We are Jim and A.Ron from Bald Move, and we cover your favorite television shows on our podcasts! AUA!!

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I think this one was meant for a.ron

I would be honored!

It seems like getting advance screeners would help you guys a ton. I know I'd love it if your podcasts were available right when the show finishes airing. Have you pursued that at all, and if so, what has been the reason for not being able to get them?

Yes, we actually have. So far we've not gotten any takers. Alan Sepinwall hooked us up with some people to talk to (thanks Alan!) but as you can imagine there is a LOT for them to worry about in regards to leaks and spoilers and I think we're just a bit too internety and fly by night at this point for them to have that kind of trust. I'd like to think as our profile continues to rise, maybe that will change, but it would absolutely help us out A LOT. Heck, we just did a semi-official podcast for HBO on The Leftovers, maybe that's a sign of things to come? On the other hand, we kind of pride ourselves on our reputations as "outsiders", so I'd be uncomfortable taking anything that would have any strings attached. Like, "we'll give you screeners and access to cast and crew, but you have to say good things about x, y, and z." No sale.

I love you guys! Personal question so feel free to ignore:

A Ron, You've mentioned your divorce before - was that due to you leaving the Jehova's Witnesses?

Jim, did you get into skepticism (Sagan, SGU, etc.) after leaving, or was that part of what spurred you to leave?

It definitely was a factor. There was a lot wrong in the relationship, and that had a lot to do with it, plus the baggage you both get from being raised as children in a cult. I had been "pretending" to be a Witness for several years at that point, and the choices I had were to keep that up and probably go insane, or stop and see where the chips fell, and I chose the chip falling option.

I enjoy your discussions when they get political (like on the last episode of Orange is the New Cast). Would you ever consider doing a policital/news type of cast like Carlin's Common Sense?

I know a.ron would love nothing more. I'm wholly unprepared for a political podcast due to the apolitical nature of my upbringing. I'd be much more likely to do a skeptical / religious cast.

That's why a political show would be so much fun! Two relatively blank slates that liberals and conservatives could try to sway and bend to their own evil purposes! MUAHAHAHA!

Thanks, I like getting political, but I've also got a "radical moderate" platform that seems to give partisans of both sides fits, so I'm not sure how popular it would be. I think we're planning on doing a once a month "Anything" podcast that we open up to listener suggestion, so when that starts up, suggest away.

We got pretty political on our first Boardwalk Empire cast. The war on drugs / privatized prison fiasco we have going on in the USA drives me crazy.

Hi and thanks for doing the AMA, big fan here!

Some questions from my request, without those others have asked:

1. Are there any shows from the past you wish you had covered? Lost maybe? Boy would I love you guys doing a podcast series on lost...
2. Do you like Sci Fi at all? I see you're in drama and fantasy but what about E. G. Doctor Who or star trek?
3. What other podcasts do you listen to, except from your own?

1) X-Files would have been huge. I was pissed we couldn't get season one of True Detective fit in our schedules for this year, that would have been a fun one to cover. Would have loved to cover The Wire from the jump, and I definitely plan on doing an epic re-watch podcast on that. 2) We both love sci-fi! I love fantasy as well, but Jim not so much. I'm a huge Trek nerd, I've read almost all the TOS/TNG era novels, I own the technical manuals, I can recite most episodes by heart like an annoying kid from band camp. Love Firefly. used to love Star Wars, now I dunno. Have to see how they handle the remakes. Doctor Who I've tried to get into 2-3 times in the past five years and I just can't make it. Not sure why, it just hasn't held my interest. 3) Dan Carlin's Hardcore History. LOOOVVVEEE that cast. Bill Simmon's BS report. I like Basketball and Football, and I like the pop culture guests and topics he throws in. I discovered Alan Sepinwall, my critical hero, on his podcast. All the Bald Move family podcasts I listen to, our buds Eric and Jesse on PA, Amy, Susan, and Jerilyn on The Because Show, and Tom and Kelly on Up Yours Downstairs. Alan Sepinwalls Firewall and Iceberg, Girls in Hoodies podcast, Stuff You Missed In History, How Did This Get Made, Penny Arcade's DLC. Jim's list is probably 5x longer, haha.

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Wellll.... Reddit decided to delete my first post, because I didn't fill out the template correctly, I guess, so since we were running late, I did the second one super high speed and left off Game of Thrones!

However, GoT is the reigning champ, statistically. We did 100k+ weekly listens at the height of this past season. It's hard to gauge exactly what our most popular show is, because the shows tend to leap frog each other. We experience 2x-3x audience growth from season to season. Breaking Bad used to hold the crown, then GoT slaughtered it this season. It would be hard to believe that The Walking Dead can catch up, but stranger things have happened. I think we're reasonably popular with the fanbases that we cover, maybe we're a bit more polarizing with Walking Dead fans, because we tend to rip the show when it is particularly braid dead.

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The numbers are a consideration, usually to stop doing something. Like, with 24 this season. We enjoyed the show, we didn't take it too seriously, but NOBODY was listening, by our standards. You start to wonder what else you can do with your 2-3 hours that would actually entertain people, you know? Same thing happened to Justified, we were doing it, nobody was listening, so we stopped. Now that we're full time, we'll probably going to pick it back up for the final season, because we're huge fans, but at the time, when we were doing this in our evenings, we couldn't "justify" it.

That said, if we ever start covering a show just for the numbers, you'll probably be able to tell, because the show will suck. So we try not to do that.

True Detective is the perfect storm. Quality show, great execution, passionate fan base, lots of "What if?" to consider and fuel debate for weeks, it was almost made to podcast. I'm very excited for season 2.

As far as adjusting, one thing we've always thought is if we're not sure about a show, we'd rather miss the first season than get stuck podcasting about a potential turd. We weren't planning on doing a weekly show on The Leftovers, but we saw the pilot, and decided the hell with it, this is something, we want to talk about it.

If a show came out and we weren't covering it, I'm not sure how we'd handle it. We've talked about what we would do, like, do "instant" style casts to catch up, then start full casts when we do? We almost did that with The Americans and True Detective this year, but we were just getting started on the full time gig, and I was still doing some consulting on the side for my old employer, so the time commitment was dicey.

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Reddit is an indispensible tool for the discriminating TV watcher. Every show we cover has a dynamite subreddit, I can't believe how fast and thorough people are at digesting and dissecting episodes.

Hey guys, I adore what you guys do. Keep it up.

If I may ask, how specific is your pipe dream? A Jim/A. Ron TV show? Getting hired onto XM or something of that nature? Or do you see yourself going a Grantland-type route and giving up-and-comers with chops a chance to get their stuff out there via your network?

Yes, yes, and yes. Haha. We're looking to expand the network in 2015 with more guest contributors and written content. What I really admire about the Grantland experiment is that Bill hired a bunch of people with the same focus/passion/style and more or less made it all work. A lot of my new favorite critics are on Grantland. If we could do something like that with Bald Move, it would be pretty cool.

And having an official gig would be AWESOME, but scary, too. I don't want to have to worry about offending an executive, I don't want to have to worry about having an unpopular opinion about the show we're being paid to cover, etc. I like Chris Hardwick, but damn I'd hate to be stuck on Talking Dead and not be able to say "that was really fucking stupid" when a turd episode comes out. You know?

That's really cool. What would the process of becoming a guest contributor be? Love the 'cast, keep it up!

Not sure yet, that idea is still half-baked. It's something that is still being discussed intra-network.

First, I just want to say that I love your podcasts. They are so honest as opposed to being pure fanboy worship sessions.

Now, since I have to include a question per the AMA rules, how do you guys decide what series to review? Do you ever review one in which you have no interest but it has enough popularity to make it worthwhile?

Great question. First, we BOTH have to love it. So we don't chase traffic. My god, the numbers we'd get on Doctor Who and Sherlock if we did... The Walking Dead is a weird instance, in that it kind of trojan horsed us by pretending to be a serious, excellent AMC drama for the first two years, then morphed into an action/horror show, and it's arguable if we'd cover it knowing what we known now. On the other hand, it's crazy popular, and it ranks really high on the "fun to podcast" scale.

So it usually comes down to whether we like it or not. If it's a new show, then it gets more complicated. What is it's pedigree. What kind of buzz is it getting? What network is it on? Are we interested in the concept? What kind of community is building about it on Reddit/message boards? How much feedback are we getting about it. We'd much rather let a promising show "go", and catch it on season two, than get half way through a season and be like, "oof, we made a mistake".

What is the formula for iTunes to move up in rankings? How do you make enough to live on podcasting?

I don't think anyone has an exact answer to the iTunes thing, but it seems to be a combination of ratings/reviews/subscriptions, with some built in recency bias (shows that are getting reviews in the past few days will trump a show that hasn't gotten reviews recently), and there appears to be some manual curation on the part of the iTunes team going on as well. If you can hit new and notable a few times, it seems like it gets easier. The general advice is; have good artwork, keep a regular schedule, release several shows in the first 6-8 weeks to maximize your new and noteworthy potential, and consistently encourage your listeners to rate and review you. When you're building from the ground up, it takes a lot of time to build up a head of steam, but once you do, it starts snowballing.

We get our income from 33% direct listener support (Subbable.com, Patreon pretty soon, donations, etc) 33% from affiliate links (Amazon is the biggest and most successful for us) and 33% from advertising. It should be noted that we're not all the way there, yet, we're making the shortfalls up with our life savings, but our projections are looking really good. It was kind of a leap of faith, and so far, so good.

Jim/ARon

Having developed the following that you have - do you ever feel like you are being stalked?

Tom in WV

Yes, especially by poets that drive Volkswagons. It's a problem. :D

This AMA is mildly interesting. When are you guys going to get back out to the Midwest with the Personal Arrogants crew? Listening to old PA episodes, I was bummed to hear I missed an epic drinking binge with all of you in Colorado.

Lately, A-List directors have been producing a lot of shows. Berg (Leftovers), Fincher (House of Cards), Del Torro (The Strain), etc... What director would you like to see produce/create a TV Show? Lets assume it's on HBO and they can do anything.

I'll keep you posted. I'd love to get back to Colorado sometime soon for the... beers. Yes, the beers, that's the ticket.

I'm going to say... Wes Anderson. Hopefully involving stop animation. That, or get Christopher Nolan to do a hard sci-fi series on HBO about asteroid mining, I don't know, something hard boiled and Firefly-ish but where you can have boobs and real swear words.

Wes Anderson + Stop Motion? Now I'm just imagining a wildly inappropriate and fast-paced version of Wallace and Gromit on HBO.

Wes Anderson might not be the best fit for HBO. Plus, he got plenty filthy with only the word "cuss" on Fantastic Mr. Fox. I'll stand by the hard boiled asteroid mining idea, though.

Oh don't get me wrong, I would totally watch a dirty Wallace and Gromit type show, especially when I get some Colorado beer in me. I need to check out Fantastic Mr. Fox; I've only seen Life Aquatic, Grand Budapest, and Royal Tenenbaums.

I do think the asteroid mining is a fantastic idea, but I would not want any hint of aliens. The future of asteroid mining is so exciting and opens so many possibilities, I would love to see a realistic depiction of it. You could even have Mars colonized by humans when the show is set, so the dynamic between Earth and the colony on Mars could be explored.

I could get behind aliens, as long as they are something bizzare, like aquatic beasts swimming in the frozen seas of Europa, or giant jellyfish creatures floating in the atmosphere of Saturn, stuff like that. But absolutely no blue humans with funny foreheads. I want it to be HARD sci-fi.

Helloo...!! Can u say me much more about what shows are planning in the future ??

The stuff I know we're doing is Boardwalk and Justified's final season and True Detective season 2. There are a few other maybes that either I or Jim haven't committed to for whatever reason. We both have a "veto" right, so we aren't stuck covering a show we're "meh" about. Oh! I'm also doing an American Horror Story cast with Cecily, who was my co-host on the Orange is the New Black and True Blood podcasts. That should be a lot of fun.

Does podcasting ever seem like work to you guys? Are there shows that you can barely get through but need to watch and break down for the sake of the podcast? (You guys are the best.)

Sometimes, but usually only when I'm sick or otherwise stressed about something going on or are just overloaded. Take this week, I have a pretty good chest cold I'm nursing and we have a packed week, so I have to make sure I really focus on bringing the focus and energy. We only do the shows we both love, so there aren't a lot of episodes I dread to cover. Plus, Jim's my best bud, so it's never a shitty day when I just hang out with him shooting the breeze.

God damn mother fucking cock sucking summer cold...

God damn mother fucking cock sucking summer cold

I KNOW! It's the WORST. We're about to hop in the sauna and try drinking a few quarts of booze and leeching.

Hey guys! Love your stuff. Two questions:

 1. Any dreams/desires to parlay your fame/reputation to get into the    other side of TV? Writing, etc?

 2. Can you give us 3 desert island episodes, of anything? And why?

1) I love writing. I have a book I wrote about Season One of The Walking Dead that will be coming out next month as part of our Month of The Dead promo/craziness. It would be awesome to write for television, but I have no idea how to move my career in a trajectory to make that happen, so it will probably have to be an accident. I also wrote a comic book with a friend last year that may or may not see the light of day (it's in his hands now, he has it all penciled, but he's a busy dude and it needs to be inked and colored). I love comic books, I could see getting into that.

2) Man, I don't know if I could pick just 3 episodes. If I had to, I'd probably pick the season finales of seasons 3 and 4 of boardwalk, and "Ozymandias" from Breaking Bad. Hard to include anything from "The Wire", because they rely so much on the surrounding episodes to work, although that would be a no brainer to include in a desert island "series" pack.

Do you miss your old day jobs?

A lot of those shows are current. How can you define the current generation of shows as "the golden age of television" when it hasn't even ended?

Not really. I loved what I did, and I could go back to it if I had to, but it got real hard to focus on writing yet another CRUD screen on Monday morning when my head was spinning from TV I'd watched the night before and a steady stream of feedback from fellow fans flowing into my inbox.

That's a great question. I think the conflux of television moving into a serial drama format and away from procedurals, as well as cable allowing more mature and adult themes, with the advent of HD broadcasting, it was a perfect storm, and it's pretty easy to say that somewhere in the Lost/Oz/Sopranos/Deadwood era, we started to see things that we'd never seen on TV before, and that TV started to wrest from cinema that "serious entertainment" moniker.

That said, I'd be open to a platinum age with 4k televisions, and more single writer/director experiments ala True Detective and Fargo! I would not mind being thrown in that brier patch.

I have a couple of questions! (Hugely loyal fan--love you guys and listen to way too many of your shows.)

• When are you going to do a Hannibal podcast? That show has a smaller cult following, but I truly believe Hannibal fans would listen and spread the word. Furthermore, the show is awesome, right on par with True Detective (and more gorey--which is suprising given its on NBC).

• When did you know it was time to go full-time? Were your friends/family supportive?

• Do you ever get sick of each other? Let's be real, you guys are around each other A LOT!

• How often do you have people wanting to guest host? I notice that you (unlike other podcasters) rarely change it up. (I don't mind--just curious!)

1) I love Hannibal, and it was another one that fell into our "cross over zone" where we were in the middle of quitting our day jobs and might have had the time to cover if we had acted a bit sooner. So I'm on board for next season, we'll see if Jim loves it.

2) We looked at our budgets, and we had been working on paying off our debt and getting our budgets as small as they could be, at the same time our kickstarter's for Breaking Good and Watching Dead greatly exceeded our expectations. The question was did we want to wait one more year and have more money saved up and more confidence, and potentially have someone eat our lunch (the TV podcasting competition continues to stiffen day by day), or go ahead and be slightly not as financially ready as we'd like to be and make it up with hard work and some help from our live savings/credit cards/401k. In the end, we went with the roll of the dice, and here we are!

3) Hmm... I'd say we do get on each other's nerves from time to time, and we have passionate disagreements, but at the end of the day Jim is my best friend and I respect his intelligence and opinion a great deal. It doesn't hurt that a lot of the things that potentially irk me about him also irk me about myself. We've also lived together for several years, so we've learned to share space and be cool.

4) Rarely, actually. We're trying to change that, because we're about to hit "peak Jim and A.Ron" so the only way we can do more is to branch out a bit. That's what the Orange cast was about, and also True Blood, and to a lesser extent our collaboration with Eric from Personal Arrogants on Fargo... and I think Jim has some experiments coming down the pike as well. Finally, look for more of this in 2015!

Hi guys No questions here but wanted to give a big thank you for your great work on the podcasts. I'm down in Australia and travel great distance for work, your podcasts are one of the few things keeping me sane on long trips plus help me keep track of plotlines and characters in GoT particularly.

One thought though...... Does the music need to be quite so loud before the spoiler sections? Makes my ears bleed every time it comes up!

But really thank you, you are both doing great work and it is very much appreciated.

Hey thanks for the feedback. Sorry about the music, we actually, believe it or not, try to normalize the levels, but maybe we're not normalizing enough or we forgot a couple. We'll try harder, because that's the kind of stuff that annoys us about podcasts, too.

I read all of these responses in your respective voices.

I've been a Subbable subscriber since the beginning, I'm definitely gonna snag a podcast and do a video chat with you guys here in the near future. Loving the BB rewatch casts... please please please do seasons 2 & 3. Shit, I would (probably) be willing to fund most of that myself. Also really excited for the TTG Walking Dead playthrough you mentioned this past week; I think this is a fantastic idea.

Speaking of TWD, after seeing extended trailers and whatnot, what are your (serious) expectations for this upcoming season?

Thanks man, that's really cool and it means a lot. Thanks for supporting us. I think at this point, given the success of our BrBa re-watch casts, and our love for the source material, it's a foregone conclusion that we will do seasons 2 and 3. Kind of up in the air on 4 and 5, since we already have full coverage of that, but who knows, that might be fun too.

RE: TWD. My hope is, TWD big wigs look around at the talent they have in acting, writing, and directing, and the product that they have been able to churn out, what works and what doesn't work, and they turn this into an unabashed action/horror show, that might occasionally do some dramatic heavy lifting, but only if it comes easy. They get into a lot of trouble when they try to get too cute, or when the needs of a realistic character get in the way of the zombie set piece they obviously want to get on the screen.

So fuck it. Embrace the action/gore you do well, and quit letting the hamfisted drama get in the way. If they want to get back to their Season One promise, they need to get better writers and directors, though I happen to think the actors they have on staff are above average to excellent, all are capable of excellence when give decent material to work with. Anyway, just from the trailer, it looks like they're going more for taut thriller, which I think is a great idea for them.

I'm late!

1. Favorite Star Trek episode? Favorite minor character? (Mine's "Tapestry." And therefore Q. (Or therefore "Tapestry"?))

2. Your favorite movie?

3. I fell off The Walking Dead because of the drop in quality. Through Facebook or perhaps the Game of Thrones cast I was made aware that you guys had also noticed the drop in quality with the show. Your listeners, those who hadn't abandoned the show because of the questionable writing, obviously didn't like you pointing it out to them. How did that work out? How did you balance your authenticity with your need to provide satisfying content? I kind of wish I had stuck with the show so I could have observed this meta-drama.

1) "Data's Day". I'm a huge Data whore and that episode made me sooooo happy back in the day. Also, my favorite TNG era novel is Metamorphosis, where Data gets to be human. I could totally watch a spin off series featuring the romantic/comedic adventures of Data and Lt. Yar. It's really sad, really, I need help.

1. The Godfather.

2. Our TWD fanbase is... interesting. It's a mix of people like me and Jim who think it's ridiculous that occasionally shows flashes of greatness, which is maddening, and those of people that don't watch the show any more but also like to laugh as me and Jim make fun of the show, and those people who are just contrary but have a sense of humor about it. They like listening because it gets them worked up, haha. But the people who send us feedback are wicked smart and pretty damn funny, and between that and the fun we have doing voices and skits, it's some of the most fun we have on "the air".

What are your top 5 shows of all time Aron?

I feel like we've got similar tastes. Ive got: The Wire, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, True Detective, The Sopranos

The Wire and Breaking Bad are top dogs, in some order that I'm not entirely sure of. Then comes Game of Thrones, Boardwalk Empire, and Mad Men, and again, not entirely sure what order they should go in. True Detective could threaten the top 10, especially if this last season of BWE is garbage, and TD's sophomore year is excellent.

Longtime fan, guys, really enjoying the Breaking Bad rewatch podcast. I'm wondering if you guys have any plans for bar meetups outside of conventions? TV podcast-related or not, it'd be awesome to have beers while you guys hold court, especially if you did it in Nashville.

Also, A. Ron, is Andrew Weil your dad?

It's an idea that we're open to, but our get togethers around large fan-cons and what not have been fairly sparsely attended. It would be rad if we got big enough that we could just show up at a town and have 20-40 people appear and all have beers. One cool fantasy would be to do a road tour of our podcasts, where we go to a different city each week for a live watch of whatever we're covering and then a live "instant" podcast with live listener feedback. We did that for the final episode of Breaking Bad in our home town, and it was a ton of fun, but we lost so much money on it, haha.

http://www.achievement.org/achievers/wei1/large/wei1-024.jpg

a. ron pls

Shit, I forgot about that part. I was fairly certain of my parentage, until I saw Dr. Weil's beard. Now I have a lot of VERY pointed questions for my dad.

Hey guys! Huge fan of your podcasts. What's your favorite show of years gone by that you wish you could have done a podcast for?

X-Files. Judging by how crazy the usenet discussions got, it would have melted a podcast. Star Trek DS9 would have been neat. Earth: Final Conflict season one, then I would have set myself on fire mid-way through season two. The one that stings most recently was missing True Detective season one. I spent as much time reading and theorizing on that show as I would have done if I were podcasting about it, I could not get enough.

Can we have a BaldMove Fantasy Football league/podcast next year?

Eric runs a BM fantasy football league each year. Last year he tried a Football podcast, which I guested on a few times, never really took off. I will say that not working in a traditional office space environment has taken a lot of the fun out of it for me. Monday's just aren't the same, coming into the office, giving everybody shit, seeing who is still battling it out for Monday Night. Jim is totally colorblind to seeing sports, so he's useless when it comes to that stuff.

Love your podcasts! I didn't realize you were doing a Breaking Bad rewatch cast. SWEET! I've been listening to A.Ron's Orange is the New Black podcast on my walks this summer and really enjoying those. I love all your podcast partners on that one except for Cecily. Sorry to say as I know this is A.Ron's girlfriend! Otherwise it's been lots of fun.

Now my question: Would you guys consider covering The American's on FX? I just discovered this one on Amazon streaming and it is amazing!! I'm marathoning it to get caught up for the 3rd season in January. Please oh please consider doing this show!

Yep, we are going to do American's s3. We just didn't get out of our jobs early enough for it this year. You are 100% correct, it is a great show. Although your tastes in podcast co-hosts is terrible! Haha...

What's your schedule like? When do you go to work and when do you do your podcasts?

I usually go to bed between midnight and 1am, and get up about 7am, and compile feedback and work on show notes/other stuff until it's time to go to the studio, which is at Jim's place. We get started there between 9 and 10am with a 15-20 minute scrum of hot topics and things we need updated on from each other, and we go until 5-6pm. Some days we watch a lot of television and take notes, some days we bang out a lot of casts and feedback, other days we're working on new projects / behind the scenes stuff. We of course watch a lot of the first watches on our "own time", and we both are working on business stuff in the evenings as well. Maybe Jim is working on working on a feed issue and I'm working on the bills and accounting, stuff like that. I kinda thought it would be a slow ramp up for most of 2014 and I'd have tons of free time but it hasn't been the case. I do try to keep 6pm-10pm for my family on the week nights, and every other weekend I take more or less completely off to spend time with them as well.

Any book/book series that YOU get to pick becomes an HBO/cable series so you can cover it on the BM network; what do you pick?

Oh god, too easy. Jim Butcher's Dresden Files. It already got made into a shitty one season on Syfy, a long time ago, but I heard that Butcher has the televised/movie rights back and I could see HBO doing it up right. It would fit perfectly right into the abandoned True Blood spot. I'd use every ounce of whatever pitiful pull I have in this industry to make that happen. Hell, it could even be an animated series, maybe it SHOULD be an animated series.

Why not A.A.Ron?

My grandfather was "just off the boat" German, and I'm named after him. Apparently Germans don't truck with extra vowels where they're not needed.

Have you guys ever considered having listeners /supporters on the show every now and again? I think it will be cool to have some segments where you interact a little more personally with listeners.

We experimented with voicemails, on The Walking Dead once, but it gave us mixed results. We prefer the format of reading feedback because we can interrupt, make jokes, etc at will, instead of waiting 30-60 seconds to respond. It's also a pain to edit feedback down in audio form, and we get TONS of feedback on our top shows. Game of Thrones easily gets 80+ pages of feedback, and I have time to read about 7 pages, if I really hustle? Now imagine getting that volume in voicemails.

That said, we are definitely looking for ways to include more listener views and interact. A lot of Bald Move contributors and listeners have gone on to form their own podcast networks and we're super proud of them. I think as we go forward, we'd like to find ways of officially working together with our really smart, ambitious fans. But that's a 2015 thing and I don't have a lot more than a sketch of how we want that to go.

Can I ask what you two make? I ask because I'm hoping to take the plunge into podcasting, make 30k at a horrible job, and I am hoping to transition out of it.

(I love your podcast and have been listening since you were only doing TWD three years ago. Hilarious and insightful.)

Thank you! We're projected to make around $60k this year. Maybe a bit more, maybe a bit less, depending on how the affiliates go and the whims of the listeners. It does take a while to get to that point, so the best time to start is right now!

You two are so humble. I can't thank you enough for answering that question honestly. You are awesome.

Well, I forgot to say AUAA, so Internet Law was at stake!

What are you most looking forward to in Season Five of Game of Thrones?

Peter Dinklage

Are they including Lady S or not?

Official word is "no", but I'm still betting they're fucking with us and we'll see her.

Honestly, seeing how they navigate the issue of GRRM's writing schedule. They've been gold much more often than not, but it's going to be very interesting to see how they handle the transition from "adaptation" to "original screenplay", assuming George doesn't just whip out 2 more books in the next 2-3 years.

what podcasting hardware/software + podcasting platforms do you recommend?

I think libsyn is the best place to host your podcast, period, though there are a lot of good options. Libsyn are total pros, they can support you when you get 50 listens a week, and they will be right there with you when you get a quarter million, and they have easy pipelines to start getting advertisers once you start getting big, and they have pretty good stats. We get nothing from plugging them, we just really like them.

Having said that, make sure you own your own feed. We use wordpress with the Powerpress plugin to maintain all of our feeds, so if one dark day libsyn goes out of business, we won't have to scramble.

As far as hardware, we happened to start off with a Behringer Xenyx 1204 USB mixer when we decided we wanted to get "professional", and it has served us well for many years now. We use Shure SM-58s for our studio. Jim records to Adobe Audition now, but until this year we were using Garageband and/or Audacity, which are both free and we used them exclusively for many years.

You can get started with headphone mics (in fact, we did!) but if you at all think you might be doing this for the long haul and have $200 bucks or so, I really recommend getting a mixer + some decent XLR mics. The sound quality boost is really noticeable, plus our board offers compression, which I consider a "magic dial that makes your podcasts sounds super listenable."

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So a lot of people say, use feedburner. Feedburner is great, and you'll have a nice, auto-maintained RSS and iTunes feed for your podcast. The problem is, your feed URL is going to be something like feedburner.com/A4571249/Your-Podcast-/Feed or whatever. What happens if Feedburner goes out of business? Now, all that traffic you built on iTunes and on your podcast goes dark. You CAN update your iTunes link, but it's not foolproof and it takes time. Meanwhile, your listeners can't get your podcast. You'd think listeners would just go to your site or send email to figure out what to do, but you'd be surprised.

If you host your own feed, which is more technically demanding (although far from difficult if you use the right plugins and have a bit of knowledge), that can never happen. The worst that can happen is the place where you physically store your podcasts go dark, then you could re-point your feed and re-upload your casts and be ready to go. No one is holding your feed "hostage?" Make sense?

Your Subbable says that you are at 28% of your goal. What did you set the goal at!?

100%, of course.

Hey guys, I've listened to all of your coverage of Breaking Bad (old and new), Game of Thrones, and 24. I really enjoy listening to your discussions, and I appreciate the fact that you've both shown an exceptional amount of humility and openness to opposing viewpoints when your listeners "take you to task". For what it's worth, I tend to agree with your opinions more often than I find myself disagreeing with them.

One question for Jim: Way down the line when Game of Thrones reaches its series finale, do you actually plan on re-listening to your old podcasts to hear what A.Ron had to say during the spoiler sections? It's really interesting stuff, but it also amounts to hours of back logged listening material. How excited are you really to hear A.Ron pontificate alone for hours on end? :)

Ahaha haha! I give the odds of Jim going back and checking that out to be 0.000%.

Hah! Fair enough. I guess that gives me a segue to a broader question. How often, if ever, do you guys feel motivated to listen to your old podcasts?

It depends, every once in a while we'll mention something that happened on an older show, or some private inside joke, and I'll go back into the archives and listen to it. My reaction to listening to older stuff is usually being surprised by the audio quality, either pleasantly so, "oh, I forgot we had decent mics when we recorded this", or unpleasantly, "dear god this sounds like it was recorded up satan's asshole!". That's the first impression. It's a shame because some of the really old stuff had really great ideas and content, but the audio quality is garbage.

I do listen to almost everything we put out within the first week, just as a sort of quality control, to make sure the sound is okay, how the levels are, did we forget a tiny edit we were supposed to make, etc.

How many minutes of recorded material gets edited out in a typical 1 hour podcast? (mistakes, dead air, superfluous material) And will there ever be a Bald Move blooper reel podcast?

(Just sold my house a few days ago, and guess which shirt I had on? http://bit.ly/ZeLZCC)

Rad t-shirt, sir, and thanks for your support!

Very little. Jim and I spent the first few years toiling in obscurity, where we honed our on-air skills. Nowadays we barely have to edit anything at all, and in fact we usually slip something in there by accident. Nothing exciting, usually it's like, "hey, I have to pee", or "shit, my laptop's dying, need to get the cord" kind of stuff. We probably do something like that every other month or so, and then someone will send us in a smart ass email about it, and we edit it out, ninja style, like it was never there!

We used to include all of our interesting blooper real stuff after our Blue Yonder podcasts, and if we had some really good outtakes, we probably still would, just doesn't happen very often.

So I'm listening to your season one breakdown of breaking bad, I wouldn't mind one bit if you did.... say....two episodes per week. Anyway, can you give an estimate on the cost of doing a stand alone podcast for a movie?

Thanks for listening! The time it takes us to do a movie is basically the time it takes us to watch it. So straight away, that's four man hours. Then we usually spend between 1 and 2 a piece hours researching things on it like the director, the themes, read other reviews, make our notes, then record the actual cast, do some post-production, upload it, create the article, then blam, it's done. That's another hour or two. It works out that just about each one of our podcasts takes about 10 man hours to do. GoT takes me a lot longer than that, because of the spoiler section, I can easily spend an extra 4 -5 hours on that.

Are you guys doing a dedicated Justified podcast this season?

Yep! Going to send Raylan off right!

Hey guys, I was curious as to what type of music y'all listen to? What type did y'all cut your teeth on? I guess I was wanting suggestions on bands that your into since you two cover all the great tv shows I like, it prolly eouldnt be a huge stretch that you'd like similar music. So any suggestions on bands since I've been looking for something new. Also, I think it was A-ron that turned me onto Dan Carlin's Hardcore History podcast. Thats soooo good.

Oof, I'm kind of a musical ominvore, and I don't have a lot of great suggestions outside of Billboard's top 100, except for indy-rap, which I know a fair amount about. Blackalicious, Jurasic 5, Lyrics Born, the whole quantum crew. Blackalicious' Blazing Arrow might be the best rap album of the past decade. It's all old school, conscious style, verbally complex, and hard hitting beats.

I also like The Protomen, which I got exposed to via their amazing live concerts. They are a prog-rock/southern rock group that primarily plays rock operas loosely based on capcom's Mega Man series, as filtered through Orwell's 1984.

Cool. Thanks for the reply/suggestions. Ill check out that stuff u mentioned. P.O.S.. is a pretty good one. Love his song Fuck Your Stuff! I started out w punk and rap long ago but spread out to all types of genres. Thanks again fellas for entertaining me every week. Will continue to spread the word about you. Idk how many of my peeps kept watching the leftovers because I turned them onto you. That show owes you guys royalties bc most of us would had quit that show if there wasnt your weekly walk through. Haha

Thanks man, we appreciate the love and support! I'll forward your message on to HBO. Gotta get our hands in some DEEP pockets!

Any thoughts on adding more podcasts to the network that arent TV centric?

Yeah, for sure. I've said elsewhere that we're doing a "whatever" cast that will be driven by listener contributions/topics. We're also doing "Afterhours" series where we goof off on video games, that we're posting to youtube and twitch. We have considered movies, but Jim's not as big of a movie fan as I am, AND that're roughly 25% as popular as anything else we do, so it's kind of a hard sale. Anything you have in mind?

What are some other shows your guilty pleasure watch?

True Blood/American Horror. Dual Survival, until they kicked off Cody, now fuck that show. Mythbusters (not guilty, really, but I love those guys/gals). I watch a fair bit of news. Stuff like the new Hulu series "Hotwives of Orlando". I fucking love Parks and Rec. It's like a love letter to Indiana, only a dream version of Indiana where people's ignorance and biases are mostly harmless and charming and only the truly friendly and homey parts of the Hoosier psyche make it through.

Should I start Nick Foles or Andy Dalton next week?

The Red Rifle, of course.

Congrats on your success! I'm a long time listener (Bobby Z), and I admire the balls that it took to quit your "real" jobs and pursue your dreams. Can you give some hints as to who/what might be added to the upcoming Breaking Bad Fan Fest in November? (You hinted that there are some things that are 99.9% confirmed) If I go to the Fan Fest, can I be on your BB trivia team?!?

Nah, can't really, I'd hate to get Jennie and Miguel in trouble, though I know how much you love your spoilers... As far as the trivia contest goes, why the hell not? Although I'm not sure if we'd be eligible to win prizes or anything like that, for that matter, I'm not even sure we're not double booked. But if we are there and playing and not goofing with the Geeks Who Drink in some official capacity, and you are cool with not wining a prize more valuable than sharing beers with us, then by all means, join our team!

I've been a listener and infrequent feedback-er since 2011. My opinions on telly has pretty much matched yours for years. However, I bailed out of The Walking Dead after Season 3..... A.Ron said he was genuinely excited for season five so, I have to ask, is it really worth slogging though S4?

I dunno. There is a lot of good stuff in s4, and a lot of stuff that was cover-your-eyes bad. I'd say that my excitement for S5 stems from them apparently just entirely embracing their action roots, and as such, you can probably just hop right in.

Another question, although I'm guessing I know the answer to this one!

During Following The Leftovers, LOST was understandably brought up a heck of a lot. Will there ever be any incentive to do a LOST cast? I'm a firm believer that it doesn't deserve the disdain you guys give it. Once you see passed its blatant 'Network-TV'isms, it's actually a pretty incredible show.

I dunno. I have little interest in going back to cover a show I bailed on for s2, and for Jim it might be close to treading on Holy Ground for him, since he's such a huge Jay and Jack fan. Jim got me into podcasting, and Jay and Jack got him, so they're like our Podfathers.

Please understand that I HAVE to ask... Are you done messed up A.Ron ?

Have I messed up? Am I messed up? Am I done messing up? Am I messed up at this moment? All fascinating questions, the answers of which are yes, depends on who you ask, no, and no. I'm on cold medication today and you have to be careful mixing booze with acetaminophen, boys and girls. Take care of your liver, and it will take care of you.

Are there any other shows that you want to go back and cover from the beginning like you are doing with Breaking Bad? Just saying a Wire podcast would be great.

The Wire will definitely happen at some point, the big problem is that I want to go B I G with it. I want it to be the Criterion / Platinum / Definitive The Wire podcast, and I don't want to start until I have in place everything I think I need to make each season of coverage that special. My love for The Wire knows no bounds.

Nice. I am guessing you own it but The Wire: Truth Be Told is a great book and will definitely help putting that cast together.

No I do not own it, but I just got the Kindle version. Thanks for the suggestion. I have read Sepinwalls "Revolution Will Be Televised" which has a lot of good stuff, as well as "Difficult Men".

Do you have a podcast about Utopia? I was introduced to the show by an internet forum with a lot of UK members, and it's one of the best shows I've ever seen. Absolutely riveting story, beautifully shot, terrific and original music cues, top notch acting. I am amazed it hasn't gotten more buzz in the states.

No, but it's on my radar. I hear Fincher is going to adapt it for the States, which I am super-excited for. That might be a day-one cover.

How would you guys have changed the ending to Breaking Bad?

It's nearly flawless. I wish Jesse had been more of a part of the final few episodes, but To'hajiilee/Ozymandias are beyond reproach. I wish Jesse had more of a happier ending. I wish I knew Jr. and Holly would turn out okay. But I don't know addressing or entertaining either notion would make it better, you know?

I wanted to subscribe to your Boardwalk Empire podcast but I cannot find the RSS link. Why is that such a common problem?

Mostly it happens when we're starting a new feed, like Boardwalk, there is a lot of stuff that has to happen to get it all setup. THEN we have to remember to add it to our menu.

The feed is here, sorry it was hard to find: http://baldmove.com/feed/boardwalk-empire/

Will Blue Yonder ever make a comeback?

Not sure what we'll call it, but we will have a general BS cast starting soon, like, once a month. Might as well call it Blue Yonder, haha...

What are your three favorite sandwiches?

Jimmy John's #8, BBQ beef brisquette, and chicken salad. But the good stuff, has to have like, grapes and walnuts in that chicken.

Digging your FTL videos. Are you considering recording yourselves playing anything else? Have any recommendations in general?

Yes, we have a bunch of stuff coming out. Some more FTL, Surgeon simulator, a complete play through of Tell Tales Walking Dead game. Recommendation for game... I recently discovered Papers, Please. Very cool Indy game, very hard and yet addictive.