Sometimes Community Means Crouching in the Closet

Mashing up Good Words with Cool Facts About Animals to create something anew.

Kids Listen: Introducing Mashups! A New Show from the Members of Kids Listen

One of my favorite things about being a part of Kids Listen is interacting with other members who are alike in our commitment to making great podcasts for kids and families, but who are also different in so many other ways. Among our community are peeps who create kids-oriented content on just about every topic imaginable!

The juxtaposition of those commonalities and distinctions has never been so powerful for me as in the debut episode of Kids Listen’s newest project, MASHUPS. My pod, the Good Words Podcast, is paired with Cool Facts About Animals and the resulting episode creates something at once adjacent to both shows and altogether new.

Meet two smart podcasts that make learning fun! The Good Words Podcast’s Lynn and Cool Facts About Animals’ Ali and her kids Grady, Clara & Teddy bring their collective wit, acumen, and phat lexicon to the table. See if you can play along and test your knowledge of words used to describe groups of different animals. We start off with a highlight they each share showcasing their mash-up partner’s pod, and end with a personal contribution created just for you listeners. https://www.kidslisten.org/mashups

On my own show, I pretty much run 100% of the operation. Episodes incorporate contributions from a variety of different voices, but the work of imagining, writing, recording, editing, hosting, uploading, and promoting are all done by yours truly. That also means I have total control over where and when those things get done.

Collaboration, of course, involves compromise. In order to align my schedule with those of the Cool Facts gang and our producer, At Your Level’s Tal Kelly, recording needed to happen when I was out of town, helping my good friends with a house move. No problem, right? In the digital age, recording can happen anywhere! And in this case, the equation to determine the value of “anywhere” was:

To be fair, I haven’t spent a lot of my life cowering in closets, but nevertheless, I can easily say that it was the best time I’ve ever had in such a position. From our various locations around the country, we laughed, played, and learned (at least I know I did). Wherever you are, I think you will, too. Give MASHUPS a listen starting on March 20!