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Survey: Nearly 3% of Americans believe they could beat a grizzly bear unarmed [ [link removed] ]
To this day I believe I could Ted Striker an airplane if I had to (I’ll have you know it’s not completely unjustified). What completely unreasonable thing do you think you’d be able to do in a pinch?
Saving for a Down Payment Now Takes 7 Years, Double Pre-pandemic Pace [ [link removed] ]
It’s good to know Misty and I aren’t the only ones who are having to save forever
More Stories Below, but first some new content in the News Sidequest Podcast Universe…
Auditory Anthology [ [link removed] ]
SCI-FI SHORT STORIES - NARRATED BY DARREN MARLAR & PRODUCED BY KEITH CONRAD
Tales From the Blue Line - One Last Drink at Jimmy B’s By D. H. Parish [ [link removed] ] - After stumbling into a mysterious Chicago tavern where the patrons treat him like a long-lost legend, a reserved young man disappears from his life forever, leaving his friends to eventually discover that the bar, and everyone inside it, never existed at all.
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As 2025 wraps up, I’ve been thinking less about what I planned to do this year and more about what I actually finished. Auditory Anthology [ [link removed] ] did a lot of growing this year, both in audience and content. Plus, I helped launch and re-launch a bunch of great projects for clients. In 2026, I’m hoping to flood the internet with a number of projects I’ve had in mind for a long time. These lessons came directly out of the projects I struggled through, revised, and in some cases, walked away from.
Momentum matters more than perfection - Several projects only became good once I stopped trying to make them perfect in theory and started making them real. Writing, recording, and producing… even when things felt half-formed… created clarity that all of my best planning never did. Which is tough, because I’m a big planner.
Constraints don’t limit creativity, they focus it - Fixed formats, recurring intros, defined tones, and clear episode structures didn’t box me in. They removed friction. The fewer decisions I had to make each time, the more energy I had for the actual storytelling.
One strong core idea is better than five clever ones - The projects that held together best were built around a single, clear spine and then expanded outward. Sub-series, bonus content, and spin-offs worked when they grew from something solid instead of trying to stand on their own.
Research isn’t separate from storytelling - My strongest work this year happened when research and writing fed each other in real time. Digging into source material didn’t slow things down. If you’re going to up something out there in the world, you might as well make sure it’s correct.
Being clear beats being clever - The episodes and pitches that landed best were the ones where the premise and tone were obvious from the start. The more I had to explain things, the less likely it was to work. Cleverness worked best when it came after clarity, not instead of it.
Systems quietly prevent burnout - Reusable templates, standardized workflows, and consistent production routines saved more mental energy than I realized at the time. Every system I didn’t have to rebuild made it easier to keep going.
Bigger isn’t always better - Whether fiction or history, the projects that resonated most focused on individual people and specific moments. Trying to raise the stakes by making things “bigger” often diluted what made them compelling.
Iteration builds confidence - I didn’t gain confidence by getting things right on the first try. I gained it by revisiting, revising, and improving over time. Iteration stopped feeling like uncertainty and started feeling like craft.
Not all wins are permanent… and that’s okay - This year, I added a high-profile podcast client that felt like a major step forward. I helped launch the show, invested real time and energy into it, and then several months later the rug was pulled out from under me. At the same time, I brought on other clients who have been thoughtful, collaborative, and genuinely great to work with. The lesson wasn’t that success is fragile—it was that no single client should ever define stability, momentum, or self-worth.
Finishing things teaches you what to do next - Completing projects… even when they didn’t turn out perfect… gave me information I couldn’t have gotten any other way. What to scale, what to refine, what to let go of, and what I want more of in the future all became clearer once things were finished.
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