A Lot Going on in Video Game Town

Alex Navarro (0:10)

Hello, everybody, and welcome back to another Nextlander Podcast. Here we are assembled like the X-Men. We are a team of mutants who have a special ability. Look, I was thinking about this, Alex Navarro, Brad Shoemaker.

For me, personally, as an X-Man, for me personally, as a Wolverine, yes. I think I am coming up on, if not there, around 20 years of continuous podcasting. I think it is nearing the point. I can't remember when, I should look it up or ask Rich, when exactly I took over doing The Hotspot, but it was probably around 07-ish.

Brad Shoemaker (0:56)

After he left.

Alex Navarro (0:57)

Yeah, that was after he left. So do you remember kind of off the top of your head when he got out of there?

Brad Shoemaker (1:03)

I don't. I can tell you according to archive.org, the first, oh, my birthday, 2005, the first Hotspot ran in July 2005, according to archive.org.

Alex Navarro (1:13)

Okay.

Brad Shoemaker (1:13)

I can't tell you which one you took over on, right off the bat.

Alex Navarro (1:17)

I don't remember. I should ask Rich, or I'm sure it's somewhere when he left. I was just thinking of like, man.

Brad Shoemaker (1:23)

Like 06-07-ish?

Alex Navarro (1:26)

It's coming up on it, where once I started, we just kind of didn't stop, you know? Podcasting? Ever?

Vinny Caravella (1:34)

We had more pauses than you did, but I have been mostly there along the way.

Brad Shoemaker (1:39)

I think the Hotspot for, and Alex, you tell me, I mean, Vinny, you started doing it every week at some point. I think it was like a, it was just like a, you'd get invited on here and there.

Vinny Caravella (1:47)

Yes.

Brad Shoemaker (1:47)

Just like, oh, you want to be on the Hotspot this week? Like, sure.

Alex Navarro (1:49)

Like, who's covering what, right?

Brad Shoemaker (1:50)

It's like, oh, my last one was like six weeks ago or something, and then.

Alex Navarro (1:54)

Like, Tor was on a lot, like, you know, Brendan was on a lot, like News. Bob was on a lot, I believe. Jeff obviously was on.

Brad Shoemaker (2:01)

And then we got to Giant Bomb, and then it was like every week.

Yep. And then over the course of Giant Bomb, it was like every week, plus some bonuses here and there.

Alex Navarro (2:11)

Other podcasts.

Brad Shoemaker (2:12)

And now we're in the like three to five a week territory, like the Podflation has just...

Alex Navarro (2:17)

It's like everything else.

Brad Shoemaker (2:19)

Run away with itself.

Alex Navarro (2:21)

Nextlander, your best podcast value, I would say. But just in terms of like, not only podcasting continuously for around 20 years, with very few interruptions, I would say, like probably you can measure it in weeks of times that I wasn't podcasting, but with the same people, which I think is kind of an amazing thing.

And you could probably, there are probably some people, but I bet there aren't that many whose lives are documented in such detailed weekly minutiae that you could probably feed that all or I should listen to that and I could write my autobiography, right? Like I could probably just go back and listen to my podcasting career and be like, yeah, I can't remember the last 20 years of my life. Just go listen to it again.

Vinny Caravella (3:13)

Yeah. At the same time though, how do you know I haven't been lying this whole time?

Alex Navarro (3:18)

I don't.

Brad Shoemaker (3:19)

Which is great.

Vinny Caravella (3:20)

How do you know you're talking to the real Alex Navarro?

Alex Navarro (3:22)

How do I know your name is Alex Navarro?

Vinny Caravella (3:25)

I mean, it's on my birth certificate.

Alex Navarro (3:30)

There are bigger questions about forming a company that I would need to ask at this point.

Brad Shoemaker (3:34)

But yeah, it's wild. It really tweaks my interest in unknowable quantities, which actually this is probably a bad example because in this case, you could know the quantity with enough time and research.

But it makes me go like, how many minutes have I been on the Internet to date or hour? Because I mean, it's easily in the thousands of hours at this point. Like it might be five figures. It might be over 10,000 hours at this point of everything, because it's like a podcast that was three hours a week, like multiple live streams a week, and now we're doing like tons of podcasts and some streams here. You know what I mean? Like all of it, we've had video reviews.