Casters on Casters: John Moe and Brenda Snell

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Welcome to Casters on Casters. Conversations about the art and craft of podcasting

with the masters of the media, the magicians of the microphone, the titans of tightening up

silences on today's show John Mo of depression mode and Brenda Snell of secret histories of

nerd mysteries. Well, Brenda K, it's so nice to talk with you to do a crossover episode.

Yeah, I don't think we've done anything together before. Have we? No, no, this is this is the

magic of maximum fun where these, you know, especially during the drive when when there's a sort of

crossover kind of thing. We learn about each other. We we become a network because we don't

all sit in one big room together at computers, making our shows. We're all over the place.

I'm way out in Michigan. My show is one of the newer shows on the network. We do like pop culture,

history, deep dives, pretty much anything I want to talk about. I will make it pop culture-related

so I get to talk about it. Okay. And the name of your show. So everybody gets that locked into

secret histories of nerd mysteries. You have to say it like that every time. What are some of the

nerd mysteries that you have solved or at least explored the secret histories? Yeah, so we've talked

about like the weird history of Chuck E. Cheese, like how crazy that was. We've talked about the

real-life Simpsons house, which was given away in the 90s, defunct video games. We've talked

about, okay, I think what's another Neopets? That's one of our best episodes. Did you do the ET

Atari video game? We touched on it briefly because we talked about we haven't done a specific

episode on the video game crash that that that game led up to, but I don't know. Maybe that's

coming during the drive. Maybe that's maybe that's on the way. You know, I'm kind of conflicted

because I use two different voices for the two shows that I that I host. One of them is

sleeping with celebrities. And in that one, I always tell the guests before we start taping

that I'm going to go into character as a sort of 70s NPR jazz station announcer. So it's very much

down here. And I talked to the sleepyheads. And we have we've had all sorts of guests. The idea,

it's, you know, this is, I don't know, this is your experience. Sometimes a joke gets out of hand

and becomes an entire show. Because you just can't let it go. So, so we talked with celebrities

who we then asked to drone on and on about things until they fell, until the listener falls asleep.

And so we had Alan Tudic on, who's, as I understand it, a nerd superhero with the actor

Tudic. And we explained the premise of the show. And he said, Oh, so like my yardstick collection.

What? Yes, Alan Tudic. Yes. And so he talks for 45 minutes about his yardstick collection.

We wanted to do a Super Bowl episode. And so we had the most the delist position in football.

We could think of which was the punter. So we had a former NFL punter come on and explain

how to punter football. And do you think it takes an hour to explain how to punter football?

Brenda, um, I imagine it wouldn't, but I'm going to say it does.

It, it doesn't, it takes much longer. It goes on and on and on. So that, that's one show. And then I

host the fresh mode with John Moe, which is a mental health show. We talked with celebrities

about their mental health journey. Um, you know, we've had David Siderison. We've had Jamie

Lee Curtison. And we talked about interesting breakthroughs in managing mental health. And,

and lately we've been talking a lot about how to manage your mental health in the face of a

world that's gone crazy. What is your research process for either of your podcasts? Like,

I know depression mode probably takes like a good chunk of research.

Yeah, I mean, that's one where we, you know, either we come across a famous person, we get

pitched to famous person who has an interesting story to tell about about their mental health journey.

Sometimes, um, you know, we, I found that just about everybody has some sort of mental health

journey. So we kind of look to people who fascinate us or, you know, if there's some big break

through entreatment or understanding of different mental health issues, anything that could kind of

help a person, help a listener navigate their own mental health. We're like, you know, is this a

story that is going to have a benefit for some is a story that after listening to it is going to

make you understand yourself or the world or give you a little bit more hope than that counts.

And with sleeping with celebrities, we often just think of people we love.

Maybe people who have a nice drone to their voice, people who can go deep on something.

But I think we've had some, some guests in common. We've, um, we've had Jamie Loftus on the show,

and she talked about, about Neo-Patrick, which you've, you've mentioned. What, what goes into

your shows? How do you figure out what you're going to talk about? And then, like, it seems like a lot

of research for, for that show as well. Yeah, we kind of have like an untraditional format where

we switch off. So I have a co-host on my show Austin, who's one of my best friends in the world.

So one week Austin picks a topic. And I don't know what that topic's going to be. So it's a surprise

when I roll into the show. And then the next week, I'll pick a topic. And I'd like to say there's

like some really involved process when it comes to picking topics. But usually like right before I

have to start doing the research, I'll be like, yeah, that's it. And then the way I do it is I

essentially, I will write like a whole script out. And then I just kind of pick from it while I'm

like doing the episode. What are some episodes of your show that are just burned into your mind,

either because they were absolute hits or that they were just incredibly deeply challenging and

in an unexpected way. I'm trying to think I think the episode I did I did a two part

of it on the thief and the cobbler. It's an animated movie that never ended up really getting

released in the format I was supposed to. And so it's the animated movie with the longest production

cycle in history. I figured because me and Austin are like really interested in animations

specifically. And like we watch a lot of cartoons. I figured Austin would know about it.

No clue. Never heard of it. So I'm just speaking with these facts and Austin is losing their mind

just like absolutely blown away by how crazy this was. And it was so fun just being like saying

a fact that I've known for a long time and sharing it with my friend and having them be like,

what do you mean? What do you mean? This movie took 30 years to produce.

I think of one episode we did with on sleeping with celebrities. We had Lindy West, the writer and

her friend Megan Hatcher Maze and they do some podcasts together. And they wanted to come on

and rank witches. It was a Halloween episode. They wanted to give me their top witches in all of

literature and film and pop culture in general. And they ended up taking what I thought was

unexpected position in favor of the witch from Hansel and Gretel whose intention is to at

least bake. And I think the titular Hansel and Gretel. And so I you know it's I come from public

radio. I've done political debate shows before. I was in the unexpected position of having to

advocate against baking and eating children. And and it was it was almost not a fair fight because

they were tag team. Like they were just going at me in the pro witch position. Which is not

somewhere I ever expected to be. I mean in the in the on the the other hand with depression. That's

gone in in some unexpected ways too. We we did a show several years ago now with Joel Kim Booster

who's an incredibly funny comedian and actor. He's in K-pop demon hunters. And so I was expecting

to do a show about comedy with him. And we happened to catch him at an absolute low point

in his mental health in a deep depressive state where you know we've had people cancel because

they just can't do the interview. But he did the interview anyway. And it was a glimpse

into the darkest darkness of depression that in 10 years of interviewing people on that topic.

I had never seen. And and it was it was bleak as hell. And then we we ended up doing you know

after so many listener inquiries. We did a follow up episode a few years later where Joel was

doing much much better and could explain why he had been in rough shape back then. So it was

it was really a marathon that we that we went on with Joel. And and it's one that he points to

now is like you know after that show aired I got all these people contacting me. I got all

these people worried about me people you know friends and strangers and it was a real turnaround

for his mental health. So you know we we turn with our guests we turn on the microphones and we

sometimes prep for the interview we think we're going to have. But then sometimes we just throw away

the notes and go with whatever's being talked about. What what about listener feedback and kind

of fans service. I know all of our shows on on max fun. Like it feels like we just happen to be

the hosts. But it's almost like we're hosts at a party like it's a community with all the people

who are listening. What do you hear from from your listeners from your your fans? What's your

community? I think we have a great community. I love them so much. I'll get messages every week

from like a couple of them who like ask follow up questions about the episode or tell me about like

they're like something they experience in a Jason City episode. So for like example we just did

an episode on steel the DC superhero movie from the 90s that starred Shaq and Shaq and one of our

fans who messaged with me on blue sky pretty often came in and was like oh Shaq Shaq super nice

like you're right he's like really cool to work with he was like my favorite person who would

come by my work and it was just like it was just nice to hear that and like get that extra feedback.

I know that like pop culture and like fandom spaces can be like really volatile but we so far

have had like a pretty good pretty good experience with everyone everyone's super cool and really nice

and yeah I love them so much. I was we did our first ever live show with sleeping with celebrities

in San Francisco in January and my driver that took me to the venue was telling me about working

on a commercial years ago with Shaq and there was a car that was blocking their shot and they

needed to move this car but the the the woman whose car was it it wouldn't started needed like

a compression start like to get it rolling and then and then it would start and so they were trying

to push this car but it was kind of stuck on something and this woman was like behind the wheel

trying to try to get the car going and then all of a sudden in she sees in her rear view mirror

this enormous person looming and shoved the car free and like can you imagine like you need to

move your car and it doesn't work and then Shaq pushes it for you and then he appears he appears he

yeah he apperates and and then just cheerfully waved with the woman she pulled away.

wow it's pretty great yeah yeah yeah no we have I mean we have a lot of followers on

under pressure mode who are you know navigating mental health issues more and more actually because

we like if you've never dealt with a mental health issue in your life I mean God bless you

or you're lying or you don't you just don't know yet or you don't realize it yeah and you know

so we hear a lot from from those folks and you know it's a sort of we're all in this together thing

and then with sleeping we hear from people I mean everybody needs to sleep but we hear from

grateful insomniacs and we hear and we just hear from the drowsy like you know drowsy people get

in touch with us until it's what they think and and we've got a pretty good policy too of like

hey suggest somebody for us and if they're close enough to being a celebrity and we think we

can get them probably not Bruce Springsteen let us know and we'll we'll give him a call we've

gotten some great guests that route as well well Brennan it's been so fun to learn about about

your show and and you know this is kind of what's fun about the drive too is is that we

we get to all meet a little bit more and and have some discovery about just the incredible

variety of what's going on with maximum fun across the spectrum yeah this was super fun I like

because we all have really busy lives we all live in different places all over the country

sometimes internationally as well and this is the one time of year where we're like yeah we're

all gonna hang out we're all gonna meet each other in some form well you know thank you everybody

for for listening to this very special and important podcasting event on behalf of me and

Brenda and everybody at maximum fun if you enjoy what we do if you want to join a community

of cool folks I'm putting cool and I because you know we're we're nerds also though really

radical people radical yeah shredders or something and if you want to support independent creators

like like me like Brenda like everybody at maximum fun just visit maximumfun.org slash joint

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