Preface To Meteors: An Embarrassing Confession

(image from here)

Self Help Radio has been on the air for over twenty years now. Mostly it's not paid attention to, so I am the one who needs to monitor the themes I've covered. A few years ago, I made what I call a table of contents which is just a list of the subjects the show has explored. I haven't counted them - please don't make me count them - & to add insult to injury, I've started adding links to other shows I do (like the Dickenbock Report) if the theme has not been explored on Self Help Radio. Usually if it took the whole show. I use this list, this "table of contents," to make sure I don't repeat a theme on SHR.

That's important, because I don't mind repeating a theme on the Dickenbock Report. I think of it as a kind of updating. & because the format is slightly different, my airbreaks will be different. If it's a theme, for example, that I covered on SHR which featured a lot of interviews, it will feature more of me talking on the Dickenbock Report episode. It doesn't feel to me like a repeat.

However. While I was listening to songs this week about meteors, the songs seemed too familiar. I checked & double-checked the list on the website. It says I have never done a show about meteors. But at some point there was something like déjà vu happening too often so I checked the individual year pages & scanned the old playlists.

Well damn. Apparently, almost exactly three years ago, songs about meteors were part of an episode of The Dickenbock Report when it was on KBOO. At that time, the show was two & a half hours long & I had other segments on it. So it never occurred to me to note it on the "table of contents" page.

This has caused me some anxiety so I have attempted to find more new meteor songs for this show but I suspect I'll play some of the ones that I played three years ago. There will be new interviews & I'll be doing the show live at the Freeform Portland studios rather than recorded or remotely during a pandemic. But some of the songs will be the same.

You may be asking, "What's the chance someone who heard the show then will hear it now?" I don't know. I don't have any idea who was listening then or now. But I have already done a lot of prep for the show so it would be dumb to just not do it.

It's really embarrassing though.