We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Pop Culture Yearbook. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Pop Culture Yearbook below.
Pop Culture Yearbook, thank you so much for taking the time to share your lessons learned with us and we’re sure your wisdom will help many. So, one question that comes up often and that we’re hoping you can shed some light on is keeping creativity alive over long stretches – how do you keep your creativity alive?
Pop Culture Yearbook is a show that has been putting out episodes every week for close to three years now (over 120 episodes). It would be easy to burn out or just keep doing the same thing over and over. After our first season, we took some time to reflect and discussed as a team what our goals would be for the next year. We set about three specific goals and made a plan for how to achieve them. Having something new to focus on allowed some new life into the show and changes that helped improve the overall quality. We had a very successful season two, so we took a break and reset again before starting up again. Taking breaks, thoughtful collaboration, and planning ahead have been the key to keeping our creative juices flowing. More importantly, we have been able to maintain our friendships as well!
Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
Pop Culture Yearbook is a podcast hosted by three Generation X friends from Minnesota. We have always been nostalgic and enjoyed going down memory lane. The movies, TV shows, and music of the 80s and 90s heavily influenced us. This podcast was a perfect way to combine those interests in one place. We love to share our memories with others who grew up at the same time, but we also love it when someone younger listens and can go discover something new. But our show isn’t only about the 80s and 90s. A listener will find that we may talk about anything from 1980 all the way to the present as well. Each month, we focus on one year, and we each pick topics that were important to us or helped create a memory that has persisted. Each week we focus on a different host’s choice by rewatching a movie or show, listening to an album again, or something else pop culture-related. The most fun part of most episodes is at the end when we have a related topic to discuss. Then we either create a top five list to share or we draft our favorites in a round robin format.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
The three skills that have helped us the most are collaboration, creativity, and consistency. As lifelong friends we love each other, but that doesn’t always mean a healthy working relationship. For us though, we collaborate and speak on a weekly basis. We respect each other’s opinions, and the format of the show allows us all to have an equal voice. For creativity, we continually look to improve. We maintain the overall theme of the show, but we look to make it better all the time. At the end of each episode we use our creativity to come up with fun lists that often allow us to learn something new or add a new perspective we hadn’t considered before. Finally, we stick to a consistent routine. We release a new episode every Monday, and we have stuck to this plan since we started. Knowing what to expect from each other creates a responsibility to not let each other down and allows us to feel successful in our work.
One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?
In our time podcasting, we have met many interesting people (mostly through social media) and even interviewed a few media personalities. We have learned so much through these connections and would love to discover more. Fellow podcasters, especially those with a Gen X background, are always fun to get to know. Beyond that, we have found we aren’t bad interviewers! What we would really like is to interview some of the personalities who are actually associated with the topics we talk about. Whether it be an actor from a movie or show, someone behind the scenes, or a musical artist we love, these interviews would allow us to learn something new and be even more deeply connected to one of those pop culture influences that we love so much.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://pcy.buzzsprout.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/popyearbook/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/popyearbook
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/PopYearbook
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCE4naBAylXFMVlpiAKprwvw
Image Credits
Paul Krumenaur
