How the Bros record Bros Watch PLL Too

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We get asked from time to time what our recording setup for the podcast is, or how to record a podcast in general. There are a lot of different facets to podcast production, so lets get into it.

Battle stations

Audio Equipment

If you wanted to, you could just record using the mic from your computer's webcam, or even an iPhone's voice memo app, but the quality wouldn't be great. When we started out, I was using a Samson Meteor USB mic and Marco used a PS3 gaming headset. After a while — probably sometime during season 3 of the podcast — I got a Blue Yeti USB mic and gave Marco the Samson Meteor to use. He still uses that mic when recording remotely. This past year, I decided to have fun with a tax return and upgrade our setup.

Marco's not here right now, but otherwise, this is the recording setup from my angle. Enhance!

From top to bottom: the Pyle surge protector, two DBX 286s Mic Preamps, and a Tascam US-16x08 USB Audio Interface

It should be noted, this is extreme overkill for what we do, and for what most podcasters need.

The Shure mics are dynamic, which is nice because they pick up much less room noise than most cheap USB condenser mics. The downside is, they need audio hardware to drive them, you can’t just plug them directly into a computer. Our Shure mics sit in those A55M shock mounts, which are attached to the Rode PSA1 boom arms. This allows us to move around and adjust the mics without you hearing every slight bump and touch on the mic. The Shures are connected to XLR cables that run from microphone to DBX 286s Mic Preamps. These preamps allow us to further enhance the audio and gate even more background noise in hardware before the audio is recorded. Then the XLR to TRS patch cables route the signal from the DBX 286s to the Tascam US-16x08 USB audio interface, each mic running into its own input channel. All this hardware is powered by the Pyle PCO850 Surge Protector to protect it from power surges.

The audio interface is how you get the signal from the analog mics into the digital computer. The Tascam is connected to the iMac via USB. We also have headphones connected to the Tascam to monitor our audio live. You have to get right up on top of dynamic mics when speaking, so the headphones lets us know (in theory) if we’re too far away from the mic.

The view from Marco's side

This is much more complicated that it needs to be. You could just run the mics directly to the Tascam, you don’t need a Mic Preamp in there too. Or you could just connect a USB mic directly to the computer and bypass all of that, but you’ll probably be dealing with a lot of room noise with that setup. You could even just connect iPhone headphones to the mac and record with the headphone mic. It all depends on how important the audio quality is to you.

Sony studio monitor MDR7506 headphones. They sound amazing. Also, Benji's footrest.

A lot of people record on Skype, which is what Marco and I do when he is too lazy to come over to my place to record. In this case, the most important thing is having the Skype users wear headphones. That way your own mic is not picking up the other person’s conversation. Skype tries to filter this out but it sounds awful.

Software

These are the apps I use to record, mix and prepare the podcast for publishing:

The next aspect of production is the software you use for recording and editing. I use macs and if you use PCs, well… sorry.

Audio Hijack for recording podcasts.

We started out recording with a simple app called Piezo, which will let you record audio from many sources on the mac, including Skype. Eventually I switched to Audio Hijack, which is like the Pro version of Piezo and has more options. Chief among them, when we record interviews, I can put myself, Marco and the interviewee each on their own channel, which can help in editing when there’s crosstalk and I want to cut someone’s voice out for clarity. I also use another virtual audio routing app called Loopback to achieve this. When you record a Skype call, everyone not in the studio is going to end up on the same channel, unless you run a really complicated setup that is beyond the scope of this guide. Go see Dan Benjamin’s blog for more info on this if you’re curious.

Loopback allows me to choose what audio sources are sent over Skype. Without it, Skype would only transmit Input 1 (Benji) and not Input 2 (Marco) when Skyping for an interview.

We use Skype because it's the best of the free options that I can find. AIM voice chat and FaceTime aren't reliable or high-quality enough for our needs. There are other options out there like Zencastr, but they can get pretty expensive if you grow beyond the free option. Whatever method you use, if you can possibly be hardwired in via ethernet rather than using WiFi it's preferable. But having a co-host in studio is always the best.

What a podcast episode looks like in Logic Pro X. Isn't Troian great?

Once the audio is recorded, it comes into Logic Pro X for editing. I use some plugins by iZotope to further enhance the audio and get rid of any remaining background noise. As you can tell, I hate background noise. My setup lets me run the AC during recording without paying an audio penalty for it. Unfortunately, iZotope doesn’t sell those plugins separately anymore, but they have some kind of Lite app that does the same thing.

You don’t need to be this advanced on software. There are other call recording apps out there, like Call Recorder, and services you can pay for to record calls online between multiple remote participants. Personally, I’ve listened to a lot of podcasts out there where sooner or later the hosts mention losing a recording session due to “file corruption” or whatever. I don’t know what the hell they’re doing, and maybe they’re just PC users, but I’ve never had Piezo or Audio Hijack not record when I told it to. The only time I ever failed to record something was when I forgot to hit record.

This is Piezo. Very basic, but reliable.

Some people record into a Zoom handheld digital audio recorder. I think this is weird, but you do you.

Bounce settings for the podcast in Logic Pro X.

Logic Pro X is fairly complex. You could use GarageBand or Audacity instead and be fine. The file we output is a variable bit-rate stereo AAC audio file. This is probably not the greatest solution, since 64kbps Mono MP3s is the typical format used by most podcasters, but whatever. AAC has a better compression ratio and our podcasts are long and take up a fair amount of space. If size is not an issue, MP3 is fine.

This is an app called Tagger, used for adding ID3 tags and artwork to an audio file.

Lastly, I use an app called Tagger which I think I found online for free to add ID3 tags for the name, artist, artwork, etc to the audio file. This isn't totally necessary because the RSS feed should cover this, but I like to make files that stand on their own.

Publishing

So now that you’ve got your podcast, you have to put it on the internet. Most people don’t know this, but the podcasting platform is actually an open standard. It’s just RSS. Of course you will want to submit your RSS feed to iTunes to get listed by them for exposure and reviews, etc, but it’s not actually a requirement. There are lots of podcast apps out there like Castro or Overcast that will find your podcast even if it’s not in iTunes. There are also apps like Stitcher that put their own ads between content, and I don’t really like their terms so I don’t bother with them. I’m not into apps like Stitcher or Spotify when it comes to podcasting. Keep podcasting open and support apps like Castro or Overcast, etc.

But anyway, we use Squarespace to host our podcasts, mostly because it’s easy and turnkey and it’s too late to change now. We just pay for the unlimited plan and can make as many different podcast feeds as we want, but each feed can only have 100 items in it. Also, you can only have one master URL for your website this way. There’s also Libsyn, or Podbean, or Blubrry, or Fireside.fm, or Soundcloud — though it sounds like they’re about to go out of business. Basically, you just need somewhere to host your audio files, preferably for a flat rate instead of paying for bandwidth use. We also use a site called Feed.press to publish the RSS podcast feeds. It basically reads the Squarespace feed and then re-publishes it. This gives us better stats on downloads and also makes it easier if we ever wanted to move from Squarespace to a different host without having to change our feed and lose our subscribers.

The Squarespace interface.

I think that just about covers it.

Summary

To boil it down, you need a mic to record into, and headphones to monitor your audio. This can mean a whole analog setup with an Audio Interface, a USB mic, a gaming headset, or just your computer’s webcam mic. Then you need an app on your computer to record the audio. Then software to edit the audio with, and an online host for your podcast files and RSS feed. If you’re just starting out, my best advice is to start out as simply and cheaply as you can, and upgrade yourself as needed. Don’t worry about potentially needing to scale to a million downloads in the future. Sticking to a recording schedule will be much more of a challenge than all that. I strongly advise creating a set schedule and sticking to it, otherwise it’s far to easy to slack off (see: Headcanon).If you have any further questions, feel free to ask them in the comments and I will answer them when I can.

- Benji

Podcast music

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Had some requests for the intro and outro music we use on the podcast. I tend to change it up every once in a while, and I'm pretty happy with the current version, but will probably change it again for season 6.

Anyway, I made these in Logic Pro X by transcribing notes from a youtube video of someone playing it on piano, and added a few touches of my own. I should stress that I'm not actually a musician, just a guy with some audio software. Do with these what you will.

Pro Tip: If you want to use these as ringtones on an iPhone, change the file extension from .m4a to .m4r before adding them to iTunes.

Spencer, you could've been gettin' down to this sick beat.

Spencer, you could've been gettin' down to this sick beat.

The Theory

Sometimes on the podcast we will mention "The Theory" and not expand further, and inevitably, someone on Twitter asks for clarification. I guess I should probably write it down somewhere. We talked about this in the pilot episode towards the end, but I'll give a brief summary here. I originally came up with this after binge-watching the first season and a half of the show over a few days on Netflix.

DISCLAIMER: I don't actually think that this is going to be the secret twist ending of the show. I just think it's fun to watch the show this way, though if you are an Emily or Hanna fan, you may disagree.

The Theory: Emily and Hanna are not real. Emily is Spencer's imagined best friend/alter ego, and Hanna is Aria's. Tulpas, if you will. Aria and Spencer are the only two real people of the four liars, and they are both profoundly insane. Spencer is the killer, and Aria is A.

Now, when we start bringing Ali and Mona into this in the later seasons, it gets pretty dodgy, but it's especially fun to watch the first few seasons this way, noting things like seating arrangements of the liars, which characters drive the plot, how they interact with each other, etc.

Evidence for:

  • Aria and Spencer are both clearly nuts
  • Spencer and Emily both seem to live near Ali and Toby
  • Hanna's parents are divorced due to her dad's infidelity, Aria's parents separate early in the show due to Byron's infidelity
  • Spencer and Emily are both good students, tall, and athletic
  • Aria and Hanna both love fashion
  • Emily was friends with Toby first until her prime self Spencer stole him away
  • Sparia often team up for major plot developments. E.g. they investigate the Lost Woods Resort while Hanna and Emily wait in the motel room; they meet with Jonah the cell phone guy, the go to Noel Kahn's cabin with CeCe, etc.

And feel free to handwave in your own reasons from here.

-Benjamin

12 minor changes to fix Oblivion’s frustrating story

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It’s been a while since I watched a movie as impressive and frustrating as “Oblivion.” The visual design is amazing. I know that kind of talk gets thrown around loosely these days, applied to everything from “Drive” to “The Dark Knight Rises” to “Skyfall,” but let’s be clear: those movies can't hold a candle to “Oblivion,” visually. It’s a work of art.

But the story. Man, this movie hits almost every one of my favorite sci-fi tropes. There are so many good ideas here, but it just never gels completely. I walked out of this film wracking my brain as to how they could nail so much of what makes a movie good but still leave me unsatisfied.

I went to see it again today, and I think I have the answers now. What follows will be massive spoilers, of course, if you haven’t seen the film. So go watch it first. Even though it misses greatness, its ambition and scope are definitely worth a theater ticket. At least a matinee.

My high level goal here is to preserve and improve the three mysteries that drive the story: Who is the girl (Olga Kurylenko as Julia) in Jack's dreams? What are the Scavs up to? And who is Jack Harper (Tom Crusie) really? To remove any of these storylines would require a major reworking of the whole story, and I think you can get quite a lot of improvement out of some small changes. Very well then, here are my 12 changes to bring “Oblivion” from flawed to greatness.

1. Cut the intro

The movie starts with a short prologue of sorts, narrated by Jack, which sets up the story about the attack on Earth, the Scavs, Jack’s dreams, his and Victoria’s (Andrea Riseborough) mission and their planned exodus to Titan in two weeks.

Why the change

The intro entirely pointless and undercuts all the mystery at the heart of the story. It’s easy to imagine this was forced on the filmmakers by nervous studio execs. Every piece of information you get here will be delivered more deftly later in the movie anyway. Cutting it gives us a true mystery of a first act, where the viewer is not only unravelling the puzzling oddities that Jack encounters, but what he’s doing on the planet to begin with. It makes his character more interesting, because we get to discover who he is slowly instead of having his whole personality packaged up for us right at the start. Cutting the intro is the biggest one for me. Simply starting it at the “Oblivion” title card would be a massive improvement. They should ship the Blu Ray this way.

2. Jack should find the Iliad and a map

In the movie, after escaping a trap by the Scavs in the remnants of the New York Public Library, Jack finds of copy of The Lays of Ancient Rome and takes it. This leads to much quoting of a rather boring poem later on. It’s barely relevant to the plot at all.

Why the change

This is the part of the movie where Jack should find something, a strange attractor, if you will, that propels the rest of the story forward. So it shouldn't be a boring book about Rome, it should be the Illiad (I’ll come back to this later), and it should be found in the knapsack of one of the dead scavs, along with some indeterminate food stuffs that seem alien enough. And, some sort of map or drawing of the natural archway that Jack flies through later to get to the cabin by the lake. This plants the seeds of doubt in Jack’s mind: why was the scav carrying a book? The second part of this change is that, rather than have had Jack going to this cabin for his whole five years on the mission, he discovers it in-movie. This ties in to Jack’s surprise in the first flying sequence that Vicka loses Jack’s signal when he’s flying in the ravine. He will use that knowledge later to find the cabin.

3. Add some natural barriers to Jack’s sector 49

Jack can only fly so far before he hits the Radiation Zone barriers that will theoretically kill him if he crosses. In the film it’s a desert area. It should be more defined. For instance, on one side: the ocean, on another a high mountain range (probably the Appalachians) and instead of just a desert, make it a desert with perpetual sandstorm clouds at the barrier.

Why the change

This is minor, but it adds to the atmosphere of Jack’s isolation. We want him to appear visually penned in. It makes everything a little more surreal, which you really want for the mystery elements of the story.

4. Jack finds the cabin while chasing a scav

Jack’s bike gets stolen during the New York Public Library sequence. The Scavs give it back to him later. Meanwhile, after traveling to sector 17 to chase the origin of the signal they picked up, he decides to visit his cabin after hitting a dead end at the Radiation Zone. This is too passive. Jack should arrive at sector 17 to find a scav making a getaway on his stolen bike. The scav drives right into the Radiation Zone, forcing Jack to break off pursuit. It’s here that Jack sees the rock formation from the map he found (see change #2) and decides to go off the grid to investigate, and ends up finding the cabin by the lake.

Why the change

This makes the story more propulsive. Jack’s curiosity leads us to the cabin, which, being new to him, is all part of the mystery he’s trying to unravel. And it keeps the Scavs front and center as the theoretical antagonist. It would also help if there was something signature about the Kingslayer’s (Nicolaj Coster-Waldau) scav armor suit. Like red highlights or something, just so that we know when it’s him or Beech (Morgan Freeman). Note: Yes, I know the character’s name is Sykes, but I think it behooves us all to only ever refer to the Kingslayer as the Kingslayer.

5. The cabin isn’t Jack’s, it's 52’s.

Rather than this be Jack’s secret cabin that he’s been coming to for five years, have it be 52’s instead. We won’t know it’s 52’s place at first. The only giveaway will be something minor, like a coffee mug with a 52 on it. He also finds a ripped newspaper page with a picture of the bottom half of a man’s jaw, and the headline “Still Missing.”

Why the change

It plays up the mystery and gives the plot forward momentum. Too much of the first half of the movie feels like just another routine day for Jack Harper, when it should feel like Jack’s routine days ended when the movie began. He can still find all the same stuff there, still listen to Led Zep and shoot a basketball, but it’s all in a mode of discovery that the audience will enjoy after all the shots of apocalyptic wasteland. Your viewer should be hearing that Zep song like it’s their first time, just like Jack. Plus, this retroactively gives 52 more of a character when he shows up. The 52 coffee mug and the missing half of the newspaper picture will be just enough to foreshadow the clone twist coming later, along with…

6. Jack sees a piece of repairman equipment when meeting Beech

Jack meets Beech and after a quick speech and more of that awful roman poem that needs to go, he’s recruited into helping rig a drone to deliver a bomb to the Tet. Around the part where the Kingslayer shoots Jack to get his attention, Jack should spot a piece of his equipment among the Scavs’ stuff, but with another number on it, like 22.

Why the change

This disorients Jack some more, and adds the other piece of foreshadowing that you need for the clone story.

7. More dialog when 49 meets 52

In the movie, Jack and Jack meet each other with guns drawn, shout a few commands at each other and then fight. They should talk at least a little. Also, when 49 comes back to get Julia and take off again, we should get a quick shot of 52 stirring on the ground so we know he’s not dead.

Why the change

Shouldn’t they have something more interesting to say to each other? I don’t know what that is, but if I ever met my doppelgänger, I hope I’d have more to say than some “Stand Downs!” Plus, it’s another chance to inject a little character into 52, which is important for the ending.

8. Jack plays the flight recorder while Julia heals

In the movie, Julia heals, then wakes up and has a romantic scene with Jack. This is done with some Fade to Blacks that worked in the first act but start to feel slow here. We don’t get to hear the flight recorder and see the flashback to Astronaut Jack’s encounter with the Tet until right before the end of the movie. That flashback should happen here, before Julia wakes up.

Why the change

We’ve already heard from Julia that Jack was an astronaut. Why move this flashback to Act III when it belongs at the end of Act II? This resolves a major mystery right when we need to, and lets us see the terror of the Tet once before Jack has to repeat this flight later in Act III. Intercutting this into the end of Act III deadens the impact that the flashback has, since it’s essentially just filler by that point.

9. Flashback to the Jack clones attacking when Beech tells the story

Beech tells us about the horror of all those clones of Astronaut Jack Harper pouring out of the drop ships. Don’t tease us with such an awesome visual, show us! Flashback to a young Beech watching the clones attack, with a trashed newspaper box in the foreground showing the full image of that piece Jack found earlier at the cabin: a picture of Jack with the headline ”Astronauts still missing.”

Why the change

Because a thousand attacking Tom Cruise clones sounds terrifying and awesome. You can’t talk about something like that and not show it. This wraps up the newspaper bit from change #5, and ties the whole clone mystery together quite nicely.

10. Speed up the pacing in Act III

There’s an awful lot of Fade to Blacks in this section. Beech gives his whole monologue, with the music soaring, then false start, they’re loading the rigged drone onto that tank thing, then false start, the drones attack, Jack is blown across the warehouse while killing a drone, fade to black… You get the idea. Beech’s monologue should be cross-cut with the flashbacks to the clone attacks, the Tet tracking down Jack by his bio signature, and Jack fixing the rigged drone and loading it onto the tank. His “I’m the weapon” line should come right before the clone attack. Additionally, after the fight, Jack should mention that more drones will be here any minute.

Why the change

Act III is no time for lots of soaring music and Fade to Blacks in an action movie. Keep the pace moving up to the big climax. The immediate threat of more drones on the way means they don’t have a choice, they have to send Jack up to the Tet with the bomb as their last chance.

11. Give the Kingslayer his “Braveheart” moment

While Jack heads up to the Tet, there’s some rather half-assed cutting to whatever the Kingslayer is doing down on earth, which is a whole lot of “Oh shit, more drones are coming!” and deer-in-the-headlights stares. Instead, he should get a nice leader moment with the surviving troops.

Why the change

The Kingslayer deserves better, and a rousing speech to his fellow survivors to stand fast in the face of annihilation makes a nice counter to cross-cut with Jack going up to his doom. It makes the Kingslayer a character instead of just a fairly anonymous second-in-command to Morgan Freeman.

12. Jack should reference the Trojan Horse when he meets the Tet

Rather than more quoting of that truly awful poem from the Lays of Ancient Rome, Jack tells Tet the story of Odysseus and the Trojan Horse.

Why the change

Because how the fuck do you have his original ship be named the Odyssey and not make that reference? Jack even tells the Tet, as he reveals his bomb, that this reminds him of an ancient book. Everyone in the theater is thinking about the story of the Trojan Horse at this point. It’s so obvious. I don't know how the writers missed it. Everyone knows that a good hero, like Odysseus, isn’t the biggest or strongest or quickest, but the most clever. It’s the only appropriate ancient story to reference at this point, not more poetry.

Bonus Change

 Vicka should mention early that the unarmored drone has been waiting for parts for their whole five-year missing. This is subtle foreshadowing that the only reason that drone is even there is to kill Jack and Vicka if they’re no longer an effective team. It lacks armor to save resources, since it shouldn’t need any to ambush the repair crew.

Anyway, that’s how I would have done it if I had to polish the script, Mr. Arndt. 

No, I do not want this “Revolution”

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 I distrust luddites.

They would say I trust in technology too much. And then I would say something mean and hurtful, bringing up a detail from their personal life, pouring salt on it, and then tying it back technology. Sorry, but that’s just how I operate.

But I can certainly see why the idea is appealing. It's one part “everything was great once before the fall," and another part, "this modern world is too full of bullshit.”

I don't agree with the first part, that's a looking-backwards-through-a-telescope kind of idea (see Stephenson, shipwreck in five acts), but I can't say there are not times when I identify with the second part. That, I think, is just part of human nature. We’ve only very recently become civilized animals. One of the great appeals of LOST, I've often said, is that all of us, secretly, sort of wished we could crash land on a mysterious island and start over. NBC's new hour-long, Revolution, aspires to be LOST, and somehow misses that point, along will all the other lessons that network execs really should have learned by now about what made LOST so great.

Let's get this out of the way, Revolution is a show about a world where electricity stops working. Then cut to 15 years later where humanity seems to operate in something like an 1800s western frontier society, populated by blemish-free Abercrombie models wearing incongruously fashionable clothing. I think it's a major fail at the heart of the show's concept that they gloss over and hand-wave away the most interesting part of this premise: what happens to society in the days and weeks after the lights go out.

That would have made for great television, just as the survivors of flight 815 learning how to live off the island did. But if I'm going to be fair, I should be criticizing the show for what it's about, rather than what it's not, and there's plenty more to find fault with anyway.

To cover it all would be exhausting, so I'm going to focus on what I think are the three main failings of the show: the characters, the plot, and the suspension of disbelief.

(If you want more of this kind of take on the no-electricity high concept, read --or better yet don't read-- "Dies the Fire" by S.M. Stirling, where we get the aftermath of such an event told (entirely without irony) through the eyes of a devout Wiccan singer-songwriter and a humorless asshole of a former jarhead: two of the worst protagonists ever put to page.)

Let's start with the characters, who are mostly all one-note and forgettable. There's the main girl, Charlie, whose acting is very unfortunate. She is introduced quickly with some bro (Danny, I think), then her dad or uncle or somebody yells at her for going outside their compound, even though she looks like she's 24, then her dad dies and she's all sad (Dad actually says “Daddy’s gone,” to her and then dies. Really.) and so she has to go rescue that bro Danny from the bad guys. Charlie has no discernible personality other than "move the plot forward." Juliet from LOST is her dead mom, maybe. There's the guy who used to be a rich Googler and is basically a shameless Hurley analog. And then there's fucking Billy Burke who is some sort of badass uncle who can kill 30 armed men at once in single combat and tends bar in what's left of Chicago, or something.

Oh, and Mr. Fring from Breaking Bad shows up as the evil militia dragon, but you get the feeling that NBC is going to have him heel face turning before the end of the season, because Giancarlo Esposito has more charisma than all the other actors combined.Also, Billy Burke will probably turn out to be evil because he is Billy Burke.

Everyone should have figured out by now that LOST was great because of its compelling characters, and none of these bland cast members comes close. The show seems to want to build some sort of mystery like LOST, but there's really no hint that any of the characters has a secret, or an interesting personality quirk below the surface. They actually manage to be less interesting that the dramatis personae of Flash Forward.

As to the story, well, there's some sort of mystery about why the electricity stopped working that seems incredibly boring and uninteresting. The father figure guy who dies at the beginning of this episode seems to have some secret info about that, and the evil militia guys want it, so they kidnap his son Danny, but Charlie--who I am honestly not sure is the daughter or not, cause if she is, she’s eye-fucking her brother--has Dad's secret USB flash-drive/talisman, and she takes it to Billy Burke instead. …zzzzzzzzz.

Seriously, this is weak fare. How many episodes are they planning on stretching out this macguffin story-arc over? What's the long-term plan here? What is this show really about? There's no larger theme or clash of ideas here. Not yet, anyway. Is this going to turn into a luddites vs. technophiles story? Rural agrarians vs. centralized city leadership? Military vs. pacifism? Tribalism vs. liberalism? The big reveal at the end of the pilot is that the main bad guy who Mr. Fring works for used to be a military bro with Billy Burke. So? Oh, and electricity might still work, but only on 1970s UNIX computers lifted wholesale from the Dharma Initiative. Yawn.

This brings me to maybe the biggest failing of the show, which is that due to the thin characters and thinner plot, I found myself totally incapable of suspending my disbelief. The Rule of Cool applies here, as there is nothing remotely cool happening that would let me hand wave away the scientific absurdity, thus I end up noticing and picking apart every false detail and anachronism I see. Like, why do the young male actors appear to be wearing $300 custom-tailored shirts? Why didn't our adventurers set a lookout when traveling through supposedly dangerous territory? Are we really supposed to believe that they live within a day's walking journey of downtown Chicago? Why would planes fall straight down out of the sky when the electricity went out? Why does everyone look like they just came from their trailer instead of living hard off the land for 15 years? If Billy Burke can take on 30 dudes with just a sword--when some of them have guns--and win, then what the hell kind of adversary will they need to face for our heroes to feel in danger? 60 dudes at once?

Also, flint-lock muskets? Really? So those 300 million guns in the US and untold billions of stockpiled rounds are all gone already? And when you start picking at these scabs, you get right to the central premise: by what laws of science would this world catastrophe even happen? Why would guns still work but not internal combustion? What magical praxis is keeping all the machines off, but the bio-chemical electricity in our bodies still ticking? Does nuclear power still work? Is there still lightning? Making the plot mysteries somehow related to military experiments only makes it worse, as an scientific explanation is only going to come off like total bullshit. Better to just say it's magic or aliens.

Revolution wants to be LOST, but it never will and likely won't last a season. LOST was a fantastic concept and a fantastic show. It was all right there in the title: a show about lost people who found themselves on an island. Revolution isn't really about anything, certainly not revolution, which was probably just a name picked out of a hat by marketing at NBC as the least scary synonym for "apocalypse" that they could come up with. It's just another in the long line of network TV failures to recapture the magic of the Island. Note to TV execs: it's the characters. It's the characters. It's the characters.

We have to go back.

Mandatory viewing for s02e02

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This week on Time Travel Murder Mystery we’ll be discussing one of Christian Bale’s earlier works: Reign of Fire. We highly recommend you watch it before listening to Tuesday’s episode so that you can properly follow along at home.  It can be had on iTunes as a rental, it’s in 7-minute segments on youtube, or there’s that whole torrent thing. Talk to you soon.

Hello there

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Greetings. 

If you’ve found your way here, you’ve probably seen that the Counterforce podcast has moved and been renamed. Welcome to the website for the Time Travel Murder Mystery podcast. Most posts here will be for the podcast, but Marco and I may write a few other posts now and then at our pleasure. We hope you enjoy the new site; the format for the podcast will be staying more or less the same.

Soon, the podcast will be available via iTunes. If you like it, give it a review. If you don’t like it, fuck off.