Episode 308: The Year the Mountain of Manure Was Hit by a Flood

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By Brendan O’Meara

Hey CNFers, welcome to CNF Pod, the creative nonfiction podcast, the show where I usually speak to badass people about the art and craft of telling true stories. I say usually because this week I don’t have a guest.

Booooo…

Hey, hey, hey before you start hurling tomatoes up that the stage, hear me out. My guest this week wasn’t feeling good so we had to reschedule. You might be like, “BO, thought you had some of these in the can. Get your house in order.” And yes, in an ideal world I have a few in the can, but you’d be surprised how many of these interviews are done the week of and packaged soon thereafter. 

I could’ve scrambled for a guest but I wanted to try something new. I don’t think this’ll be a regular thing in the podcast feed. I DO think it’ll be a normal thing for the Patreon crew so consider heading to patreon.com/cnfpod to support the podcast to get special podcasts like this one you’re about to hear.

So what’s the deal? In an effort to up the production value and to make the show seem a little bit more zippy, I’ve always been inspired by the structure of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. Here are these episodes that focus on one guest, they film all day, so hours and hours of footage, for what, 15 minutes of final product? What must that edit be like? 

The simple answer is, throw out all the boring parts. 

The harder answer is to say, in the case of CNF Pod. I’ve got 60 minutes of raw tape. You get 20 minutes: Go! Figure it out, BO.

I love the musical interludes of CCGC, I love the motion of it and I think, what would CNF Pod sound like if it was THAT?

So I went back to one of my very favorite interviews, this with Laura Hillenbrand, and gave the CCGC treatment.

The show’s Instagram handle, @creativenonfictionpodcast, and you can always keep the conversation going on Twitter @CNFPod.

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Brendan’s Monthly Newsletter: First of the month! No spam! Can’t beat it!

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