New Season, Deeper Content
INTRO: Hello, deep thinkers, this is your host Agrita, and welcome to Mind Full of Everything, the podcast that questions the deeper and bigger things in life. From intersectional, environmentalism to self-development and everything else in between.
Welcome to season 2! It is nearly been a year of Mind Full of Everything, I began this podcast and the 16th of August, 2019. I really didn't know what I was getting in to, how much work I would have to put in to make this podcast become into the podcast 've always wanted to make, what to expect, how I'd go about doing everything. It is really been an amazing journey and I'm very, very glad to have shared this journey with you all!
Nearly after a year of getting used to podcasting, talking into a mic and listening to my own voice when I edit the episodes, I finally have decided to start a new season where I can release the content that I've always wanted to release, but haven't been able to because I kind of needed to get used to everything and understand the basics of podcasting and really improve my sound quality as well as the content quality of each episode. I really wanted to be as comfortable as I could be with podcasting before I can actually dive into what I really want to be delivering to you. So, creating this episode is really important for me and also for you. For me, because I can keep in track of what I want to achieve, so this episode is basically going to be outlining some of the goals that I really want to achieve for this podcast. And for you it's of course important because you can hear about what you'll be expecting to hear in the coming, in the upcoming episodes and really get a taste of what season 2, what Mind Full of Everything is all about.
Going straight back to the beginning, why I started this podcast and kind of reviewing everything I've done so far in the past year. The reason why I started the podcast, if you have listened to my trailer you would know, but for those that perhaps are just tuning into this show or maybe forgotten, the reason why I started this podcast was so I could better understand my mind. If you've seen how my podcast is structured, it's very unstructured (laughs). It's not straightforward. I have a lot of things going on in the podcast, and that is exactly how I want it to be. I want it to be reflective of my mind and how my mind works. I have a lot of things going on in my mind, I try to get my foot into loads of different things. That's how I feel like I am doing something with my life, that I'm always being productive. Constantly doing stuff for me makes me feel alive. Call it cringy or cliche, but that is the truth. And this podcast is essentially just reflecting how my mind works. Sometimes it's confusing for me to have so many things in my mind so to dissect each thought into an episode is something that I've always wanted to do.
I've always wanted to better understand my mind. Not only that, I've always wanted to connect with people that think like me, people that are constantly wanting to understand current issues, global issues, and not just stick to their area of interest. For me, my area of interest is environmental justice, intersectional environmentalism, which is why I try to incorporate the environment as much as I can in my episodes, but that is not all that I care about. The environment is not everything for me. It is a major part of my life, but it is not everything, and that's what this podcast is all about. It’s me exploring the different areas that I don't want to pursue a career in, but I'm very, very passionate about regardless, and I want to be able to understand them better. In my daily life, of course, I'll be focusing more on the environmental aspects of society, how we can all be more sustainable. But I'm also very, very interested and passionate about trying to solve other issues as well and that is why I wanted to do this podcast so I can stay motivated in exploring these different topics more, because in my daily life, I'll be continue on doing stuff for my career, and sometimes I don't get that time to, you know, sit back and try to research into topics I'm interested in apart from the environment. But for this podcast, because I need to stick to my schedule of releasing every two weeks, that really helps me explore all of the different other things I'm really interested in, but perhaps I don't really put in as much time to look into those topics in my daily life, in my daily routines.
As I mentioned before, I want to be as brutally honest as I can. I already am quite brutally honest (laughs), I'm quite upfront anyways, because transparency for me is a major thing. If I am not transparent in how I feel, then I will not be able to build a connection with anyone, a deeper connection. So, to be really honest and upfront, because this podcast is not as structured as other podcasts that fill in the niche, I really think the structure of my podcast has affected my podcast growth and also listenership. When somebody comes in to listen to the podcast, of course, perhaps they’ll be very used to listening to niche podcasts so when they listen to mine, it has a bit of everything and maybe that could get people lost or maybe they don't really understand what the underlying theme of my podcast is.
Instead of being really specific, I've kind of been a bit vaguer and I understand that that's not everything that people really look for when they listen to a podcast, they want to be as specific as possible. I understand that, but the thing is I've always wanted Mind Full of Everything to be as broad as possible, in the sense that I want to cover as many different issues or topics as possible. Because, like I said, Mind Full of Everything is reflecting my mind and how I think, how a deep thinker would think. The catchphrase of this podcast is “podcast with a mind of deep thinkers” and I'm pretty sure every deep thinker will try to cover as many different topics as possible. That is why I really wanted to create Mind Full of Everything; it’s essentially in the name “mind full of everything”.
I want to create a space where we can all be talking about whatever is in our mind and be able to explore that without having any form of judgment or without having any filters. I want us to explore the deepest parts of our mind, and if that's about human trafficking, if that's about self-development, if that’s about the environment, then that is what I really want to be talking about! I want to create that space where everyone can be talking about anything that is on their mind, in the deepest parts of their mind.
That is all great, but I do understand that I haven't really pinpointed an underlying theme, and there really needs to be an underlying theme for a podcast to be sustainable. If I really want to be involving essentially everything, what is my underlying theme?
You should have realized that I've changed a little bit of my intros, and I've now been saying that Mind Full of Everything is a podcast that questions the deeper and bigger things in life, and in some of my posts, I've mentioned that this podcast really challenges the difficult parts of society and living. So that is my main theme, picking out the most challenging and problematic, but also very important aspects of society, of living, and making sure that whatever episode I want to record, whatever topic I want to talk about, that theme is incorporated in it. As you all would know by now, I love science and I love philosophy or mind-related things, so whatever topic I choose needs to incorporate, of course, both of these interests, but I need to be relating it back to the main theme, which is focusing on the challenging parts of society and living. How does the topic that I've chosen to talk about, how does that impact society? Why is it important to society? Why is it important to us? What can we learn from it?
I genuinely realised that I'm missing this focus on a main theme when I was doing my Beautiful Planet series, and that is when I thought, okay, I need to start a new season. I need to rewire my podcast and really help emerge a main theme in my podcast. I really want people to understand why I've really started this podcast. Why is it so important to me and why do I really want this to be important to so many people? That main theme should be emerging in every single episode. I don't want people to keep going back to, for example this episode, to understand what it is I really want to put across.
I want the main theme, which has to challenge the difficult parts of society and living, I want that main theme to be emerging in every single episode. And that is why I need to focus on, to change in this new season. That is what I was able to achieve in the Beautiful Planet series. I was able to, for example, talk about the language of trees, but also let us know why it is important to understand the language of trees, to understand the and network. What can we learn from it? When I talked about the lessons that we can learn from elephants and how beautiful elephants are, why is it important to study elephants? What can we learn from that? When I talked about the great migrations of the planet, of species, this amazing phenomenon that happens all year round in different seasons, it's amazing to see, but why is it so important? What can we learn from it? What can society learn from it?
At one point, I really wanted to extend the Beautiful Planet series and talk about amazing parts of this planet, but I realised I would be going into the scientific topics without achieving this theme, without showing how we can connect natural phenomena to society. I kind of started forgetting that this is not a scientific podcast where I talk about the different aspects and elements of science, things that really excite me when I think about science. I very easily forgot that this is a podcast where I talk about the difficult things that people don't really like to talk about. Or the things that people don't really go into, don't really explore. That’s what this podcast is about.
And so that is why I thought starting a new season would really help me stay in track of what I want to achieve for this podcast. By just talking about the topics that people really don't like talking about, are uncomfortable talking about, removing the stigma around certain topics and also exploring different sides of topics and different areas that people wouldn't really think about exploring.
The Beautiful Planet series really helped me gradually begin to incorporate this theme, but I didn't get to the level that I really wanted to. The biggest mistake I definitely made when I started my podcast was not investing in a good mic. It really impacted my confidence in talking into a mic and talking about very difficult topics. Instead of focusing on the quality of the content, I started focusing on the quality of my sound and it was really, really distracting. I was focusing on how I was sounding, and it genuinely ate at my confidence. I wasn't able to talk about the difficult topics because I wasn't even comfortable in recording the content. So once I got a new mic, I got this Samson Q2U, amazing mic, really affordable as well, once I got that mic and I revised my podcasting goals, I realized that I could finally transform Mind Full of Everything into the podcast I've always wanted it to be.
So, what can you as a listener expect now, what can you as a deep thinker expect now? I have mentioned that I will get deeper into topics, I will be able to explore topics better and to bring that challenging element to each episode. I'm going to be doing that. This now means that my episodes will now begin to get the explicit rating. I really wanted to make my episodes as accessible to everyone, but a lot of things I'll discuss will not really be appropriate for all ages, and I guess when you talk about the challenging parts, when you talk about things that make people really uncomfortable, that is necessary. In my two upcoming episodes that will be interview episodes, you will understand what I mean by the “difficult parts” I'm going to be talking about. Things that are not comfortable for everyone, for majority of people, and so you do need to expect that a lot of things will be very uncomfortable but really, really important.
Another major, major thing I really want to be emphasising in this podcast and this new season, is challenging the silence over difficult topics, difficult but important topics, as well as removing stigma and discomfort around frequent discussion of these topics. Especially in developed regions, in wealthy countries that don't really have to be experiencing any of these things I'm going to be talking about. Why it is important to be removing that silence, to remove that stigma and to be constantly talking about these topics, I'm going to be covering that throughout this podcast. I am definitely going to be continuing to look at intersections of the environment and social justice, intersectional environmentalism, because that is what I'm really passionate about. That is something that I've wanted to pursue a career in for really long but it is not the only thing, I'm going to be trying to relate different things as much as I can to the environment but that is not everything that I'm going to be talking about. I want to be exploring things beyond my career path, beyond my career choices and beyond my biggest passions.
But the main thing I want to be highlighting in this podcast, especially in this new season, is spreading the message of bringing out your inner activist. I genuinely believe that if everyone was to focus on a specific part of society that they really want to improve, a lot of change can be done. And I'm very certain that every single one of us have a particular issue that we're all very, very concerned about and we want to improve. But that's only possible if you unleash your inner activist. You don't have to be a full-time activist to be making good change. Lots of people think that in order to make change, you have to kind of sacrifice everything and become a full-time activist. No, you do not need to be.
A lot of us listening to these podcasts will be privileged. We'll have a permanent shelter, we will not have to be worrying about how to get food, we’ll have money, we can go on holidays etc. We are privileged. I understand that this privilege allows us to disconnect from certain parts of society that are really uncomfortable, certain issues that aren't affecting us, and we can easily cut off from. If you just turn off your phone, you won't be hearing any of the news of those dying, people suffering etc. That privilege allows us to disconnect from global issues essentially and that is what we can't do. We can't misuse our privilege and forget about the ongoing issues in society, because if one issue is affecting a completely different continent, that same issue will definitely be affecting your country, for example, homelessness is a major issue in every single country, western or non-western.
There are so many different issues that we think are just limited to developing regions, when in fact they are in wealthy countries aswell. We can't continue on living our comfortable lives without trying to help those aren't able to live comfortably. Mind Full of Everything was started to spark activism or to provide momentum to the activists in all of us. Local action has so much power, I emphasised this in so many of my episodes already. People power is the ultimate power, once it's combined with others. I really want to help in dismantling this idea that bottom up approaches, grassroot activism, has little to no value or isn't as influential as top down approaches. I want to be removing that idea.
Real change really starts when the public start to identify problems and the public started demanding for changes in the system, changes in systems. That's when revolutions arise, and I really hope that Mind Full of Everything can help in reconnecting people with the power that they have, the power that they always had and deserve to have, and perhaps provide some solutions to global problems, at least on the individual or local level.
So, join me on Mind Full of Everything, every fortnight on Wednesdays, where we can all create that space to discuss the really important things without having any filters or any barriers that stop us from taking the first steps to major change.
OUTRO: I hope you're all super excited for season 2! Remember to subscribe to the podcast on your favorite app, follow my Twitter, Instagram and Facebook pages, and subscribe to the newsletter (HERE) on mindfullofeverything.home.blog to get instant updates for blog releases. Until the next episode, happy listening.
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