In 2011 DC Comics relaunched their entire comics line and I rediscovered my love for their characters in print.
That same year, someone I’d admired from afar for a while on Twitter agreed to run a new blog with me about that very thing and so, Two Shots to the Head was born.
We set ourselves a target of creating one blog post per day to figure out if we could actually stick to it; lo and behold, we did. But we also did more…
My partner-in-geek, Garry Aylott, convinced me to buy a Blue Snowball microphone and develop the blog into a podcast. I took a little convincing but he took the lead and we developed our first-ever podcast in 2013 – that was the very first time I made a podcast, ever.
The rest is history for me – podcasting changed my life and I constantly have “the bug”. Our professional lives took over for a while as I went on to develop the Rebel Base Media suite and Garry went on to develop UI and UX projects for some of the biggest brands in England, constantly pushing the boundaries of what a great user experience looks and feels like.
But, Garry loves podcasting too and also went on to develop The Big Blue Box Podcast, one of the UK’s biggest and best Doctor Who podcasts and as we began to enjoy the Star Wars sequel trilogy together (until that fateful day in 2019 when The Rise of Skywalker saddened us all) we decided to come back together to form Spark of Rebellion – the Star Wars podcast that we still run together to this day.
Garry is one smart cookie and since the earliest days of our Twitter conversations I’ve looked up to him for his skills – his design and front-end coding skills and how he approaches the world he works in. That’s why for the last 15 months, Garry has been working on some freelance projects to tighten up Captivate’s UI and as the product and team continue to grow, it’s my sincerest pleasure to welcome Garry to the team full-time as our new Head of Design.
Garry is still someone I look up to in podcasting and although he won’t agree, he is an expert in the field and one of the most consistent podcasters I know: badass designer first, podcaster second and probably an entertainer third.
However you describe him, he’s one of the finest people I know and a huge new addition to the growing Captivate team – an addition that will only benefit the podcasters that we help every day.
I can’t wait to unveil some of the big new developments that the Captivate team is working on and bringing the podcasting journey that Garry and I have shared together for nearly a decade full circle today means a lot.
Live fast, die old.
Mark
