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Does Podcasting and Alcohol Mix?

Posted by Andrew McGivern on May 16, 2011 in Feature, Podcasting | 0 comments

Don’t drink and drive… what about drinking and podcasting?

Some podcasters drink alcohol while recording their shows… Is this a good idea? What happens at The Bunker Project doesn’t stay at The Bunker Project… unless we edit it out in post production that is!

Let’s talk Social Media, Podcasting, Technology and New Media in bar over a black beer! Join us for a night of Tech Talk at The Den on Robson Street in Vancouver, BC. The Den is located in the historic Barclay Hotel and is a little known secret watering hole for locals and visitors alike!

As you’ve seen in previous posts, podcasting takes a lot of work, a lot of preparation and the ability to adapt if your with a co-host or interviewing people. So you need to be on the ball during your podcast in order to keep the show under control and in the direction you planned. Not to mention controlling your audio and monitoring your mixing board, audio levels and background noise. At the best of times things can go wrong and you need to be ready to adapt to the situation.

What if you add alcohol to the mix? …

Alcohol slows down your reaction time and ability to think on the fly.
Alcohol lowers your inhibitions and allows you to say things you might not otherwise say.
Professionalism may suffer
It may be difficult to control the flow of your show
May have to deal with a hangover
Risk of spilling your drink on your audio gear

From Wikipedia:

Explicit Memory

Retrieval of explicit memory is significantly impaired by alcohol. When compared to sober participants, intoxicated participants performed quite poorly on a recall task for everyday events (episodic memory). Intoxicated participants are also slower to respond in reaction time tasks. Alcohol also impairs retrieval in word recognition tasks. When both encoding and retrieval take place during intoxication, there are surprisingly more impairments for cued recall than for free recall.

Implicit memory

Implicit memory does not require conscious effort or intention for recall. It occurs when previous experience influences performance on a certain task. Implicit memory includes procedural memory, which influences our everyday behaviours, such as riding a bike or tying shoes. People can perform these abilities without thinking about them, which means procedural memory functions automatically.

While retrieval of explicit memory is severely impaired by alcohol, retrieval of implicit memory is not. Intoxicated subjects score higher on recognition tasks (involving implicit memory) than on recall tasks (involving explicit memory).

So when recording your podcast under the influence of alcohol, the actual recording procedures and rituals you go through in your regular routine with your podcast shouldn’t be affected because this involves implicit memory. However, your ability to remember facts, bring up counter points and to converse intelligently is definitely impaired because these tasks involve exlpicit memory.

For these reasons it is probably a bad idea to podcast under the influence of alcohol. The exception is if alcohol fits into the theme of your show. For example, a wine tasting show may include alcohol consumption. In this case the show would only be enhanced by enjoying a glass of wine while talking about it!

Check out the Bunker Project Podcast… Black Beer and Audio Gear! If you like the show… subscribe and give us a good rating and review in iTunes

The Bunker Project is a pub talk podcast where we talk about Social Media, Technology and New Media in a local pub (tavern) over a beer or two or three… sometimes four …

The show is all about a couple friends getting together and talking about a subject they love to talk about. Joined with regular guests and new people each week the show is dynamic and we never know exactly what to expect.

For us it works… we enjoy a couple black beers and chat about Social Media and Technology. The idea for the show originally came from some great conversations about social media over a beer. We said… man that would have made a great podcast! So we started a Meetup Group and created The Bunker Project Podcast and the rest is history in the making.

Generally speaking, I’d say podcasting and alcohol don’t mix well unless your show is set in a bar, tavern, pub or night club and drinking beer or wine is an important part of the fabric of your show.

In that case… cheers!

For more information on podcasting START HERE at Podcast Hero’s Podcasting 101