Hey, everybody on the podcast. This is Ben with Live From The Path. Do you guys have a name? Do we… Is there the thing… Something we use to refer to you people on the podcast? I don't know. Live from the casters. That's stupid. Path path casters.

Path pods. This is stupid. Anyway, it doesn't matter. Anyway, I just wanted to say hello and check-in with you guys. So you… You've noticed… And and, frankly, if you've been around, listened to the show for any length of time, especially over the last year or two, you've noticed that the show just hasn't been as consistent as it used to be. We used to… You know, we were broadcasting all weeks of the year, high water, snow, holidays. It really didn't matter. We were in there broadcasting. And then especially over the last year, seemingly over the last two years, our consistency has kinda faded away. We just haven't been able to to

be putting out shows consistently every week. And there's a couple of things to that. You know, maybe you don't care, but I just thought I'd I'd just check-in and share with you kinda what's going on. So there's a a couple primary things. The main one really is just is just time. So, you know, if… Specifically,

this is me, Ben. My job has required me to be out of town, quite a bit more than what I used to be, and I find that I travel quite a bit on on Mondays, you know, maybe the first half of the week or whatever. And, you know, we've kinda set aside Monday as the night that we do the broadcast. We don't really make it up. If it happens on Monday, that's fantastic. If it's not, we just… The guys that are that are part of life from the path and have been in the past, they're just busy guys. They got stuff going on with with church and and priorities with families and and other jobs and things.

And so it just simply isn't something where we have said that we wanna make things up. It's just we've carved out the time and on Monday nights from ten to midnight, we tend to use it then. And if it doesn't work, it doesn't work. So most of it's been on me, to be honest, is I've been out of town. And in the past, you know, I might be able to have a backup or whatever, but Dan's found himself busy on some Monday nights. Boof has been been out of pocket forever.

He's been working and going to school, and so it's been made it very difficult for him to come on Monday nights. And then Mike kinda similarly is finding that he's out of town more over the last two years than he was anytime in the prior five or six. And so, frankly, it's it's just a lot of… It's the timing

and the the changes in the work schedule and stuff, and it just hasn't allowed us to be consistent. And, you know, I get frustrated with that at times because I love the show. I love doing it. I hope that it's helpful for you guys. The the truth is that it's core. It's helpful for me. It's helpful for me to dedicate time to talk about things of the day, you know, through a through a biblical lens, through, you know, some fellows who were just trying to follow Jesus. And so even if you all weren't there, to be honest, I'd probably still do the show. In fact, there there have been times that,

frankly, if I look at the podcast numbers and the people that that watch on YouTube, it just has… It's not that many at times. And so, I still do it because it's important to me, and it's valuable to me. And I I… We we record it, and we we kinda commit to it, because I think there… There's probably value for some other folks. So, you know, to to that extent, it it gets frustrating to me when I don't get it. And, frankly, I notice it. I notice when I'm not taking that time to do,

to have that time with the fellows kinda talking through those things. So that's one. The second thing, and this is much more… This is less frequent. But to be honest, we we have… Often have technical difficulties. We're…

We've been running off of kind of a full setup of, you know, four cameras and a and a pretty decent mixer board and a a computer that can kinda handle all the video input sources and things. We were running on the same same equipment for maybe the last four or five years. And to be honest, for what we're asking out of it, it's not like it's not fine. We don't, you know, we don't need

crazy good, you know, awesome stuff in there. We don't really need kind of a a a computer that will, you know, render a full length film here. Like, it just needs to be something that can take in the sources. So it's a little better than what you might pick up for word processing, but not as good as your hardcore gamer. So… But, you know, we've we've had problems with the computer here and there. Our soundboard died on us, and we kinda had to figure out a a temporary solution to that.

You know, problems with getting the the other video and audio that we bring into the show from… We have another computer that does that. Sometimes we have problems with that. Internet seems to be dicey at times. And for when we're trying to broadcast, it it takes a lot of, you know, bandwidth and stuff to be able to broadcast.

Stream videos is one of the reasons actually, if you guys notice is we we actually don't really do a live show Monday night anymore because I can record in much higher quality of video and audio and then just kinda post it the next day. And so, you know, maybe this is too much background of of how the show works, but, like, often what what I'll do is is we'll record that, and then if the show itself was good, I'll maybe try to clean up the audio a little bit that night. So somewhere, you know, twelve, 1AM, get the audio cleaned up, and then get the thing posted so that it's available from a podcast or on YouTube. If it requires any additional editing

or if I wanna cut clips from… Generally, from musicians that have been in or or other things. If I don't do it that night, the truth is it's very difficult for me to get back to it until the next time I show up to the studio, which could be one or two weeks later. And so it's just kinda how the show works, and we've we've ran into some some technical things since it's not something where we… We don't have advertisers because we're not on the… We're not doing terrestrial radio radio anymore, and so there's just not an income stream. So to the extent that something breaks, it either requires time or money, both of which are at a bit of a premium. And so, anyway, it's, you know, it's it's just the nature of the beast. And here's the thing. It's like none of this is irrelevant to your lives. Right? This is how your lives work. Things that you wanna do, and it either takes dedicated time or money, and sometimes both are difficult to come by. Things that you intend to do, that you commit to do, and don't happen as often as you want, and that's just kind of the nature of life.

There are questions that rightly… Things that that both up against your boundaries. You know, if you're not doing all the stuff that you wanna do, you make sure that the the the reasons that you are busy, are the right reasons for busyness and that they're not stealing away from things that would, otherwise be a better use of your time. I have to ask those questions about how often I travel. Mike has been asking kinda the same thing. And even, frankly, even the show itself,

is this based upon everything else that's going on? Is this the right commitment of time? And so those are, those are awesome questions. They're good questions. Right? That's why you set boundaries so that, you know, when you bump up against them, you rethink, are these the right boundaries? And if they are, then you figure out why you're bumping up so close to them and see if you can change some things to get back. And so, you know, I I don't know that I see anything in the near future that's gonna significantly alter kind of, where the show's been over the last couple of years where we're we're just not making it, every week. I don't know that that's going to change.

And, so it's… You know, I I hope that's okay with you guys. It's just it's just what we were able to do, and so, I I fully intend to continue doing the show. It is one of those things as I was bumping up against that boundary. I thought even a few months ago, was thinking, you know, is this something that I need to continue to do? Do I wanna continue to do the radio show? Is it a value? It was weird. I… That, right after I was thinking at that week,

I had, like, three different people had had brought up the show in one way or another, and kind of expressed that it was value to them. And it was it was from folks who I wouldn't have, have expected or anticipated. Right? Like, there's people that are close to you that know the things that you do, and they pay attention to it. You kind of expect that. But folks who I know, but otherwise, you know, I I wouldn't have had a consideration that they were listening to the show with any consistency, and then it kinda came out that week that I was thinking and kinda praying on it.

That it… There is some value to it. So, anyway, I I just wanted to take a a real quick second to just share that with you guys. I hope that's helpful, interesting, or whatever, and just kinda to tell you where we're at.

Where we're… There's not really a grand scheme of things, I suppose, where we're going with the show. We've got some, we'd like to… One of the things that we kinda let drop that I was really, really excited about was, looking at good news change the world. I think we have room to be encouraged. We we get kind of our own box, either it's your own church setting, your own office building, your own family, your own small group, whatever it is, and things that I know to be true

that good news changes the world. Sometimes I need to be reminded that, it's actually happening. Right? These aren't just promise. These are things that are being fulfilled by people pursuing good news and sharing it, and using

the the good news as a fulcrum to otherwise serve the world and point them to Jesus. And so that is something that I wanna continue with our inconsistency in broadcasting. Frankly, it's been a little bit difficult to book some folks because I'm always afraid that we're gonna have to cancel on them. And, frankly, our requirements for interviews happening from 10PM to midnight on a Monday night are… It's a big ask anyway. So, anyway, I do… We do heap… Help… Hope to continue to kinda go that direction. We've also not had a chance to connect with that many bands. We kind of had set up. We were gonna talk with Egypt

Egypt Ali recently, and that that didn't happen because of technical difficulties on our end. She was all ready to go, and and we sucked. So, you know, even the ones that we have, we thought we had something going didn't work out quite well. So, anyway, I'm working on all that stuff. We're… We'll get it we'll get it straightened out. But I just thought I was… I'm I'm driving, you know, traveling right now for work, and I thought that I just kinda reach out and talk to you guys just a bit, let you know where we're at. So if you could be praying for the show, fantastic. If you got anything that we would like to know or you would like us to know or reaction to, you know, whatever all this stuff is, shoot… Feel free to shoot me an e… An email [email protected], and we'd love to hear from you. Past that, I do expect that we will be back having a show next week. So it's a sec… It's April 2 today, and so we should be back in the saddle on April 9. And at least for the few weeks following that, I expect that we'll be able to do the show barring some unforeseen circumstances.

So if you just, you know, pray for the show on that, pray for Mike and I, especially Dan, also to a certain extent, you know, just with the lives that we have going around. Sometimes it makes it difficult to be… To make the show and, you know, just for for wisdom on that, make sure we hit our boundaries, having the right discussions and thoughts about it, and, you know, changing what needs to be changed if that be the case. So, anyway, I appreciate you guys taking the time to listen if you made it this far, and I hope to see you next next week. This has been… In the meantime, be faithful in the means. God will handle the ends. You've been listening to one man live from the path.