An E! TV Production.


A dizzy blonde on a luxurious private jet, champagne glass in hand:

"Hello and a good day dear audience,
today we have been invited on the set of this year's surprise hit, The Everything2 Podcast.We will be travelling to the arse, er, end of the world on the south island of New Zealand to meet the man who made it all happen and get an inside view of the creative process and the technical wizardry that is behind the production of this endearing and enduring show that has Kelsey Grammer, Tom Selleck and Benazir Bhutto as its most devoted fans. My name is Lilo Stitch and I will be accompanying you for the next thirty minutes. So, sit back and relax and enjoy the show. We will soon be landing at Oamaru Airport."


Cut to small wooden cottage on non-descript beach side village. The camera follows the dizzy blonde to the front door.

"We are now here at the production offices and studio of the everything2 podcast. Let's see whether they are expecting us. "


Dizzy blonde knocks on door. After an embarassing 20 seconds a large, bald, unshaven man with a German accent opens the door in what appears to be his underwear.

"What in the world?"

"Hello Mr Heisenberg, I am Lilo Stitch from E! TV. We have come to do the 'behind the scenes' feature of your podcast?"

"Oh bugger. I thought that was next week. Tell you what, come back in two hours, and I have the place cleaned up and some cookies."

Slams Door.


Cut to the inside of a small cottage furnished in a general fifties to seventies hobo style with some small design items. You can hear a washing machine rattling in the back. On the floor is the odd rabbit dodo.

"Right, here we are now finally in, er, what are we in, Mr Heisenberg?"

"You are in my living room. Do you like these cookies? I baked them myself."

"Er, yes thank you, lovely. So, are you going to show us the studio?"

"This is the studio."

"Ah. Very, er, low tech, is it?"

"Well, there are a couple of Mac Minis next door and a big AMD desktop in the sleep-out, but all of the podcasting is done in here on this shabby old Linux laptop you're sitting on."

"Ooops. Sorry. So, could you at least give us some idea of what it is that you do to produce the podcast?"

"Sure. As the show has a fortnightly release schedule, day one to day thirteen are used to receive requests from noders and then find helpful users who will be happy to read.
Sometimes it takes just a couple of hours before a node drops into my inbox, sometimes a bit longer. For some readings I have now been waiting for more than 2 months.
I usually scour e2 for nodes that might work on the podcast and then ask the author if he or she would be happy to have it featured on the show. On the day of the actual making of the show, I normally listen to all of the nodes that were send to me. The Laptop streams the nodes via Airport Express to my stereo and the noder's voice fills the whole room. This helps to pick up background noises. I then decide in which order they are played. Then I fire up OpenOffice and write the the intro and the links I will be using to connect the nodes. Putting it together is then straight forward: I set my old logitech microphone on the kitchentable, launch Audacity and start reading my intro. To get a feel for the linearity of the show I then import the first node, then read the link, import the next node, and so forth. I then have another listen to the links and nodes to see whether the volume of the different tracks has to be adjusted and check whether I can filter some of the background noises out with audacity's filter.
If I am happy with the product, I export the show as an MP3 at 42000 hertz sample rate. After dinner that evening, I play the finished podcast to my significant other. If it passes quality control, it gets uploaded to the server, I change the xml file and inform E2 of its existence."

"Is that it?"

"Yep."

"Not very glamourous, is it?"

"I could wear a blond wig and some flares if you want to.
Would you like some more cookies?"

"No, thank you very much. I think we've seen enough. What's that black and white fluffy thing doing with my prada shoes?"

"Oh, oops: Off, Wilhelmine. Leave them alone.
Sorry about my rabbit. She likes shoes. And toes. Anything else?"

"No. Thank you. I think this is all our viewers want to see."

"No problem. Anything else I can do for you?"

"No. That was, er, fine.
This is Lilo Stitch reporting for E! TV from the south island of New Zealand.

Good night."


During the credits the viewer sees the dizzy blonde woman desperately trying to clean up her shoes with her sound engineer's tie.

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