Decades Distilled: The Intersection of History and Whiskey (BRC S3 E16)

AI Transcript: please excuse any typos

Kerry:
Good morning, good evening, good afternoon, whatever time it is you are catching the show today. Today on the show I have decades distilled. I have Sarah and Kurt here who are just recently launched their audio podcast and I have found it fascinating. I found it pretty quick after you guys launched and I've listened to every episode except for the one that's coming out today just because I haven't been able to do that yet but I will be. And I find it extremely educational and very fascinating and you guys have a lot of facts and interesting stories that go on with your podcast. So welcome to the show both of you. Thanks for being here.

Sarah: Thanks for having us. Thank you.

Kurt: Thank you.

Kerry: Okay. Well, as we always do, we start off talking about whiskey journeys. So ladies first, Sarah, please tell us how you got to be the whiskey nomad and how you went from a wee little lass to this, you know, huge name in whiskey influencing.

Sarah: Well, I actually started off my spirits journey drinking tequila and loved tequila. Reposado was my favorite. And then one day I drank too much tequila. And I don't know if you've ever done that before, but. Oh yeah. Me and tequila. Nope. Yeah. It took about a decade for me to be able to have a margarita again. But after that night, which I won't go into details on, I decided that I wanted to drink something different and not abuse alcohol anymore. And I stumbled across scotch because I could go to the bar, order a scotch neat, and hold that glass in my hand all night long. And nobody would ever give you any sort of grief for holding a glass of scotch all night long and sipping on it. It's kind of hardcore. Right. I could just kind of sip on my scotch. And then at the time, not a lot of women were really drinking whiskey. So when I would go to the bar and I'd get a scotch neat, the bartender would kind of take a glance at me and then start talking to me about whiskey. And I just started to go down that endless rabbit hole that is the world of whiskey that nobody really realizes is there until you start going down it. And then you can never crawl back out again. And I just loved it. I was like, what is this? There's so much here. And I'm a nerd. So, you know, I started deep diving into everything about it. And I joined a couple of local whiskey clubs here in San Diego. And Um, they were all like, you know, older guys who just liked to drink and none of them knew how to run social media accounts, but they all wanted it because this is the dawn of Instagram and you kind of need it for your, for your presence. So, right. I didn't have a lot of money at the time. So I exchanged doing photography and social media for all of their events and their clubs in exchange for being members and getting to go and drink all the whiskey. And I had built up an Instagram for one club, like I think at the time we had 10,000 followers, which was really big when Instagram first was going. We were only one of five whiskey Instagrams on the Internet, on all of Instagram, which is crazy to think about now. Right. The only one that has lasted that I remember of those five was Whiskey With A View. They had just started. This is when Whiskey With A View was posting other people's content and just growing like crazy. And And then the club kind of imploded politically, it just died. And so I asked him, can I keep this Instagram that I'd been growing? And he's like, yeah, sure. But then he realized how valuable it was. And he ended up selling it to someone else for several thousand dollars. Oh, wow. And I just woke up that day was so mad, you know, like, all my work, you know, this was mine. And I just thought, why am I doing this for everyone else? I should do this for myself. Like, what do I like? Well, I like whiskey and I love to travel. So I'm going to do a whiskey travel Instagram. And I got really lucky because I happened to niche out in a way that nobody else was really niching. Everybody was doing reviews. And it was kind of unique enough to really set me on a path for success. And here I am today.

Kerry: So is this now your full time job or do you still have a money making thing on the side?

Sarah: No, I do this full time. My husband and I also run a charity, a nonprofit called the First Responder Whiskey Society. Oh, nice. Yeah. So Whiskey Nomad is my career, but I do a lot of other little things on the side related to whiskey, such as the Decades Distilled podcast. And I run that charity where we donate money to fallen first responders via whiskey, like buying single barrels and custom bottles.

Kerry: Very cool. And then is your husband also into whiskey as much as you or he's just along for the ride?

Sarah: Oh, no, he loves whiskey. We've been together like nine years now. When we first started dating, he said he liked whiskey, but He didn't understand how much I liked whiskey. He was like, oh, we both like whiskey. I'm like, I don't, okay. We went to dinner and then after dinner, he's like, well, I really enjoyed this evening. Would you like to carry on the night by going out to a bar? And I was like, sure. And he had picked Seven Grand, which is a whiskey bar, because he knew I liked whiskey.

Kerry: I frequent the original often.

Sarah: Yes. And so we showed up at the bar and I walk in the door, bartender looks up and he goes, hey, Sarah, you want your usual? I just looked at him because I was like, how's he going to respond to this? You know, is he going to feel insecure? Is he going to over emasculate himself or whatever you want? You know, it's a first date. I don't know. I'm just, I'm testing him for better or worse. And he just kind of looked at me and he's like, I'll have what she's having. And it was a great night. What was your usual at the time? It was anything peated and finished in a wine cask. Oh, nice. OK. Yeah. I was really into like the intensity of peat. But like with the complexity of wine, I just wanted all of that flavor.

Kerry: Wow. OK. So, Kurt, tell us a little bit about you and how you became this whiskey aficionado and now expert and author and et cetera, et cetera.

Kurt: I tell everybody it's dumb luck, but we'll see. You know, we'll see how that turns out. Um, I, I tell everybody that in all honesty, the thing is I didn't like beer in college. I think I have like some kind of low level gluten allergy. So like I drink beer and I bloat, so I can have a little bit of beer. It's fine. But if, you know, you're in school and you're drinking, you just can't throw down because you feel ill. You know, you feel like you're pregnant. You're just like, I'm miserable and I'm not happy and I feel bloated. So of one of my best friends, she happened to be from Hong Kong and drank whiskey. drank Jameson. So I started drinking with her. And so, you know, it's funny because you go with the whole like women and whiskey, like a lot of my, my tutors, people taught me about whiskey were women. And so she was one of them. So she got me into whiskey in college could probably out drink me till I hit about 30, you know, it's a while because she was, you know, that she drank with like, you know, Australian rugby players. She was, you know, um, So from there, I went to, I was in DC, I made friends with Richard Thomas. And this is before, you know, we weren't doing a podcast, there was no podcast around. We weren't doing the Whiskey Reviewer, which came later, but he was, you know, from Kentucky. from like the Lexington area and he knew bourbon like the back of his hand. And so we would watch like sporting events and talk shop and talk politics and drink bourbon. And so he taught me lots about bourbon. When I went to New York, when I came here, he was just in the process of moving to Portugal and he decided he wanted to work But he wanted to do something online, because he wasn't renouncing his American citizenship. But he couldn't really work in Portugal. So therefore, he's like, I can write a web magazine about whiskey. I can do that from anywhere. And he goes, I need somebody in the States. And Kurt, you're in New York. And you write. I was doing some music writing at the time. And he knew I liked whiskey. But I didn't know whiskey the way I know it now. So he's like, you can write. It'll be fine. So I'm like, OK. I started going to events, you're in New York, every brand passes through New York. So I get invited to a lot of events, and I realized quickly I had to up my game. I knew I had things I liked, but I didn't know the history, I didn't know the background, and I wanted to be in a position where I could ask them good questions. Because, you know, there's a lot of people doing press and blogging and whatever here. You don't want to be the one where they're like, oh, God, that guy's going to ask me a dumb question again. So, you know, you wanted to be able to ask them cool questions. I started doing more research. I have a B.A. in history, so I kind of applied that. And that's part of what I love about whiskey is that like the rich history of whiskey. So I use that to my advantage and you know lots of interviews lots of tasting lots of traveling Going to Europe going to Japan hitting distilleries getting a good store of knowledge And that's how it started now, you know on the book side Again, I say it's dumb luck. I was at a day job and Day job's a paralegal. I'm in the office. I get a phone call from a publisher who I had written an article that they had put in another book, and they decide they wanted to do a book on cocktails. And they asked me, you know, hey, can you write a book on cocktails? I go, I write about whiskey. They're like, yeah, we don't want a book on whiskey. We want a book on cocktails. So I thought about it for like 10 seconds. I'm like, I'd love to have a book. I'd love to be published. I'm basically like, OK, you're paying me? OK, fine. Let's do it. And so I had to like do a crash course to because I've been drinking cocktails for years but And what do I know about I never worked in a bar? I wasn't you know I'm I don't want to say I'm too lazy to make a cocktail but like I need to do it when I've like It's much easier to come home from a hard day at work to pour a glass of wine, pour a glass of whiskey, than it is for you to make a cocktail. You know, if you're making a good cocktail and I'm sitting there with fresh ingredients, do I really want to sit there and like, you know, go through and peel a lemon and do a fresh squeeze, so on and so forth. So, you know, it's like, I appreciate a good cocktail and I've learned how to make them. And I learned a lot from doing that book. And then, you know, from doing the book, and I was writing the whole time, like I kept on writing with Rich. So I write in a whiskey reviewer, I'm deputy editor, but I also have written for like, Distiller, I've been interviewed by the Atlantic, you know, I got interviewed in New York Times.

Kerry: So… Oh, just the New York Times, not a big deal.

Kurt: But it's funny, though, because you think it's like, I've done all this stuff. But then like the social media aspect is the one thing where I'm like, I don't mess with it, even though I imagine I should, you know, because it's helpful for all my other projects. Right. So, you know, but that's me and, you know, my whiskey journey that got that got me to here.

Kerry: And I assume you two whiskey is basically paying for your life.

Kurt: No, I mean, yes and no. Well, let's put it this way. It's supplemental income. It pays for itself as far as travel and getting gear. Because, you know, like you do a podcast, all of a sudden you're like, you have to go buy new gear. I listened to the first season and I'm like, okay, I can tell where I bought a new mic because, you know, I got new equipment. I'm in the process of getting like another camera. I got a, um, I got a portable recorder so that I can do like, you know, field recording when I'm out and I'm like, Oh, hey, I want to interview somebody. I don't want to be dragging, pulling out my laptop or constantly using my phone. I want my phone to be the backup. I want a good piece of equipment for recording. So I bought a portable recorder like the other day. So yeah, generally whiskey is like travel money. travel money and the finance, more whiskey is what happens.

Kerry: What is your day job then? Are you still in legal? Still paralegal. Okay. Well, I imagine that makes pretty good money.

Kurt: Yeah. And I mean, it makes for interesting conversations with the attorneys. They're always asking me, oh, well, I need to get this for a partner. What should I get? Okay, well, what's your budget? how much you were willing to spend. I can tell you, you know, and there's times where the partners are like, Oh, you talked to Kurt because like they know full well, the associate had no idea what to get, but I knew. So, you know.

Kerry: Right, right. I get that all the time. They're like, Oh yeah, Kerry, I needed to ask you, my husband's friend is blah, blah, blah. And we need to blah, blah, blah. And what do you suggest? And I was like, well, depends, because I don't know anything about this man or this woman. I was like, so you need to tell me a little bit about them. And you know, what kind of, you know, do you know what kind of foods they liked? You know, what kind of drinks they usually have? Or are they regularly a whiskey drinker? And then it gets into all these questions. And they're like, Oh, I don't know. I don't know. I said, Well, I mean, I can tell you what I like. And I can tell you, you know, what I think is good and what, you know, is popular, but If you want me to, like, actually customize my, my choice for this person, you're gonna need to give me a little more.

Kurt: You know, I mean, I'm sure we all make a good stab at a choice. But I really need data to give you a really good, like, like you said, a customized

Kerry: Let's move back on to now you guys met back in 2015 ish. And then when did you decide and how did you decide to start doing Decades Distilled? And when did that premiere? How many episodes in are you? And what is your plan for the future with the podcast?

Sarah: What last year?

Kurt: I think we started talking about it last year.

Sarah: Yeah, it was pretty fast. I mean, I've been wanting to do a podcast for a very long time. I figured that was the next step for me with Whiskey Nomad. But I didn't want to do it alone because I think you know that social media is just so much work. And I already feel like I'm drowning in it. So Kurt mentioned wanting to do a podcast. And I was like, yeah, let's do it together. And also, here is my capability. I can give you this much of my time and absolutely no more. But I want to do this project with you. And he was like, yeah, let's do it. So for me, that's a win win like partnership. And and yeah, I think the other my other stipulation was that I have sort of learned through Whiskey Nomad that content needs to be constantly poured out and through a variety of different life experiences. You know, there are times in your personal life where you just can't pour into content three times a week, plus stories, plus editing, plus everything else. And so I said, I will do a podcast if we do seasons, um, to where we have a certain amount of episodes per season, and then we can take a break and then we can do another season and then we can take a break. That way we can allow for different life things to happen. And, um, And so he agreed, and then it was like, what do you want to do it on? And for me, we landed on history, which is my probably weakest, maybe, topic in the whiskey world. Like, I'm much better at science.

Kerry: Really?

Sarah: Because you don't sound like it on the show. Yeah, well, I like to research. But right before the podcast started, I was like, OK, we're going to do history. Like, that is not my forte. Like, if you look at my content, I'm, you know, social stigmas. nerd education. I'm science. I'm travel. And so I kind of maybe touched on history a little bit, but not that much. And so I was excited because I thought, hey, this is an opportunity for me to strengthen my weakest concept, my weakest, like, I don't know, piece of the pie in the journey of whiskey. It would force me to read a lot more books to really know my stuff. So I just started devouring books and articles and got ready to do this thing on Prohibition. And that was kind of why I was excited about it.

Kerry: Kurt, what about you?

Kurt: I mean, for me, definitely, I'm a big, I'm a big consumer of podcasts. And I thought it was, you know, I guess it was my way to dip my toe into social media by having something beyond me writing. Because I've, you know, I've learned it's like I have one picture of me and like Anthony Bourdain and it gets 10,000 looks. I write, you know, a book, it takes me three years to sell 10,000 units or whatever. Right. You know, it's like, I write all the time. And, you know, it's like, I enjoy doing it. But it never has or doesn't always have the impact that something like social media does. But I was gonna I wasn't looking to like, delve deeply into doing hordes of Instagram, even though I have to do it as part of this project. So I thought, okay, like, I love history. So like, as Sarah says, she is the nerd. She's nerdier about it than me.

Sarah: You notice it on the podcast, like whenever a science topic comes up.

Kerry: Oh yeah, you get very excited about it.

Sarah: I'm like, oh, let me, let me talk about it. Yeah.

Kurt: Yeah. So I'm like, and so like when we're doing research and I'm doing stuff, I'm like, okay, here's a science thing. Okay. I'm giving it to Sarah. I'm like, I'm sending her an email. Okay. Hey, I came across this. This one's for you. Um, it's not to say I couldn't do the science stuff, but it's like, that's something. Yeah. Yeah. And it's a good way to like break up the work and the same thing about the, the seasons, like I was inspired when we had the discussion. Katrina Longworth, who lives in LA and does a podcast on movies, she does seasons. And it made sense because it's like we both have lives. I have a busy day job. Sarah has a husband. She has family, things she wants to do. Neither of us wanted to get stuck cranking out 50 episodes for the year or more. So we thought that, OK, hey, you know, it's cool. By focusing on a particular time period, you do a couple episodes on that you could always revisit it, you could always like decide later, hey, we do some extra episodes of stuff we didn't cover, or you maybe your 10 seasons in and like, hey, let's revisit that decade that we didn't do. there's stuff that we didn't do in there we want to dig into a deeper or we've learned new stuff because what I found in the process of like researching this is that it's helpful for me in my writing mainly because you're putting together stuff within the course of a decade and you're getting more of a you're seeing more of how one thing affects other things in a way that if you're just focusing on scotch, you're not looking at what's happening with bourbon. You're not looking at what's happening in the wider whiskey world. At that point in time, anything from the 1800s on, it's getting more and more interconnected. And what happens with one part of the industry affects the other parts of the industry, for good or for ill. So by doing the podcast and putting together the puzzle, And like, oh, well, this is happening here, and this is happening here, and this affects this country. So, you know, lack of a, it's not even a spoiler alert, but like, you do the, we put the 1920s, you're doing prohibition. But the 1920s has a start of, a start of Japanese whiskey. It has, you know, some of the, you know, the beginnings of the downfall of Irish whisky. It has all the things that come up from Prohibition, like rum running, bootlegging, you know, basically guys driving fast cars, organized crime, like all these things are related and happening at the same time.

Kerry: And now we get the stuff that great old movies are made of. Yeah.

Kurt: No, I mean, you know, in the podcast, I say it's like my experience with Gangsters at least initially was I'd watch gangster movies with my dad and we would watch you know Public Enemy and the Roaring Twenties and Cagney movies and Edward G Robinson movies and Bogart movies plus basically my dad like three types of movies Biblical flicks so Ten Commandments, Ben-Hur, Samson the Delilah, that's one Westerns all of them crime. So any of the old gangster flicks, any of those you watch on watch any Westerns? No, yeah, no, you like those. We would watch them together to this day. We'll still put it on and watch and you know, we'll have it. We'll break out some. One of my favorite memories with my dad of watching a movie was watching the Wild Bunch with like a bottle of bourbon. I think we're both between jobs. So we're sitting downstairs watching a movie late at night. My mom's like, you guys having a good time? And we're like, yeah, actually, yeah, we are. This is fun. you know, but yeah, that was the whole genesis of the podcast. And of course, you know, for us to each accommodate what the other one needed. So, you know, rumor has it I'm fairly chatty. And I have a background in radio because I have a I, I took that look there.

Kerry: So

Kurt: No, she knows. A little, yeah. Well, you know, it's just like, you know, it's not so much that we're opposites, but there's certain things where as much as she's more social media savvy and whatever else… I'm introverted. She's more introverted than I am. I'm a bit of an extrovert. So yeah, so it's good when we combine forces because then it's like we shore up the others weaknesses, right? I try to support her with whatever she's doing. And she supports me with what I'm doing.

Sarah: Yeah. Because Kurt is like, let's just wing it. And I'm like, absolutely not. He's like, we'll be fine. I'm like, I will not be fine.

Kurt: Yeah, I would be fine. She would not be fine.

Sarah: No, that was like episode one. We, I, we had a conversation about that. I was like, I need to be, I need to know what we're doing. I can't just start recording and just start talking.

Kerry: That is like, do this for your regular.

Kurt: Well, see what's funny though, is this, is that like, as it went along, you start modifying the process because you realize like, you can't script out everything. There's things you learn. It's like, and unless you're going to sit there and do like a table read, you know, there's stuff you're going to react to as you're hearing it, as you're recording. So you want enough structure to make Sarah happy and enough space to let me babble a little bit.

Sarah: Yeah. I mean, by the end of the season, you can actually tell in the season that we start to become a little more dynamic to talk back and forth to each other. And I think that actually was good because the very first episode, I think it's like a block of me talking in a block of him talking. The last episode, we're exchanging a little bit more. We're joking around a little bit more. We're just better. And that did work.

Kerry: Coming into your own, basically.

Sarah: Yeah. It was good. It was, again, growth for me.

Kerry: Right. So let me ask this. For your seasons, how many are you doing per season? And I know you're weekly. 10? Yeah.

Kurt: Yeah, there's nine in this season. We haven't figured out, like, if there's a hard and fast rule for each season.

Sarah: There's so much information. I mean, we tackled the 1920s. Like, by the very first episode, I was like, we could do an entire 10-episode season just on the very first episode's information alone. I mean, we are flying through data.

Kerry: It was hard. Let me ask you this. When you decided to start researching, did you plan out all nine episodes first and then record them all together? Okay. I was going to say because I don't need to do that because the way mine is, is more interview based and, um, you know, travel based. But, um, when I was listening to yours, the very first one I was like, if they're doing this, like this all the time, I wonder, like, immediately, that's what I'm, as my production brain is going, I was like, they must have, they must have, like, researched all of this first, and then just back to back to back, and then are releasing them. Because I could just tell that that's the way it would have to be.

Sarah: Yeah, I mean, we even recorded some episodes like out of order. And then, of course, we put them back in order when we realized, hey, you know what, we need a second episode on Japan. Like we can't fit it all in in one episode. So I think we did too.

Kerry: So as I was saying offline, we started my first podcast during the lockdown in May of 2020 was when we first launched. And, you know, we thought it was going to be a couple of weeks. So we're like, OK, well, we'll just do this for a little bit. So we were doing it weekly. And then, you know, the lockdown got longer and longer and longer. And we just kept doing it every week to the point where we're like. When are we going to stop doing this? So and I was like, you know, I kind of I, you know, as much as I love Mark Gillespie and his show, it's one of the first whiskey podcast I listened to and I still listen to it religiously. But he, you know, every week, every week of the year, all the time. And I was like, I, I don't want to do that because what happens when lockdown is over and we have to go back to our regular lives? I was like, I'm used to having seasons working in television, you know, and I was like, you know, And now I'm old school with TV because, you know, seasons are between 20 and 24 episodes. If you get the back nine, now you're lucky if you get nine for a season. And it used to be every year starting in September. And now it's like, Oh, well, I think season two is coming out in two years. What? And it's nine episodes and what? So I'm still old school in the fact that I like my seasons to be, you know, 20, 25 episodes on a regular basis. And so when we started doing the cocktail guru, I said, you know, I, I would like to do seasons. I was like, cause now that the lockdown's over and people are back to a little bit more normalcy in their schedules, like I can't keep doing this, but yeah. So, so now I'm trying to do keep to be between 20 and 25 per season.

Kurt: Well, the other thing is with, with what we're doing, is that, you know, it's like, as much as I'm quite willing to sit in front of a mic and talk about whatever with whiskey, and I can pull it out of my butt a lot, because, you know, I have a decent memory and I've been reading, you know, it's the historian in me. I've been reading this stuff for years. I got 10 years of writing about it or reading about it, but realistically, and it's, you know, it's partially for Sarah's comfort, but also for us to do a good job, we need time away from it to think up what's the next season. Because it's one thing if we were doing more like current topics or interviews and releases, you're then you're tied to like the release cycle and a brand spawning is putting something new out and you're getting your interview set up for us. It's mostly us. So you need like, okay, we got up. So for example, for what we just did, that's the 1880s. 1880s is next, sorry, we just did the 1920s. So the thing is, is that our mindset is what was going on in the 1920s, what was going on socially, politically, whatever. Okay, well the next season we're going back. Some of the things that happened in 1920s haven't happened yet, but there are things in the 1880s that are gonna affect what happened in the 1920s. So we have to kind of, especially in Irish whiskey, Yeah, no, definitely. No, definitely. You know, I was I have this book on like, you know, lost Irish distilleries, and I'm going through and I'm like, Okay, I'm focusing on two of these, and I have to get data on it. And with that in mind, it's like, we kind of have to sit back and almost reflect on what we what we did the first season. if there are any connections in the new season to the old season, because we can make them. And then like, what do we want to focus on? Because, you know, I mean, at some point we're going to do, I'd like to do like a Patreon and do extra episodes and that kind of stuff. And that's probably where the things we didn't cover for the 1920s will pop up. There are certain types of whiskey.

Kerry: And that'll sell. That'll sell because people will be like, oh, there's more of it. I mean, everyone loves the 1920s, especially if you're talking about booze and gangsters. So, you know, I think that will definitely easily shoot up.

Kurt: But then, you know, we have to plan out like, OK, how many episodes, what are we comfortable with? I think generally it's going to be once we get a look at like one of the major themes of the season, we'll get a better idea of, like, how many episodes. Because, you know, spoiler alert, there's not much to cover with the Japanese in the 1880s. There is in the 1890s, but not in the 1880s. So, like, that's two episodes that we had in the first season that aren't gonna be there, but there's other things to cover. So what are those gonna be, you know? You don't have the… you have less socio-political things to cover. because there's no major legislation that affects whiskey everywhere. But there are still things. I mean, it's like prohibition. Yeah, well, that's the thing that affects everybody. But yeah, so that's how we're gonna, you know, figure in looking at it. I mean, I blew up Sarah's phone, like, was it two Saturdays ago with like, you know, five long text, like, I'm going through these books. And it's like, here's the topic, here's the topic, here's the topic. It's just me and how I work.

Kerry: So for the first season, from when you decided to do this and when you published the first episode, how much time did you spend on all the research and getting ready and then recording before you published it?

Sarah: I think I read like three or four books.

Kerry: But like over the course of a month, two months, I mean, how, how far, how long did you give yourselves?

Kurt: We started recording early in the year, like January, February, we started recording. And I think we were done recording in like late March, early April.

Kerry: And did you, so did you, for each episode, did you research each episode at a time or did you research a bunch and then kind of sprinkle it in to various different, we did like generic research first and then we decided what episodes we were going to do.

Sarah: And then, um, and then we kind of pulled books and shared books and articles with each other on each topic. So like when we did Irish whiskey, you know, he had some Irish whiskey books that he mailed to me so that I could read them and, And I think we just kind of planned out the topics and then decided who was going to talk about what, or if anybody was super passionate about a certain topic in Irish whiskey or a certain topic in Japanese whiskey, that we would kind of divvy that up. that way we could kind of share. And then I think what happens sometimes is like, you know, I'd give him a topic, he'd give me a topic, we'd think they were different. And then we'd end up kind of talking about the same thing on the podcast. Like they kind of crossed over, which was also fine. Cause you know, it's just regurgitation of the same information in a different way. But, um, but yeah, that's kind of how it went.

Kerry: No, I think you guys have done a really good job on, um, your storytelling and presenting the facts and the information in such an interesting way. Like, I was driving and I was listening to the podcast and this has happened actually a couple of times and I get home and I just sit in my garage waiting to finish it because the effort of getting out of the car and resetting up inside just, no, I'll just stay here. I'm just going to keep listening. Um, which is always a good sign of people, you know, staying engaged. So what is, what do you, what do you guys hope to accomplish with the podcast and what's the five year plan?

Kurt: Hmm. Um,

Sarah: Well, Kurt has dreamed of the Patreon, and I think for me just continuing to kind of learn about history and keep going with the seasons, just that's all I really want to accomplish personally most of the time is just how much can I learn and nerd out on whiskey?

Kurt: Yeah, I mean, I look at it as you're piecing together a puzzle. So we had certain rules. One was seasons that we had to have breaks, like legitimate breaks, or we're not recording. So Sarah doesn't kill me even though she's across the country. Um, well, another thing was, is like, we're not doing them in order. I because I because I was like, if you're doing it in order, you could get a book. If we're doing it and we're kind of like throwing all the puzzle pieces on the table and we're kind of putting it together as we learn it. We're working on corners. We're working on parts. And I think it's more fun and more interesting that way.

Sarah: Then just ask the audience, like, what do they want? Like we, we polled for the 1920s and we threw out four different options and everybody picked the 1920s. I actually didn't want to do the 1920s. I felt like that was pretty cliche. I was like, let's do something different, you know, but everyone picked a starting point though. And I'm glad we did. Cause it was, it was good to get that.

Kerry: And it was good too, because you guys, you went back, like you went and talked about things happening in the 1800s that affected things that happened in the 1920s, which was good, because it wasn't all just like, this is what was happening between 1920 and 1929. Right. I mean, we tried. Tried to cut it there, but you can't you know, there's you can't because otherwise you're gonna have holes in the story You don't know why is it like this?

Kurt: Like well because this was happening in Ireland and this was happening in Japan and this was happening in Scotland Especially because we're not doing an order So it's like if if we were doing in an order then it's not so bad if you make them wait a couple a little bit To get the next season. We're like, oh, here's what happened in 1932 but it's like we might not cover the 1930s for five years like who knows and

Kerry: How far in between are you going to be airing seasons? Like how big is the airing break? And then how big is the actual research and production break?

Kurt: That's a good question. I mean, you know, I'm already reading and writing. And I've been sending information to Sarah. So I've been like, Okay, hey, hey, how about this?

Sarah: We're planning on recording season two pretty much starting September. So we'll get September, October to pretty much do that, and then we'll get our editor involved. Depending on her vacation schedule and life schedule, we'll get it up as soon as we possibly can. I don't know that there's necessarily like, every September we'll release a season, but maybe September, we have a fall season, maybe we have a January season and we have a break in the summer. Getting more engagement from the fans and the audience would be really crucial next steps for us. Because one of the things that's cool about doing these seasons is like, people text me, oh, I really thought this part of this episode was super interesting. I wish you'd gone Into more detail on it or you know i didn't never realize this you know i wanted i wish we could do a whole episode on just you know nascar and prohibition. So that helps us like ok in the off season for these bonus episodes you know do something. where we go and we see one of these NASCAR like bootlegged cars and like all the booby traps that they had and how they modified it and interview somebody who, you know, whose father or grandfather was a prohibition race car driver and, and really deep dive into what the audience actually is interested in in these individual episodes instead of just like what Curt and I think

Kerry: I did love the bit that you did on the NASCAR because it, and it was cute how you got very excited about your tangent, but it was very interesting. Like that wouldn't have been anything that I would have thought of because I didn't know that there was really a NASCAR interest during that time. And so I was like, Oh, this is, I didn't know about this.

Kurt: Part of the trick is that Sarah, both of us love cars, Sarah might love them more. We both have a thing for cars. So invariably, it's like, if we could slide something in there, you know, it's like I have my weird thing with like guitars and music. So like, I've kind of committed to doing a music playlist for each season. harder in the 1880s. There is music, but it's not the same. I'm going to have a blast when we do the 1970s. I'm like, I have to do multiple playlists. I'm like, okay, there's going to be the disco funk playlist, and there's going to be like the rock playlist, and there'll be the R&B playlist, and there'll be some other stuff. It's kind of to put the listener into the mindset of what's going on. So when we eventually do the 50s, it'll be like, hey, it'll be here, you'd be drinking this whiskey in this bar. And here's what will be on the jukebox. Here's what we'd be playing your car in your house. Here's the song. So and I, you know, try to do extra research on that. But music's another hobby of mine. So I'm like, that's fine.

Kerry: If I was a new person looking to subscribe to your podcast, where would I find all the information about the show?

Kurt: question, because if you just went to Spotify or Apple, it's the show is there. I'm working on writing up stuff. So, you know, perhaps by the time the last episode airs, the information that should have been there in the beginning, we'll be we'll be around.

Kerry: No website yet.

Kurt: No, I mean, what I'm planning to do, and we'll see if this happens, is do a Patreon, have, you know, a very large free tier, and I can have like, because I need a place to put, for example, The info, like, you know, where we get our info from, you know, cause I've, I've already have a list of that stuff, you know, links to that, um, that the music list here, here's some music from that time. You could listen to, um, you know, a place for them to come to and like all that stuff will be free. And then I'll put a tier in with the, or we'll put a tier in with the extra episodes when those start. But yeah, if I'm a good boy, I will knock that out this weekend. And it'll be live before the next episode drops. You know, great. But there is a Facebook group.

Kerry: Yes, I just joined.

Kurt: So that's useful. Yes, I did see that. And I liked it. Um, I gave the thumbs up.

Kerry: Love it. Well, you guys are doing a great job. Keep up the good work. Um, I'm excited to keep listening. You do definitely have a fan in me. Um, and, uh, thank you so much for coming on the show today. And, um, we will definitely, uh, keep following you guys. And as you grow, let us know, and we'll be happy to put information out there to let people know all the new ways to get involved. All right. Thank you very much. All right. Thank you.