Bill Meeks and guest co-host Anne Marie chat with four special guests about how they are staying creative, happy, and healthy during this coronavirus pandemic. Featuring quarantine reports from NATHAN BEATTY (The CiP Network), JOEL VANVALKENBURG-HUFF (Ghost Train), HOPE MULLINAX (Geeky Girl Experience, Jaig Eyes and Jedi), and Rebecca Johnson (Supergirl Radio).

I Made This

Quarantine Edition

Robin Hoffman flipped a career spent working with the disabled into two great chat shows which she publishes on Facebook: Chat With Me and Hoffy’s Heart Bake With Me. We’ll discuss what drove her to create her shows, the people who’ve helped her along the way, and how she’s using her platform to elevate all kinds of voices.

Robin Hofmann Makes Chat Shows

Josh Zepess id the head honcho over at Broke Is No Joke, an edutainment platform he built after escaping the corporate world. We'll discuss how Josh enables other people to be successful, discuss our shared history in improv and sketch comedy, and talk about how goal setting can supercharge your life.

Josh Zepess Made An Edutainment Platform

Ali Spagnola made her first mark with her Power Hour drinking game/album or 60 1-minute songs, but for the past several years she's been focusing on making her mark on YouTube. She finally hit paydirt eight months ago when she recorded a style mash-up of Billie Eilish and Meghan Trainor. It was meant to be her final YouTube video, but when it got millions of views Ali decided to follow the trend. We discuss all the work she put in before her video hit big, and why she can't leave the fur room she called us from.

Ali Spagnola Makes Music On YouTube

Guest host Anne Marie DeSimone interviews our normal host Bill Meeks about his new book Fan Podcasting: The Complete Guide, and it covers everything from critical theory to how to land an interview with the star of your favorite show. Bill reveals his Cafe POV philosophy to podcasting and discusses writing and self-publishing his own non-fiction book. Listen for info on how to get a free copy of the book when it releases on February 18th.

Bill Meeks Made A Book About Fan Podcasting

Brian Brushwood is best known for his YouTube shows Scam School and The Modern Rogue, but it all started with a dream to get his own TV show. In this interview, Brian outlines the steps he took to eventually land his own cable series (NatGeo's 'Hacking The System'), and how, when the dream went away, he leveraged his experience to self-start a fresh YouTube brand, web store, and blog that Brian controls himself, no cable network required. He also shares his unified theory of being an independent creator and how you can start from nothing and get to something. It's a magical discussion.

Brian Brushwood Makes You The Most Interesting Person In The Room

Andy Behbakht and Rebecca Johnson are the founders of DCTV Podcasts, a podcast network devoted to tv adaptations of DC Comics characters with well over a dozen successful fan podcasts under their belt. Hear what it takes to run a podcast network, particularly within a niche like superhero shows. We also discuss how vulnerability makes you a better podcast host, and how the network unites every year to support a great cause.

Andy Behbakht and Rebecca Johnson Made A Superheroic Podcast Network

Justin Robert Young is a comedic podcaster on the long-running podcast Night Attack, but his big personal passion is politics and political history. It's only natural that he's making a new podcast covering one of the biggest presidential elections ever. In the first season of "Raise The Dead,", Justin dives deep on the 1960 Presidential election between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy, and how that election influenced Donald Trump’s campaign in 2016. We talk about the ins-and-outs of producing a researched podcast, and Justin reveals how his podcast broke new ground in soup-related political history. Yes, you read that right.

Justin Robert Young Made A Historical Podcast

Cliff and Melissa Barackman built the North American Bigfoot Center in Boring, Oregon. You might know Cliff from the Animal Planet series Finding Bigfoot. He's been a dedicated sasquatch field researcher for more than two decades, and he brings all that experience to the North American Bigfoot Center. His wife Melissa is also great at making horrific replicas and props, skills she puts to use working for the museum.

Cliff And Melissa Barackman Made A Bigfoot Museum

Jason Usry has been writing screenplays for nearly twenty years. In 2019, his screenplay Dead Water was made into a movie starring The Breakfast Club's Judd Nelson and Starship Trooper's Casper Van Dien. We'll find out how he got his movie made, and hear some solid tips to break into showbiz while considering creative and financial requirements.

Jason Usry Made A Movie With Judd Nelson

Rich Johnston has been reporting on comic book rumors since 1994. Currently, he's the Head Writer and Founder of BleedingCool.com, a site known for breaking comic book news long before DC or Marvel issues a press release. Bleeding Cool has quite a reputation among comic book professionals, and we dig in on how Rich feels about all that, as well as how he sources stories and the people who've helped him along the way.

Rich Johnston Makes Bleeding Cool

Laura Purdie, sole proprietor at Hey Sweetness Bakery in Oak Ridge, Tennessee (soon to be Florida) makes cookies for a living. Beautiful cookies, packed with detail and design. This "cookie savant" has been making sweet treats professionally for most of 2019, so we'll talk a lot about how she built her cookie business. If you don't make cookies, don't worry! Laura has a lot of solid advice for creatives of any discipline.

Laura Purdie Makes Cookies

Michael Dolce is an accomplished writer, graphic novelist, podcast and web guru. He’s currently in charge of Sire Studios, a multi-genre IP production company. He’s written for Image Comics, Zenoscope, and ran several successful Kickstarters to finance his passions. We talk about using Kickstarter to fund your passions, and Michael offers up some great advice for somebody leaving their job to start their own business (like me).

Michael Dolce Makes Comic Books With Kickstarter

Aviva is just oozing with life and passion, and she writes great songs. She's also an activist. Aviva’s song “Cannabis Car” is part protest song, part groovy jam, that teaches the listener about the history of hemp in our country, and all the ways it can help the environment today. She didn’t stop at writing a song, though. She’s become a familiar face to Georgia legislatures, where she’s spent countless hours arguing for legal hemp. Plus, she was kind enough to play some songs while jumping on her trampoline!

Aviva Made Cannabis Car (And A Difference)

Connor is best known for his work at the Upright Citizen’s Brigade improv school and theater in NYC, but you might have seen him on Last Week Tonight, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, or as a 35-year-old Presidential candidate on The Chris Gethard Show. Expertly staged and foolishly named, Connor's "Talk-A-Doodle-Doo" was broadcast on MNN earlier this year as part of Chris Gethard Presents. It's a real piece of theater that keeps you guessing for the whole hour. Plus, Connor sheds light on what he's moving towards, and its a limited series with familiar trappings.

Connor Ratliff Made A Public Access Masterpiece

Bill Meeks talks to passionate people executing their "Big Ideas" in realistic ways. From entrepreneurs to artists and everything in between, I Made This tells the stories of dreamers just like you.

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I Made This

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