Introduction -
Tilda: You're In The Loop - we're here to discuss the ups, downs and sideways of the sport of figure skating, and maybe give you +5 GOE along the way. Let’s introduce the hosts for this minisode:
Evie: Hi there, I’m Evie, and you can find me on Twitter at @doubleflutz.
Kite: Hi, I’m Kite, I’m at @mossyzinc on Twitter.
Tilda: Hi, I’m Tilda, and you can find me at @tequilda on Twitter.
Kat: Alright, guys. This will be a fun episode. Hi, I’m Kat (@kattwts) - I should probably introduce myself, um, I’m just going to be the moderator for this episode. This is going to be a fun one, because we’re actually doing this pretty blind. The hosts for the most part haven’t seen any of these questions from the audience, so we’re just gonna have fun with it, and yeah, maybe get to know everyone a little bit better? (Hosts laugh).
Tilda: I’m terrified. (Laughs).
Kat: It’s okay, it’s okay, Belle and I -
Evie: The fear of the unknown is so strong.
Tilda: Evie, just edit out the embarrassing stuff, basically.
Kat: Yes, exactly. (Laughs).
Evie: I will do that.
Kat: So the way that this is gonna go is we’re gonna have a couple of audience Q&A questions in the beginning and then we’ll do a quick rapid-fire question and answer segment and we’ll end with one more. And that will be it! Don’t worry, guys, it’s not gonna be that bad, like -
Kite: Famous last words. (Hosts laugh).
Kat: Belle and I did a good job of picking and choosing, so I think it’ll be fine.
Evie: Good to know.
Kat: So the first question is from Claire: “How did the idea of creating In The Loop come? Was it because you felt there was a lack of good content for figure skating?”.
Tilda: Yes. (Hosts laugh).
Evie: So let’s see. When our first group chat got created in early April this year, I think, Yogeeta was applying for an internship at Spotify for podcasting and we talked briefly about the idea of creating a podcast and it really never went past that. And then in early May, in the first couple of days of May, the subject got brought up back again and we said that even if Yogs didn’t get the internship, we should do the podcast anyway. And so we ended up talking about that a lot and we decided that night kind of just to start the thing. It’s been consuming our lives ever since! You know, this was meant to be a part-time thing! (Laughs).
Tilda: I mean, it was just an off-hand joke and then we all have this tendency to take things too seriously. (Hosts laugh). I do, anyway, so when someone says ‘let’s do something’, I’m always four steps ahead and planning it already, so that’s basically what happened, we just got way ahead of ourselves and suddenly we had an episode out and suddenly we realized that we were actually going to do this for real.
Evie: When we started planning everything, it was the week before IceNetwork announced they were going to be shutting down, and so we were all like ‘oh, you know, there’s going to be a gap in the market now that their podcast isn’t a thing’, so we really timed our release well in comparison to that, because I think there’s a couple of figure skating podcasts, but we wanted to get that fan perspective in.
Tilda: Yeah, exactly. Our own perspective.
Kite: Yeah, we did have the sense, I think, that there was a decisive lack of media for newer fans to get involved in, especially post-Olympics. I think a lot of people even in the group chat joined figure skating fandom during the Olympics and we have had people like that in mind when we decided to make this more accessible to everybody.
Evie: Definitely.
Kat: Yep. Oh, and also, you all should check our post on our website, our origin story is on there too, so… (Hosts laugh).
Evie: Subtle plug.
Kat: Yeah, a great little origin story if you want some more info. Next question is from Marigold: “Can you explain the way you come up with episodes and how you go about assigning people to them?”.
Kite: Yes! Yes, we can explain! (Hosts laugh). I’m going to take the second part of that question and say that it’s strictly on a volunteer basis, so whoever happens to be free that weekend or the week we decide to record that episode is welcome to sign up and get involved in writing the rundown and planning out the episode and doing research. That’s why sometimes we have three hosts and sometimes we have four hosts on an episode, it really just depends on everyone’s availability at the time, but it is strictly volunteer based.
Evie: And it’s also just a priority for people, like - when we’re doing a research heavy episode, like, say, the gender episode or the medical episode, there’s a priority to get hosts in who have specific knowledge in that field as well, like in the medical episode when we had Nina, who’s a medical student, and we had Maryam, who’s a first responder. There’s - obviously for competitions and stuff it’s more of a ‘anyone who’s free and has access to the Internet and a microphone kind of jumps on’, but sometimes we have to have a bit more of a specialized kind of volunteering system.
Tilda: Also, if more than four people are interested, we also try to take the ones who haven’t been featured so much in the episodes, so that everyone should be able to participate if they want to.
Evie: Yeah.
Tilda: As for how we come up with the topics, it’s just literally brainstorming in the chats or we have a brainstorming document and everyone can write down every crazy idea they get, and then we sort of sketch out a schedule and we sort of look at the ideas we’ve written down going ‘hm, what seems practical to do now with the time we have and in regards to research and what’s coming up?’. It’s a very, very case-by-case basis, basically, based on the brainstorming document.
Kat: Yeah, I feel like half of the topics have come from random conversation we’ve had in the group chat, like ‘oh, let’s just talk about that on the podcast’.
Kite: ‘This would be good for the podcast!’.
Kat: Exactly. Next question is from Lauren: “What is your favorite part about running a podcast with so many people involved?”.
(Hosts laugh).
Evie: With so many people involved... Okay, should we all say one thing we like about it?
Tilda: Alright.
Kat: What’s the most fun part about it?
Evie: Well, for me, I have a bit of a background in radio and podcasting, but I’ve only - I think the most I’ve ever produced a show for was, like, five people max. So moving up to a thing with twenty people is a bit of a jump, but I love how we all - we really have a great sense of teamwork in the group, even though we haven’t all known each other for a huge amount of time. So I think my favorite thing about it is how we all have such a passion for figure skating and we’re all so dedicated to the podcast itself that we can just band together and really get stuff done when it needs to get done. I really like that sense of camaraderie between all of us. Friendship!
Tilda: Yeah, I mean, I agree, but I also want to say the randomness of it. You never quite know where it’s going to go this week since there are so many of us, someone could suggest something and then a week later we have adjusted our way of doing things (Evie laughs) or decided to do a new article for the website, I mean, just the idea of creating a website in the first place - that’s not something we discussed for a long time before it happened. So just sort of that excitement that you never really know what’s happening next, basically.
Kite: Yeah, for me I think it’s - especially when we do the competition recaps, we usually watch the competitions live and we watch them together if that’s possible, and we’re watching it on one screen and on the other screen we’re chatting, texting each other and freaking out or whatever we’re doing, and it’s nice to have other people to enjoy figure skating with and to get deeper into the aspects of the sport than just aesthetic appreciation, because it’s a pretty niche sport, there’s not a lot of people I know in my life who regularly follow smaller events like the Junior Grand Prix, and, I mean, I watched the Olympics alone with a bottle of wine, so you can imagine how stressful and kind of disheartening that was. It’s just nice to have this community now, where we can appreciate it together and suffer together as necessary.
Evie: Awww!
Kat: Agreed. Okay, this is from Rhea: “What role does everyone have?”, or maybe you can just talk about the general behind the scenes, I guess, of the production.
Tilda: Well, first of all, we do not have any set roles.
Kite: Except Evie is our editor. (Hosts laugh).
Kat: We all scream at Evie.
Evie: Yeah, we all scream at me.
Tilda: Evie is the editor and I guess Belle is the organizer…
Evie: Gabb is the graphic designer.
Tilda: Yes.
Kat: But other than those few people, everyone else takes on a pretty diverse role, I think. No one really has a job title, I guess.
Tilda: I suppose we end up in sort of niches - I mean, I tend to be the one to manage the episodes, micromanage even. (Hosts laugh).
Evie: I usually obviously end up editing the episodes, but we all kind of trade jobs now and again. Some people work on the website occasionally, some people do Twitter-related things. Sometimes Gabb is not the only one doing graphics, sometimes some people decide that they need something done when Gabb is not available.
Tilda: And of course, the stats team as well has a very specific role. The statistics people, we don’t meddle with them. (Laughs).
Evie: Because we don’t understand them!
Kite: It’s okay, as someone on the stats team I don’t think we understand what we’re doing either, but we’re kind of just doing it anyway.
Evie: I take a periodic look into the stats chat and just go ‘I have no idea what’s going on’.
Kite: That’s very brave.
Evie: I look through it and I go ‘you guys are braver than the US marines’ and I just leave. (Laughs).
Kite: The whole stats chat at this point is just like ‘famous last words’. Like ‘oh, this shouldn’t take more than a day’, famous last words. But yeah, we do have sub-teams, so based on your expertise or what you’re interested in you can go into social media or stats or organizing rundowns or project managing or whatever.
Tilda: Most of the time it’s basically just who’s available, who has more time that week. We have a board with all of the tasks, a managing board, so it’s mostly just looking at the board and what needs to be done and whoever has more time available for that week will try to take responsibility, I think.
Evie: Yeah, and there’s a lot of little jobs around as well, like, you see a bit of news floating around that could be included in the Weekly Round-Up or talked about in an episode, just sending it to one of the chats and going ‘oh, here, can someone add this to something?’, you know, even little jobs like that are really appreciated.
Tilda: Yeah, and editing the rundowns we have for each episode...
Evie: Yep, proofreading is always great.
Tilda: Doing the research, finding articles… For the medical episode, there was a lot of research being done, so someone will be like ‘oh, do you remember this skater who had this injury, wouldn’t that be interesting to talk about?’, so jobs like that… Organizing our documents… (Laughs).
Evie: Reorganizing the entire In The Loop process every couple of months, you know…
Kite: In six hours one afternoon.
Evie: That I sleep through.
Kat: I think there’s an advantage since we have people all over the world, at every hour of the day someone is awake doing something for In The Loop, which is really cool.
Evie: In The Loop is truly Mr. Worldwide.
Kat: Yeah. (Laughs). Okay, this one is to Evie, from Georgina: “How do you edit?”. I don’t know how specific she wanted me to go with this. You don’t need to do, like, a Garageband tutorial.
(Hosts laugh).
Evie: I don’t know how well that would work over audio! So let me tell you all about Garageband - no, no, okay.
Tilda: She did do a guide to me and I just have to say that it is very time consuming, because I tried it and I -
Evie: Yeah.
Tilda: I appreciate you so much.
Evie: Basically, as I talked about before, I’ve got a background in radio, I’ve volunteered at a student-run media organization from most of high school and my first years in university, I’ve managed a humongous amount of podcasts, I’ve produced radio shows and all that, I’m very familiar with podcasts and so when the time came to make In The Loop, I volunteered to edit and because I’ve got quite a lot of free time, I was fine with spending a lot of time sitting in front of my computer in front of Garageband editing away all the episodes. It takes me about - usually I like to set a whole day for editing, but on average it takes me about five to six hours to get an episode and depending on how long it is, because some of the episodes have gone for forty five minutes, some have gone for an hour and forty, you know. It really depends on how productive I’m feeling that day, I guess, because I can get them done really quickly if there’s that whole ‘deadline fever’ kind of thing that got me through university, where if the deadline is coming up I’m going to race towards it and get everything done super fast. If I have, like, a day, I can go ‘oh, slowly, I don’t need to get it done immediately, oh, I’ve done ten minutes of editing, I can go watch some YouTube videos’, you know, that kind of thing.
Tilda: Hopefully, I am going to be able to help you some as well, so the whole burden is not just on you. I just need to get used to it.
Evie: So it’s just a thing that takes practice and stuff. It’s a time consuming part of the work, but it’s rewarding as all hell, because at the end of it you get an episode. In the middle of the night when I’m done editing and I send it off to everyone and I go ‘here you go, it’s on the Drive, you guys go on with the transcript, good night’ kind of thing, once everything is done it’s just a wave of relief, it’s nice.
Tilda: Transcribing - that’s probably the most time consuming task ever. It takes probably a full work day to do.
Kat: It definitely does. Me and Belle were up until 5:30 am for the last episode, it was great.
Kite: Yeah, it took four hours for me to do thirty minutes last time, it was ridiculous. We used to do everything by hand, so you would be listening to the podcast and you’d be typing up the whole transcript. And now thanks to Clara, one of our lovely stats people, we have a Google automated transcriber, it’s like an AI, and so we just run the audio of the podcast through and it transcribes the audio for us and it comes out as a nice text file. But sometimes -
Evie: Nice text file?! (Laughs).
Kite: Sometimes it gets a little confused, so our job is to -
Evie: It hates my accent and it hates Lae’s accent.
Kite: It hates Australian accents for some reason, I can’t really explain why. Every time Evie said “free skate”, it tried to correct to “The Fray”, like the band. (Laughs).
Evie: But sometimes it comes up with the best transcriptions ever. They’re so funny to read through. It takes a while, but it’s those little things, like, when we’re all transcribing and working on different sections, every so often someone will go to the chat and copy-paste something they found funny and everyone starts laughing.
Kite: Stay tuned for a “Best of AI” feature.
Kat: Alright, next question. This one was to Kite and Tilda, but I think they mixed Kite and I up, because this is, um… “You were on the Figure Skating in Fiction episode, what was your favorite movie discussed and not discussed?”. I was on that episode, not Kite. (Laughs).
Kite: Well, Kat, do you want to take that?
Kat: You can go, Tilda.
Tilda: Right, well… I think we discussed every single movie I have seen about figure skating.
Evie: What about that one with Tessa [Virtue] in it? We didn’t discuss that one.
Kat: So sorry, guys, but there are only so many romcoms that we could watch about figure skating in two weeks.
Tilda: I did watch the Tessa Virtue movie.
Evie: What was it called? Ice Girls?
Tilda: Ice Girls. Yeah. It was a terrible movie. Tessa looked really good in it, so if you like Tessa, then -
Evie: She looks good, like, all the time, she could roll out of bed and, you know -
Tilda: Watch Tessa’s part. But my favorite movie discussed is probably Ice Princess, I think.
Kat: Yeah, same. I actually didn’t watch Ice Princess until a couple of months ago, but it stands up. Compared to the other stuff we’ve seen, I think it’s pretty okay. It’s a low-budget Disney movie, so you can’t keep your expectations too high, but it’s fun. It does what it needs to do, I think.
Evie: I wasn’t on the episode but I totally agree. I’m an Ice Princess junkie, I used to watch it, like, a million times when I was younger.
Kite: Oh, right. It was like my sole summer activity was watching Ice Princess.
Evie: Ice Princess and Blades of Glory I’ve watched a million times.
Kat: Blades of Glory is another good one. Tilda, there was a German one, right, that we wanted to watch, but we were never able to find it. There’s a German movie and a Russian movie that we were just never able to find because languages.
Tilda: I did actually watch the Russian movie.
Kat: Oh, you did?
Tilda: Yes. But without subtitles. (Hosts laugh). I could not understand anything. It was so beautiful, they have this great training montage where these young Junior girls were training and it was really raw, and I was like ‘wow, is this an actual representation of how Junior girls in Russia train?’, you know. But it was absolutely gorgeous. I think it was also a musical... (Evie: What?) I have no clue basically, except that it was about Pairs and injury, but it was very beautiful.
Kat: I wonder if Russia just has a larger pool of figure skating stunt doubles to pick from, because they have -
Kite: They have so many skaters.
Kat: Yeah, there are so many skaters in Russia. Only a couple of them can rise to the top, so what happens to the ones that don’t make it to that level? They could just become stunt doubles, right? (Laughs). Or figure skating doubles in movies. Russia, look into the figure skating movie market.
Tilda: I definitely want to see the German movie as well, because it’s about an older lady who’s starting adult skating, so I thought that sounded really cute.
Kat: Okay, this is from Mathilda, not Tilda.
Tilda: Not me?
Kite: Not you, Tilda.
Kat: “What was your experience like during the Olympics? Would love to hear about friendships made or silly stories on Twitter as the Olympics went on”.
Kite: So like I said, I was watching the Olympics alone, I had a bottle of wine and I was very stressed out. I think I met Kat very shortly afterwards on Twitter?
Kat: It was right before Worlds, a couple of weeks before Worlds.
Kite: Yeah, and then that kind of got me into getting to know everyone else. And there was a Rabbit during Worlds when we were watching the Ladies and I think Evie was hosting, that was how I met Evie. And then Tilda I met when the group chat started, I think a week after that. The Olympics was - it was a time. I’m glad that it happened, but yeah, I see why it happens every four years now, because I don’t think my heart can take that kind of strain every year.
Evie: Agreed. I think my Olympic experience was very much, um - again, I didn’t really know a lot of people on Twitter at that time, but everything was just so intense. The main thing I can remember is just watching the Men’s free skate and full-on claw-grabbing my couch while watching it. I literally dragged my dad in to watch the last group of the Men’s free skate and then I didn’t say a word during the entire thing, I was so stressed out, and he was just making these comments and I was like ‘dad, shut up, this is a very stressful moment in my life right now!’ kind of thing. (Laughs). That’s the main emotional thing, it was just… Oh, boy.
Tilda: I was also watching it completely alone, nobody cared about it, and it was in the middle of the night as well, so I was staying up really late, I had a thermos of coffee -
Kat: Oh, yeah, the Europeans really had it rough. (Laughs).
Tilda: Before going to bed, I’d been setting my alarm clock for, like, 2 am or something. My strongest memory was actually - I went - the day after the Men’s free skate - the Men’s free skate ended at 6 or 7 am and then that evening I went to celebrate Chinese New Year’s at this Chinese exchange student’s place and, you know, we were watching Chinese television and eating Chinese food, and I was just thinking ‘how can I celebrate Chinese New Year’s when Boyang [Jin] didn’t get an Olympic medal?’. (Hosts laugh).
Kat: That was me, except for [Wenjing] Sui and [Cong] Han. (Laughs). But it’s okay. That entire first week of the Olympics, I swear to God that my chest was about to explode. I was literally about to go to the doctor because my chest was hurting so much. (Laughs). And I have a watch that tells me my heart rate and it gives you a notification when your heart rate goes above 120 bpm when you’re not doing anything, so it’s like ‘oh, you haven’t moved in ten minutes, but your heart rate is going above 120’. I was like ‘oh, yeah, I definitely have an issue’. I took a picture of my heart rate right before Yuzuru [Hanyu] skated his short program, it was 140 bpm. (Laughs).
Evie: Oh my God.
Kat: I was completely still and my fingertips were going numb and I was clutching onto my friend. He was like ‘it’s okay, it’s okay’ to me and I was like ‘no, it is not okay’. (Laughs). That entire first week with Sui and Han and Yuzuru Hanyu was just - thank God for that break between Men’s and Ice Dance, because I would not have survived if it was straight through.
Tilda: I actually went on a skiing trip (Kat: Oh my God) the day after the Men’s event.
Kat: I would’ve had a heart attack.
Tilda: I did not have proper Internet, so I was skiing and not being able to watch Ice Dance or the Ladies. I actually still have not watched the Ladies. (Laughs).
Evie: Oh my God. We’re going to have to - let’s go, hop on the Rabbit, come on, let’s do it right now guys, come on, come on. (Laughs).
Kite: I mean, maybe it’s for the best that you didn’t watch Ladies’, honestly.
Tilda: I had my iPhone, so when I woke up that morning, before going out skiing, I checked the results and was like ‘oh, that happened’. (Laughs).
Evie: That certainly happened.
Kat: Good times. But we found each other and that’s all that matters.
Evie: Awww.
Kat: So next question is from Jenn: “What competitions are you headed to this season and what are you looking forward to the most?”.
Tilda: I’m going to Grand Prix Helsinki, because that’s really close to me, so I’m very excited. I am especially looking forward to the Men’s event, of course, because three of my favorite men are competing, Yuzuru, Mikhail [Kolyada] and Boyang, so really excited about that (Kat: What a bloodbath, though). I might be going to Grenoble [for Internationaux de France] as well, we’ll see.
Kite: I am going to the Autumn Classic International (Kat: Whoo!) in less than two weeks, which is very exciting. With Kat, we’re going to be driving for eight hours, so -
Kat: It’s going to be so much fun! Oh my gosh, I’m so excited!
Kite: We’re going to get there at, like, four in the morning, it’s going to be great. I’m very excited for the Men’s event, for what I think are obvious reasons, and I’m very excited for the Ladies as well, because you have some pretty big names there and some of the people I’ve never seen live before. Then I’m going to go to Skate Canada in October, where the lineup is pretty similar. Pretty excited for all of the disciplines there, I think there’s potential for a good competition, especially in Ladies’. And then in December I’m going to the Grand Prix Final and who knows what’s going to happen there.
Kat: We do not try to predict the Grand Prix Final.
Kite: Yeah. Maybe we’ll see the first quad lutz landed by a lady at the Grand Prix Final.
Kat: That will be fun.
Evie: And I am unfortunately not solidly planning on going to anything this season, just because I’m stranded in Australia and there’s no access to anything. I’m currently tentatively looking at Worlds tickets, but I’m not 100% sure if I’m going to be able to go and if I don’t get to go to anything this season, then I’m just going to save up and try to go to Worlds 2020. So we can meet up with everyone!
Kite: It’s going to be so fun.
Kat: Alright, next question is from Rhea: “What is your favorite program element in Singles, Pairs and Ice Dance?”.
(Hosts laugh).
Evie: Oh, God.
Kite: Send help.
Kat: (Laughs). I mean, there’s only a set number of elements to pick from, I think.
Kite: Is it like your favorite element overall or…
Kat: I think so. Like spins or - or how about we do something like that, you can pick your favorite element from a skater or something, like an example.
Evie: Okay, then I’ve got one. My favorite is [Shiyue] Wang and [Xinyu] Liu’s straight line lift from last season and this season, because you know I had to show off the fact that I’m still the number one Wang and Liu stan.
Tilda: In Ladies’ Singles, I love spins, especially layback spins. I think they’re beautiful. In Men’s skating I prefer the jumps, I think that’s the main reason you watch Men’s skating, right? To look at quads. (Laughs). For Pairs, I like side by side jumps, and for Ice Dance, I like the lifts best, I think.
Kite: Yeah, I think in Men’s I really like Shoma Uno’s triple axel-half loop-triple flip, (Kat: That’s a good one) it just blows my mind every time, I don’t really know why, it’s just so not common and really aesthetically pleasing to look at. In Ladies’, I really loved Mao Asada’s Biellmann spin, especially when she put her hand on her boot, I thought that was a really nice variation. Or the one-handed Biellmann. She just had the most beautiful spins, I love her so much. In Pairs, which I don’t watch a lot of admittedly, I really like Sui and Han’s throws.
Kat: They’re so beautiful.
Kite: I know. I’m saying this to appease Kat right now. (Hosts laugh). In Ice Dance, I really loved [Meryl] Davis and [Charlie] White’s curve lift during their Scheherazade free dance at the Olympics. (Chorus of agreement). Beautiful. It didn’t make any physical sense, how that could happen, but I loved it so much.
Tilda: Wow, you were a lot more specific than I was, but I’m sticking to my general answer, because I think there are a lot of skaters who have really lovely elements and those are my general favorite elements.
Evie: And I just had to say Wang and Liu because, you know, it’s me.
Kat: So the next segment we’re gonna do is rapid-fire questions. So each host is going to have three seconds to answer each question and, yeah, let’s see how this goes. Okay, are we ready? We’re gonna do Evie, Kite and Tilda, so that’s the order we’re doing.
Tilda: Oh, God.
Kat: Alright, ready?
Evie: Okay, okay!
Kat: Evie, favorite ITL episode so far?
Evie: The gender episode.
Kat: Kite, favorite host other than yourself?
Kite: (Laughs). I’m gonna say Kat, just because we had a lot of fun doing the iconic programs and dying.
Kat: Tilda, someone you haven’t hosted with that you’d like to?
Tilda: Oh, Clara! (Laughs). I love her accent.
Kat: Evie, a topic you hate talking about?
Evie: Uh, I’m a chatterbox, I like talking about anything! (Laughs).
Kat: Kite, a topic you could talk about for hours?
Kite: (Laughs). Protocols.
Kat: Good one - ‘PCS!’. Tilda, a topic you’ve talked about in an episode and would like to expand on?
Tilda: Oh, definitely gender. I think I could talk for hours about that.
Kat: Evie, favorite idea for a future episode?
Evie: The history of federations.
Kat: Kite, favorite part of the episode making process?
Kite: Making the rundown.
Kat: Tilda, least favorite part of the episode making process?
Tilda: Transcribing. (Hosts laugh).
Kat: Oh, man, yeah. Evie, who’s the team leader?
Evie: Uh, we don’t really have one?
Kat: Kite, who’s the team peacemaker?
Kite: Tilda.
Kat: Tilda, who’s the funniest person on the team?
Tilda: No! Why would you say that?! Why would you do this?! (Hosts laugh). Karly.
Kat: Evie, Men’s or Women’s?
Evie: Men’s.
Kat: Kite, Pairs or Ice Dance?
Kite: Ice Dance.
Kat: Sigh. (Hosts laugh). Tilda, bad singing or voiceovers in a program?
(Hosts laugh).
Tilda: Voiceovers. I don’t have a problem with voiceovers.
Kat: Evie, step sequence or choreo sequence?
Evie: Step sequence.
Kat: Kite, favorite spin?
Kite: Biellmann.
Kat: Tilda, favorite jump?
Tilda: Axel.
Kat: Evie, favorite program?
Evie: Ahh! How could you ask me that?! Um, Yuzuru Hanyu’s Hope and Legacy.
Kat: Kite, favorite exhibition?
Kite: [Yuzuru Hanyu’s] Requiem [of Heaven and Earth].
Kat: I thought you were gonna say that. I knew you were gonna say that. Tilda, favorite skater ever?
Tilda: Yuzuru Hanyu. (Laughs). I’m sorry.
Evie: We just said three Yuzuru answers in a row!
Kat: Wow, I wonder who we stan. Okay. Evie, favorite competition to date?
Evie: Probably Worlds 2017.
Kat: Kite, favorite season you’ve experienced to date?
Kite: 2013-2014 was a time.
Kat: Tilda, what is your dream program music and for who?
Tilda: Um, something from one of my favorite obscure European musicals, like Kristina från Duvemåla, probably, yeah. Or some of the actual dramatic parts of Elisabeth the musical.
Kat: And for who?
Tilda: For who? I don’t know, someone like - someone who is good with doing dramatic programs. I don’t care who as long as it’s dramatic.
Kat: Okay, cool! That’s it! That’s all the rapid-fire questions, whoo!
Kite: Yay, we survived.
Kat: Yes! Good job guys, they were good answers. One more closing question, from Terry: “What was the nicest thing to have happen since you got into figure skating fandom?”.
Tilda: I think… I mean, I’m going to be cliché and say starting a Twitter account, because I did not have a Twitter account until February this year and before that I didn’t have anyone to talk about figure skating with. So to me, starting a Twitter meant finding a community.
Kite: I’m gonna say when our group chat was created a couple of months ago.
Tilda: A couple?
Kite: A couple of months ago, right? (Evie: Yeah). It was like five months ago.
Tilda: That’s not a couple.
Kat: Really?
Kite: How many is a couple? Are we really gonna get technical about this? (Laughs).
Tilda: A couple is two, what are you talking about? A couple is two!
Kat: Wait, really?
Kite: Fine, several - technically, technically, yes, I don’t know anyone who actually enforces that, anyway! (Laughs). You guys are interrupting my sappy moment.
Kat: A sentimental moment and we ruined it.
Kite: When our group chat was created several months ago. I think just having people to talk about figure skating with and be unabashedly geeky about it. But also just having people to talk to about things that are going on in your life every day and knowing that probably someone’s gonna be online if you just need to talk or, you know, need a friend or something. I think it’s been really, really nice.
Evie: I think I’m gonna have to say definitely the best thing has been creating this podcast. Just because there are some moments when you think about what we’re doing and how much we’ve done in such a short space of time, especially when we put up the website and we got all this amazing, positive feedback from people, and you get that rush of gratitude and you think about how much hard work we’ve put into it and it’s all seemed worth it. And we’ve done it all together as a team, it’s just, yeah. Sappy moment central over here, goddamnit. (Hosts laugh).
Tilda: No, I definitely agree, because - I mean, just the fact that people enjoy what we do and that they want to talk about enjoying what we do, it’s just crazy to me. I’ve never been a part of something that is such a teamwork experience.
Kat: Yeah, I feel like every single time we get a nice tweet or a nice anon telling us, like, ‘thank you for the work you do’, it’s just incredibly gratifying.
Evie: Or donations.
Kat: Or donations, yes! (Laughs). Sometimes you wonder, like, ‘who’s actually listening to this?’, or you wonder if this is all for naught, but then you get a nice message like that, someone actually took time out of their day to say something nice and it’s - yeah, it’s really rewarding. Alright, cool, that’s it! Yay, good job guys!
– end segment – 35:56
START: Outro
Kat: Thank you for today, we hope to see you again for another minisode next month!
Evie: If you want to get in touch with us, then please feel free to contact us via our website inthelopodcast.com or on Twitter, Tumblr, or Facebook. You can find our episodes on Youtube, iTunes, Google Play, and Stitcher.
Tilda: If you enjoy the show, and want to help support the team, then please consider making a donation to us on our ko-fi page, and we’d like to give a huge thank you to all the listeners who have contributed to our team thus far. Thank you so much, we really appreciate it!
Kite: You can find the links to all our social media pages and our ko-fi on the website. If you’re listening on iTunes, please consider leaving a rating and a review if you enjoyed the show. Thanks for listening, this has been:
Evie: Evie,
Kite: Kite,
Tilda: and Tilda. See you soon!