Zooier Than Thou
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S4E2 Going MAD
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Thoughts About the Episode
Holy shit, what a production cycle. Everything was basically a week behind, and that’s mostly my fault, but the end product came out really well, I think.
This one’s been in the pipeline for a few months, ever since Stuart first shared his story with us. The circumstances were less than ideal, and I remember after he laid it all out for us, he said something to the effect of, “You could completely destroy me now.” And I thought… “That’s a very strange and unhealthy conclusion to come to. Why would you say that?”
But he didn’t just say it once. He repeated it a few times over the course of a couple of days, and we were like, “We’re not here to destroy you. Why do you keep saying that?” We realized that he’s basically been living under this specter of Mutual Assured Destruction for almost three decades. Old habits die hard.
We originally conceived of this episode as an interview, like our normal format, with Stuart coming onto the show and us having an unscripted conversation. There was a big problem, though: Stuart was too afraid to come on the show. No matter, typically we can do a text interview and just have someone read the lines. But Aqua proposed that a narrative podcast format might better suit the story we wanted to tell. He mocked up an introduction and set it to music, and I knew we had something fantastic. I want Season 4 to have an air of experimentation with the format, and this was something we hadn’t really done yet. I made him narrate, because his delivery was excellent, and figured we’d sort out the rest as we went along.
However, putting something like this together takes a lot of work on the front end. An hour of scripted content takes some time to get together, and we were already at the end of writing week before we’d come to the conclusion this is what we were gonna do. This was a collaboration between all of our writers, who worked all the next week to get it done. All other writing tasks were dropped in favor of putting together the narrative, and it was revision after revision, right up until the final cut. Even just gathering music for something this long took hours. But I think the end product really shines, and I’m really thankful to everyone who helped get this podcast from concept to production.
I reached out to a friend who does some voice acting Down Under, and y’all, I’m a real sucker for an Australian accent. Working with his voice was… extremely pleasant, to say the least, though it was occasionally distracting. I wanna jump his bones really bad. This is not a joke. His voice is everything. Totally smitten.
Finally, super thrilled that Harley stepped up to cohost and be my interviewer. He did a fantastic job, and I was really impressed with the unscripted bits I threw at him. You might hear where I react surprised by how fluidly he reacted. I definitely wanna have him back on!
I think I’m gonna take next month off, though, in terms of planning. After an episode like this one, we really need something lightweight and simple. Since people have asked for more unscripted content and shooting the shit, we might play with that in May before tackling more heavy topics in June and July. We’ll see!
Anyway, please let us know what you think about this format and whether or not you want to see more of it!
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Have you ever had experience with MAD-like situations? How are you going about forming positive relationships in the zoo community? Let us know in the comments, or e-mail us!
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S4E1 Whats Zooing On
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Thoughts About the Episode
Man, I think March is just a terrible time to produce a podcast. Things always ramp up right around this time, and I end up taking on more than I can handle. We were planning on doing next month’s podcast this month, but I had to be like, “Guys, I can’t be in charge of it this month. I just have too much to do.”
In the end, Mike the Dog came to the rescue with a topic that allowed us to get some fresh voices on the show and give updates on current projects, with Lovecat and newcomer Vex taking on hosting duties. I think whenever I’m not there, though, everyone’s like, “Oh god, we’re not gonna have enough material! It’s gonna be too short!” So they booked like six or seven folks at once and ended up handing me a full five hours of audio to edit. As such, this is the most brutal I’ve been with the editing machete. Each person spoke for roughly an hour, but I didn’t allow any one segment to take longer than 15 minutes. Because of this, and because Descript let’s me edit audio by selecting text from a transcript, this was actually a lot easier to edit than normal because I could just take entire tangents and remove them at once without having to listen to them. It’s a powerful feeling!
I also went over the survey results, for my part, and I might post my full analysis on a separate ZooCommunity forum post at some point. Thanks to everyone who participated! We got a lot of responses! In the end, I don’t think a lot is going to change in terms of the format, but we’re gonna try to tighten things up from here on out and just keep people’s feedback in mind.
Lovecat’s been working on his secret zoo for a couple of months, so we’re happy to have that presented. Though, our female voice actress said “Rai-oh” instead of “Re-oh.” It’s not too big a deal, but probably something anime fans will knock points off for x3 I think it’s neat how it speaks to that forbidden, repressed love thing I reckon a lot of zoos deal with at some point in their lives. Lovecat has a good sense of prose, but he’s a bit wordy. At times it felt like an audio book, so I actually ended up editing it down from 15 minutes to just under 10 minutes. You can hear the whole thing in its original form as bonus content this month. It’s got a sort of lushness to it.
Shiv actually reached out with their new song for last month’s episode, but I was already putting the final touches on the outro and already knew we’d have a spot for this one. This is a premier, so they haven’t released it anywhere else yet! It’s kind of a ska punk type of song. I dig it, and they learned a lot more about mixing as a result of our back and forth discussing the release. I hope you enjoy it!
Speaking of music, I hope you like the new intro. I’d been toying with doing an electronica version of the theme, but I was having trouble envisioning how that would work. I’ve also idly thought it might be cool to do a jazz version, and one day while I was in the shower, I had a spark of inspiration about how that might sound and sketched out the horn parts, and I got really excited about it and ran with it. After tracking the bass and drums, I got help from Logic, Konny from Shiv, and ZipWok to put together some keys, and from another zoo I know who’s a music producer for the mix. I tried to get Doodle back on the vocals, but he was too busy. Steeeve offered to croon, but he couldn’t be loud while the kids were sleeping. So the honor fell to Kynophile, who did a fantastic job. I really love the horns a lot, which are from EastWest’s Composer Cloud. They sound fantastic!
I guess that’s pretty much it. I hope you enjoy the episode, and I hope maybe you start thinking about what kinds of cool things you wanna do as a zoo!
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What zoo projects are you most excited about? Got an idea for a project of your own? Let us know in the comments, or e-mail us!
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S3E12 Three Years of ZooTT!
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Thoughts About the Episode
Sorry for being so late! It’s been a busy week, and it doesn’t seem like that’s going to change any time soon. I have a few projects I’m working on in addition to the podcast, and I hope they bear fruit and are useful for everyone!
Season 3 has been pretty intense! It’s a lot of heavy topics with very few of what Tugs would call “Tentpole Episodes,” or episodes that are light and fluffy and help the audience take a break from big topics. So we wanted to end on something a bit lighter, less scripted, and fun for everyone. We also had a backlog of emails to get through, so it was a good chance to get it all done and celebrate a successful season. I also wanted it to be no more than an hour and a half, rather than the big, monolithic 3 hour blocks we’ve done for a lot of this season. We set a timer for the email responses to make sure we weren’t rambling on too much, and I gotta say, this was one of the easiest episodes to actually edit. I definitely want more like this, but it can be hard when you have two hours of solid topic material to get through, like with OPSEC.
The Ask Zooey question is one of my favorites in a while. The question was submitted by a listener who responded to our call for writers with experience with horses, and it allowed us to give really solid animal care advice. It’s fun, light, and informative, and it’s a great way to close out the season. I’m very happy with it!
I had been thinking of how to do something worthy of a finale, and I remembered Zipwok’s song from S3E2. I reached out to see if he could record a clear version of the guitars, and had him throw in some vocals as well. I got a friend of the podcast to play an improvised trumpet line, put together an arrangement, and got as many people as I could from the show to record vocals. I think it lands pretty solidly at the end of the episode, so huge thanks to Zipwok for helping me put that project together. And thanks to Doodle and Arlo for giving me some main vocals to work with, as well!
A couple of big things: one is that we are doing a survey to collect feedback from listeners, and we’d like your input! We wanna make improvements to the show, so we wanna know what you love and what you hate! Here’s the link:
Second, I get a lot of folks asking me where they can find groups for zoos on Discord, and I highly recommend against using Discord in the first place. There’s some decent telegram groups, though, and I think I good public one is ZooFurs Unity. It’s not a porn chat, to be clear, but if you wanna just talk to other zoos, it’s very active, and there are some decent people there. Give it a try!
Zoo Furs Unity ?
Zoo Telegram's best! We help zoos build connections and unite under common cause. For our rules and more: https://t.me/ZFUGuidepostt.me
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What are your favorite moments from Season 3? What kinds of things do you want to see in Season 4? Let us know in the comments, or e-mail us!
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S3E11. The Safety Dance 2022!
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S3E11 The Safety Dance 2022!
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Thoughts About the Episode
Gosh, honestly, I’m not sure what to say about this episode. I didn’t really have much to do with it.
I guess I start by saying that Season 3 has been going hard and heavy from episode one. There’s been a pretty clear arc, a line from topic to topic where the next one is set up in the topic before it, and that’s been quite purposeful. A lot of that is thanks to Aqua and Mike, who are this season’s new zoo voices we’ve added to the team. I do love that every season we bring in new people who give the show fresh perspective. I hope that trend continues. We’re going to really need to constantly update the podcast art, though. Gosh!
Aqua’s been thinking about doing an episode on OPSEC for some time, and now was finally the time. We needed to give Mike the time off from hosting and writing and doing literally everything, so it ended up being Kynophile’s turn to do hosting and writing and literally everything. Aqua has been putting ideas together for some time, so he came super prepared to deliver this topic, and it’s probably one of the most important ones we’ve done given how many people are coming online to represent themselves as zoos. There was so much to cover that we’re probably going to have to do a few bonus episodes to dive deeper into certain aspects of OPSEC, but this is a pretty good overview, so I encourage you to listen to it.
We finally got the dog scientist Twitter skit done, and I’m pretty happy with it. Not too much to say about it except that it’s good, and I hope you like it!
Kynophile’s been sitting on this rap for a long time, and it’s probably the best one he’s written. He based it off an epic rap battle of history, and he’s got some pretty smart rhyme schemes going. I got another friend who likes rap to contribute her voice, and I think she did pretty well. I had to chop up a 4/4 beat to make it 6/8 to fit my part. It’s surprisingly difficult to find 6/8 rap beats that are royalty free. I hope you enjoy it!
This is a good episode, but other than a bit of writing, I wasn’t super involved in this one, which is kind of nice. I hope that gets to be a trend! You’ve pretty much heard enough of Toggle’s voice. I want to let other zoos’ voices take front and center. Thanks to everyone for stepping up and getting everything done on time.
Before I forget, I can’t post this without giving a shout out to ZetaOpSec on twitter, who has worked with an artist to produce some fantastic cartoons for furries and zoos about OPSEC. If you haven’t checked it out, please do, even if you don’t have twitter. Here’s some great threads:
If you have Twitter, be sure to follow and RT. This is fantastic information that all zoos — and furries — should see.
Hmm, what else? Got a few bites from some horse zoos about contributing writing and segments, so I’m hoping to put them to work. We’ll see if I’m successful. We really don’t have a lot of horse zoo representation on the show since Fausty died, and while Doodle is a wealth of knowledge and insight, he’s not usually available to contribute his voice or write scripts.
I guess that’s about it! The next episode is the last of Season 3, and we’re going to try to keep it light and easy.
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Did you learn anything new from this episode? Do you have your own OPSEC tips to share? Let us know in the comments, or e-mail us!
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S3E10 Life Isn't Over
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Thoughts About the Episode
I need to start by thanking our cast and crew for putting this episode together while I was on vacation. This episode would not have happened without everyone stepping up to get it done, and it’s fantastic to boot. So let’s start with the episode.
For my part, I made sure to get any writing I was responsible for done before I left for MFF. Me and Mike the Dog got together to write the intro and outro, and Mike had a note in our project manager about a skit based on this image:
Somehow we banged out a silly poem, and I got a friend of mine from Down Under to read it for us. It turned out really well, I think :3
Lovecat pulled out the Secret Zoo this time, and that, too, turned out pretty nicely. I’m happy to say that apparently my editing brought out exactly what he had hoped to accomplish, so that’s a big plus. I think family and love are good themes for a holiday episode, wouldn’t you agree? I’m proud of everyone for putting it together!
Kynophile came up with a silly parody of what might be the most poorly-aged Christmas song ever featured in a classic children’s movie, Be Prepared to Pay. I’ll leave you to look it up and find out why. I was worried about it at first, but Kynophile managed to arrange it in a way that was fun and carefree. It turned out great, I think, especially considering how much of a rush we were in to put together the track. Seriously, we couldn’t have pulled it off without all the hard work everyone put in.
And then there’s the meat of the episode, the topic. Sigma and Canis proposed this topic some months back, and we felt it would fit in well during the holiday season, a season of hope in the face of adversity, when we have to huddle together and weather the cold while looking forward to brighter, warmer days. Someone from our humble forum on ZC wrote in about their experiences being doxxed a few months back, and I felt it made a perfect pairing with the theme. Thanks for sharing your experiences, because I think people really need to hear that our worst fears are survivable. And big thanks to Canis Gnosis for being vulnerable for a second time on our podcast. This topic turned out to be super substantial, and I’m very very pleased with how it turned out.
It’s worth noting the myriad technical difficulties the crew dealt with while I was out of town, losing entire hours’ worth of recordings, dropping connections, and general difficulties getting through the process. And despite all the setbacks, they managed to put together one of our finest episodes, I think. Thanks for your patience and perseverance!
And now, briefly, let’s talk about how fucking amazing my MFF trip was! Man, I really needed this vacation. On every leg of the trip, I got to stop and meet another zoo and hang out with them, which was truly a privilege. And that’s not to speak of the bunch of zoos I met while at con! I got to witness some of the grassroots efforts other zoos are doing within the furry fandom and spend time with some very impressive and admirable people. I also finally got a proper zeta pin, and I’m displaying it proudly wherever I go! Shout out to the zoo who was giving those away! And let’s be real, I also got to fool around with a lot of really neat people, to boot! This isn’t the forum for getting explicit, but suffice it to say, I had a blast. Then, it was off to spend time with friends for the following week. One of them introduced me to a new video game that’s like Mother 3 with the nightmare fuel turned up to 11. It’s really a blast, and there are tons of secret bosses and hidden dungeons with creepy and powerful enemies. I also got to spend time with Kyon, ZeMen, and some of there friends and try a vegan pizza place local to them. All in all, it was everything I wanted and more, and it was exactly the recharge I needed.
I guess that wraps it up! Happy Saturnalia, animal people! I hope this season finds you well <3
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Have you survived a difficult trial as a zoo? Are you going through a difficult time now and could use some encouragement? Let us know in the comments, or e-mail us!
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S3E9 So What's the Deal with Veganism?
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Thoughts About the Episode
It’s been a very long month for me, putting out various fires, putting together the podcast, all while trying to help guide the launch of a North-American version of ZETA Verein with Sigma and Sappho, among others. Folks, I am worn out, but I’m relieved to have this episode finished, and with MFF on the horizon and a four-day weekend for Thanksgiving, I’m getting the vacation I need very soon.
As we were working on the animal activism episode, Aqua’s research led him to wanting to discuss veganism on a future episode. Lovecat had originally planned to do something similar last December, but found that there was some tension in discussing the topic among zoos and opted to lay down the foundations that led us to choosing that path instead. This time, however, with several listener emails broaching the topic and everything this season easily leading up to this discussion, the time seemed right. Lovecat was worried as we approached the deadline that we wouldn’t have enough to discuss, but I’d say after whittling down a 3 hour discussion, we had plenty to say, and all of us are pretty happy with how it turned out. I like to think we approached the topic in a way that isn’t off-putting; while LC is fully vegan, Aqua hasn’t yet sworn off meat and dairy, while I have autistic food hang-ups that make certain things difficult for me, and I think that makes this discussion really human. We wanted to be approachable and encouraging without condemning zoos for not being vegan, and while also acknowledging actual barriers to entry. Let us know if we achieved that!
These Ask Zooey questions are getting difficult! I think we did a decent job of giving advice as a group, and I hope it’s very helpful for the sad good boy who wrote in. It’s interesting how this has kind of evolved from a tongue-in-cheek, raunchy comedy sketch to being actual zooey relationship advice, and I suppose that’s a natural progression as the show evolves and more people are asking for real advice. Still, I’d love to have time to actually hash out some funny animal entries again like we used to. I think there’s really just not enough comedy in this episode overall — topical banter excluded.
Honestly, I just didn’t have a lot of time to write, and there wasn’t really anyone else available to write this month, either, so we’re light on content. Not that we needed much more with our massive topic discussion! But it’s nice to change the pace with different sketches now and then. Fortunately, Shiv saved the day with their new song, In June! They asked us to feature it on the show just as we were about to ask if we could, so that worked out splendidly. And boy, it’s a really good song! I enjoy it a lot! I think it might be really cool to consistently feature other bands doing zooey music on the show so it’s not just me and Kynophile doing it every time. Gonna have to hit up Zipwok for more tunes, too.
If you missed it, there’s another forum trying to get started called myzetaspace.com. It’s got a different focus from ZooCommunity in that it aims to be a more adult space, but with strict guidelines in terms of making sure there’s no abusive material. It wants to build up to be an alternative to ZooVille, so give it a go if you have the chance. As we mentioned, they recently did an event featuring zooey music, including Zipwok and ZooTT, and it went over pretty well. New forums are difficult to get off the ground, and they need support and content, so if you have some time and some topics, help fill up their board!
There’s probably plenty more to say, but frankly, I’m really tired. I need some time off, so I think I’m gonna start right about now. Enjoy!
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Are you vegan? Are you considering going vegan after our episode? Let us know in the comments, or e-mail us!
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S3E8 Howloween 2021!
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Thoughts About the Episode
Sorry this one is so late! It’s been a really, really busy week as we work to make very large changes to the way our website functions. When we’re done, it will look more or less the same, but it will be faster and more reliable. You may have already noticed that episodes are loading faster, since we’ve moved all the files somewhere a bit sturdier with longer uptime. Anyway, it’s a big project, so it’s taking a lot of free time. On to the fun stuff.
I wanted to get through a lot of emails with this one, which I think we did successfully — though we accidentally addressed an email that we’d already addressed previously. Ah well, these things happen. I need to get more organized when it comes to emails. I think Zemen and Steeeve did a great job hosting, though, so shout out to them!
We like to do fun stuff with the community on Howloween, and every year has included skits submitted from members of the community. This year was no different, with a pretty impressive Twilight Zone-style skit that I think has all the characteristics of Rod Serling’s work — the way it builds, the character types, and that sense of cold and callous poetic justice. Well done, zooey writer! There was some concern that perhaps we were indulging a bit too much in schadenfreude with this one, but I don’t get that sense. I don’t think you’re particularly rooting for either of the characters, because both are kind of shitty in their own way, and at least on my part, I don’t particularly revel in the protagonist’s situation as much as enjoy the progression of the information being delivered. Perhaps some people feel that way, but I kind of hope not. I’m pleased with this one. It’s not the type of skit we could have pulled off with our own writing team, I feel, and that’s part of why I love getting these submissions from listeners. (The other part is getting new people involved and airing new zooey voices!)
The other skit I’m quite pleased with, as it was a collaboration between me and Sappho. If you haven’t heard somehow, Sappho came out on her hypnosis YouTube channel, and it garnered a lot of attention online. I recall she told me ahead of time that she planned to do it, and I cautioned that coming out publicly is very different from coming out to a friend or a family member, and that she would need a very robust social network to survive such an endeavor. I kind of expected it would be some time before it happened. Suddenly, she was like, “Hey, wanna be on my show for coming out, right now?” and I was like, “I’m a bit too busy to do a voice chat right now,” and that same day she’d posted a coming out video. It happened pretty fast! I have to say, it’s not bad! I would have done it differently myself, but in terms of being positive, informative, and appealing to non-zoos, I think it hit the mark pretty well. Whoever you are that was interviewed, nice job, all things considered. Original reactions were very positive, but of course, once the trolls found it, the channel was inundated with negativity. Sappho’s been through a lot since then, but she’s holding up remarkably well, and her initiative is pretty impressive. She’s got a drive for activism that I hope doesn’t burn out too quickly, and she seems receptive to counsel from others, which is wise. I’m hoping she’s able to do great things for the community.
I will say, things got a little vorny this episode, unexpectedly, with both skits having elements of vore fantasy in them. My real goal with Sappho’s skit was to be as accurate as possible regarding hypnosis, while retaining an element of horror — it’s Howloween, after all! Sappho gave me a crash course, and I employed the advice she gave in the script. Honestly, I wasn’t sure what I was going to write, and the one we used was not the first scenario I’d come up with. I decided on a place that was open and public, but private and relaxing, and started there. Somewhere along the line, I decided there was going to be some kind of monster haunting the protagonist, an inner zooey demon or something. And then suddenly I was writing hypnovore, so I just leaned into that as heavily as possible. And then suddenly, the character was therian, and you know what? This is Halloween, so we’re going to let him transform into a bear. It’s one of those things that came into being while it was being created, spontaneous rather than planned. And it works well! Lord, I’ve gotten some comments about how horny this skit is, let me tell you x3 Apparently, for one person, I basically hit every single button. Unexpected, but once I realized what I was doing, I just went for it x3 And it helps that Sappho has the \*perfect\* voice for riling people up. Also, no shortage of accolades to Mike the Dog, who gave a pretty great performance, as well!
Our Samhain ritual went well, and I hope it brought some comfort. I know a lot of us have lost loved ones recently. We even got a random entry for a dedication to Fausty, which was a surprise. There’s not a lot to say, since it’s not really a creative process, but I think it came out well.
Finally, I decided a couple of months ago I wanted to write a song to pair with the Samhain ritual, and the piece that stuck out in my mind was Left Behind from Spring Awakening. You’ll note structural elements lifted directly from this piece, if you’ve got a good ear.
Track 14- Left Behind
Track fourteen of Spring Awakening's original broadway soundtrack. Jonathan Groff (Melchior) & company sings Left Behind. No copyright infringement intended....
I also pulled some elements of the chord progression from the verse of Last Dinosaur by The Pillows. I felt like it had a bittersweet quality to it, and it really works here, imo.
Arlo came in and brought elements from Godspell’s In the Willows, mapping out a basic melody and putting together some lyrics. I tweaked the melody a bit and adapted the lyrics to fit, and I leaned heavily into sentimentality for the progression of the music. I’m hoping the build-up and release, immediately following the quietude of the ritual, served to be emotionally stirring. Arlo took the lead on vocals, and I think he does a very nice job, here. This song definitely wouldn’t be the same without his contributions. I hope you enjoyed it!
Well, I’ve blathered on for quite some time now, so I’m gonna end it here, I think. The next full moon is November 19! See you there!
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Did you find value in our Samhain ritual? Did the hypnosis skit push your buttons? Let us know in the comments, or e-mail us!
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S3E7 What Matters Most
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Thoughts About the Episode
We’ve been planning this episode as a natural progression from s3e5’s discussion, and we had planned to set it up during that episode, but it didn’t quite land as a set up. Still, I think we have enough preamble to make the connection clear. Gays had marriage as a bridge issue, and we feel that our bridge issue is mostly likely going to be animal rights. Big thanks to Aqua for really pulling this together, in addition to everyone else that helped contribute to and refine our discussion. We had tons of links, so please be sure to check out the links either on YouTube or on our actual website.
I’m pretty happy with the discussion to be honest. Something I’ve been thinking about is when someone mentioned to me that they didn’t feel like they were a real zoo because they weren’t really gung ho about animal rights activism, and frankly, I don’t think activism is something you just naturally fall into. I also don’t think that the values we discuss on our podcast are natural conclusions people might draw after growing up in western society. We have to do a lot of unlearning as zoos, and while this process may come more naturally to some than it does to others, I think having a community pushing you toward these higher values is a key component to fostering them within oneself. We are largely the sum of our outside influences, and if you’ve not been exposed to the horrors of factory farming, for instance, there’s very little pressure to acknowledge it outside of our community. So I hope that zoos don’t feel alienated by our discussion because they don’t feel connected enough to activism, and I also hope that they’re open to learning more about it and understanding why it matters.
I finally get to talk about this rap I’ve been sitting on for two months. I’m super stoked with my verse, if I’m honest. It could potentially be the best one I’ve written yet, in terms of rhyme schemes, wordplay, and setup/punchline. Maybe I won’t feel like that in the future, but I’m really digging the way it sounds right now. Kynophile reworked his verse just a very small bit, and I think it’s even better than before, particularly with one line that’s really fast and has a ton of alliteration as a result of his changes. He snuck in a bunch of Sondheim references fairly seamlessly, so it was a neat concept for him.
I think for both of our verses, there is a lot about our own interests and personalities that show through. I likened mine to a sort of introduction, and I think Kyno’s follows suit in that you get a sense of what he’s about. However, they’re very different otherwise, and I was trying to think of a hook to unify them together. Thinking about my verse, which revels in rebellion, I thought about the skateboard trick No Comply as a really neat title. A No Comply is basically a way of getting air with your board without doing an Ollie. You put your front foot on the ground and use your back foot to pop the board into the air. I started thinking about what kind of skateboard trick might represent Kynophile’s verse, and I recognized he talks about three kinds of grinds. He speaks about mundane office work — “the grind,” as it were; he discusses performing in musicals, which is his own personal bread and butter; and he talks about physical intimacy — you might grind against a partner while fooling around. I thought it would be a nice innuendo to talk about a tailgrind. One small problem: what might be considered a tailgrind in skateboarding — which is when only your back trucks are grinding against the coping or rail — is actually called a 5-0 grind — referencing half of a 50-50 grind, which is both trucks on the coping. In other words, “tailgrind” doesn’t really exist. The closest we have to work with is a tailslide — a grind using the tail of the board across the rail — so that’s what I went with. A No Comply Tailslide is a pretty standard No Comply trick that looks pretty neat, so it’s a canon skateboard framework. In Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, you would see this written out as No Comply + Tailslide, so I kept that format in homage to a game that really defined a part of my childhood and cemented my love for punk and hip hop.
To tie it all together, I wrote a short hook that has double entendre — it both describes how to perform a No Comply Tailslide, and it also references defiance and innuendo as it relates to the two verses of the song. It might be the closest to being Aesop Rock that I’ll ever get xD It’s catchy as hell, and I’m pretty happy with it.
How-To Skateboarding: No Comply Tailslide with Steve Reeves
Learn a new trick each and every day from top pros. You'll get step by step instructions on how to master every trick in skateboarding!This week Steve Reeves...
Lastly, I think the Ask Zooey for this episode fits with the overall discussion, and I love when that happens. But boy, was it a tough one to answer. Y’all keep giving us really difficult questions! But the scenarios we find ourselves in as zoos are often complicated as fuck. I find it telling that sometimes it’s the way we stick our necks out for animals that makes people suspicious. I’m thinking of one particular zoo who was confronted by a furry in their community literally because they talk about animal rights too often. Imagine being a furry suspicious that someone is a zoophile because they care too much about animal welfare. It’s wild to me that you can use that as evidence to ostracize someone on grounds that zoos are bad actually. That’s complex enough, but throw in stories of zoos trying unsuccessfully to advocate for animals in very dire situations and not being able to overstep their bounds for fear of either getting caught or not being allowed to look after those animals’ interests in the future. That’s devastating. I hope we were able to give good advice. Thanks for sending us your questions, folks.
Next month is Halloween, and traditionally we do emails and skits, and also a Samhain ritual. If you’re creative, or even just have skit ideas, please send them to us before October 8th. We are also accepting eulogies and remembrances for our Samhain ritual, so if you have a lost loved one you want to speak to across the veil, please send us either audio or text to eulogies@zoo.wtf by October 8th.
The next full moon is October 20! See you there!
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Do you have experience with animal rights activism? Are you wondering how to get involved? Let us know in the comments, or e-mail us!
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Listen @ zoo.wtf
S3E6 Coming Out 2021
Subscribe to the podcast at rss.zoo.wtfSubscribe to bonus content at bonus.zoo.wtfFollow us on twitter:@ZooierThanThou@OneBigGrumpyRat@MeowofLove@CanisGnosis...youtu.be
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Thoughts About the Episode
I’m posting this one a week late, since I was out of town last weekend when the episode came out. I thought I’d write on the plane or at the airport, but it turned out I was destined to just sleep the whole time. :
This episode, we were committed to taking things easy, both on ourselves and on our listeners. I needed to get the episode done at least a week early so it was ready to launch while I was out of town, and we were keenly aware of potential listener fatigue. Thus, we didn’t want to do any heavy topics with lengthy discussion, and we wanted to keep the episode at about an hour and a half in length. We weren’t sure what we were going to do the show about, but a few listener emails that came in right around that time sealed the deal. Blackbird, who is here on ZooCommunity, wrote in about his experience coming out to his parents, and with the number of emails about coming out that were coming in, we thought it was about time to talk about it again. I still wanted to make sure we got a well-rounded look at the topic, rather than just saying, “Coming Out is sunshine and roses!” so I don’t know that this is an easy topic, but the array of emails we had allowed us to cover the good and the bad. I think we did a decent job, and we really have our listeners to thank for that one.
I think the highlight of this episode for me, other than the great discussion, is the Dog Science skit. When Aqua and I were discussing it, he mentioned he had this really shitty “Nut” button on his desk, and we decided that HAD to be a part of the skit. We also got to share our love of old Mac culture and played around with really old MacinTalk plug ins. In the end, we decided to go with the female MacinTalk voice for most of them, and save the male voice for the Nut button. Without being prompted, Kynophile took time to put together some male button voices, so I used his “Nut,” and I think it came out great. I just laugh my ass off at that “Nut. Nut nut nut nut.” We’d love to do more of these, so if anyone has ideas, we’re all ears!
I wrote a rap for this episode that I’m really very happy with, and Kynophile came through with a rap that referenced 17 different Sondheim songs throughout, but we weren’t able to get a good recording in time for the episode. Rather than put out a half-assed production, I opted to save it for next time after reworking a couple of parts. I’m very excited about it, though!
I wanted to grab a few oldies for this episode, and I happened to notice that Loose Rocket Cop was supposed to come out in Summer 2021 when we originally aired it. It’s still one of my favorite skits, so I changed the ending so it was like it had just come out and popped that in. I also grabbed one of the secret zoos from S2E12 because it felt very relevant to the topic.
Finally, our Ask Zooey question actually came from right here on ZooCommunity, so thank you for allowing us to give it a try! It was actually incredibly tough to answer, but honestly it’s something that a lot of us deal with, a partner that’s not interested in us the way we are in them. At some point, I realized that this was analogous to having an asexual partner (not one-to-one, but similar), so I started looking into resources related to that to help answer this one. It’s really tough, cuz as someone who is an unabashed slut who fucks a lot of people, the answer seems obvious. But I know from experience that promiscuity isn’t a viable solution for a lot of people. I hope that we were able to be helpful here for anyone who’s in that kind of relationship.
Thanks for listening and contributing to our discussion. You are the reason we are able to do what we do. See you in September!
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Have you come out to anyone important in your life? Are you afraid of coming out? Let us know in the comments, or e-mail us!
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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 Twitter @ZooierThanThou, @OneBigGrumpyRat, @MeowofLove
You can contact us using the anonymous web form at zoo.wtf