I am excited to announce the first step in a journey which will ultimately result in CTOB becoming a full blown Mike Strand fan page. 

I've been itching to get Mike Strand's voice and fingerprints on CTOB.

Every time I talk to him, I wind up in tears laughing. It's the kind of effect we have on each other. We have a tendency to indulge each other in long-winded, absurdist bullshit. It's fertile soil for a guy who runs a story-telling website. 

I've also been eager to keep stepping my podcast game up lately. Long time fans of the site will recall that we pumped out 17 episodes of a weekly podcast when we launched the site. Those episodes will join the archives soon, and the Podcasting Hall of Fame shortly thereafter. And along shall come new podcasts from the CTOB podcasting network to stand on the shoulders of giants and grab eagles as they fly by. 

So I got an idea: I'll call Mike once a week (or so) and pitch him a story that I pulled from the headlines and want to turn into a movie. I'm going to produce it, he'll be the Executive Producer, and we'll turn our real news story into a fake movie. We're calling it Buying the Rights. 

The podcast is in the can and I ain't too shy to tell you it's pure gold.

I Skyped with Mike for about an hour last night and then I went straight into the editing booth with it. That little sliver of podcast carpaccio at the top of the page was very early in the call. Later in the call, I did indeed wind up in tears laughing.

I'm also going to be honest with you and tell you the sound quality on Mikey's mic isn't good. I know that. It will be better next week, and the week after that, and the week after that. And then it will be perfect, because that's how we do things around here. But until then, just understand and accept that a tinny, distant Mike Strand is better than no Mike Strand at all. Also better than every other Mike on the planet put together. Times two.

The podcast bar is on the right side of your page or you can find us on iTunes as CheckThisOutBabe. Maria and I just dropped episode 2 of OMG Dragons!, our Game of Thrones fan podcast. We record it each week immediately after watching GoT and geek out over/dissect the episode together. If you haven't checked it out yet, get after it. 

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Buying the Rights will debut next week on CheckThisOutBabe.com.