Director’s Notes: 239 – Sister Cities: Vermillion Falls (Patreon)

I am a big fan of the podcast app, Podcast Addict. I've used it for years, and it's one of the main reasons I still won't move to an iPhone despite my wife really wanting me to. Podcast Addict is only available on android and there just doesn't seem to be a podcast app even close to as good available over on the Apple side of things.

One of Podcast Addicts features, which I don't use very often, is a random podcast button. Pushing it gives you a list of a few of the podcasts available in the world, randomly selected. I did this once and subscribed to one or two that looked interesting. One of the podcasts I subscribed to this way, was The Mischke Roadshow, a show by long time Midwestern AM radio personality TD Mischke. I had never heard of Mischke, but I was instantly enthralled by his rambling stories about...well about whatever he wanted to talk to that day. Peppered throughout the podcast were ads for local businesses that were so specific that I genuinely could not tell if they were supposed to be jokes or not. 

Mischke had two equally interesting registers: a more personal, storytelling style, and then a slick radio voice style, and he was able to switch between the two whenever he needed. It was the kind of performance that made me instantly excited to write for him. So, I reached out, saying basically "hey, you don't know me but I write this podcast and I'd like you to perform an entire episode of it". And Mischke said: "sure!"

When titling this, I decided to give it a series name, "Sister Cities" because I wanted to leave open the possibility of exploring other cities in the Night Vale universe, with other interesting voices I come across. Because sometimes you just want to open your favorite podcast app, push the random button, and see what people are making out there.

-Joseph Fink