Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - super mega triple ANNOUNCEMENT about this podcast!

Episode Date: January 27, 2023

Alex Schmidt has three big pieces of news to share! 1) SIFpod is joining the Maximum Fun podcast network. 2) Katie Goldin is joining up as Alex's weekly co-host. 3) There's now a Discord hangout for our SIF community. Hear all about it here!You can check out the new SIF page at MaxFun's site: https://maximumfun.org/podcasts/secretly-incredibly-fascinating/Join in the fun on the SIF Discord: https://discord.gg/D5k9X4Rg [note: this invite link expires in February 2023]And see you Monday with another brand-new SIF episode. 🦬

Folks, hello! Welcome to a special miniature podcast that is a huge, exciting announcement. And part of why it's a huge, exciting announcement is I'm joined by the wonderful Katie Golden. Katie, hi! Hello! Hi! I'm in the Lil' Itty Bitty podcast. It's so tiny and small. That's right. Yeah, as we're taping this, we're each about six inches tall, I'd say. We have the exact car Stewart Little drives. Let's see. What else? Symbols are our cups. And even though this is a very tiny podcast, there's a bunch of amazing news in it.

There's going to a few kinds of listener. If you're a patron, you already know a lot of this. If you're listening in the free public feed, this is new to you. And then also there's a third set of folks who are wonderful fans and listeners and supporters of the Maximum Fun Podcast Network. Because first piece of news, this podcast, secretly incredibly fascinating, is joining the Maximum Fun Podcast Network. That's right. Not minimum fun, but maximum fun. That's right. Not minimum fun, but maximum

fun. That's true. It's the level we've chosen. And then the second piece of news is that as part of that, I'm so excited about this, the podcast is going to be co-hosted weekly by the great Katie Golden. She's joining me every week. Wow. Not just in the tiny world where we live in mushrooms and drive tiny cars. Wait a minute. Well, I am using a plate as a button, but hey, that's me. Yeah, that's you. And the third piece of news is there's now a Discord for listeners of this podcast, which is especially great for folks who have chatted with me and hung out with me on Patreon in the past. But I'm so excited about all this. And I think first talk about Katie

co-hosting weekly. Like, what a great thing, because I'm still bringing the research together for the show. But like, Katie is, I believe, the most frequent guest and is always one of the best guests. And it's just one of my favorite podcasters, one of my favorite people. It's like such an upgrade that you can be here every week. It is so great. I'm going to be just joyful. What is this? The make Katie cry podcast. Jeez. Uh, but tiny tears, keep them small, tiny, little bitty, bitty ones. Yeah. Um, you know, I'm a, I'm extremely, extremely excited. I am so happy to be here and I'm so happy that you will not be able to get rid of me week after week. And that's partly the size issue. Like you can hide between and under things so

effectively. You may think you're like listening to a podcast through some sort of like air wave compression technology, but no, it's just me. I'm little and I'm in your ear. technology, but no, it's just me. I'm little and I'm in your ear. And then you go into a little case like an Apple AirPod. Yeah. It just clicks. Yeah. Yeah. I, yeah, I truly though, like you're so funny and so versed in science. If people don't know, Katie has a humongous knowledge of science and also animals. I hope people know about your podcast Creature Feature as well. And Katie is also secretly a bird on Twitter.

And just like anybody who's heard even a little bit of this show knows you're awesome, but it's going to be so great to have you all the time. Yeah. Yeah. I'm so excited. Yeah. Thank you. And yeah, if you're interested in animals, we do talk about that on Secretly Incredibly Fascinating. But all animals all the time is on Creature Feature. Yeah. Yeah. Also, and like, I think animal episodes of this have been particularly exciting to people, mainly because you're often on them.

But we can like do that consistently in a great way. Yes. Also, I. That's going to be great. Even though I know a lot about animals, I don't know everything. I know. Surprise. Shocker.

So I'm always very excited to learn stuff about animals that I don't know, which I can here with Alex. I'm cutting that whole admission. It's out. It's going to lose it in the edit. Well, thanks. And there's a lot of things this also allows, for example, speedier intros to the podcast, because I usually spend a lot of the introduction of the show introducing a new guest and a new guest. And I'm going to reformat that, speed it up a bit. The first episode of us doing this together is January 30th. That'll have a longer intro to share a lot of announcing too. But then from there, it'll be speedier. And I'm also going to continue acknowledging Native Land, but it's going to be at the end of episodes because the whole start of the show is changing, not just that part. And then also there will be some additional guests joining us too. It won't

just be us all the time and it's going to be other people coming in. This is also a great opportunity for more guests from the wonderful Maximum Fun Podcast Network. Because not to bury the headline of that, but holy cow, the podcast is joining Maximum Fun, one of my favorite things ever in audio entertainment, the world. This is just awesome. We finally have a license to podcast. We were doing it illegally before. It's true. It's been pirate radio. I feel like I'm doing too much of the weird tiny bit, but we were in a tiny boat, right? It was a miniature like matchbox speedboat. And then it was me with a microphone. Yeah. My, my tiny boat of choice is a corn chip because then you can eat it. I was going to say, you know, the danger of how much birds love corn

chips. That's a, that's a rickety boat. Then you get picked up by a seagull, and now you're in a tiny person's airplane. But yeah, think of the pirate radio and stuff. One of my favorite things about Maximum Fun is that a tagline you're going to hear a lot is, artist-owned, listener-supported. And that's what this podcast has been. It's been an independent show. It's still a show I possess officially, but it's going to be supported by listeners and supported by this really, really wonderful network that's been doing it for a

long time and doing it the right way. So I'm thrilled about all that. I also am hoping that this is another opportunity for you to consider supporting the show because it's been supported by folks through the Patreon.com system. And that general model of people who listen to the show making the show possible, that's still going to be the big thing, the main thing. That's how they operate. And that's how I want to keep operating. So it's now going to be through Maximum Fun. And I'm already talking to people through Patreon about moving that over. But I really like that you can keep supporting the show and now get a lot more by it being part of this awesome network with a bunch of really cool shows, really cool hosts who you've heard on the podcast before from time to time. And we're going to ramp that up. We're going to make it even more of a thing. Yeah, that's right. We are not in the pocket of big corn chip. By the way, eat more corn chips. Like they zoom in on the Maximum Fun logo with the CSI computer and then they just see the word Tostitos everywhere. It's like, oh, that's who's in charge. Okay.

That's right. Yeah. They're flavor blasted right directly into your neurons. That's where flavor lives, folks. The neuron. That's it. That's anatomy, folks. That's actually, that is actually true.

But yeah. What if I'm like, and the third piece of news is constant misinformation. We're going to stop researching anything, dude. Forget it. It's really tiring research. No, done. And then the last piece of news, I think it sounds a lot smaller than the other news, but it is not.

And here's why. Because the news is there's going to be a Discord for the show. I think not everybody knows what Discord is. It's a robust and fun chat platform. And you can also do other stuff with it too, for hanging out online, especially people in the gaming community know it. Throughout the run of this podcast, I've been like hunting for ways to turn Patreon into a great way to chat with listeners. And that has gone okay. Like it's been a lot of using the comment sections of Patreon to chat, and it's kind of hard to open those and nest those and just use it. Discord is going to be way,

way better for that. And it's also going to be where I run the polls that we do for selecting episode topics and suggesting episode topics. I'm going to start running that through Discord. So I want to take this opportunity and this transition time to make you something better for that. Like we can go ahead and get a Discord going as we do these other exciting changes. Are you going to do some like custom Alex emojis? Ooh, I've been so busy creating and smithing bison emojis in my emoji forge that I had not thought about making them of myself. Wow. This is wild.

I mean, sometimes you got to do a self-portrait emoji after you've done every animal that you can think of in the world. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, we could really get some stickers going. And I have I've used Discord quite a bit to like, chat with friends, but I haven't run it before. And I'm sure I'll run it great. But I'm gonna learn stuff too. If you folks have like ideas for channels for a Discord or things on a Discord, that'll be exciting. Yeah. And the episode description has notes on exactly how to join that Discord. I'm also posting stuff on the current Patreon for how to get over there and start hanging out.

It's such an opportunity to hang out with you more, do more stuff with you, the wonderful listeners of the show. So please come hang out there. That's a Discord for the show, which again is now a Maximum Fun podcast co-hosted by Katie Golden and artist-owned, listener-supported. Thank you so much for continuing to support and continuing to be awesome. Yay, I'm so excited. Smash those champagne bottles against your phones. I'm not responsible if you destroy your phone. See, optimally, you would think everyone would have a corn chip boat

because then you can smash your champagne on the side of the corn chip boat. Then it soaks in that flavor. those are two flavors that pair perfectly um so the unsinkable corn chip but then it does sink but at least it tastes good go down chewing right there we go go down with the chip. But yeah, and so I'm thrilled about it. And starting with this coming Monday's show, we get to do that officially. Yes. It's going to be great.

Woo!