CONTEST RULES!

Matt Fradd just released his new book, penned with Robert Delfino, entitled, "Does God Exist? A Socratic Dialogue on the Five Ways of Thomas Aquinas". It's a great walk through the five ways and draws from a lot of Fradd's experience debating atheists.

Matt called me (well, Marco Polo'd me) and said his publisher is willing to give out 10 copies to 10 winners. BUT they must be in the continental United States (sorry European listeners!) and you must do the following:

Contest

1. Tweet or post on Facebook a link to a past episode of Catching Foxes you liked
2. Use the hashtag "3outof5" so we can find it. Tagging Catching Foxes on FB or Twitter helps!
3. Post between March 9-16
4. Luke and I will tally up all the entries and select 10 winners at random.
5. You will be announced and contacted by the 23rd to get your shipping address
6. The publisher, Enroute Books & Media, will send it directly to you

Rules

• No purchase necessary
• Void where prohibited
• US Residents only (the lower 48, not the freak states, Alaska and Hawaii)
• Must be posted between Friday, March 9 at 6:01am Eastern Time to Friday March 16 at 11:59pm
• If you already posted something, you can repost it again with the new hashtag

What is the deal with that Hastag?
It comes from a reviewer on iTunes who was trying to be clever and said: "3 out of 5 couldn't catch these foxes". So, awkward and hilarious as that was, we decided to own it and celebrate it.

Dan Benjamin is a professional podcaster who runs his own network. He saw the writing on the wall that many of his podcasters, once his 5by5 network gave them a huge audience, would jump ship off his network and either start their own or just go independent. So he saw an opportunity in creating a powerful and dead simple hosting platform.

This is not the place for video podcasts. It's just audio. Just MP3. And just RSS feeds.

Within these constraints, you have a simple and clear layout to get your show up and running. We use the default artwork and fonts because, honestly, I think they look great and I don't have the time or experience changing anything now.

The price is easy: $19/month. It's the only plan.

If you have more shows you want to do, new podcasts are only $8/month. It'll import from your provider in one click and help you easily get on more platforms, like iTunes (default), Google Play, Stitcher, TuneIn and more. Catching Foxes in on about 8 or so different podcast platforms.

We started as a podcast hosted by Squarespace on my LayEvangelist.com website. This is great for non-serious, cheap, or just starting out podcast shows. You need a website for your show, an RSS feed to point iTunes to, and that's about it. Fireside gives you a website and the RSS, but if you already have a website, like I did with LayEvangelist.com, then adding a podcast is essentially free.

But once I jumped ship to pay more money for hosting with Fireside, I haven't regretted it for a single moment.

Hardware

1. Microphone: Shure Beta 78A. This supercardioid microphone is amazing at canceling out environmental noise. You want this if your A/C unit is close at hand. For about $250 it isn't cheap, but it certainly isn't the $400 Heil PR40 that many podcasters long for. Here is where I got the idea for it: Marco.org.

2. Focusrite Scarlet 2i2. This is purely a USB box that takes the microphone cable and turns it into 1's and 0's for the computer to understand. My headphones plug in here and that gives us direct monitoring. This also supplies phantom power, which is required for the Shure Beta.

3. dbx 286s microphone pre-amp. This pre-amp up's our game by helping cancel out additional room noise with dedicated hardware nobs. We both have one and it really helps the audio before it ever enters the computer. The microphone goes directly into this, and then from this into the USB box.

4. Apple iMac computer. I use this for audio capture and editing. This gives me access to a world of Apple third-party software.

5. Boom arm from Røde. A boom arm adjusts your microphone so its always in the right place. Highly recommended, but with the Shure Beta microphone, you can hold it in your hand (unlike the Heil PR40).

6. Sony MDR-7506 Studio Monitor Headphones. These things produce a great neutral sound for about $80 and are "closed back," which means the sound stays in your ears and doesn't pour into your microphone. That's called leakage and that's bad. When people are talking to you, you want their voice in their mic, not your mic.

Software

1. Skype. Everything starts with Skype, which is free. Entire million-dollar networks are built on this stupid thing. Alternatives exist, but simply do not have ease-of-use combine with robust audio quality.

2. ECAMM Call Recorder. This third-party software integrates completely with Skype. We have it set to only record the audio in high-quality AAC files. This is back up, because whatever noises Skype makes, Call Recorder picks up. If Skype gets wonky and makes those weird digital noises, Call Recorder picks it up. However, it's easy to use and records two tracks- one for me, one for everyone else. If we have multiple guests, they are all on the second track with Luke, which can be a huge problem if someone is coughing or something while someone else is talking. Sometimes Luke will send me his Call Recorder file and I'll spend a lot of time editing out the conflicting audio.

3. QuickTime Player. When you hear Luke counting down, it's because we are about to hit record on QuickTime. This little guy is a heavy lifter and produces some huge audio files for us. Almost every show is recorded with QuickTime on each of our ends and I mash up the files in post-production. This is called a "double-ender" and it's awesome.

4. Piezo, by Rogue Amoeba. This is a super-dedicated little guy. Its whole task is to record audio from an application. This is how I capture those YouTube clips. This is also a back up (or replacement) for ECAMM's Call Recorder because you can get it on the Mac Apple Store and it's shared with up to 5 devices, so it is on my iMac and my MacBook Air when traveling.

5. Logic Pro X. From day one we never used GarageBand. Plenty of people do because it is powerful and free on every Mac. I went pro and have never looked back. I use it for Strip-Silence, Shift+F, and easy volume and gain tweaks.

6. Pixelmator. To make album and chapter artwork, I use Pixelmator. It's fairly simple to use and very easy to intuit. There are a lot of powerful features, but I still to the easy stuff for now.

Future Software from Rogue Amoeba

Rogue Amoeba is an amazing audio-focused software company. They build some incredible stuff. I own a bunch of it but have not invested the time to make it awesome.

1. Audio HiJack 3 is incredible and kind of a miracle. It's super clear and clean interface lets you drag-and-drop entire audio pathways and channels. I've seen other podcasters use it like a beast (Jason Snell), and I am covetous. I own it, but haven't mastered it to the point where I think I can use it well.

2. LoopBack lets you turn your computer into a high end mixing board. It can take audio from any application and spit it out in any other direction. So, you can bring music in from iTunes and pipe it to your guests.

3. Nicecast creates an Internet Radio Station for your podcast. This is what I will get when it's time to go live with Catching Foxes.

4. Farrago was just released this week. It lets you quickly play sound bites or other audio clips on your show. So if you recorded a short interview, you can play it and then discuss. Or you can have some funny sound effects at the ready, if you like that short of thing.

TECHNOLOGY SIDE

1- It all starts with Skype. We ask that you sign up for Skype and put it either on your computer or your smartphone. We use software to record both sides of the conversation. If you are unable to get Skype, we can use Skype to call a phone number, but please note the audio quality suffers greatly.

We NEVER use video in our Skype interviews. It takes up too much bandwidth and can ruin the audio. So feel free to be in your PJ's during the interview! No one will know.

2- Use headphones! Keeping the audio in your ears prevents the microphone from picking up our end of the conversation, which makes for ugly-sounding audio.

3- Apple Computer? Use QuickTime Player! Every Mac comes with a powerful and free piece of software called QuickTime Player. Open it up, go to "File" and select "New Audio Recording" and make sure the input is your microphone set up, then we will tell you when to hit record. This is called a double ender. When everyone records their own end, Skype's wonkiness won't end up in the final result and you will sound great!

4- Windows Computer? Unfortunately, nothing like QuickTime Player exists on the Windows side. The best thing I can tell you to do is get the free Audacity software, but it's complicated and involves you installing something that I don't have enough experience with. We will rely on our software that records the Skype conversation as is, and if there are annoying artifacts that Skype introduces, we will just have to use it. Thanks, Bill Gates!

THE CONVERSATION

We are known for "Discussion over Instruction", which means this is a conversation, back-and-forth. This isn't an interview in the formal sense, where we ask you several pre-scripted short questions. We want our audience to get to know you first and foremost, and then the thing that you're known for.

"Wait. Is this the show?"

Almost everyone we interview asks that question because we just start talking. We do not do an Intro in most cases. We just start talking. It's a lot of fun but can throw some people off. Please be assured, however, that we will delete anything you request of us. We are not the news. We aren't trying to catch you in a lie or something. But sometimes people are caught off guard and maybe say something reserved for us in a private conversation that they don't want to be mentioned on the show. That's cool. I'll delete it!

Concluding the show

We respect your time. Nearing the 60-minute mark we will ask you if you want to keep going or to begin to wrap up. Our wrap up consists of you plugging anything you want: social media accounts, websites, products, etc. This is "shameless self-promotion" time and is set up explicitly for this purpose. We cue this section by thanking you for coming on the show and asking "Where can people find you?"