Oh boy. So I have discovered over the past year or so that I really, really like podcasting. I originally went to school to do radio broadcasting, and while the radio industry itself is dying, podcasting is its new form. A lot of podcasts have captured my attention, and done a lot of interesting things — and then died out. I used to listen to Penn Jillette’s show via podcast, and loved it.. and then he stopped doing it. I really enjoyed Steve Dahl’s podcast from here in Chicago… and then they took him off the air.

Combine all of that with a recent nagging feeling of creativity, along with a little extra time lately, and you’ve got the reasons why I’ve decided to do this. I’m making a new podcast: it’s called the Mike Schramm ‘Shoe (for reasons that will become apparent shortly), and it’s going to be quite an experiment.

The podcast itself is over on a site called Talkshoe, which we’ve been using for the TUAW Talkcast, and is cool because it’s basically a conference call with recording and chat capabilities built-in. If you have a mic hooked up to your computer, you can chat right along with us without any additional software, and even if you’re not on a computer or near the Internet at all, you can call (724) 444-7444, punch in our call id (which is 40600), and listen to the show and talk with us live. That’s why the show is called “Shoe” — not only because it sounds like show, and not only because it’ll be my “shoe” to throw at whatever I want, but because it’s going to take full advantage of the Talkshoe service.

It’s called the “Mike Schramm” ‘Shoe, because it’ll be run by me, and we’ll talk about whatever I want to talk about (except on Wacky Wednesdays, when you guys will set the topics, but we’ll talk about that on Wednesday). So it’s a talk show, more or less, but it’s an interactive talk show — I will have anyone and everyone on with me who wants to come on. And to make sure things stay civil and/or entertaining, we’re going to make it a little game — I’ll be giving out points (or taking away points) for people who add to the show. More on that in the actual show itself — we’re going to write the rules of the game as the show goes along, and it’ll be a lot of fun.

As for what we’re actually going to talk about, it’ll be whatever interests me for the week. It won’t be ordinary — lots of talk shows and podcasts cover the same issues every week from their own angle, and my goal with this is really to try and drop off the beaten path into some interesting stuff, whether it be cultural touchstones like what the smoke monster really is, interesting history (like where the Iron Sheik used to keep his gig), or tech weirdness like the Unix 1234567890 Day. It’ll probably be nerdy, since I’m nerdy, but it’ll also be technology, entertainment, and/or news-based. It won’t be full of politics, but where politics cross over into our daily lives, the show will be there.

Oh, and finally, given that we’re going to be passing out points and talking about all kinds of issues in an entertaining fashion, we’ll need somewhere to keep track of everything. There’s already a “Shoe” wiki — you can head over there right now and post anything you want on it. I’ll be staying mostly hands off of the wiki — I really want to see what comes out of there as a community. I’m responsible for the show itself, and listeners are responsible for the wiki. For better or worse — probably worse.

If you want to contact the show, there’s also an email address: you can send feedback, comments, questions, or whatever you want to mikeschrammshoe@gmail.com.

The first show is this evening, Sunday, February the 22nd, 2009 — we’ll start at 8pm Eastern over on Talkshoe. You can listen live, or just wait (eventually, we’ll have the show set up with an RSS feed in iTunes as is usual with podcasts these days). At this point, I’m planning to do the show three times a week — on Sunday, Monday, and Wednesday, about 30 minutes to an hour each show. That will likely change, depending on my own schedule and what people think of what we do.

And finally, this is currently an experiment. As I’ll explain in the show, I’m only committed to doing 12 episodes of this so far. If, at the end of twelve episodes, I think it’s worth continuing (for me, for listeners, or whatever), then we’ll continue it. I have no idea what will happen or what will come of this — like I said, it comes out of seeing great shows falling off the map, my own personal creative drive, and a general need to try and raise some hell about who knows what.

Should be fun. If you are around this evening, join up in the channel and we’ll see what happens.