The Pit and Pod is the weekly blog of the Archaeology Podcast Network full of updates, news and opinion. Written by co-founder Tristan Boyle and special guest writers.

By Carlton Shield Chief Gover

The A Life in Ruins Podcast wasn’t a spur of the moment decision, but the culmination of years of thinking about starting a podcast. Almost a decade ago, back when I was a bushy-eyed undergraduate at Radford University, I was enamored with the show Drunk History. I played with the idea of recreating that same kind of experience through a podcast that I was going to call Inebriated Archaeology. But alas, the cost commitment for buying all the equipment for a full-time undergraduate student making minimum wage at Domino’s was just too much to justify. Even after graduating from Radford, I started at the University of Wyoming where I received my Masters. I remember asking a couple of other graduate students there if they’d be interested. But this time it wasn’t the cost that was the issue, but the time commitment. No one, including myself, had time to be a graduate student and produce a podcast; especially one in which were supposed to get drunk each episode. Doesn’t look good when you’re trying to sell yourself on the job market.

Even though it was becoming increasingly apparent that I’d probably never start my own podcast, I still thought about it. You see, I listened to a couple of archaeology podcasts, but they just weren’t that entertaining. They were either too high brow or had such niche content that it just wasn’t fun to listen to them. The seriousness and professionalism of the current archaeology podcast landscape just didn’t have anything that felt personal. Listening to those podcasts felt like I was at a lecture and I was required to go to enough of those already. It was apparent that those shows were geared towards professionals in the field and not the general public. I just hoped that someone would come along and make the show that I so desperately wanted since my hands were tied in making one myself.

After the University of Wyoming I went the University of Colorado Boulder to start on my PhD. Towards the end of my first semester at CU, I received an email from the host of the Heritage Voices Podcast, Jessica Yaquinto. One of her previous guests, Emily Van Alst, recommended to Jessica that I would be a good guest to have on the show. I remember being so nervous to be interviewed for Heritage Voices. I didn’t have a mic but instead I used my Trident Gaming Headset. After the recording I asked Jessica about the time and energy it took for her to produce her podcast. She told me that having the show as part of the Archaeology Podcast Network meant that all she had to do was record consistently and the producers would take care of the rest. I immediately asked her if she could get me in touch with her producers because I had an idea for a show. Well shortly after the interview I received an email from Chris Webster about my idea for a show. He liked my pitch for a show targeted at the general public to showcase the variety of research and experiences of young professionals in the field of archaeology.

Now that I had a home for my future podcast, I just needed to find some co-hosts. I had a few in mind. I reached out to my colleague David Howe who I went to UW with. He was now working as a lab manager for New South Associated Inc. He was up to join when I told him that all we had to do was just record and episode and leave it to the producers to make the magic happen. Getting Connor Johnen to join the show was all David’s idea. Connor had graduated from UW before I had arrived. We had stayed together at a couple SAA conferences, but I didn’t know him all that well. Yet he was onboard too. He was working as the GIS wizard for Alpine Archaeological Consultants. I think they both missed doing research and being in academia and the podcast was a quasi-way for them to get back into a side of archaeology that wasn’t available in their daily routine. Since we began to think about starting the podcast just shy of over a year ago, they’ve become two of my closest and treasured friends. Picking the name for the podcast was a journey in it of itself which we’ve talked about a couple of times on the show.

Our first episodes dropped in May of 2019 and the A Life in Ruins Podcast has been running ever since. We’re now the second most downloaded show on the Archaeology Podcast Network and we have a successful following on our Instagram account where we post about current events and awesome figures in anthropology. We’ve also started producing YouTube content to further the kinds of media we can produce for the public. A Life in Ruins has become more than just a podcast now.

Podcasting can be a huge financial and time commitment. However, having the podcast’s home on the APN has made the A Life in Ruins podcast a reality. If it weren’t for our producers Chris Webster and Tristan Boyle, this show would have continued to have been nothing more than a daydream.

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Please contact tristan@archaeologypodcastnetwork.com for more information