July 2019 Recap

Brandt here --

I realized the other day that we sometimes post a bunch of stuff. Since Patreon charges at the start of the month, why not post an overview so that you can see what you helped us make, all collated in one place?

Great question, why not indeed.

[ FOR THE PUBLIC ]

We posted 7 new Modern Rogue videos (that's 2h 11m in total runtime)! Some were long in-the-making like our bladesmithing video (which was hinted at back in march, in a video with its own storied history), the return of article digests, a fire eating series, and some radio shenanigans with Josh. Captions have been lagging a bit behind on some of these. As it turns out, posting more videos eats into some of the time it takes to clear those, but I'll get around to it.

Oh, also we crossed over 900K subscribers on youtube this month. That's pretty neat!

• MR197: Homemade Fuses (10:51)
• MR198: Secrets of Shortwave Radio (20:56)
• MR199: 5 Superpowers You Don't Want (17:38)
• MR200: Transforming a Rasp into a Deadly Blade (42:32)
• MR201: How to Make Fire Eating Torches (15:48)
• MR202: 5 Insane DIY Weapons (8:40)
• MR203: Why 2.6 Million People Can Push This Button But We Can't (14:45)

If you're unfamiliar with our podcast The Bizarre Briefing, which is now in its 4th year, we give a behind the scenes look at the business. We posted our thoughts on June a couple weeks ago.

• TBB: Compromise - June 2019 (1:34:17)

[ FOR $5 PATRONS ]

We've had a good bundle of First Pass Edits (10h 17m in total), which is our largely-unedited multi-cam feed of each episode, and I'm working on getting John up to speed on delivering his as well. We've also occasionally given people in our Discord server slightly early access to some of the videos this past month, as well as the rare Shwood sighting on some Fridays before or around publish, so it's worth checking out if you haven't already! Plus we've got all of those good MR emoji.

• MR191-FPE: Knitting Needle Slingshot (47:28) 
• MR193-FPE: How to Make Flash Cotton (1:48:33)
• MR196-FPE: Fire Eating Showcase (47:50)
• MR198-FPE: Shortwave Radio (1:11:11)
• MR200-FPE: Bladesmithing (3:51:11)
• MR201-FPE: Fire Eating Torches (56:47)
• MR203-FPE: Handheld Radio (54:19)

[ FOR $10 PATRONS ]

I know we've been pretty lax on some of the stuff for this tier, but I'm hopeful that livestreams will be more regular when HQ is built out. In the meantime though, we got around to a guest interview which is always a nice break in format from what we usually do.

• Guest Interview: Chris Farrell (15:17)

And while it wasn't livestreamed during July, the making torches video that came out a couple weeks ago was livestreamed in June. You can find that here.

[ FOR $30 PATRONS ]

At the end of June, we landed on our Samson & The Chooch design for the Q2 patron shirts and sent out sizing surveys soon after. Many have responded, but if you got a survey and haven't replied yet, it's in the absolute last days to get your size in as printing will start up very soon!

Now I just have to start brainstorming on what this quarter's design should be...

[ COMING UP ]

As we push headlong into August, what do we have up our sleeves?

Plenty of videos are already shot and slotted into the schedule, the finale to the fire eating series is going out tomorrow/today, and then we have some spycraft, some escapology, and one last radio-based video. The timeline on these might vary if we shoot more stuff, though I'm not sure what we'll shoot next. You'll have to ask Jason about that. We do have a half-shot research video that we might finish up, and it's a pretty different thing than our usual shtick. We've also been talking about doing some sort of conversational piece about the show for patrons, but we're still figuring out what that should be.

Regarding HQ, the kitchen is getting built out and looks a lot less like a death trap in an abandoned building. The new warehouse has stalled out somewhat (from what I can tell at least), but the house is making solid progress. I think the poison oak on the property has been treated, and my particular exposure to it is... almost entirely back to normal, a month and a half later. And since so many people were concerned about it from the atlatl video, we also mowed the grass.