When Charles and I started doing Dawson's Speak: A Podcast About Dawson's Creek, the first challenge we encountered was how to make the podcast sound remotely good despite being 3,000 miles apart. Charles was living in New York at the time, and I had just moved back to Los Angeles.

Now that the podcast is over (we're still blown away that we finished it!), we've joked that this period of quarantine due to COVID-19 would've been the perfect year to continue doing a podcast that's always been done from our own separate homes. But one thing that our 3 years of podcasting has done is given us the tools to talk a little about how we even did it – and as many podcasters have started tooling around with their own home set-ups, I thought it could be helpful to share what worked (and didn't work) for us!

Some background: We started working on the podcast in March 2017, it blew up about a year later thanks to this Entertainment Weekly reunion, and we just published our last episode this past Monday. I published this blog post in January 2018 about why we started the podcast, if you want to learn more about how that happened.

As the primary producer/editor of the podcast, I went through a pretty long journey to figure out the best way to make this work. When we started, I was using my Zoom H1 recorder (with a wind sock!) as a USB microphone, and we were also publishing to Soundcloud. But because Soundcloud didn't have an option for us to schedule episodes, we realized it ultimately wasn't the best option, so we switched to Libsyn and used it as our host and website for awhile. (Ultimately, we launched a full website – more on that later.)

I'm also not proud to admit it but... I couldn't get Audacity to work at first on my laptop, so I was editing the audio in FinalCut Pro. Ouch!

So if you went back to our early episodes, you can hear the quality isn't that great. We also tried once early on to record in-person together and that didn't work out. (The only success we had with an episode in-person was doing it in a professional studio, but that's not something readily available to us.)

But eventually, we grew...we learned... and here was the final set-up:

Step 1: Cutting soundbites from episodes

Each one of our episodes includes moments from the Dawson's Creek episode we're talking about. To do that, I downloaded Loopback, an audio routing software from Rogue Amoeba onto my MacBook Pro.

Note: I use two laptops (one is my old MacBook Air from college, the other is my 13-inch MacBook Pro I got in New York for video editing) in the process of producing/editing the podcast.

In Loopback, I set up two Devices that are key for the podcast. The first is a QuickTime device:



Because we were graciously gifted all of the episodes of Dawson's Creek with the original music by an anonymous listener (I originally had purchased the entire series on iTunes), I open the episode in QuickTime, and then also open a "New Audio Recording." Make sure the input source for the New Audio Recording is set to QuickTime (the device I just created in Loopback), and now it'll record anything that's playing in QuickTime.

Note: If you are watching the episodes in your browser or in iTunes, you can create Loopback devices for those so that QuickTime will record from those sources instead.

After watching an episode, I go back through and select scenes/quotes/moments to clip the audio from. I then save all of those clips into a folder and drag it into an iTunes playlist I made for the podcast. (Make sure you select all of the clips, right-click, and click "Uncheck selection" so that the clips don't automatically play one after the other.)

I make a note of each clip I recorded in a shared Google Doc Charles and I use to outline the episode. It includes a summary of the episode, links to things we want to talk about, Charles' Paula Cole facts, etc...

Step 2: Setting up to record

Charles and I both use the Blue Snowball USB Microphone. I also use this pop filter, which attaches onto the neck of the Snowball stand, to soften those harsh-sounding plosives. (If I'm not mistaken, Charles just put a sock – or two – over his Snowball and it produces a similar effect.)

In his apartment, now in LA, Charles usually sits at his desk to record. In New York, his room gave more of an echo, so he occasionally sat under his desk with a blanket over it. In my first apartment in LA, I used to sit in my walk-in closet. In my second – and current – apartment, I sit on the floor of my living room, facing sofa cushions and using a coffee table as my work station.

From my Pro and with earbuds in, I call Charles on Skype. On my Air, I plug in the Snowball, open up Quicktime to record, and make sure the recording input is set to the Snowball. (He does the same on his laptop with his Snowball.)

On Loopback, I set up a second device called PCAST setup:



In Skype, I change my audio preferences so that the input is PCAST setup. This way, Charles can not only hear me talking through my headphone mic, but he can hear when I play the audio clips off of iTunes as well.

Step 3: Recording (This is the easy part!)

...And we start! We start recording at roughly the same time and sit in silence for about 15-30 seconds. This helps us record the environments of our rooms (audio folks, you'll know it as "room tone").

Remember: I'm doing all of the talking and playing clips for us to talk about on my Pro, but I'm recording on my Air. Charles is doing everything on his one laptop.

When we're done recording, Charles uploads his audio to Dropbox and sends it to me to download. I save my recording from my Air and AirDrop it to my Pro.

Step 4: Editing (This is the hardest part!)

I use Audacity to edit. (The thing that had tripped me up in the beginning was this add-on to export the final product as an MP3, which is a smaller file size than a WAV.)

The first thing I do is import my own raw audio and adjust the audio. That means Noise Reduction (that's where the "room tone" came in handy!) and adjusting volume. I do the same with Charles' raw audio, and then I add a Label Track where I can make markers. Next, I drag in our opening theme, and use that track to put all of the Dawson's Creek clips and music throughout the episode.

Here's an example of how our final episode looks, for instance – at least how it looked about 3 and a half hours into editing. Don't be scared off by the length of the episode, this was an anomaly!



I spend the most time on editing, I think. About an hour of raw audio takes about 90-120 minutes to edit because I'm cutting out pauses, trains of thought that didn't pan out, "ums," and other things that don't make for a pleasant listening experience.

When it's done, I export it as an MP3. When we started, our episodes were under an hour, but by the end of the podcast, the episodes were averaging between an hour and an hour and a half. We definitely tried not to exceed 2 hours, with the exception of the series finale and then, of course, our final episode.

Step 5: Uploading

After I upload it to Libsyn and schedule it to go live, I grab the embed code for the player and then head over to Blogger, which I use to power our website. (It's a custom template so it makes it look less "bloggy.")

Each episode gets its own post, which includes links to anything we talked about in the episode and any extra thoughts we didn't get to during recording. I schedule that to go live and grab what will be the live link to schedule social media posts. I also take this time to try and respond to emails/comments that I didn't have time to get to throughout the week.

And that's basically it! Was the podcast time-consuming? Yes: From cutting clips from the episode to uploading, I probably spent about 8-10 hours a week working on it. And yes, there were costs associated with at the end of the day (the mics, Loopback, fees associated with Libsyn and our domain name host), but we loved doing it and we're glad we did it too.

Let me know if you have any questions, especially if you're interested in moving your podcast to a remote set-up. Good luck!

An abbreviated summary:

• Equipment: 2 Blue Snowball USB Microphones, laptops
• Software: Loopback, Skype, QuickTime, iTunes, Audacity
• Websites: Libsyn, Blogger

Today is Tuesday. I don't know what day it's supposed to feel like because, frankly, I've stopped keeping track. It's hard to sort out the days – and my emotions – around a global pandemic. Remember those cartoons where someone would go rolling down a hill of snow and start to get balled up into a giant snowball? That's how each day feels and I'm covered and surrounded by feelings of anxiety, stress, sadness, and occasional bits of peace.

It's odd to grieve the lives we were used to. I now wonder if I took it for granted too: chasing after the bus, walking down the street to the coffee shop, being able to see my grandparents. I try not to think too much about the people I shared my daily commute with on the bus or the funny staff members at the cafe who liked to make people smile or my grandparents alone in a wheelchair or hospital bed.

It's all a bit grim, isn't it?

Anyways. Here's an audio story I did about making pasta:

We say postponed, I think, because "canceled" is too harsh. In reality, I think we all know the truth.

Three-hundred and fifty miles away, up north, yeh-yeh and ma-ma are in a nursing home that's been locked down from outside visitors. At 98 and 96 years old, I wonder if they're wondering why the daily visits from family have stopped. I think yeh-yeh must know, at least. He's still sharp and has been reading the Chinese newspapers frequently, when he gets them. Last month when I saw him, he told us there were people dying in China and we should be careful.



One of the hardest parts about this new reality we've found ourselves in is not knowing how long it will be before we can all see each other again. It isn't just the physical distance that keeps us apart right now; it's also the technology barrier – the lack of means to even communicate – and, most importantly, the language barrier.

I used to envy my friends whose relationships with their grandparents were built on conversations that extended beyond, "Have you eaten today?"/"Yes." But my poor Cantonese and my grandparents' broken English ... We've always struggled to really communicate.

And yet I know, without question, that we love each other as much as people who can speak to one another every day. During last month's visit, I showed ma-ma pictures on my phone of Disney trips and my life at USC, and in between drifting in and out of consciousness, she would nod and smile and point to the familiar faces she knew.

Yeh-yeh is more talkative because, by nature of his life, he's had to be. We still joke around in small ways and he remembers how old I am. But he doesn't know what I do for a living or how I spend my days or what music I listen to or what foods I've decided I like and dislike.

But none of that really matters. What matters is that I miss them.

Now, onto the post:

I haven't been writing so far this year. Actually, this blog has kind of slowed down a lot in the past two years. So much of it, I now know, was because I had given up. Somewhere between my year of creating and now, I found myself unsure if I really had a voice.

But this can't be a post about what I've lost. It has to be about finding it – whatever that is: voice, faith, agency, trust – again.



When I was in college, people knew me as a bit of an Energizer Bunny. I couldn't stand seeing a blank space on my calendar. If I wasn't in class, I was at the newspaper; if I wasn't at the newspaper, I was filling my time with friends and friends of friends.

But it was exhausting, and I felt guilty about feeling exhausted. It wasn't until senior year when things came crashing to a halt because my anxieties merged too deeply with the stress of...well, everything. And suddenly I changed from someone who liked keeping busy to someone who needed to be busy in order to feel worthy.

"Slow down," my friend Jason would say to me, over and over. I started forcing myself to paint my nails at odd hours of the evening so that I couldn't do anything but sit there and watch them dry. No multitasking allowed. It worked. I still do it to this day (although now you can tell how anxious I am by how often I change my nail polish).

But isn't that a problem? In the 9 years since I've graduated, I still have trouble slowing down. If I'm not physically running around, my mind is bouncing from one worry to another – all things that I typically have no control over.

When that happens, I try to remind myself: Take a breath. Slow down.

The most recent journal I kept regularly updated has entries marked at late hours of the night. To remember what I turned to in order to keep my anxieties at bay then is somehow remarkably comforting right now. I know the answer. I've always known the answer. "Sometimes the mountain that needs moving is inside you."

We're in a storm. And we've weathered them before, and there will continue to be more storms. The world is filled with so much uncertainty right now, and so many things that can end up being out of our control. But what I know can control is how I walk through this storm. The rest is out of my hands.

It's surreal that the decade is ending. This might be the first year (at least, that I can recall) where I didn't even realize a new calendar year was right around the corner, let alone an entirely new decade. I've been thinking about how to reflect on the last 10 years, but it's been tough. So much has happened – so much that I've forgotten – and ultimately what I want to focus on is how right now feels: challenging, hopeful, peaceful. And I'm grateful for it too.

After all... This was the decade I graduated from college; the decade I lived in six cities (and once on an air mattress in a living room) and ate $1 pizza on weekends because it was all I could afford.

I traveled abroad for the first time, hiked a world wonder in China, and climbed the tallest church in Amsterdam. I saw tulips and cheese wheels and King's Cross, and I also went to Disney World and only got violently ill once.

I strengthened old ties and made new connections, celebrated milestones with friends and grieved the deaths of loved ones.

I got my dream job. I quit my dream job.

I fell apart. Often. This year alone, I both suffered a loss of identity while also uncovering more of who I am. But I also hit rock bottom and nearly pushed everyone away in the process.

I made mistakes.

I learned.

I'm still learning.

And whatever happens in 2020, and beyond, I'm ready for it.