I don't get nervous before recording episodes of The Distraction, and was surprised to notice during our more recent live episodes that even the usual bite of anxiety which comes with going onstage was just a fairly mild nibble. Some of this is because Drew does a lot of the annoying work required to make the podcast happen, but most of it owes to how comfortable I've become doing this show with him and for the audience that followed us from The Deadcast over to The Distraction, for the past [number redacted] years. That also explains why I was so anxious about recording this one, which will be the penultimate episode of the show.
This was one I didn't really know how to do, until it was time to do it. Then it was easy. That's the thing with getting to talk to a friend for an hour every week for so long—around six years together doing this show, more than a year doing The Deadcast together at Deadspin, and much longer than that for Drew. It's easy and fun in a way that doesn't quite align with the idea of "work," even when it's a little bit sad. Much of this episode is about the years we've spent doing this podcast together and what it has meant to us. We also discuss the podcasts that will replace it: a new concept from Drew that will arrive in Week 1 of the NFL season, and one co-hosted by me that is a little less far along in its progress, but will be along in time.
In that sense, it is a Very Special Episode. It is also a fairly normal if slightly more melancholy entry in the subgenre of Distraction Episodes Recorded Before Summer Vacations. We recorded this episode late last week, before I headed off to the Jersey Shore with my family, and Drew lit out for San Francisco for one of his SFGate reporting sprees, which was just long enough for me to go through the whole range of emotions that preceded recording it all over again. These were mostly pretty uneasy feelings, if I'm being honest. I love doing the podcast and will miss it; I can still talk to Drew whenever I want, his work and nap schedules permitting, and I absolutely will go on doing so. The chance to do that as part of this show remains one of the great pleasures of my professional life, and I am preposterously, unreasonably grateful for the audience of age-appropriate goofuses who have followed us this far. I talk about it in the episode in ways that would be unacceptably mawkish if put into words here, but I feel a pride in this show that goes beyond pretty much anything I've written.
We'll have one more episode next week, and more stuff, separately and maybe also together, after that. We are nearly at the end of this long run, but still on the same journey, or just still on the same bullshit—a tale full of sandwich chat and fart humor, told by two idiots, signifying nothing in particular, that has nonetheless been one of the happiest work experiences of my life.
The Distraction feed will flip over to Drew's new show when it begins in early September, so if you're already subscribed, you don't need to touch that dial at all. If you aren't subscribed and would like to for that as well as the final Distraction episode, you can do that through Apple Podcasts or wherever else you might get your podcasts. Thank you, as always, for your support.
