It appears I am wildly unprepared to record/edit/release a podcast! I did consider hiding this fact and going with the "fake it til you make it approach" but that's not me. It's been a very frustrating and time consuming experiment so far, but I am DETERMINED to at least publish a few episodes in June.

I thought the "just having a chat bit" would be fairly easy. But here's a shortlist of things that have gone wrong so far in my journey to become the next big thing (don't worry I'm aware it's highly unlikely).

• My intros for the guests were emotionless as I was trying soooo hard to get all the words out in the right order!
• The first ever recording (remote guest) I tried to do was video because I was told it's more interesting...the video continuously froze and crashed (not sure if it's the platform or, more likely, my connection or laptop. In the end I just did audio, but kept recording as a video accidentally, just with the cameras off!
• My technophobe brain then had to ensure it had saved and try to salvage the audio. I kept saving it in the wrong format and it wouldn't upload because it was a video not mp3. I kept losing it in the depths of my different files.
• The second recording (remote guest) I used a different platform which promised easy group recording. This felt a lot better and my confidence grew when I realised there was a pause button! Unfortunately there were no sound effect options but I thought I could pop them in later...as well as remove all the barking my darling puppy added..
• I have been through a plethora of free editing apps that I'm sure are perfectly good, but I am even more clueless than I realised. I've got the hang of merging, but sorting out volume levels, audio quality and adding in intros/outros that don't sound like a drowning Nokia 3310 remains problematic. I am also terrified of getting arrested for breaking some sort of copyright law.
• On the plus side I have been having some fun getting to know ChatGPT which has been fairly productive. Well, to an extent. I had to laugh at my attempt to make a cute ad with my face on.... FML.