70. Fifth Anniversary! Listener Q&A

The Land of Desire: French History and Culture

What if it succeeds?

Aloha from Hawaii! Your host is celebrating a lot of things right now: Bastille Day, the ability to travel responsibly, the birthday of a certain overworked and abused producer-intern, and oh yeah, the fifth anniversary of The Land of Desire!!! I’m celebrating by answering some excellent questions from you, dear listeners. Merci beaucoup.

Episode 70: “Fifth Anniversary! Listener Q&A”

Transcript

Bienvenue and welcome back to the Land of Desire. I’m your host, Diana, and this month, The Land of Desire turns five! I can’t believe it! I wanted to celebrate by reaching out to all of you to answer your questions and say thank you! Thank you so much to everyone who wrote in over the past few weeks, whether you had a question, an episode suggestion, or just said hello. I won’t be able to answer every question I received, but here are a few of my favorites!

I’ll start with this question from Matt, which is by far the most popular question I received: What topics do you have coming up? How do you decide what to discuss?

When I first started The Land of Desire, I planned out all these epic miniseries. In a testament to my ability to scope projects appropriately, I originally intended to launch this show with a ten – yes, that’s right, ten – part series about the history of the Louvre. Needless to say, don’t expect that series any time soon. The problem with a big miniseries is that it’s easier to burn out – or worse, realize that your audience doesn’t actually care about this subject when you still have four more episodes to go! So I try to force myself to scale back and do more one-off episodes because they’re simply more sustainable. I mean, look at “Women at War” – that miniseries began in September 2019, and by the time it finished, I’d changed jobs, nursed my sister back from a car accident, begun sheltering in place and witnessed at least two waves of a global pandemic. These days, if I get any bright ideas like “Time for a deep dive of the entire Hundred Years War!” I shake my head, take a deep breath, and say, “No, let’s talk about the potato.”

Often when I’m beginning the process of brainstorming a new subject, I’ll take a look at my own personal life for inspiration. What am I reading lately? How have I been spending my time? What’s already got my attention these days? It’s a much better jumping off point for me than forcing myself to go back to a subject I selected for myself months ago. Take last month’s episode, for example – by the time this episode goes up, my boyfriend and I will be taking a very exciting vacation to Hawaii. Obviously in June I wanted an excuse to daydream about tropical islands some more, which led me down the path of studying the cultivation of vanilla. Since I’m in vacation mode, I’m trying my best not to think about next month’s episode topic. Empty head, no thoughts. It’ll be as much a surprise to you as it will to me.

Rhian then asks, : how long does the research process usually take?

For a single standalone episode, it’s about two to three weeks of research, while a miniseries of course can be much more research spread out over the course of months. My production schedule is always the same: aim to be done with research by Sunday night, aim to finish the script by Monday night, aim to finish recording and editing the vocals by Tuesday night, then on Wednesday mix in music, write the blog post and draft the social media updates. God knows it almost never works out that way. My research always starts in the same place: my enemy and my friend, JSTOR. The absolutely amazing San Francisco Public Library system offers me free access, and I take full advantage of it. I read 8 billion papers about a particular topic until I’m able to figure out what kind of slant or focus I want to take, and supplement with books and other scholarly works once I have a better idea of where I’m headed.

Steven asks How do you prioritize topics for the podcast ? (And how do we influence that process!)

Haha, you don’t! Sorry, everyone! It’s interesting to me that there’s one question nobody ever asks: how do I stay motivated to keep doing the show month after month? This podcast has now been my constant companion for nearly one sixth of my life! It’s a heck of a commitment! And one of the most important ways that I stay connected to the show is by creating a show for myself, and sharing it with others. Capitalism is a hungry beast which wants to monetize everything – anyone listening who has any kind of hobby is probably familiar with this feeling. Are you planning to do it full time? Is it like a side hustle? And so on. The Land of Desire is first and foremost a passion project, and the way that I stay passionate about it is by not feeling obligated to deliver episodes on topics I might not be feelin’ at the moment, or subjects that I don’t personally care about. Sorry everyone, it will always be a whimsical endeavor!

Steven had another really good question: What topic did you think was the most interesting of the topics you have covered?

Oh man, it’s so hard to choose! I absolutely loved learning about the history of the catacombs, it had everything I love: secret societies, hidden passageways, urban planning, and of course, sinkholes. I feel like I get to show off my knowledge of the catacombs much more often than I was expecting. Not sure whether that’s a good thing.

Rose Valland and her heroic notebooks is my favorite story in French history maybe ever, if you get enough drinks in me at a party, that’s going to be the story I tell to strangers, and it was such a joy to talk about her at the end of the long Women at War saga.

Next, here’s an exciting question from Nicole: What are your favorite French-inspired or historically-French places in the United States? If you have any good suggestions for when we visit San Francisco, please let us know!

Nicole, you’ve struck upon one of the #1 topics I want to cover in a future episode – the French in America! More specifically, I’m almost as passionate about San Francisco history as I am about French history, and I debated for quite a while which place I should focus on in my podcast – I’ve thought about doing a spinoff miniseries on San Francisco quite a bunch, though I’m not sure whether there’d be interest in it. Luckily these two subject areas overlap quite nicely. I would LOVE to talk about the French forty-niners, for example, and maybe this is the year for it. I have never been to New Orleans, and I feel like a trip would be very important, you know, for research. If I have any listeners in New Orleans, say hello…

As for visiting San Francisco, take a walking tour of the old Barbary Coast, where the French immigrants first settled along the old shoreline, and see where the city decided to build right on top of sunken ships. In terms of food, oh yes, I have a million recommendations. My favorite French restaurant is Gaspar, but I’m not sure whether it’s reopened yet, it’s been closed for all of the pandemic. Take a trip out to the Inner Richmond to eat at Chapeau or get a perfect souffle at Cafe Jacqueline. When I first launched this podcast, I celebrated with a huge glass of wine at Aquitaine, which still has some of the best pommes frites in the city. For baked goods, there are easy winners depending on what you’re after. The best croissants are at Arsicault in the Richmond, the best kouign amann is at b. patisserie in Pac Heights, and the best fancy patisserie is at One 65 near Union Square. The best baguette is a much harder question, I’m not sure I’ve picked a team, but Tartine and Jane the Bakery are standouts.

And finally, I’ll wrap things up with a question from Corinne, who wants to take things all the way back to the beginning: What inspired you to start the podcast?

Great question, Corinne. I’ve mentioned this in a few places but I don’t remember whether I ever did so in a podcast episode. Quite a few years ago, I found myself unexpectedly dumped. I’d just moved back in with my parents, and now I found myself alone, sad, and incredibly bored in my small hometown – wamp, wamp. It was a miserable summer, and I needed a distraction fast. In an effort to keep from brooding, I started taking big daily hikes. If my hometown has one thing to offer, it’s vast endless space for hiking nowhere in particular, so off I went, stomping out my frustration in the fields for hours at a time. I started listening to podcasts along the way, and two shows really captured my heart: You Must Remember This and Revolutions. I found myself wishing for a show which was some kind of mashup of the two, some kind of laid-back entertaining pop history of France. I realized that no such thing existed! If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself, and god knows I had enough free time to pick up a new hobby, so that summer I began developing the skeleton of the show. That was back in 2015, and it would take an entire year before the show really got off the ground – I had a lot of books to read, some equipment to buy, and oh yeah, I met this cute guy who would end up becoming the show’s greatest cheerleader and most overworked intern. I made a million mistakes along the way – remember that 10 part miniseries on the Louvre? – and I did everything they said not to do. “Launch with at least 3 episodes in the tank! Don’t be a perfectionist!” Yeah, right. Well, after a year of preparation, the show finally launched on Bastille Day 2016. Now, five years later, I’m sitting on 70 episodes – and nearly one million downloads. I say that not to toot my own horn – well yes, dang it, it’s Bastille Day, the whole day is about tooting on horns – but to encourage anyone listening at home to do it. Try the new hobby! Start the new project! I know you’re thinking, “what if it fails?” but here’s a question for you: what if it succeeds? Five years later, the coolest part of this entire project isn’t the fact that I finally have an answer whenever someone in a meeting asks me for a fun fact about myself, it’s the fact that I get to talk to all of you! I’ve spoken with listeners from all around the world, you’ve offered stories, ideas, recipes, travel itineraries, even invitations to visit, and it feels like I have a little community spread around the world. I’ll be off the grid for the next few weeks, relaxing and furiously reapplying sunscreen, but when I come back I can’t wait to pick up this grand conversation where we left off. Until next time, au revoir!

Sources:

• Y’all

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