In this additional bonus chat, we look at some behind-the-curtain podcast business with Peter Sokolowski. We look at his super impressive 7,000-episode streak on his "Word of the Day" podcast. He shares the reason he records every day and every episode himself. (This was recorded during a quick chat between segments but was too good not to share!)
In this additional bonus chat, we look at some behind-the-curtain podcast business with Peter Sokolowski. We look at his super impressive 7,000-episode streak on his "Word of the Day" podcast. He shares the reason he records every day and every episode himself. (This was recorded during a quick chat between segments but was too good not to share!)
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[Computer-generated transcript]
Mignon Fogarty: Greetings Grammarpaloozians! Sometimes the guests and I chitchat between the main segment and the bonus segment, and usually it's just about administrative stuff, but I thought you'd enjoy this little bit of extra Merriam-Webster history from Peter Sokolowski.
Peter Sokolowski: You're good at this. You should get into podcasting.
Mignon Fogarty: Thank you, Peter. That's hilarious.
Peter Sokolowski: How, first of all, you're like the—or to me, you're the original podcaster. When did you start?
Mignon Fogarty: Oh, it's been 19 and a half years, so July will be 20 years.
Peter Sokolowski: In 26.
Mignon Fogarty: July 26th will be 20 years. Yeah.
Peter Sokolowski: You know, for me, I can give you the number. I don't know the number offhand, but I started doing the Word of the Day, which is a podcast, but—
Mignon Fogarty: Yeah.
Peter Sokolowski: It's just a script that I read. But I've not missed a day.
Mignon Fogarty: Wow.
Peter Sokolowski: We are approaching, and I, that was, I believe, March 06. We are approaching episode 7,000.
Mignon Fogarty: Wow. That's amazing.
Peter Sokolowski: Never missed a single day, and sometimes I have to record five weeks just to, because I'm traveling. You know, I’ll record them in advance.
Mignon Fogarty: Yeah.
Peter Sokolowski: And I still, that's why I have this microphone. It was bought for me because I was during lockdown. It crashed a few times, and I was at home alone, and I don't have an engineer or whatever. So, we just recently kind of rebooted the thing and got a new audio program, new microphone, new everything. And so, you know, we kind of renewed the technology so that it's less likely to crash. Anyway, I can't be a technical podcast for like the Guinness Book of World Records because a daily podcast has to be 15 minutes or longer.
Mignon Fogarty: Oh, that doesn't seem fair.
Peter Sokolowski: And mine are only two minutes. It doesn't matter. But it is the same voice. And actually, I have to—the funny bit is it was, of course, an adjunct for marketing purposes initially. The voice part of it was because I do radio, and they said, "Hey, you'll be good at this." And I started, but then immediately our marketing director, who was absolutely brilliant, it was all her idea. She said, you know, one of our other marketing colleagues was a former actor.
He was a theater actor, and he had a great voice. And she said, "You know, Arthur can do this when you're sick or when you're traveling, or like, he can do." And I thought, great, no problem. And then we started looking at the script, and I realized just to train him to say the French words, the German words, the Latin words, the Greek words, the Old English— and to say nothing of just the geographical place names and all the rest of it.
And I realized it would take me longer to train someone else to do it than to just do it myself. And that's why I'm the only voice.
Mignon Fogarty: Yeah, no, it is like all those foreign pronunciations. Oh. When I'm doing scripts, and it's like, I have, you know, the ba—like Irish. When I say Irish, I panic.
Peter Sokolowski: Yeah. You know, those are the ones I absolutely don't even guess. I go to our etymologist. But luckily, the lion's share of these, as you might guess, are disproportionately French, and French is disproportionately difficult for English speakers.
Mignon Fogarty: It is very hard for me.
Peter Sokolowski: The one thing I know.
Mignon Fogarty: I know. So good at the French. The French, yeah. No, the French is very hard for me too.