Do you have a passion that you and your friends could talk about for hours? Would you love to make money from talking about your interests? That’s what happened for a current Bonner Springs High School teacher.
Mr. Taylor, one of the science teachers here at BSHS, is a self-proclaimed nerd. He loves all things pop culture, such as Marvel, DC, cartoons, and Star Wars. Along with his best friend, Taylor Oxner, Mr. Taylor has turned his pop culture interests into a side gig.
“My best friend and I, during COVID, decided that we should really record our nerdy conversations,” says Mr. Taylor, “My last name is Taylor and his first name is Taylor. So we called it the infinite Taylorverse.”
What started as video call conversations turned into an idea, then turned into a reality. “He lives in Lawrence and I, at the time, lived in Olathe…We would Zoom just because Zoom was like the hip thing to do, I guess,” Mr. Taylor shares, “We started realizing we could record these nerdy conversations and just go with it. And when the rules kind of loosened up a little bit about COVID, we met up for lunch one day and literally wrote out what we would do if we did a podcast.”
Next month, the Infinite Taylorverse Podcast will be entering its fourth year. As of last week, they have a total of 156 episodes. The episodes range in length anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour, depending on how much they have to talk about. Most of the episodes consist of discussions of new and noteworthy topics in pop culture from that week, but a few dozen of them have been interviews with different celebrities.
Some people they’ve featured on the show are actors, voice actors, and comic book authors and artists. Mr. Taylor’s favorite person he got to interview was an actor from the Power Rangers.
“When I was a kid, my favorite thing of all time was the Power Rangers,” he shares, “And about a year ago, I had an opportunity to interview Jason David Frank, who was one of the original Power Rangers. He was my favorite one.”
About a month after being on the show, Jason David Frank passed away. Mr. Taylor shares that it was kind of mind-blowing and humbling that he had the chance to interview him when he did.
Early on in the production of the podcast, they were relying on free equipment that they already owned, like a headset with a built-in microphone. As they’ve progressed, though, they’ve been able to buy better equipment to improve things like the audio. Just recently, Mr. Taylor says, he bought video equipment and expanded beyond just an audio-only podcast.
Mr. Taylor says he does most of the editing. “I arrange everything. [My friend] jokes, because I’m a teacher, he calls it our weekly syllabus…Because I’ve written out….an outline of what we’re going to talk about each week.”
The Infinite Taylorverse Podcast has built up quite a following, having just passed 10,000 listeners. Mr. Taylor shares that it helps when, occasionally, the celebrities they interview share the episode on social media. He recalls one time that their listener count went up by thousands after their guest shared it with his fans. They even have enough of a following that they’ve done live shows at arcades or local conventions, where they’ll do live Q&As with the audience.
Mr. Taylor’s favorite thing about having a podcast is all of the opportunities it’s led to. “We just started it because we were a couple of nerds trying to have fun, and it’s turned into this thing where we get to go to all these events and meet all these really cool people from shows and comic books and movies and all this stuff that we love.”
The hardest part of it, though, he says, is the editing. While also being a full-time teacher, Mr. Taylor takes time each week to edit the episodes. He says a half-hour episode might take three to four hours to edit thoroughly.
If you’re interested in the Infinite Taylorverse Podcast, you can listen to it pretty much anywhere you get your podcasts, like Spotify or Apple Podcasts, and follow them on social media. Scan the QR below to see all of their links in one place.
