Episode 41: Cole Burkhardt Interview

Travis interviews podcaster Cole Burkhardt about their science fiction audio drama, Null/Void. The story follows a young woman and her friends as they defend their small town from a family of ruthless billionaires who wish to exploit and destroy it.

Cole and Travis discuss the power of audio fiction, practical advice for aspiring voice actors and sound designers, and the importance of representation in the media we consume.

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Things Mentioned This Episode:

• Unplaced
• Godsfall and the Rise of the Demigods
• Project Ozma
• Pary of One
• Jeff Stormer’s Editing Process
• Piece of Cake Podcasting Newtork
• What Will Be Here?
• Vega: A Sci-Fi Adventure
• Dreambound

For early access to episodes, extended cuts, and exclusive articles, you can support us on Patreon.

About Cole Burkhardt

Null/Void

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Transcript:

[intro music fades in]

Travis: One of my favorite things about science fiction is its power to punch up and push back against capitalism, corporate greed, and systemic oppression. It’s always a necessary message… now more than ever. 

Welcome to the Fantasy Inn, where we share our love for all things fantasy and discuss the broader speculative fiction industry. I’m your host, Travis Tippens. This week’s interview is with podcaster Cole Burkhardt, creator and director of the Null/Void audio drama. They’ve also acted in and sound designed more shows than I can count. 

Cole and I discussed the power of audio fiction, practical advice for aspiring voice actors and sound designers, and the importance of representation in the media we consume. 

So on that note, let’s just jump right into the interview and hear what Cole had to say. 

[intro music fades out]

Cole Burkhardt. Welcome to the Fantasy Inn. I’m so glad you could come on the podcast. 

Cole: Hey, thanks for having me. 

Travis: Yeah well to start things off, something I kind of like to ask everyone in some shape or form is what was your journey into discovering science fiction and fantasy? 

Cole: I was a big reader as a kid. I loved fantasy. There was a running joke among my friend group and the librarians–who are also part of my friend group–is that I had read the entirety of our fiction section while I was in middle school, which is probably true. I started from A and made my way down to Z. 

And it wasn’t until I would say I got a lot older and went into college that I ended up delving into sci-fi. A lot of ’em were like movies and stuff, but I did end up reading like Ender’s Game and a lot of those big types of sci-fi, with outer space and other worlds and didn’t really see a whole lot of like the smaller day-to-day sci-fi. 

Travis: Honestly, I’m not even sure what I would classify as the smaller day-to-day sci-fi, but yeah. 

Cole: Like so a lot about sci-fi is going to space and exploring and developing the technology past that in order to give you a look into how it’s done. But it doesn’t really take into consideration the smaller things of how those advanced technologies would influence society and how people would just have… Like even something like having a bus that is just a little bit better or having voice or hologram calls or just I guess even Null/Void where they have the–I guess some spoilers for Null/Void–but how Adelaide is able to beam herself down isn’t something that’s able to be done, and a lot of the coding is like new code that’s been developed as they’ve made room for the bigger things they’re working on… is what I mean when I say small sci-fi. 

Travis: OK I get you. Yeah, I know personally, that’s kind of my favorite kind of sci-fi or fantasy, where it’s more focused on the human element than the tech or the fantastic. 

Cole: Yeah, it’s kind of like Black Mirror. I guess I would consider it small sci-fi in that it is mostly focused on human stories. And it is something that could happen in the present, but there’s always one specific type of technology that is futuristic that we don’t have quite yet. 

Travis: That’s a good, if potentially a little bleak, example. 

Cole: Definitely yeah, yeah. 

Travis: So I guess following on from that, how did you discover the world of audio dramas and podcasting in general? 

Cole: A friend recommended me Welcome to Night Vale while I was in college. It was still relatively new at the time. I think they only had maybe like 30 episodes up and I fell in love with it. From there I moved on to the usual, like The Adventure Zone, and from there I kind of got into like the bitter world, especially with like welcome to Nightvale and all of that creepy abstract horror. I was able to see a lot of myself in audio dramas like that and then it was kind of like the bigger draw for me to get into it. Also I guess I started getting more into it because of the fact that I wasn’t able to read quite as much, not just because college killed my love of reading, but because I had commutes and can’t really read and drive at the same time. Or like if I’m going to read, I’m going to get so absorbed into I, I’ll miss my metro stop. But having a podcast is just something I can turn on and listen to in the background while I’m going about my day or when I’m driving through traffic and I normally listen to like Night Vale for when I’m trying to fall asleep ’cause it’s very great soothing background noise for most episodes. But being able to experience things like TAZ or Wolf 359 or things like that, it’s more easily accessible and I think that’s what I really liked about the medium. 

Travis: I kind of had a similar transition as soon as I started getting a regular commute, but all of my reading time kind of disappeared and so I actually made the switch into audiobooks at the time and was continuing there. But then I discovered podcasts after that and so now I kind of alternate 50/50 or so. 

Cole: Yeah, a lot of the audio books I listened t are well, I don’t have a lot of opportunities out to the library or like hit up books like that where I can get those audio books. I remember when I was a kid they used to hand out casette tapes and you would get this big old binder full of cassette tapes for like each and every chapter of the book and you have to drag out your old player and play through all of that. And now I’m seeing people pulling out these giant binders of CD’s worth of audio books or MP3s or WAV files or whatever Audible and the others do. It’s so reminiscent of a younger day, but also still like new and exciting. 

Travis: Yes, although I will say the one minor trend in audio books that I’m not a huge fan of as someone who enjoys fiction podcasts, is when they try to do like the audio dramatization version of it and they’ll add in sound effects. It’ll just be like random noises on top of the regular book. 

Cole: You can tell like, it is good that they’re trying to make it a more immersive world, but you can tell they still have a lot to learn in translating it to an audio drama. 

Travis: Yeah, absolutely.  

Well, I kind of already touched on this sort of, but what intrigues you about the audio medium other than just ease of listening? Over say, like a written one. 

Cole: Um, I liked the–oh what’s the way to say this?–I liked the fact that there are multiple characters just like in audio, but you’re normally just resigned to the narrator and that narrator doing voices for all the characters. But having multiple cast and crew adds so much more to the story. I don’t have to imagine what someone sounds like, and it also it also lends itself to a little bit more improv and sounds a little bit more natural than just someone reading off a page. It’s very endearing as someone who enjoys telling stories as well. 

Travis: Yeah, the natural sound I think is a big thing for me as well. I know part of the reason why I’ll switch over to a podcast rather than an audio book is I’ll be falling asleep or something. They’re just kind of reading out as if someone is reading a story, which can be great and soothing. But the more natural element, or just like regular spoken dialogue from an audio drama, that… it’s kind of nice. 

Cole: Yeah, I want to hear, I… I can’t go to the theater, not just because of the current hellscape that the world is, but because theater is expensive. And this is kind of the same thing as theater, except I can’t always see what the actors look like. It still allows me to imagine the world, but also lends itself to some creativity. 

Travis: Yeah, it’s really kind of the classic radio drama “movie in your mind” kind of thing without like… I think there’s an Audible competitor that does the same thing, but they charge like $70 for a book in audio drama form. 

Cole: No, it’s free! So yeah, that’s another thing. Podcasts are free and I can choose if I want to support a creator or go find more of their work. Free is also a very big draw for me. [laughs] 

Travis: Yeah, absolutely. Well, so I know you’re kind of involved in quite a bit in the scene of podcasting. And one of those–seeing as we’re talking about what stands out from audio books–is voice acting. So how did you get involved in voice acting? 

Cole: So originally, I… actually through Tumblr, which shows how old I am. I had been on Tumblr for a minute. I’d gotten into the TAZ–The Adventure Zone–kind of scene area of that Tumblr. And someone had put out a call ’cause they wanted to make an actual play. Kind of based off of TAZ. And I did it, it was called Blue Dawn. I learned a whole lot of stuff about it, but through Blue Dawn I got more into like the actual podcasting world of it, and found a couple of small bits to get myself into it. And then really I think I really got into voice acting when I landed the role for Unplaced. Which is a fantastic podcast written by Michelle Nickolauson, voiced by me. [laughs] And that was kind of like the “oh, I might actually have like a place here” and really, really enjoyed it. I like theater. I will admit I was a jock in high school, but I really enjoyed theater. Except I have stage fright [laughs] and so like I couldn’t get up in front of those large audiences and act in the way that I wanted to. But switching over to voice acting, it’s a lot easier to act for people when you don’t have anyone looking at you. [laughs] I don’t want to be perceived and voice acting let’s me do that. 

Travis: Yeah, I can imagine that’s a pretty big draw. So what are kind of like the most challenging or the most fun parts of voice acting? 

Cole: Oh, I guess definitely the most challenging is trying to work off someone who’s not necessarily in the same room as you. You can do like remote recording and things like that, and during read throughs there are people on the other side of that call, but a lot of, at least for me… I’m partially deaf, and so a lot of my conversation is based on how people act while they’re talking, ’cause it’s also a little bit hard for me to pick up tone and things like that, especially over text. Or like if someone is messing with me or whatever. So trying to reply to someone who isn’t necessarily there got to be a little bit challenging, ’cause like I can’t see how they’re reacting to me saying something, so I have to try to guess on this reaction. And even if I’m on a voice call with them, they may say something one way, but have their attitude be a completely different way. And trying to parse through that can be a bit difficult. But I’m blessed to have had so many fantastic co-stars and co-voice actors. So that while it is challenging, it’s also a lot of fun to do to meet all these cool people and to be able to like, talk and learn their experiences as well and just being able to like riff off each other and improv some scenes and just the act of recording with someone, even if they’re not in the same room, is still really satisfying to me. 

Travis: I love how it seems like a good number of creative types or kind of somewhat introverted 

Cole: [laughs] 

Travis: but the whole podcasting together kind of thing. It gives like that sweet spot, it seems like. Where you know you’re kind of remote, but you’re getting that active communication with people. 

Cole: 100%  

Travis: Well, so, if someone were to tell you they wanted to get into voice work, what would be your advice to them? 

Cole: I would have two words of advice. Or well, two things of advice. First one: You don’t need any fancy mics to get into voice work. I know some people who started voice acting using their iPhone as a microphone. I started off with a Snowball mic. You don’t need all those big fancy SM 58 or 62’s or whatever to become a good voice actor… that comes later, once you have the money to purchase it. 

But you don’t need anything super expensive to get into voice acting. The other thing I would recommend is to take an acting class. I know that sounds kind of like snarky and self-explanatory, but like theater, while it doesn’t really translate to an audio medium, still has a lot of the same beats as an audio drama. They’re pulled from the same crop, I guess. And it will also help you to just get a little bit more loose behind the scenes so you aren’t so stiff when you’re reading through your lines, ’cause you know the exercises to do and you have experience not just behind the mic but up on a stage to act. 

Travis: Yeah, that’s great advice. It’s the kind of thing that it seems like well, of course, that that should be the advice, but it probably doesn’t occur to a lot of people? 

Cole: Yeah! 

Travis: Well, we’ve talked about a lot and not actually got into like your show at the moment. So how would you pitch Null/Void? 

Cole: Null/Void is a modern sci-fi audio drama about a young woman named Piper, whose voice–whose life is saved by a mysterious voice named Adelaide. Sorry, I’ve had to do this elevator pitch a lot for people. 

Travis: [laughs] 

Cole: Together, Adelaide and Piper and her friends have to save their town from a team of ruthless billionaires who stand to destroy it. It is about not only finding your place in the world, but it struggles a lot with depression and finding friendships and figuring out the value of your worth, especially in terms of how other people and how other majorities will view you. It’s about fighting for what is right and not letting people give you shit for it.  

Sorry I didn’t ask, can we curse? Am I allowed to curse?  

Travis: Yeah! Yeah yeah yeah.alright. 

Cole: Okay, cool. [laughs] 

Travis: Yeah, I probably should have led with that, but yeah, curse away. And yeah, I love that pitch, which sorry for making you get that for I’m sure the thousandth time, but it just hits like so much of what I like in fiction. So again, like we were talking about that personal story on everything with still some cool speculative technology elements in there. 

Cole: This is, I guess, technically not a spoiler because that episode released last week, but a lot of what Adelaide is is kind of like the ideas I have for for science in general. Adelaide is an AI that was working for a billionaire company to do evil throughout the world. 

And becoming self-aware and seeing the stories of other people–how those big evil doings have affected them negatively–made her realize that she didn’t have to be working as a tool for people to spread evil, that she can go out and do some actual change for the better. I think a lot of science is that way, that it is normally something that is created to help, but in the end it’s turned and used for, well, for bad. [laughs] Which is very reductive and a simplified version of everything.  

Unchecked science and unchecked work in general always has the potential for someone to use it for evil. All it takes is a very small but vocal minority for folks to realize that hey, maybe we shouldn’t be doing this in the first place. Or maybe hey, we need to make a change. And I wanted that to be reflected throughout Null/Void, of we can’t just let people get away with the evil shit that they’re doing just because they’re big and bad and intimidating. We have to hold ourselves and also them responsible for the work that they’re doing. 

Travis: That’s a concept that unfortunately always feels like it’s getting more and more applicable to the world, so… 

Cole: Yeah. Yep. [laughs] When I sat down to write this a year and a half ago, I was fully not expecting 2020 to go the way that it did, but here we are. 

Travis: [laughs] I would hope you weren’t. I can’t expect what’s happening on a day-to-day basis, so… 

Cole: [laughs] 

Travis: So frankly, I feel like this is kind of a silly question, but I’m going to ask it anyways. So why choose billionaires as the Big Bads for Null/Void? 

Cole: So… I used to work at an HOA and then moved onto a luxury apartment housing complex. I did some concierges and some leasing agent work for them, and every single step of the way the one thing that would stop people from getting a house or not being fined ridiculous amounts of numbers were the the leaders behind it. I mean, these were run by like big corporations of people who were… it seemed like the only reason they had those clauses and contracts or they had those rules in the first place was to not only be able to charge people way too much money, but to make themselves more money. 

A lot of it was also like just straight up gentrification. They can’t come forward and say that because that’s like… housing to only white people is illegal. But also there are steps they would take to make sure that people of color and other marginalized identities wouldn’t be able to rent from them or would be less inclined to rent from them. 

And watching them sit there and be able to do it, and being able to shoot down anyone who tried to tell them, “hey what you’re doing is bad” was very frustrating to me. It seemed like they didn’t care about the people they were trying to find houses for, or they didn’t care about the people they were supposed to be taking care of and not being able to do anything about that was heartbreaking to me. I am no longer working for either of those two companies, but being put in a situation where you’re directly contributing to someone’s not getting a house or just being bullied out of their neighborhood wasn’t a good feeling for me and I wanted that to be reflected in the stories that I wrote. 

Travis: Yeah, when I first started listening to Null/Void, I was telling all of my co-bloggers that this is like the Eat the Rich show that I’ve been looking for for a while. Like this is the fuck capitalism story that I’ve been missing. 

Cole: I, uh… especially during college, I was on food stamps and had to go on specific unemployment things, and just the way that people treated me and also the others who needed help was kind of disgusting. It was like they hadn’t thought about what it meant to learn to either have to choose between paying rent or buying food for that month, and just seeing that reflected in the actions of people was… I don’t, I don’t know. I couldn’t stand it, and needed to write down some cathartic stories about finally winning against major corporations and Big Bad billionaires. 

Travis: Yeah, this is the more relevant version of kind of like, I don’t know, escapism and processing current events than like going off on an epic quest to throw a ring into a volcano or something. 

Cole: [laughs] Exactly. 

Travis: Well, kind of on a craft side of things, like on the metal level. I’m curious about your choice to make the teaser episode like the stand-alone piece of micro fiction that compliments the overall story. Because I know a lot of times you’ll get just like sound clips taken from the first couple episodes, but this is its own unique thing. 

Cole: So I actually didn’t write the teaser. One of my script editors, Amber, she’s a god damn delight. She came to me apropos of nothing, and was like, “Hey, I did a trailer for you. Me and my friend did this in like half an hour in our our front room. What do you think about it? We could probably use it as like a script or a like a jumping off point for our actual trailer.” And I listened to it, and it was like… it was fantastic. It was exactly what I wanted to be representative of Null/Void. Not just the story but how people are affected by these tragedies, and how it focuses on these individual stories. And the same way that we see these individual lives within the story of Null/Void are affected. Wow, that was a very circular sentence… 

Travis: [laughs] 

Cole: I wanted to keep that trailer as it was because it focuses on individual stories and we get to see how people are affected by those tragedies in the same way that we see tragedy reflected in the actual story is what I mean to say by all of that. 

Travis: Yeah, and I think that comes across very well in that trailer. 

Cole: Yeah. There’s a second one that got written and partially recorded, but thanks to COVID and all of that, we didn’t have a chance to finish it. That is another standalone micro fiction piece that kind of delves a little bit more into the background of Null/Void. I will probably expand upon it and release it as like a mini-episode at the end of the season. If and when we take our break. But it also delves more into like oh now you can actually see that this is Null/Void’s fault, or that this is Void Vetwork’s fault that these things are happening and not just like accidents. 

Travis: So for people who maybe aren’t quite as familiar with audio dramas or audio fiction, can you describe what your role is as the creator and director of Null/Void entails? 

Cole: Ooh. Besides just writing it? [laughs] Um… 

Travis: [laughs] 

Cole: So I was in charge of basically everything across a podcast. I wrote it. I hired editors to look through as well as did final edits for it. I wrote the press kit for it, designed our website, all of our social media. I did all of the crowdfunding. I wrote up contracts for everyone who was involved. So our voice actors, our sound editors. My editors also had to sign contracts that were confidentiality as well as pay agreements. 

I organized read throughs. I worked with the voice actors very heavily on like all of the characters and their backgrounds and how all of these people kind of tie together. 

I also communicated with our audio editors, not only with like the sound effects I wanted to see in script, but how I wanted the overall tone of the show to be. I also did quality control checks on their work, which means I listened through it and was like, “Oh put this sound effect here or turn this up. Or I want the pacing of this sentence or scene to be this particular way instead.” 

Even just uploading all of the episodes. And I don’t write all of the episode descriptions, we actually have a master coder who writes some of the code work and double checked my efforts on writing the code work that you can find in our episode descriptions. But I worked very heavily with our coder, who I guess helped integrate the narrative structures of the story into the actual, like actual factual code, like Python code that we have written there. 

I also, oh, goodness I do a lot of stuff, um, directing and producing a podcast means you do a lot of stuff, um, but I’m so thankful that I’m not doing this alone. I have my editors and my voice actors and my audio editors, to help make this all just a lot easier than it probably would have been if I was doing this by myself. 

Travis: Yeah, and from what you described, you’re already doing a ton. 

Cole: [laughs] It… podcasting is a full-time job. And I hate assigning la price to creative works because I didn’t start Null/Void as a job. I did it because I had a story I wanted to tell. 

But the act of podcasting and making and creating a podcast really is a full-time job and people don’t get paid nearly enough to do it, but I guess that’s one of the things you have to keep in mind when you’re making art, is there are a lot of moving pieces, but you really don’t have to do it alone. 

Travis: It’s sort of like a double-edged sword, I guess. We were talking earlier about how great it is that podcasts are typically free.  

Cole: Yeah. 

Travis: But then that kind of feeds into the whole, like… 

Cole: Like people aren’t, you can’t get paid with free. 

Travis: Exactly, yeah. You can’t eat exposure. 

Cole: Yeah! [laughs] 

Travis: Yeah, exactly. It doesn’t help with the whole “Oh why should I have to pay for art?” mentality that a lot of people seem to have. 

Cole: I… [sighs] I don’t… I never got that. I always try to live by the mantra: Make art, pay rent, help others do the same. Because art is transformative. And art can help influence and make the world a better place. But it also means that people need to be out there making it and doing the labor of making it, so they should be, I suppose… paid for the change they are trying to incite. 

Art, I think still should be free to some extent, but also I understand people wanting to get paid for their art. 

Travis: Yeah, it’s an interesting balance between I guess accessibility of the art to people… 

Cole: Yeah 

Travis: And then also like actually letting the artists live and eat food and have a roof over their heads. 

Cole: 100%. It’s kind of like… the issue I have with Luminary is they put all of their podcasts behind a paywall. And so people who can’t afford a Luminary subscription aren’t going to be able to hear the podcast that are behind it. But it also means that those artists who have their podcast with Luminary are going to be paid. So it’s a good thing that they’re getting credit for their work. But also, I’m not gonna go listen to it. [laughs] 

Travis: Yeah, that’s pretty much exactly how I feel about that. 

Cole: Mhmm. 

Travis: It’s an odd.. I mean, I don’t think Bigger Business, kind of like air quotes, capital “Big Business” has really figured out art in general, but podcasts specifically.  

Cole: Yeah. 

Travis: I think they’re still trying to figure out how the hell to handle that. 

Cole: Oh, there was an article released by I think NPR a couple weeks ago about how podcasting is like this new like craze that’s happening, and like we’ve been here for 10 years.  

Travis: [laughs] 

Cole: Catch up. Like 10-15 years. Come on guys, do a little bit more research, please. 

Travis:  That’s the thing is, as soon as you know like anything about podcasts, you realize how much like the big journalists and everyone don’t know anything about them. 

Cole: Yeah. And it’s such a small niche. Like normally when I’m talking… when someone asks me like “oh what do you do?” I’m like, “Oh well, I make a podcast.” Like 50% of the time… Well, I’d say like 40% of the time I hear people go “OK, well, what’s a podcast?” And then I have to start with like “OK, well, you know what like a radio show is, you know, like a radio drama?” And they’re like, “Oh yeah.” I’m like “it’s that but on the Internet. And then that kind of gets them open to like oh, that’s what a podcast is. Even though we’ve been here for so long, it’s very easy to forget that. Well, the Internet’s only been here for so long and a lot of people don’t have access to the things that would grant them access to a podcast. 

Travis: Yeah, that is true. OK, another question I have is… so you’ve said that you have your sound engineers, you hire the audio editors for Null/Void, but I understand you also have some experience with that side of things.  

Cole: Yes. 

Travis: I mean, I guess obviously you’d have to if you’re giving them feedback. So what types of editing have you done before? 

Cole: So I mostly started off in the actual play side of podcasts. I had my own podcast, Blue Dawn, which ran for about three seasons. We had, I think 70 to 80 episodes when we were all done. And I did all of the editing for that. So I put together all of the voice tracks. I added sound effects and music. Thankfully I didn’t have to make music. We had a fantastic musician. Corv Leary, Piper Leary if you’re nasty [laughs] who did all of our music and would provide me and we’d be able to work together to shape the music around a particular scene instead of just having these prerecorded tracks that I would have to find places to fit in. You can’t find the podcast anymore. It’s been so long we’ve had to take it down off Libsyn ’cause no one wanted to pay for it. Um, but we had these very like audio fiction focused scenes sometimes where they were less about the gameplay of dungeon world and more about like how these characters interacted and we were able to edit it down… or I was able to edit it down. Sorry I need to take responsibility for my accomplishments. I was able to edit it down into something that was really similar to an audio fiction, much in the same way that Godsfall and the Rise of the Demigods are able to take gameplay and turn it into a fully immersive world. I tried to aim to do the same thing with Blue Dawn, would put in music or clashing of swords whenever I had the chance. 

I got to experiment a lot with like magic and how magic sounds in the world, which was very fun. And then from Blue Dawn I did a couple others and then moved onto my first sci-fi audio drama which was Project Ozma, a part of the Deuce Thunder podcasting network. 

Project Ozma was a fun struggle for me, ’cause it was like I had all of these like things for magic, but I didn’t have any sound effects for like sci-fi, and had to go out and create some or finding footsteps for the… It was an ensemble cast, so they had like 20 characters that needed individual footsteps for, and some of them were aliens, so those footsteps sounded different and I had to figure out what their science sounded like. Beause a lot of like constructs they had within Project Ozma were the generic spaceships but also like I remember one was like a clockwork bird, and I had to figure out what that sounded like. And a lot of like the different robot voices that we did. And I, just because all of the other sound editors fell off or weren’t able to have the time to edit, I ended up taking over the majority of the sound design for that. ll the way down from bleeps and bloops to what a robot stepping in liquid slime would do to its processing parts. 

It was, it was a lot of fun. I’ve stuck on with the Deuce Thunder network, specifically that  one writer has brought me on to do the sound effects and line audio design for Novitero, which is a technically sequel to Project Ozma. And I’ve been able to carry all of what I’ve learned from that onto Novitero. 

Um, I’ve done a couple small things. Oh, let me pull up and see what I’ve done. Because I can’t remember everything that I’ve done. 

I’ve also kind of branched out into talk show design. I edit for the Game Closet, which is a tabletop RPG talk show highlighting queer representation and have had so much fun being able to edit and do the sound design for that as well. 

Goodness, I, uh, we’ve also, I’ve done the editing for a lot of the stories that you’ll hear in our International Podcasting Month team. Last year, we opened it up to actual plays and I did the majority of the editing for quite a few of those. It is a lot of fun to hear people enjoying a game, even if I’m not the one playing it. So I really do like audio work for actual plays and for non-fiction types, but being able to like design a world and how the world sounds is also a very fun challenge to me. Because I’m… As I mentioned earlier, I’m partially deaf, but because of that I also did get a lot of like… Sound is very important to me. I get sensory overload sometimes and need silence, but the way something sounds is so delightfully communicative. Not only about the person who is making those sounds, but of everything that came together in the world around it to cause that situation. And being given the chance to do that for an audio drama has been a lot of fun as well. 

Travis: Yeah, so I’d say it’s safe to say you’ve done a few things. 

Cole: Yeah. [laughs] Whenever I’m filling out an audition form or whenever I’m emailing something, I have to be like OK. What have I done? Let me open up my resume and see what I’ve done so I can tell people about it. 

Travis: In the Podcast Problems discord server, I think it was you who was saying that you have like this specialized mouse where you’ve like programmed a lot of shortcuts for editing? 

Cole: Yes! Yeah, I have a… one, two, three… I have a five-button mouse that in addition to the–I’m not gonna mess around with it because it’s gonna do stuff for my recording—But if I press a certain button, it’s key bound to like control copy or it’s key-,bound to like delete something. I think I’ve got pause and play, which is all in one button. I’ve got copy and paste. Then I have delete and then I have the like it starts up noise reduction but it doesn’t go through the entire process. 

And that depends on also the type of program I’m using, because I hop between Audacity and Adobe and will occasionally use Reaper for stuff, so I have different programs set within my mouse to work with different other programs.  

Travis: Wow. 

Cole: Yeah. And it just… it makes things so much easier. I don’t have to like touch my keyboard to do audio editing sometimes, which makes things just a lot easier and make things like very, very streamlined. I’ve also found… shout out to Jeffrey Stormer, who runs Party of One podcast for creating this, like, how to do like basic audio worked on all of your stuff. That includes programs like the Levelator, which will like automatically  level and do EQs and a little bit of noise reduction on your actual like .wav file, and just a whole bunch of other stuff. You can even audio edit…. I find it doesn’t really work for audio fiction, but for like actual plays and talk shows you can also like speed up the sound using a specific button in Audacity and Reaper as well, and that makes it a little bit easier to go through large chunks of files and then you can slow it down if you need to like edit out some ums or ahs or just rearrange a section of it. There’s a lot of like little shortcuts that you kind of just pick up as you’re going along that I’ve found help make all of this work easier. 

Travis: Yeah, don’t mind me, I’m just taking some notes over here. 

Cole: I can send you, I can send you a link to Jeffrey Stormer’s sheet once we get done. Because it’s so helpful. And I’m pretty sure he’s got it pinned somewhere on his Twitter. Which is Party of One pod I think? Let me grab my phone and make sure that I’m shouting him out right ’cause… Where’s Twitter. Here we go. I feel bad ’cause I should know this, I’m on his podcast enough. 

Travis: I mean I’ve found no matter what the thing is and how knowledgeable I am about it, as soon as I have to like be live recording something… yeah. 

Cole: Yeah, I’m like, no clue. Yeah, you can find Jeff Stormer on Party of One pod on Twitter. He’s got a lot of good stuff linked there and on his website as well. Yeah, thank God for him. [laughs] 

Travis: So you mentioned the podcasting network that you’re a part of, I guess potentially still a part of. So, you’re also a part of the Piece of Cake Podcasting Network, which you’re one of the producers for. So can you talk a little bit about what that is? 

Cole: Yeah, of course. So the Piece of Cake Podcasting Network, or PoCPN, is a podcasting network that was specifically created to help uplift Black voices and other marginalized identities within the podcasting community. When I was first starting out as a voice actor, I got roped up in a script that was, um, pretty racist. And none of the producers of the network that that show was a part of thought to… to say something about it. Or they either like, didn’t read the script, or didn’t have any way to address the situation because they were all, you know, a bunch of white folks who didn’t know any better. Well… they, I’m not giving them a pass for it, but… the things happened that they did. 

So me and the other co-star who was part of that decided that we wanted to set up a space within the voice acting community that was safe for people of color to be able to A) speak up about that and B) be free from all of the bullshit that we have to deal with, especially in a community that tends to be overwhelmingly white. We have a couple of shows–mine included, Null/Void included–but we have a couple of shows that are currently still in production that are being run under the POC flag. Let’s see we have The Fury… Hold on, let me pull up proper credits for everything, which is something I should have done, but… 

We have Disaster Youth by Georgie, which is going to be a like talk show explaining Black culture and things of that matter in media, as well as Black queer culture and how those two intersect. We have The Fury by Amara Augustine, which is about a bunch of criminals fighting for their city against a corrupt police force. Then we have Vaporwave, which I can’t really give you too many details on. It is very science fiction, I’m very excited for it. But that will be releasing all of its trailers and whatnot pretty soon. 

We tend to do a lot of weekly writings. I’ll post a topic and be like, here. I want to hear, right now we’re doing villain monologues. I posted a couple of resources on what makes a good villain an asked them to write either a villain monologue or a villain origin story or something to showcase a villain and how they can play into your story.  

And then we’re doing a, uh, voice acting corner where I’ve posted a couple of my favorite villain monologues throughout media. One of them is Azula’s “you weren’t even playing the game” monologue from Avatar: The Last Airbender. I’ve got the great one from Pulp Fiction with Ezekiel 17. It’s different ways for people to not only flex their like voice acting chops, but to get more comfortable behind a mic and to hopefully inspire some creative stories that come along with it as well. 

Travis: Yeah, that all sounds fascinating. 

Cole: [laughs] 

Travis: Um, and then so another topic I was curious, so… And so, this is also kind of I feel like already covered, but why are you so passionate about the representation of people of color and queer folk in media? 

Cole: Because it’s never… OK, I’m going to be upfront and say I’m a pessimist. Um, I definitely view the world… OK, that’s a lie. I tend to be a pessimist. I really like being hopeful about things, but… I feel like I see the facts in that the fact is, whenever someone is of a marginalized identity and is represented, more often than not, if it’s not written by the person of that same identity, it’s not going to be written well. 

I have seen so many like Black roles for people who are the like sassy ghetto like best friend or the maid, or like angry woman, and I wanted more for that. I especially, as a biracial nonbinary person of color, don’t see people who look like me in in media. Um, I don’t see people who have the same like family type or dynamic as me, or when I do it’s because they can use it to showcase pain or make our cis white het male stars feel better about themselves. And it was a tough feeling and I sat down one day and was like why can’t we see stuff like this? Why can’t I write a story about a young mixed woman who has to deal with greedy corporate capitalistic nightmare billionaire people. 

It’s important to me because I want people to have good representations of who people are. And in the same way that, like queer folks are always seen as like, perverted or like the funny like made for a goof kind of character… I wanted people to be able to see a queer love and have it just be normal, to have it… It is normal, but I want it to be seen as normal and represented in media as something that everyone can have a chance to do. Because that… that is important to me. I have… It took me way too long to see a queer kiss on TV, and even then when it was it was played for a goof or a gag or like everyone acted disgusted by it, and it was like… We need the positive representation, not just for me, but for everyone else who’s watching this who doesn’t know that they’re gay or doesn’t know that it is OK to be Black or it is OK to be queer, and especially in the voice acting community where we even get things like white people playing Black roles, which is not fair. Especially when the person who is able to bring the most experience into a role is the person who’s experienced those roles before. And there’s a lot that is missing out when you ignore these struggles that these actors have had to overcome, and using that to bring that to a character. 

Um, sorry I got off on a little bit of an angry rant there, but…. 

Travis: No, no. Don’t be sorry at all. 

Cole: But yeah, Iam passionate about queer and Black representation because we need better representation. We need to be better about how we represent our queer and marginalized characters. 

Travis: Yeah, absolutely. Do you think that podcasts are any better at that than other forms of media? 

Cole: We are getting better, is what I will say. We’re definitely getting better. I know… I have met so many queer folks through podcasting and have had the opportunity to like actually sit down and talk with them about it, and it’s been it’s so refreshing, especially when we get to see stuff like in Hollywood where they just have the same five white actors every single time, or the same two Black actors any time they need to fill a “diverse” role. And like I, I do find that representation within podcasts is getting better if only because there are so many… there are so many podcasts. 

And because it is, I suppose, easier for underrepresented folks to get into podcasting. Which is why you see it more compared to other media. You don’t need a big fancy camera or a big fancy microphone to do or make a podcast. And in terms of like movies or TV shows you need, you know, an actual budget for that kind of stuff. 

Travis: And I know, I think my view on like diversity in podcasts is kind of skewed because I listen to so much of like the indie podcasting groups rather than like the big name ones or like, God forbid, like Joe Rogan or something. 

Cole: Oh, fuck off. No, not you. 

Travis: [laughs] 

Cole: Like there’s so much more to podcasting than just talk shows and serials. And, like the indie fiction and the indie audio drama community, is just… it’s so, so gay. And I love it. I love how we’ve come together as a community like maybe we don’t need to write the same five stories and cast the same two people over and over again. Maybe we can diversify a little bit and give voice to people who don’t normally have it. 

Travis: Yeah, and just waiting for someone else to come along and invent podcasting for the first time, I’m sure. 

Cole: [laughs] Have you heard of, have you heard of Alice Isn’t Dead? The very first podcast, even though it’s hosted by your network that’s had a million other podcasts underneath it? Like come on. Do just a moniker of research, please. 

Travis: Well, are there… we’ve kind of talked a bit about them, but are there any other projects that you’re either working on or in the works that you’d like to talk about? 

Cole: Yes, yes I do. I have two. I have three. I have… OK, so I have a lot. I’m doing a lot. I need to stop doing so much. At the moment, um, I really want to talk about What Will Be Here. It is written by Tal Minear who does Side Questing. It is a very positive outlook on a sort of capitalistic apocalypse world of sort of alright, we’ve been taken over by all of these corporations, and everyone is a slave to capitalism. But let’s look at the good that we can do for this world and how communities come together under stress to preserve this sense of being inside of these worlds that don’t allow for any sort of anyone going against the grain. It’s a beautiful story that I’ve had the pleasure to help write and edit, and I’m very excited for people to hear that.  

For the other one, it’s currently one that is unnamed at this moment that I am working on. So just my next podcast. It is a horror podcast, like a full-on horror, that is kind of along the same veins as Russian Doll? That one Netflix TV show. In that a young man finds himself repeating the same day over and over again, and gets caught in this sort of ritualistic sacrifice by the community in which he is living and he has to find a way with him and a couple other folks to break the cycle of this same horrific repeating day before it finally ends for good. 

We’re going to be having a casting call sometime out this fall. We are wrapping up on final edits for this thing. I’m very excited to be able to get it out into the world. 

Travis: So you’ve hit on like my favorite trope… 

Cole: [laughs] 

Travis: …of all time, which is time loops. And I cannot get enough of them, so I will be eagerly waiting for that one. 

Cole: I was finally able to write the cult horror that I wanted to and also have some fun with time looping. It’s going to be good. I hope it’s going to be good. I think it’s going to be good, but also I hope it’s going to be good. 

Travis: Yeah I have no doubt. Well, speaking of good podcasts, are there any good podcasts that you’ve been enjoying lately? 

Cole: Yes, um I want to shout out Vega. Vega is… it’s very short. It took me a weekend to marathon. Vega is a sci-fi adventure podcast. It is told through a single narrator, but it is… It is extremely good. It’s so well done. Not only is the narration engaging, but the world that is created through the use of sound effects and just lore dropping is so fantastic. Um, I highly recommend it.  

It’s about an assassin who is forced to work for the government and their struggle to not only be free from the binds of this government, but to make their mark as the world’s best assassin, and it is extremely good. It’s Vega. Let me see, do they have a… They don’t have a quick link to their Twitter. Oh come on, do you have one? Cool. 

Well, you can find their podcast at vegapodcast.libsyn.com and they have a whole bunch of other links there as well as a place to listen to the episodes. Apparently a season 2 is gonna be coming soon. I cannot wait, but for now, go listen to the first season, it’s very good. 

Travis: Yes, and if you’re lazy, I’ll stick links to these podcasts in the show notes so you can just find them that way.  

Cole: Thank you. 

Um, Dreambound is another one that I want to shout out. Dreambound only has one episode right now. They just launched their crowdfunding campaign. Dreambound is written by a good friend of mine, Sina Briar. It is about a, it is… oh God. What’s that one anime? Shoot, I don’t remember it. 

Travis: I only know like two animes, so I can’t help you. 

Cole: I know, same here. I’m so behind. It is a podcast that translates into anime extremely well. It’s about this guy who buys a video game and gets stuck in this video game world, but his avatar is this cutesy little girl. 

It is a very, very good look at anime and that trope through a queer trans lens and pokes fun at a lot of the like kind of terrible things we see about trans people in anime and is actually written by a trans woman! So you know it’s going to be in good hands. It is delightful. It is hilarious. And it really feels like you’re listening to an anime. Which is the best way I can describe it. It just captures that tone and feel extremely well for an audio medium. 

Travis: That sounds much better than Sword Art Online, which is the only anime… 

Cole: Yes! That was it! That was the one I was thinking of! 

Travis: OK, well. 

Cole: It is the best parts of Sword Art Online but also really gay. 

Travis: That’s, that’s a very strong pitch. 

Cole: Yeah. [laughs] 

Travis: So I like to close out the podcast with this question and for consistency I’m still asking it, but it seems like increasingly poor timing. So just what… what’s one thing that you happen to be excited about right now? 

Cole: Oh let’s see, um, I… my sourdough starter? Which feels like I’ve hit that point in my COVID quarantine that I’m making sourdough… 

Travis: How very 2020. 

Cole: Yeah [laughs] I got some really good ingredients. I’m going to make a pizza tonight. I found myself some cast iron skillets, and by found I mean I literally found them in the trash and then washed the everliving hell out of them. And I’m going to make skillet pizza by hand, which is a very fun thought for me, using a sourdough that I’ve been working on for like months at a time that’s finally gotten to like the right consistency and right rise to actually work for pizza.  

I guess another not so sad thing that I’m excited for is, oh, I… actually hold on. I can’t talk about that. 

Travis: [laughs] The problem of being involved in so much  

Cole: I know. Oh goodness. I guess also Animal Crossing. I’m always excited to play Animal Crossing. But besides that, just bread. Bread and video games. The new Last of Us 2 just came out and I am saving up to buy the game because even though I’ve heard some terrible things about it, I’ve been watching some people play through it and it looks gorgeous and I want to help the creators who were forced to work overtime and in backbreaking situations. I want to be able to help pay them for their game and show my appreciation for it as well. 

Travis: Yeah, well. Cole Burkhardt, thank you so much for taking the time to do this interview. It’s been a pleasure. 

Cole: Yeah, thanks so much for having me. 

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Travis:  You can find Cole Burkhardt on Twitter as @KingCoalMiner, or at his website coleburkhart.card.co. If your stomach’s been grumbling and you’re starting to feel hunger pains, Null/Void is the perfect Eat The Rich sci-fi story you’ve been waiting for. 

As always, you can find us over at thefantasyinn.com. Or click the invite in the show notes to join our discord server, where you can hang out with us in real time and find more books than you’ll ever be able to read.  

If you enjoyed this interview, consider supporting us on Patreon! We’re just a few dollars away from finally getting our last microphone. And of course, don’t forget to subscribe to the show so you can catch all of our future episodes. 

That’s it for this week. Until next time. 

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