In my previous post, I mentioned that I had been a guest on four different podcasts over the past few years. I also realized that I had never posted links to all four of them or talked about them. I thought I’d take a moment to do exactly that in this post.
The very first podcast I was on was The Wormhole Manifest, which first went live in December of 2021. I actually got this particular interview because a mutual acquaintance, Frankie, had been on the podcast herself and recommended me as a potential guest. So Wormhole Matt contacted me and set something up.
Entering the Wormhole with Matt was probably the wildest and most random podcast interview I ever gave. This is because Matt’s podcast has a very loose focus and tends to cover alternative lifestyles. This was fun because we got to talk about things like popular myths about Paganism and witchcraft as well as pop culture references to witchcraft and my thoughts on them. Matt and I have talked about doing a follow-up episode where we focus on witchcraft in pop culture. Assuming he’s still interested in that, I’m the one dragging my feet at this point. I feel like I need to get caught up with a lot of recent pop culture portrayals (I have yet to watch American Horror Story: Coven even) before I can do such an episode justice.
The next podcast I recorded for an interview — though it was the third one to be released — was for the Poema Podcast. That podcast is hosted by James Prescott, who I know through Twitter and online deconstruction spaces. His podcast focuses on spirituality and many of his guests — myself included — have been former evangelicals discussing new ways that they have found to embrace and explore spirituality. My interview with James aired in June of 2022.
While I was waiting for the Poema podcast interview to be published, I did another interview, this time for the Thereafter podcast, which came out in May of 2022. Thereafter is hosted by Meghan Crozier and Cortland Coffey, both of whom I also knew through Twitter and online deconstruction spaces. In fact, I used to participate in Meghan’s deconstruction book club. This interview focused primarily on my journey out of evangelical Christianity and Christianity in general and how I found a new spiritual home in Paganism as a devotee of the goddess Freyja. This is probably the interview I am proudest of because it’s the one I found myself feeling most confident during.
After that, I went silent. I’m not the kind to go seeking interview opportunities (though I’ve considered changing that) and no one was approaching me. Then earlier this year, friend and grief counselor Mandy Capehart tagged me in a threads post letting me know that her colleague, Kim Evans-Handy (aka The Mocha Widow) was looking for guests to interview on her podcast for a series about how people from various religions and cultures viewed death and the grieving process. I contacted Kim and we set up an initial meet and greet. That went well, and we scheduled a time to record an interview, which she released back a March of this year. I’ve already done a separate post reflecting on my experience and feelings about that interview, so I’ll try not to rehash much of that here. What I will note is that this was an interesting and different interview than the other three (and I tried to keep each of them unique) in that it was not so much about my personal spiritual journey. Instead it was focused (or at least was supposed to be) more on a particular subject and how I viewed it based on my spiritual path. I’d love to do interviews on other focused topics like that if I ever run across a podcast that covers a topic I’d be interested in and feel I have something to say about.
Of course, the other thing that made this interview stand out from the first three was that it was the first time I appeared on a video podcast. The previous three had all been audio-only podcasts. I didn’t realize this one would include video until about a couple minutes before we began recording. Fortunately, my hair didn’t look too unkempt and I don’t think there were any (noticeable) stains on my shirt. But I learned an important lessons: Next time I agree to appear on a podcast, I need to verify the intended medium for the episode ahead of time!
Overall, I’ve found that I enjoy being a guest on podcasts. I’d love to be guests on more of them, and I’d absolutely do a follow-up episode on any of the four I’ve already been on. In fact, I did appear on another episode of Thereafter, though not as the episode’s guest. Cortland and Meghan had to record the introductory segment and discussion of recent social media happenings (“TwitBits”) the same night they recorded my interview. One of the things they planned to discuss (I don’t remember what) was something I had some knowledge about, so they invited me to participate in that recording as well.
As for new appearing on other podcasts. I guess that would require me to find other podcasts and possibly expressing an interest in appearing on them. I have a few hang-ups about that I’d have to get over first, but I’m absolutely considering it. Of course, I’m not sure how open most podcast hosts are to people contacting them about being on their show. I feel like the ones I’ve been on would be pretty open to it, as long as the person inquiring actually fit the theme of their show. So trying to get on a cooking podcast to talk about love spells probably wouldn’t go so well for me, for example.
