Gary’s Q&A

Listener question & Gary’s response · Transcript passage

Barton Brierley asks In many of your episodes you mention a ? subject, and then say”that will be the subject of its own episode.” ? Do you keep track of all these loose ends? If so, is the list shr?inking over time or diverging to infinity?

On a related note, Steve Augustino asks At what point will your topics list become too unwieldy to be useful to you? Do you trim the list of related topics when you post a new episode? And have you considered licensing spin-offs as a way to address all the topics? (For example, Everything Roman History Daily)

When I started this podcast, I created a list of 100 episodes just to get me started. I created the list in a Google doc file.

Since then, I’ve added to the list when I have new ideas for episodes and delete from the list when I do an episode.

The current list had 935 show ideas. The list remains somewhat steady, but it will grow in spurts and then slowly fall back as I do episodes.

If I was more aggressive about coming up and documenting show ideas I could probably double or triple the size of the list.

What episodes I select is often nothing more than what I feel like doing on any particular day. I try to mix it up so that the same general subjects aren’t done in the same week.

As for spinning off a new show, that is a theoretical possibility, but I have absolutely no plans to do so anytime soon. I have my hands full just keeping up with this show.

If I were to spin off a new show, like a Roman history show, for example, it would have to be in a different format. I’m not sure bouncing around a topic would work for a show like that. A more linear format would work better for a single-topic show.