Here is the Bittorrent link and direct MP3 download for the EGC episode for December 6, 2004.
I discuss my fears of what happens when I put out so few episodes; I play a song from Paul Melancon; I don’t want to be used as the negative example in any more episodes of How to Really Speak Spanish; I talk about the ongong dialogue with Tony Kahn; I tell a story about interviewing legendary comic book artist Joe Kubert; I play another song from Paul Melancon; and I talk about bit rates, sampling rates and file sizes.
Links mentioned in this episode:
Hey Dave,
I just listened to this latest “finding your better angels” EGC, and I totally support your point that the decent way individual podcasters treat eachother right now is a very good thing, more so cause it has become extremely rare in media in general.
However, you should not take that to mean that the anger and agression you have found in yourself are necessarily bad things that you should not put into your show. That just doesn’t follow from the argument. In fact, agression is a mechanism that brings people together, which is what you are aiming for, right?
Studies have shown that after agression there is far more positive contact between individuals then before or without it. Aggression attracts individuals, and brings them together. You already noticed this, in fact, you hit it spot on when you said that it seemed to be so that the more “foaming at the mouth mad”, agressive pieces you put out are always the ones that draw the most attention and generate feedback.
In fact, if you want to know more about agression as an attractive mechanism you should listen to a podcasted presentation from Frans de Waal called “Human Nature”, which was in IT conversations recently. [http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail231.html]
My point is, you have discovered that your anger is a part of yourself that you just have inside of you all of the time, like this glowing ember. So use it! Don’t try to stuff it away down deep somewhere because it’s not “nice”. Whoever said we have to be nice all the time and ignore essential emotions that we experience?
In fact, you were doing just great back there until just before you started questioning that piece of yourself.
Focus your anger, let it out, but use it in a good way I say. For instance, to provoke people into thinking about important subjects. You already know it works!
So keep it in your podcasts, cause it’s you. Keep ranting at stuff the way you did, but use the mechanism wisely. In fact; I’m looking forward to hearing your next rant 😉
Love your show, keep it up!
Jeroen
P.S. Oh I wish I had seen that notice about the spacing before posting. Sorry about that last post, it’s probably a terrible read this way.
P.P.S. Just bought Camera Obscura by Paul Melancon today via iTunes. Great stuff. And, if anyone gives you a hard time over playing those songs on the latest EGC, you can honestly say “Hey, it DID lead to album sales!” 🙂
Jeroen, that’s all thought provoking stuff. I’m still exploring the edges, but as you say maybe what I want to do is to learn to make the anger work for me, rather then me working for it. That’s an interesting notion, that maybe being crazy pissed off does as good a job at community building as being calm and rational. I have all those programs in my IT Conversations queue, which is long. I’ll get to them eventually, though.
That’s also cool about the Melancon sale. I really love that album and him as an artist. We saw a number of coffee house gigs with him before and just after that album came out, just him and an acoustic. In one, he noted that all the upbeat songs are really disguised sad songs and all the slow songs are disguised happy ones. Thanks for buying it, and I’m glad you like it.