Today we’d like to introduce you to Mark Chrisler.
Mark, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I’ve been a playwright for the last 15 year or so, and while I love writing for the theater, it comes with a ton of considerations that can be miring: how are you going to sell this to a producer, how is it going to be staged, how many actors do you need, what theater might like it?
In the last two years, I found that I was getting lost in trying to serve all these different masters instead of just telling the stories I wanted to tell.
So I started working on this podcast, where the only constraints were how much I could fit into my schedule and the overarching theme of the show. We’re just wrapping the second season now, and people are really responding to it.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
The first hurdle I hit was very early on. I knew pretty much nothing about how to make a podcast when I began, but I thought I could slowly inch my way into it, bit by bit, as I started to figure things out. I was working on scripts, playing with recording and producing, toying with how to actually drop the show. I decided to make one little test episode, to see how all the elements worked and how far I was from being able to make the show for real.
But when I dropped that test, I learned that, for some complicated algorithmic reasons, you’re really on the clock once you put out your first episode, because you’ve only got a month or two after that for Apple to find you and put you on their “new and noteworthy” page. So I panicked and kicked the whole shebang into high gear, to pack as much content as I could into that window. It ended up being a first season I was really proud of. Never did get that new and noteworthy page though…
So, as you know, we’re impressed with The Constant: A History of Getting Things Wrong – tell our readers more, for example what you’re most proud of as a company and what sets you apart from others.
The Constant tells stories of getting things wrong. We’ve looked at what people used to believe happens to birds in the winter (they fly to the moon!) and examined how an oversight in English insurance law led to thousands of drowned sailors. But we also tell smaller stories, like Einstein’s biggest screw-up, or how a group of Italian pranksters managed to fool the art world into believing in a sculptor who didn’t exist. Sometimes the stories are funny, sometimes they’re tragic, but usually, they’re a bit of both.
The show is heavily researched, scripted and fully-produced. I’m not a big fan of long, meandering podcasts where a couple of friends aimlessly chat about stuff. Each episode of The Constant is between 10-30 minutes long, and in that time I think we manage to stuff as much mystery, comedy and trivia as a lot of shows can do in two hours. When we can take listeners on a big, wending, surprising ride and have them get off at the end saying “wow, that only took 15 minutes?” I’m very happy.
So, what’s next? Any big plans?
I’m working on season 3 right now and also trying to build the infrastructure of the show. I’m hoping to bring in more radio drama aspects and other fun audio tricks going forward, but I’m also excited just to tell a slew of new surprising stories. Did you know that for hundreds of years people were terrified of forks, for instance? Or that the invention of the bicycle played this big circuitous part in women’s suffrage?
Every once in a while I worry that we might run out of stories to tell, and then I find something–like that American settlers thought they could make it rain by plowing more and more land–and I think “oh no, we’re going to be fine for a good long while.”
Contact Info:
- Website: https://theconstantpodcast.weebly.com/
- Phone: 708-761-0493
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theconstantpodcast/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheConstantPodcast/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/constantpodcast
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