our listener base is wide enough to spread that discussion around, and we can worry about how to “ratify” updated principles after actual discussion has taken place.
It is entirely coincidental that our secret zoo this month involves the character 30-30 in the same episode we talk about the zoo 30-30. BraveStarr was originally slated to come out last month, but it was delayed, and this discussion was slated for next month. I’d never seen BraveStarr before, so Lovecat put together a little viewing party so we could get the feel of the show. I have to say, I’m happy with how Lovecat was able to loosen up his prosaic writing and put together a silly skit worthy of an 80’s action cartoon. I thought he did a great job, and he gave some really great performances, as well. Big thanks to Tex for stepping up to play 30-30 — probably a role he was born to play as a horse from Texas — as well as to all the other voice actors who came through for us. I also wanna shout out to a couple of folks that volunteered but didn’t make the cut. We truly appreciate you stepping up when called upon, and we look forward to getting you involved down the line. I think the hardest part was getting the music put together. You’d think there’d be a lot more “80’s action cartoon” royalty free music, but I guess that’s just an aesthetic that people aren’t going for enough to generate sufficient demand. I hope you enjoyed what we put together!
I suppose that’s about it! Happy Queer Pride!
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What changes would you make to the ZETA principles? Did you learn anything interesting about how they’ve evolved? Let us know in the comments, or e-mail us!
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S4E3 ZooTTin' the Bull
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Thoughts About the Episode
After the last episode, and knowing the work coming up in the coming months, I really needed a month where I could take it easy on planning. One of the things most requested through our podcast survey was more time spent between our contributors just having fun and talking, so I figured this would be a great time to experiment with that. I set a timer for an hour and a half, brought a couple of prompts, and we just talked about whatever shit we felt like talking about. Apparently this is how most podcasts are actually made, and if that’s true, I can see why the process is a lot of fun for people. We had a great time shootin’ the shit. I definitely wanna try to incorporate that more, somehow.
I spent most of my time this month putting together a song. I knew I really wanted to do another pop punk song, since it’s been a long time. I’ve been listening to a lot of Yellowcard lately, so I picked up on their vibe a little bit. One of the things they seem to write about a lot is wistfully remembering lost love.
Yellowcard - Ocean Avenue (Official Music Video)
Official video for "Ocean Avenue" by Yellowcard.Watch more Yellowcard music videos: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8D227F99E9354401Revisit more 00's...
I also knew I didn’t want to write a song about a dog, because we do a lot of dog stuff. So I drew inspiration from Doodle’s experiences with a mare he loved. When I showed him what I was working on, he wanted to sing it, so I rewrote the melody to be in his range. It almost seemed like he wouldn’t make it in time for the deadline, but he did! I had a bit of trouble getting his vocals to fit into the mix since they weren’t perfectly clean, but I think I got it to work. Added a gentle chorus effect and put it through some tape saturation, cleaned it up fairly well.
Usually the music is written, recorded, and produced in about two weeks, which means the production is typically rushed. I started during our off week this time, so I had a bit of time to work on it. It’s not perfect, but I think it turned out alright. As always, it kind of depends on your speakers. I only have so many to test them on, so for some, the vocals are forward in the mix, while others sink them back, but universally, it’s punchy and loud in the right ways. I also already recorded all the vocals and harmonies for my own version of the song, so I might release that as an alternate or something down the line.
Finally, someone sent in an Abbott and Costello-style zoo parody a few months back that we’ve been trying to get done for like three episodes, but no one was available to edit it and complete the concept. I finally passed it on to someone who wrote for us back on S3E12, and they gave it a spit shine and sent it back in time to record. I went to my non-zoo friend who does a lot of voices. The first run through was alright, but just… alright. But after that, we were fucking around and he did the last line as Paul Lynde, and then he was like… “Can I just do the whole thing over, but as Paul Lynde?” and I was like, “Abso-fuckin’-lutely.” Gold, in my opinion. There’s an unscripted line in there, where Abbott says something like, “It would just be bleating and body language anyway,” and he quips, “That’s just the way I like it,” and I literally fell out of my chair. Perfectly in character.
The website is being worked on, albeit slowly. It’s difficult to get folks to work on projects like this in a timely manner, universally. It’s a problem I’ve had with pretty much everything I don’t have a hand in doing myself. So thanks for your patience. You won’t really see much design change, but what you WILL see is Cloudflare’s bullshit being removed. I’m frustrated every time I load the website and it’s still there, so I’m right there with you.
I hope you enjoy this relaxed episode!
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How did you feel about the loose structure of this episode? Is this something you want to hear more of? Let us know in the comments, or e-mail us!
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