The One Where My Podcast Turns One
One full year of yapping into a microphone every single week. Let's take a trip down memory lane and learn how this podcast was 25+ years in the making.
Picture it: Long Island, 1999. I’m begging my aunt to let me watch ‘The Wizard of Oz’ when she babysits me and my brother this upcoming weekend. I don’t know where I heard about this film or why I needed to watch it so badly, but I’m so glad I did. I can vividly remember sitting on the couch in our basement apartment, watching the 1939 classic for the first time, and being in complete awe of it. We watched it two more times that night, one of which my aunt fell asleep during, and that’s where it all begins…kind of.
Music, movies, and pop culture have been a major part of my life for as long as I can remember. Whether it was 5-year-old Andrew begging my mom to take me to buy Nelly Furtado’s debut album ‘Woah, Nelly!’ or walking around my house quoting the first flamboyant gay man I remember seeing on TV, Sean Hayes on Will and Grace, “Just Jack!” (hand motions included), I’ve always loved the way media can make you feel. There’s something so comforting to me that no matter what changes in your life, your favorite song always sounds the same, and your favorite movie always ends the same way. You can move across the country, lose friends, change jobs - you can change everything about yourself, but your favorite album will always be just the way you left it.
Throughout high school and college, I found myself becoming the “pop culture friend” - the friend that everyone went to for what was going on in music or TV. What celebrity is dating what celebrity, who Taylor Swift’s latest single was about, teaching my friends about the new social media app, Twitter, and how they could tweet by texting 40404, etc.…and I loved it. I loved being the friend that my friends came to for music suggestions, and even more, I loved being the friend who was always buying CDs that my friends could borrow and burn to their computers. Sharing music and my thoughts on music became a love language for me.
Fast forward to my senior year of college (2017/2018), I’m in a Digital Storytelling course, and one of our assignments is to create a podcast. My show was called ‘What’s Poppin’ with Andrew,’ the show where we’re quenching all of your pop culture thirsts. I talked about Katy Perry’s latest album release, ‘Witness,’ and Joe Jonas’ recent engagement to Sophie Turner (this aged like milk, clearly.) I submitted the project and went on with my life as such because who can start a podcast without any experience? Spoiler alert: anyone can.
Fast forward to September 2022. I’m working at a job I hate, but things are looking up because I landed a new job offer. Our weekly "Wine Wednesday” soirée doubles as a “Goodbye Andrew” party, and someone asks, “What’s your dream job?” After taking a second to think, I say, “Probably hosting a pop culture podcast…a pop-cast, if you will.” BTW, I haven’t thought about hosting a podcast since college, but for some reason, this is what came out of my mouth. I spent the next 4 months at my new job producing my boss’s podcast, learning the ropes of recording, editing, promoting, all the bells, all the whistles, and I keep thinking back to sitting in that final Wine Wednesday where I told a room full of people that my dream job was to host a podcast.
I started toying with the idea of starting my show and started coming up with podcast names. I started designing artwork for a show called “talk ur talk” which I immediately realized was a terrible name for a podcast and went back to the drawing board. I toyed with a few other names with the word “pop” in it to make sure people knew pop culture was the main focus of the show. And then, on a cold walk home from the gym in January of 2023, it came to me. Too Pop to Handle. It was one of those “aha!” moments I’d seen in movies where the protagonist stops in their tracks, looks into the camera with a cheesy grin, and you know it’s about to be a turning point in their life.
I secured all of the social handles and created a toopoptohandle Gmail account. I started playing around with cover art, scrolled through endless pages of royalty-free pop music for my intro, and even ordered a microphone in June so I could finally start recording. I recorded a trailer for the podcast, and then the microphone collected dust in my drawer for 4 months.
I remember telling Julie about the show in March of 2023 while she stayed with me for a week because the Jonas Brothers were doing a Broadway residency in NYC. I remember telling Jaclyn about it on the subway on our way out to dinner for Ashley’s birthday. I remember sending Brionna the trailer of the episode months before I launched.
Finally, after a shitty Monday at work in October of 2023, I got home and told my boyfriend, “I need the living room tomorrow. I’m launching the podcast this week.”
One year, 56 episodes, and 12K+ downloads later, here we are celebrating one year of Too Pop to Handle.
I often joke that this podcast is my baby because I came up with a name 9 months before I launched it. This has been such a rewarding year. I have learned so much about myself and have fallen in love with recording this show every single week. There is nothing I look forward to more than coming home on Tuesday night to record the show.
Thank you to everyone who has read this post, who has listened to one episode, all 56, or somewhere in between. I truly appreciate every person who has supported me and the podcast, and I cannot wait to see what the next year has in store.
A special shout out to my Too Pop to Handle focus group who never fail to help me with any and all ideas I have about the show: Thomas, Brionna, Jaclyn, and Jocelyn.
I also need to give a special shoutout to Gati and Delani, who joined me on two bonus episodes of the show breaking down Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter and Taylor Swift’s Tortured Poet Department.
I thought it would be fun to end this post by taking a trip down memory lane and sharing some highlights from the year - enjoy! 💖
October 24th, 2023: Podcast announcement
October 25th, 2023: First episode, “Full Send on Tayvis” goes live
Listening back to this a year later feels like it’s a completely different person hosting this show 🥲 I covered topics such as the early stages of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s relationship and Ariana Grande and Ethan Slater’s first photo together. Funny enough, I talked about these four on this week’s episode, too
January 20th, 2024: The podcast hits 1K Downloads
One thousand plays in three months!? This was crazy, and so, so exciting.
February, 14th 2024: People’s Choice Awards
Getting invited to the People’s Choice Awards only four months (!!!!) after launching the show was such an incredible opportunity. This trip was a turning point for me where I realized I’m doing this; I’m really doing this podcast thing. (and I looked cute as hell doing it, btw)
May 13th, 2024: My one-sided beef with Quinta Brunson
I can’t even go on with this highlight without completely debunking any beef - I just like a punchy headline LOL. If you listen to the show, you know how much I adore Quinta Brunson and Abbott Elementary, so you can imagine how ecstatic I was when I found out she stitched one of my podcast clips. The TikTok was deleted by the time I woke up for reasons I’ll probably never know, but much like my love and admiration for Quinta, screen recordings live forever.
August 16th, 2024: Love Island USA event
You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take, and this was the perfect example of that for me. When I saw that the Love Island USA cast would be hosting a panel at the 92NY, I knew I had to be there. One problem: the tickets sold out before I could get one. I decided to flex my podcast muscle and see if I could cover the event on the podcast, and to my surprise, they were thrilled to host me with a media pass!
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August 19th, 2024: Website Launch
toopoptohandle.com goes live! Yay!
September 1st, 2024: The podcast hits 10K listens across all platforms
One of my goals for the podcast was to have 10,000 streams/downloads by my one-year anniversary (today!), and I ended up hitting it over a month early while my boyfriend and I were stuck at the 86th & 2nd bus stop because our bus had a tire pressure error. Does it get more New York than hitting your goals while on a broken-down bus!?
September 7th, 2024: Newsletter launch
I decided I needed a way to connect with my audience more and launched my Substack (hey, that’s you!) Launching the newsletter has been such a fun part of the podcast, and I love having it as another way to reach my listeners + find new listeners. Thanks for being here 💖
October 25th, 2024: One year of Too Pop to Handle
And now here we are, one year later. Here’s to 52 more fabulous weeks of being your pop culture best friend.