I’m a senior now in college.  I have less than a year to finish if I don’t fuck up.

I am happily married to a great woman, who is the only woman who could ever be my wife. 

The pod cast is  going extremely well. Its been going for about  a month and a half and if I’m analyzing the listening patterns and statistics that the website gives me correctly I have about 300 regular listeners.  That’s up from about 200 regular listeners in the beginning of February.

With those kind of numbers the natural progression for me is to keep doing it.

300 people are literally coming and listening to half an hour to an hour of me and my friends talking about science!

So far its been a great adventure and the biggest high I’ve had in years.

With 300 regular listeners it seemed the next natural progression was advertising.

I’m still figuring that out.

I have 2 clients right now , Evolvefish.com and Zeus comics.

Bawls energy drinks has told me that they are interested in being a corporate sponsor of the pod cast.

Today I have an ad appointment with 9 eyes tattoo studio which is all but already shook on.

But for these successes and others that I am not mentioning, there have been at least half a dozen attempts of me to make a sale.

Most people in Dallas who own businesses seem to not  know what the hell a pod cast is.

Which is fine, I didn’t either, until about a year ago.

Though I was made to listen to the damn things. For music, I’ve never liked what was played on the radio. At least not here in Dallas, or in Lubbock. 

I guess I was introduced to the whole concept of internet radio while working retail at an indy record store in Lubbock called Ralph’s records.

The owner liked really weird indy country (got me into it too) and found internet stations that played it.

Now I listen to goth and industrial internet radio.

But I always loved talk radio. Even though I am a liberal I would listen to Rush Limbaugh and other conservative radio shows when I lived in Lubbock because it was the only talk radio readily available. I als listened to radio preachers.

When I was a christian , my pastor let my friend borrow his radio show, and my friend brought me along. We would do the show together.

Briefly while at Texas Tech university I was a DJ at the college station. But I wanted to talk a whole lot more than I wanted to play music.

I would trash talk the mayor of Lubbock, who I think was a terrible leader.

But I got into pod casts with trying to expand my knowledge of secular and skeptical philosophy.
I started with Point of Inquiry, which I tend to call “atheist NPR” but that’s actually a gross oversimplification.

I think I have heard every episode ever recorded, because I also went back and listened to all the archived episodes.

Then I started to listen to the Skeptics Guide to the Universe, which is like a radio morning show done by and about skepticism.

Then I started listening to everything I could find on these subjects. That covered quite a few shows.

This eventually led me to find science pod casts, like This Week in Science and Ginger Campbell’s brain science pod cast.

The more and more I thought about it, the more I realized that I wanted to do this.

That I had to do this.

My first attempt to record was on my digital recorder that I use for classes. That was also my first editing decision.  Only my co-host has ever heard that attempt.

Then I thought how do I want to do this?

I know, I want to be like Bill Nye the Science Guy on PCP!

I want to be the Howard Stern of Science!

So Mindcore the Shockjock of Science was born. I had been using Mindcore as a handle for a while, but this was better.

Mindcore the Shockjock of Science started out as a character, 100%, no holding back.

Then I went to the forums, and message boards, where everyone I spoke to told me that I was a talent less hack and that I should stop.

Conflicting their opinion though, people kept listening.

But I thought about there words, and I tweaked Mindcore.

Mindcore is still a character, but he’s not different from the real me either.

My wife and I play gross out contests, where we perpetually try to gross each other out,  when I do that I am Mindcore.

When I am sick with the flu and I tell someone at the pharmacy I’ve never met not to buy alternative medicine, that’s Mindcore.

I really do act like that, just not all of the time.

When I am with my mother, or mother in law, mind core is caged in my mind. But for my closest friends, the way I do the Mindcore character on the pod cast is no different from the way I act in real life when I am with the people I feel most comfortable around.

So where to now?

I want to do science popularization as Mindcore for a living.

I intend to push the pod cast as far as I can, and I don’t see myself stopping.

I want to get my doctorate in Neuroscience so that I can be Dr. Mindcore, then from there I think I will leave the academy and pursue science popularization full time.

I love the academy, don’t get me wrong. But I want to teach people science, not pre-meds.

This current plan requires me to get my doctorate, and I intend to.

From there hopefully the work I’ve already begun with the pod cast will create the connections and momentum to move into the next phase of my life.

It sounds like a blast.