Bullets 2 Bedpans
EP:17 How Far We Have Come and Where We Are Going
Our journey hasn't been without its challenges, touching upon how far we have come and where we are going. Dee Tox and MZ reflecting on starting Bullets 2 Bedpans and what exciting new adventures are coming for both their podcast and Coming Home Well.
Nurses and Medics: This is your platform! We want to hear your stories of the good, the bad and the ugly. Send us an email at cominghomewell@gmail.com
Do you know a health worker that needs a laugh?
B2B N.F.L.T.G. Certificate click here
Get the ammo you need to seize your day at Soldier Girl Coffee Use Code CHW10 for a 10% off at checkout!
Special Thanks to
Artwork: Joe Weber @joeweber_tattoos
Intro/Outro/Disclaimer Credits:
Pam Barragan Host of 2200TAPS Podcast
"Racer" by Infraction https://bit.ly/41HlWTk
Music promoted by Inaudio: ...
Our journey hasn't been without its challenges, touching upon how far we have come and where we are going. Dee Tox and MZ reflecting on starting Bullets 2 Bedpans and what exciting new adventures are coming for both their podcast and Coming Home Well.
Nurses and Medics: This is your platform! We want to hear your stories of the good, the bad and the ugly. Send us an email at cominghomewell@gmail.com
Do you know a health worker that needs a laugh?
B2B N.F.L.T.G. Certificate click here
Get the ammo you need to seize your day at Soldier Girl Coffee Use Code CHW10 for a 10% off at checkout!
Special Thanks to
Artwork: Joe Weber @joeweber_tattoos
Intro/Outro/Disclaimer Credits:
Pam Barragan Host of 2200TAPS Podcast
"Racer" by Infraction https://bit.ly/41HlWTk
Music promoted by Inaudio: ...
What's up everybody? Coast MZ here, along with my co-host, Detox how you doing, I'm doing, I'm doing.
Speaker 3:How's life with you?
Speaker 2:A little chilly. You know we've got this cold snap. I think it's kicking everybody's butt right now. We're sitting at about what 20, 27 degrees.
Speaker 3:I was 18 this morning.
Speaker 2:Oh, too cold, make it stop.
Speaker 3:Now I'm an East Coast girl, so that's like we don't even blink at those temps. That's like above zero. But I have been texanized, so yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm with you. It hurts. Yeah, woke up this morning forgetting that I was in South Texas, so let's see, we're cold. It's the beginning. No, it's the middle of January, which means birthday time and New Year's time and all sorts of things that make us reflect and think about the year that's happened before us, and it feels like we closed our eyes and it was over and done with. Maybe not so much. In the moments. The days were long, but man was the year short, wasn't it? It felt like it.
Speaker 3:But wait, we gotta stop because you said it very slyly Her birthday, mz's birthday, was this month my 21st, 21st times. How many I'll let you live? In that moment. You can pass for 21,. You be young looking 29,.
Speaker 2:How's that?
Speaker 3:29, I take 29,. Heck, I take 39.
Speaker 2:Oh no we've got the plenty, plenty with the PL, Exactly all right.
Speaker 3:So I think you kinda you lean to what we were gonna talk about today, right, Reflection, we thought it would be good to kinda backtrack a little bit on where we started and where we are now A year in review. It really is only about eight months in review, but that's okay. A year from Well, it felt like about double that. A year from planning, yeah, well, that's fair.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. I mean how we got this thing stood up, where the idea was born and what the evolution of the podcast has looked like. That's kinda what we're talking about today. You had much more of a hand in the beginning stages than I did, and you kinda looped me in after you were a few steps deep.
Speaker 3:I cannot take credit for the seed planting. That would go to our lovely executive director, cindy Thompson. We love you, sandy, we love her. Yeah. So she one day, just out of the blue, we were talking and she said what do you think of a show, a podcast, where it was geared towards military medicine? And she was like I just wonder if anything like that would add to our network of podcasts. And of course she knows me well enough to know that she put my squirrels on the treadmill, fed them some crack and then my little brain was like hmm. So we did some research and we found out that there are some, there's a lot of veteran podcasts. I mean tons of them, but there was nothing have you ever heard of me on the front line? Oh, yes, there's that one.
Speaker 2:I haven't heard that one.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I've heard that one. But what we found was that there was nothing that was geared towards the military medical community's view, like from their perspective. So we don't care what the patient thinks in this realm, the angle, we didn't care what they thought. We wanna know what the nurse, the doctor, the whoever, the corpsman, the IDMT, the para-rescuing, we wanna know what they were going through at that time, because we're all sucking it up. But what were they going through?
Speaker 3:Yeah, kind of their perspective, their vantage point, yeah, on how they were feeling or doing, or their perspective or their coping right, because we don't talk about it.
Speaker 2:Probably because I wanted to put that shit in a box, tape it up tight and put it up on the shelf Right because that's what we do right. And pretend it's not there.
Speaker 3:And pretend it's not there until right, until we have nothing else to do, we separate, retire, we have time on our hands and then we're like fuck, I'm fucked up, wait a minute, and then it starts, right. So-.
Speaker 2:The emotional terrorism begins.
Speaker 3:Emotional yeah, that's a perfect word emotional terrorism. So we just started developing this concept and then she said you know, we need hosts. And I said okay. So at one point I had a person set up and this person was like yes, absolutely, we're gonna do it, hey, and I know so and so. So it was just kind of lining up, I'm like perfect. And then somewhere and there's somebody says you know, we should have a medic too. And then I went, oh, let me think about that.
Speaker 3:And then all of a sudden your beautiful face your beautiful face popped in my head and I went oh, I might know somebody. So you know, I pitched the idea to you and you were intrigued. So in the meantime, we're also developing the logo. We're developing music. Everything was coming together and falling apart just as fast as could be. It took us, I bet you, six months to put it together.
Speaker 2:I'm pretty sure I looked at that logo more than I evaluated actual large bodies of ink that I've permanently placed on my body. That was not a half-cocked decision for the logo by any means.
Speaker 3:No, we wanted something that just kind of represented across the board, right. And you want to hear the funniest part. If y'all look at the logo and you see three medical people, they're not necessarily nurses, because they could be a medic, they could be other fields, but their characters general represent temptation. And then you look in the front of it. So the back part, the part with the three medical people, those were actually professionally drawn by. Actually a tattoo artist did a phenomenal job. Joe shout out to you, thank you.
Speaker 3:And then the front part we couldn't seem to get this right. It was killing me. Like we wanted the litter and then we had all these accoutrements on it and then it was like too much and we were trying to get that piece in there and it just wasn't coming together, right. And I said to Cindy, I'm like I drew a prototype on Canva and that's what we had, right. And then finally we're like, screw it, we used that prototype is what we're using in the logo, that prototype with that I made that on camera, all shot up. It was a beautiful glory, it was a combination of professional they did the people. And then we couldn't get this litter, couldn't find what we wanted. And then we're like, hey, let's just hand it up, let's just put that there. And we did.
Speaker 2:Let the record show. I am the blonde one with the big boobies. That's my story.
Speaker 3:Is that the one you're claiming? Yeah claimed that is MC. In case you guys were all wondering Hot Bob big boobs, that is MC.
Speaker 2:Yes, that's exactly what I look like in person, with no filters. Exactly, yes, exactly like that.
Speaker 3:Oh Lord. So we finally got that together and then we went on to figuring out this podcast and I'll give MC credit. She started like I did, like I never did this before. I had a little background in it. So I said I gotcha. So we started. She took me under her wing, we did.
Speaker 3:I'll tell you there is something to be said for organic and learning and developing. So all the haters can hate. We got in there and we're like we're going to figure this out. So we go back and listen and her and I kind of crunch our eyes once in a while. I go that's yeah, we could do that better. And we didn't have flow at first. It was a little flow. I'm going to dish on MC and say she's a preparer and she oh God, I know you're going with this. She likes, she's orderly, she's very prepared, she's on it Like you want things to look good and be organized. You go to MC. I fly by the seat of my pants sometimes I can do it, but when I come in last minute sometimes I'm not quite as good as her. So we were doing our first podcast. Was it the first one?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was like one, maybe our first or second. You mean the dissertation, the dissertation.
Speaker 3:Maybe that was the second one, the first one, well, back up the first one, the first one we did we thought we'd be funny. At least we thought we were being funny and we were kind of poking fun at the whole, why you never trust a student, right, we were making ourselves. We were students once and all. We thought we were funny and just being lighthearted just to give people a taste of what we're doing. And I don't know if you got any feedback, mc, but I did. And I had people say to me you know that wasn't really nice to pick on students and I was like huh.
Speaker 2:Here's a hurt feelings report. Go ahead and fill that out for me, then crumple it up and shove it up your ass.
Speaker 3:Thanks, and you know, we made fun of ourselves too. We were included in that. Yeah, but you know, don't you think it's a little harsh on students?
Speaker 2:I'm like okay, this is a podcast geared towards EMS and military type peoples Right.
Speaker 3:We've all got thick skin. You know what made me laugh? I was like the whole concept of nurses eat their own and now you're going to be all like kumbaya. I was like, really, jesus, okay. So it was the first one, even her, and I still cringe when we came in on that. The intro was rough. Intros across the board are rough. They're hard to get that flow going, but we did it. And then the second one. Try to remember the second one, but we had.
Speaker 2:Is this the one we recorded like 18 times because we kept having the audio issues and then like it wouldn't record. I remember one of our first ones.
Speaker 3:Yes, well, that was actually the first podcast. I bet you we re-recorded it 20 times. Our equipment wasn't working right. I really thought MZ was going to tell me to go pound some sand. We re-recorded that like five times. We're like this sucks. She hung in there. And then there was somewhere the second or third one. We had to do some research and I told her I said, hey, when you do some research, we just need to get some stats, and if we're talking about data, we really should back that up, right? I mean, we're smartasses, but we're smart smartasses, right.
Speaker 2:It's a collegiate brain here.
Speaker 3:Right. So MZ took that to heart and when we come into the next podcast, top to bottom, she must have had three pages. And I was looking at her. I'm like what's that? Well, I did this research and she was up half the night researching and I was like, oh yeah, no, you just need a couple of stats to back that up and a little data. Yeah, the rest we flow, yeah.
Speaker 2:It turns out to do a podcast. It doesn't have to be an APA format. I had a beautifully laid out citation reference sheet but if it did, I was prepared.
Speaker 3:I would have given you a college at one time. I would have given you an A for that work.
Speaker 2:One with that, though, is while being prepared and doing your homework in college and a lot of times on the job. It doesn't necessarily come to one's aid in production, so I find myself trying to sift through all of this data, and it's coming out more like a textbook, and I'll be transparent in saying not only was there a learning curve at that time for myself, there's definitely a life curve attached to it as well. You know, we all go through some things, and that particular time I was kind of drinking from the fire hydrant won't get into the specifics, but there was just a lot going on personally. Professionally, I was still very much in the military. I had a phone attached to my hip 24 seven, ready to take calls from the command post. I was on my way out of the military as transitioning into retirement. I was up to my butt in medical appointments, you know, trying to figure out how production and podcast works, and I mean this is all branded territory. I have no idea what I'm doing.
Speaker 3:A little anxiety was going on there.
Speaker 2:A whole lot, a whole lot. So if perhaps I sound a little space cadet, especially in those earlier ones, I mean just say it.
Speaker 2:Your girl was up in the clouds more, more than once. There was a whole lot of life, a whole lot of anxiety, and I think you know I feel comfortable enough to say, especially in this community, anxiety and, you know, ptsd as well, are not uncommon within our population and I've struggled with both through the years, and there's periods of regression and that was definitely one of them for me. I wasn't doing so hot and in a way, you know, podcasting has been cathartic, it's been therapeutic, it's given me an outlet and a voice in a way that I hadn't had before. But, just like anybody else that struggles with those things, you know you might take 10 steps forward and then find yourself seven steps back. So that might better illustrate what was going on learning life, and there's just a whole lot going on.
Speaker 2:And, man, I got to give my co-host detox some props because, whoo, not only did you take me under your wing and say, hey, this is, you know, from a task standpoint, how to do this, but you had a whole lot of grace with me in that process and still do, even presently. So that's not always easy to do when you're trying to teach, but you did it with a smile on your face and a piping hot kettle always on the stove.
Speaker 3:Teacures all yeah totally does.
Speaker 2:That's the fact.
Speaker 3:Well, I have to, I chuckle that. She said that because there were times that I would look over and I could see that she pretty much was checked out Like she was so overwhelmed and she was trying to respond but her she couldn't what we call flow get to flow because she was A, either over research, looking at all her notes, or B, like she had such.
Speaker 3:Overmedicated. Well, that happened, I would just say it she did. I didn't want to go there. I was like, are you going to say it? No, she was calming her anxiety on one of our earlier podcasts and I would look over and she's just literally staring and I'm like she's not home and so I start caring the podcast and she was okay, I mean, she did respond, but it was very mechanical and so when we got done, she's like shit. She's like note to self, like what Don't medicate before a podcast Right Hashtag.
Speaker 2:I can't, I have the dumb. And it's so awkward when I know I'm doing it too because I'm like, oh yeah.
Speaker 3:I can't process.
Speaker 2:I see it, I know it's there.
Speaker 3:So we learned. I can do about it right now oh my God, I think that was probably one of the funniest things I understood. I knew everything that was going on with that. So I mean, rightfully, you know I got it. But it was hilarious because the whole time I'm like, is she okay, like something.
Speaker 2:Is she about to go lick?
Speaker 3:that window my nurse, spidey senses were going off. I'm like, hmm. And then when you said it I went, oh, that makes lots of sense. Now You're like, yeah, don't do that, that's not a good idea. You just couldn't respond. I could see you trying.
Speaker 2:Commercial for at a van All the PAMs, all the.
Speaker 3:PAMs, just don't do it Right, so hey, we're learning here.
Speaker 2:This is a operation wing it. We're learning as we go, and I mean really.
Speaker 3:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:We're talking about this. I think we should put we aren't trying to be perfect.
Speaker 3:Well, and I think the curtain should come behind you. People are like, oh, you're a podcaster and you know, this day there's like 100,000 bazillion podcasts out there and, honestly, her and I are pretty grounded. We are like, yep, we're one of many, you know, but there's room for everybody, right? We hope that some people will listen to ours and it'll resonate, and other people will listen to something else, maybe with the same information. It resonates with them. Great, as long as you're getting the information. You know. The whole intention I've said this on other podcasts is to offer a little decompression and to remind you you're not alone and there's some resources here that can also help. So, hopefully, bring that. So, as we started doing the podcast, we realized that a couple of things. One, it's very hard to get a hold of military medical people to talk about things, because they're in the military and they're just not going to go. Pop up and go. Hey, let me talk about all the good, bad and ugly things that you see, and Jay, yeah, a lot of weight.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean we could talk about certain stuff, it was fine. But if we ever wanted to kind of pick things apart and ask why and this isn't good and why it wasn't happening, then we noticed like hey, civilian world, medical and military word, medical, they overlap quite a bit right. And so we all have that dark humor, military side, medical. We just have an extra layer of dark humor because we're also military. So we get in all kinds of other situations and we did our first interview and it was on trauma and we were looking for somebody to talk to us about trauma and we had a gold mine Wait, right, ways that we can cope and just bringing some information. And we found Leslie and see, and Leslie is a trauma informed coach, but her job back in the hospitals was a respiratory tech man. We, we still talk to Leslie, we love her. She came on.
Speaker 2:She came to hang out with us.
Speaker 3:Oh my gosh. And she came on for two shows right Talking all about trauma and coping and the issues with the medical fields and how we're traumatized in various ways and her story and her friend's story. You know, and if you guys want to hear some really off the wall coping mechanisms, go back and listen to Leslie and see his podcast or that. I think it was part one that talked about the incident that happened with her friend.
Speaker 2:Somebody might have gotten shot in the ass Possibly.
Speaker 3:Perhaps Perhaps.
Speaker 3:Yeah, he had it coming, he had it coming and Leslie was so kind and became our guest host and she still is when we need her. She popped right in with us. So, leslie, we met her and we hold her as our own and here's the coolest part we're coming home. Well, heard her with us and they offered her a podcast. They said, hey, we think you'd be good. So, leslie, starting a podcast called hero to hero. Recording is happening now and at the end of this podcast I'll tell you where you're going to be able to hear that, but we'll save that for the end.
Speaker 3:And then we had another scenario pop up. When Cindy and I were developing it. We were just thinking of all kinds of things like wouldn't it be cool if we could get Loretta's sweat on, because you know, she was iconic. Well, maybe not in your day MZ, your baby, you had to look it up but in my day she was iconic because of MASH right. And so I'm like God, that would be so cool to do a podcast with her and talk about you know what she saw and went through as an actor, you know, seeing all this stuff. And Cindy, would.
Speaker 2:They said Sagafra.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the Sagafra was going on, so that limited us a little bit, but I'll be damn. Cindy just happened to reach out to her PR person and they're like, heck, yeah, we'll do it. And so the next thing we know is that we it took some logistics.
Speaker 2:I just love that episode because I can hear the excitement in your voice. I was so excited.
Speaker 3:I love that one. Yeah, we, you guys should go listen to that episode Loretta's sweat, that was a really fun episode and I'll tell you she actually does a lot for veterans. She has a nonprofit and some other work that she's done and go find out what she did for 9-11. That was pretty eye-opening. Eye-opening, yeah, really incredible to hear how she jumped in. So we did that. Huge animal lover, huge animal lover, yes, and you know that connection. I will tell you what that led to. It was interesting.
Speaker 3:Short story is that I had someone reach out to me and say, hey, we're in a pickle and they were having some financial Things happened. You know how life happens my washer died and then the oven died and then my car got broken to all in a month. That kind of stuff was going on with this family. And then their dog got sick. This five-month-old puppy got sick and they didn't want. The option was, if they didn't do anything, the puppy would die. It was their child's puppy and the dog was chowenying. So the dog had the potential for a very, very long life. I think they're like 17 years. And they reached out to me and they're like, hey, do you have any way that could help and I was like, oh my lord, I don't know. So I? You know, part of my business is advocacy. So I went around and I'm reaching out, and then Loretta popped in my head Long and short of it. It was a very expensive surgery and she covered like $3,000 of it with her Swit Hart Foundation.
Speaker 2:High five, Ms Loretta.
Speaker 3:High five. If you want to learn more about her foundation, it's swithartorg. Yes, so she. That was cool. That was like really awesome to see her step in and help out.
Speaker 2:So we did that Sounds like Ms Loretta really walks the walk. She's not one of those celebrities who's all talk. She's in it for the long haul and is the real deal.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, she is. I said she's done a lot of other things with veterans, so I she talked about it on the podcast. And then, in the midst of all that, again the executive director that I were talking.
Speaker 2:The queen of manifestation.
Speaker 3:Yes, she is the queen of manifestation, and we made this comment about up and coming, I guess, influencer nurse, influencer, nurse Blake, and I'm like, oh my god, he'd be hilarious to bring on to talk about laughter and humor as therapy, right, because that's really what he does. And she's like, oh, he's getting ready to go on tour. And I said, well, that's all right. I said, you know, that's probably somebody we won't be able to get anyway, it's like a future thing.
Speaker 3:And she's like, yeah, well, she went out and reached to the PR person thinking, since he's just starting tour, we'd have to get in line. And I'm up to my eyeballs with like a hundred other things and I get a call and I hear Cindy say so we have this situation, that happened. So I was like what? And they responded very Stop and dyes. Yeah, they responded super kindly and they're like we got nurse Blake. I'm like you what? And then, yeah, sure enough, now that one MZ, I knew you were the fan girl all over the place, so we worked it again. It was some logistics, so they were. I Go ahead. Yeah, I was just gonna say.
Speaker 2:I of course remember it, but it's kind of like a blur. I don't know if anyone's gone skydiving, but your first couple of times doing it it's almost like blacking out. You jump out and then you're on the ground and you're like what just happened? What literally just happened? Zero recollection of what just happened. That's how it was. After hitting and recording with nurse Blake I was like holy crap, did we just do that? We just did that. And he's very kind. That was actually him.
Speaker 3:Yeah, he's a nice guy too. I mean, like sometimes you get worried. I think I even said to him I was like damn, I was worried it was me and Dick Blake.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I was like I was worried you'd be a dick. He was like, okay, Like that. He laughed. You know, because you don't know, sometimes you don't know what you're getting. It's sometimes going to be a crap shot, but he, let me tell you, he threw us sideways. So they were very kind. They let us raffle off a couple tickets to any show in the US that was going on. These weren't like nosebleed seats, they were good tickets. So, anyways, we did get a winner. We were very happy with that and we were given tickets. So we got to go and that was a good show.
Speaker 2:The show is hilarious.
Speaker 3:The show is hilarious. I think he's in Australia now.
Speaker 2:I think that's where they're going, or they finished up in December at the US tour, yeah they were just being up at the end of the year, but, holy smokes, yep, blake Shock Advise Tour Absolutely hilarious. If you don't know him, you can find him everywhere. He's viral on TikTok, facebook, instagram, oh yeah, twitter, all of the things. He's a freaking doll, super generous. He's kind of like Loretta in the sense that he's not just talk when the cameras and public is off. He's still the same guy. Yeah, he really is.
Speaker 3:He's a good guy, super sweet.
Speaker 2:Super generous, love him.
Speaker 3:In case you guys are all wondering none of this endorsed, we're not getting kickbacks, Nothing. I'll tell you the other one. This just happened and I'm being transparent because I'm just going to tell you folks, you just keep trying and you just keep doing and you just keep improving. And if people are going to give you crap, just whatever, walk away, pound sand. We're trying, we want to bring information and laughter to the medical community, the military medical community, the first responders and our brothers and sisters on the civilian side, Because, man, they're hurting right now. They are hurting and so they deserve to decompress, they deserve to have laughter just as much as anyone else. And I'm telling you, post-COVID, it's a rough go out there right now. So recently you guys are going to go back and listen to the last couple of podcasts and they're going to sound like absolute shit. Tell you straight up, and probably most people are going to Not the content, just the quality Right.
Speaker 3:The content was great. It sounded like crap and this was on me detox and I'm like what is going on? Our executive director, I'm sure, was ready to kill us at this point. It's not sounding good. We're trying to be consistent. I know you guys are out there thinking well then just don't post it. You're right, we probably could just pull it too, but the information was good and if you can bear through the gain on there, we might redo those and get those resituated. But we wanted to keep consistent content out. So we were willing to bear our shitty side a little bit and put it out there just to kind of have content. Maybe that's the wrong decision, I don't know. We'll probably clean it up. But I'm going to tell you what happened.
Speaker 3:I have a setup. I keep my setup. Occasionally I move my podcast setup into different areas of our house and somewhere in there, when I was probably bleary-eyed or just not paying attention, I reversed my chords on my mixer. I reversed the power chord with the input output chord. Long story short, the mic wasn't picking up the guest, it was only picking up whatever was coming out of the computer.
Speaker 3:So there is a couple of these that are on that sound a little tinny and don't sound super awesome and definitely I am not proud of it for that reason, for the production of it. But I do want their information out. So if you can bear through some of the fuzzy, there is good content and I'm not even going to tell you which one it is. You can go find them. You'll hear it and just laugh at me. It's fine, I'm owning it. But we figured it out and now we're back on track and I know which chord goes where. But somehow I must have done that, not paying attention, and it did not. It took like six hours to figure this out. Chord switch.
Speaker 2:Well, that just goes back to what we were talking about earlier with we are perfectly imperfect.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:And neither one of us are going to sit here and say we've got it all figured out and this is easy and anybody can do it, and there is a lot of work, learning, and there's just a lot that goes into production. And this is an all-volunteer basis and I think detox would agree. We're not trying to put anything out there that's fake or not true. Podcasting is something that you're kicking around. Maybe you can learn from some of our mistakes. Do better on your own.
Speaker 3:Do better.
Speaker 2:It's funny Ikex had told me a recent story about somebody that had reached out and was giving a little bit of tough love maybe not so constructive just criticism about the podcast. And that's OK. We live in America and you're free to say whatever you want. Being an asshole is not illegal. What can you do? Anyways, she asked the question. Well, how would you do it better? Or invited that person. Come on whenever you're ready, and it's true, is it to be a Monday night quarterback? Or the oh.
Speaker 2:I would have done this, or I would have done that, or why didn't you?
Speaker 2:Whatever, by all means, come on, come in, we invite you, we invite your story and you don't have to be well-versed, have a background in production, podcasting, public speaking. Just come in and be authentically you. That's what we want Authenticity, realness. We want the good, the bad, the ugly, the broken, because we're all here and just trying to do the best we can each and every day, whether that's clinically, in the hospital, in the back of an ambulance rig, in a field on deployment, on a ship, as a corpsman, wherever you are, wherever you might be listening, we want to know what it is you're going through and hopefully, some of our stories and realness, that transparency that we're talking about, touches you and impacts you in such a way that lets you know it's OK If I have to medicate today just to get through it. It's OK If I goof up and swap a couple of cords. It's OK If I miss an appointment, miss whatever it is, it's OK, and you just pick up the pieces and keep going Right.
Speaker 3:You try next time, so we're happy to look like total fools.
Speaker 2:We'll be like, here we are. Yeah, just don't make me do it on video. That's where I draw the line.
Speaker 3:That's what they keep trying to get us to do. I'm like I don't know about that, but the whole point is, every time you pick yourself up, do it a little better, remember the lesson. If you keep going back into the same cycle, you've got to reflect on that and go why am I doing that? But we want all this for you guys to help you decompress, to help give information, to give a laugh. So, on that note, there's some big stuff happening with our parent podcast, which is coming home. Well, and we're part of that. And so now do you want to talk about what's coming in February?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So coming home well is standing up its own radio station. You'll be able to stream it from wherever you're at on the app Coming home well radio. It'll be here in February. In fact, we had an opportunity to chime in, give some ideas and you'll get to spend an hour block with me doing metal music here in the app. We don't have the exact schedule laid out quite yet. It's in the works. It'll be announced at a later time, but that's a newer project I'm working on with one Shannon book, shout out to.
Speaker 2:Shannon living his best rock star life and we are super excited to be working on that project, bringing music and the whole radio station. I mean it's going to be great, it's going to be awesome.
Speaker 3:It is going to be awesome. I'm excited for that. Actually, we just talked to him the other day and he was making a comment about that. That's also where our lovely Leslie is going to be debuting her podcast, hero to Hero. What's even cooler about this podcast is that we have a sister network. We have Coming Home Well, which is all geared towards the military and their family and making sure we're bringing them all home in the best possible way that we can.
Speaker 3:Whole Care Network, wcn, is a network of podcasts. There's about 30 podcasts in that network. I think 10 are active still and they are all geared towards caregiving across the board, which is awesome, because caregiving comes with the same challenges whether you're caregiving for a veteran or caregiving for a civilian. There's obviously some uniqueness and nuances in their culture and whatnot, but from the caregiver standpoint, they're respite care. How do they get respite care? How do they deal with whatever issue is going on? They have a whole network and we cross podcasts. They currently are actually up and running. If you go to WCN, if you look for the app WCN, it should pop right up. It's on Google and Apple. You will occasionally hear some of our podcasts on their stream right now, when our stream gets going, some of their podcasts will be on our stream. We've already talked to a couple of them. Helen Bauer is one of them. I think Veterans Spouse Network is on Coming Home Well, but they will also be cross-podcast over to Whole Care Network Hannah O'Brien, she does that.
Speaker 3:We have coming one gear towards Parkinson's. That's a pretty neat one. We have a cooking one coming. We have one that is geared towards federal resumes and how to do better resume building. We have one geared towards meditation you name it, it is and we're constantly bringing more and more on. I'm in meetings all the time helping them, vet this and what we're doing. Veteran music is coming. We're going to be focusing on veterans that do music. That's going to be a huge project that's coming on All kinds of amazing things. So MZ, since we've started and we started recording when June was when we launched something about right, we're babies still. This is still a fledgling podcast, but look at everything that's happened and how far we've come and how much we've grown. We do sometimes have two steps forward, one back. We don't know how to put our equipment together, but at the end of the day, we have a lot of gratitude right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. I think we'd both agree that we didn't do it on our own, Even just the two of us. We had a lot of help along the way from Coming Home. Well, I know Cindy has worked her patoutie off trying to get us up and running and editing. That is a labor of love, Cindy. I don't know how you do it on top of everything else you do, but thank you, Thank you. Thank you for giving us not only the opportunity but your time, your patience, your kind words. I think a lot of people in Cindy's position probably not so much you detox, but probably would have wanted to strangle me at a time or two.
Speaker 3:Or fired me I'm doing that.
Speaker 2:She's been nothing but patient and kind and I wanted to highlight that for a minute. All the folks who have volunteered their time to talk with us, to give us interviews and answer questions, entertainment, whatever it was they had to share, so so grateful for that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, all our guests have been awesome. We have not encountered anybody less than kind. Really.
Speaker 2:Seriously, yeah, yeah, so Go ahead. Oh, I was just going to say the feedback too. We've both reached out to a lot of people friends, family, other podcasters and said, hey, how do I do this differently, how do I make it better, Without going line item and name by name? There's just a lot of people that help us get here and we're so excited for what lays ahead. For sure, but couldn't do the year in review episode without taking a little bit of time to have that attitude of gratitude and mention how we got here, because it definitely wasn't dumb luck and we had a lot of help along the way.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think you summed it up well. I think there is a lot of gratitude to all the people we interviewed and Cindy. She didn't fire me after three or four crap podcasts. She's like this still is not good. I'm like, oh gosh, we're back on track. So I think that's good. I think that you summed up everything. I think we have a lot more great interviews coming in the pipeline. If you guys have a story that you want to talk about, come on. If it's something you don't feel like you can talk about and you want to just tell a story, we keep everybody anonymous. We are not out to sensationalize. We are not out to ambush anybody.
Speaker 2:We're looking at you, military people. We totally understand the need for I always screw this word up and in a minute, oh man, animity, that one, you know what I'm trying to say. That thing totally understand why you might get cold feet, but you have a story, you have important knowledge and experiences that deserve to be talked about, highlighted, shared. And if you don't want to share your name, that's not a problem, we'll hook you up with an alias. You can write it on a paper and email it to us anonymously. Don't care, we're just interested in your story, what we can learn from it and how to share it with others. So please don't let that be a variable in making the decision to not and share what you've got. We can, we understand?
Speaker 3:Yeah, we'll hide it, no problem but we like the story.
Speaker 2:We'll get like little. What are they called this? The glasses with the big nose and the mustache?
Speaker 3:And we'll get the Darth Vader voice.
Speaker 2:Yeah we can put like a blank over their face.
Speaker 3:There you go.
Speaker 2:When it's just us.
Speaker 3:That's right, yeah, hilarious. I think it's about time to wrap this bad boy up. What do you think?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think we touched on all the big ones. All right, thanks for hanging out with us guys. We hope you stay warm in the tundra.
Speaker 3:Oh shit, like most of the US is like freezing yeah it hurts. Yeah, our broken bones. All you veterans out there, you know what I'm talking about. We all ache.
Speaker 2:Shakira said the hips don't lie. I don't know if this is what she was talking about, but yeah, it hurts.
Speaker 3:Not the hips that she was talking about Her's work. Ours are broken the shoulders, the ankles. What's the song? The shoulders? We are digressing. Everybody. Have an awesome, awesome week. This is Bullets of Bad Pans and Detox and MZ are out, peace out.