Season 2, Episode 1: A New Year's Introduction

Gina, the host of the "A Tisket-Tasket" podcast, kicks off Season 2 with an introduction episode. Despite battling bronchitis, she recaps the highlights of the past year, including episodes on nursery rhyme origins, historical facts, and themed months like horror stories in October and holiday carols in December. Gina shares her plans for 2024, teasing upcoming themes like babies, counting to five, and food. She also discusses new content additions, website renovations, social media engagement, and potential subscriber benefits, including merchandise. Gina expresses her aspirations to attend folklore conferences and seeks financial support for podcast upkeep and research opportunities. The episode ends with a call for donations and a heartfelt thank-you to listeners. Find out more about this podcast at atiskettasketpodcast.com or email me at info@atiskettasketpocast.com.  #ATisket-Tasketpodcast, #Nurseryrhymes, #Season2introduction, #Podcastrecap2023

Transcript

Season 2 Introduction Episode for Jan 1 2024

Hello! This is Gina, your host for A Tisket-Tasket podcast. Welcome to season 2.  A year ago I decided to begin a podcast exploring the enchanting world of nursery rhymes and I’m excited to continue to do just that in 2024. I have some exciting new content coming this year. Stay tuned or continue to view my website - atiskettasketpodcast.com - to learn more. 

Unfortunately, I am beginning the year with bronchitis so I’m already behind. But, I wanted to record a quick episode just giving a bit of a recap for the year and introducing what I will be doing in 2024. The first content episode will hopefully come out this week or the beginning of next week, depending on my health. Hopefully this illness is not a bad portent for 2024, but I think my stubbornness will get me through it just fine. 

Overview of Episodes & Topics Covered 

Last year I put out 45 episodes covering a variety of topics. I started the year with an episode covering the podcast’s namesake, “A TIsket, A Tasket,” made famous by Ella Fitzgerald’s beautiful song rendition. I then picked a few that I was most interested in, including London Bridge is Falling Down, Ring Around the Rosie, Pease Porridge Hot, Baa Baa Black Sheep, among others. I can not believe some of the weird and wonderful facts that I uncovered, including learning about child sacrifices to bring good luck to new buildings, false etymology facts, and facts about England’s bustling wool trade and its influence on children’s literature. 

Towards the middle of the year, I added some summary episodes to help supplement all of the amazing facts that I was delving into. Check out episodes like #27 where I talk about “Shoe Symbolism” in nursery rhymes, episode #34 where I talk about jump-rope and hand clapping games, or Episode #40 where I talk about death and nursery rhymes.

October and December were themed months. In October, I covered four horror short stories: The Ghost Summons by Ada Buisson, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving, The Lady Maid’s Bell by Edith Wharton, and probably one of my favorite episodes, The Lottery by Shriley Jackson. On a lighter note, December was all about holiday carols, poems, and rhymes where I talked about The Twelve Days of Christmas, Jingle Bells, The Friendly Beasts, and finally wrapping up the year with Auld Lang Syne.

I am so happy that I embarked on this journey with you and I certainly learned a lot. I hope you have as well. Let’s look at the forecast for 2024. 

New Year Topics & Monthly Themes

Now that I have a whole year of podcasting under my hat, I have a bit of a better idea of how I want things to be organized. I sat down and wrote out a list of topics that I want to cover, and grouped them by month. My goal is to do three episodes on a specific theme and then have the last episode of the month be special content. More on that coming soon. 

Some teases for content themes include January’s theme of babies, February’s theme of counting to five, and March’s theme on food. Stay tuned to learn about upcoming themes as the year progresses. 

If you liked my summary and symbolism episodes, please let me know at via email at info@atiskettasketpodcast.com, link in the description below. The last week of the month I have new episodes planned, but I can certainly add symbolism episodes peppered throughout the year if that’s of interest. 

New Content Including Interviews & Subscriber Content

Speaking of new content, I plan on adding even more this year to help in my quest to bring you the historical facts of the enchanting world of nursery rhymes. I plan on doing some major website renovations - and please excuse me as I’m not a front end developer and am still learning the ways of the internet - where I give you easier navigation to my episodes, updates of future content, cleaner reference pages, and more of my analyses. In addition to the website, I am prodding myself to be more active on various social media accounts and adding more visual content through those platforms. 

Further, I’m working toward having additional content available to subscribers for a small fee each month. Information about this will be provided on my website for those who are interested but I’m really excited with some of the future leads I’ve already been following about this.

Also, I plan on adding merch for this podcast available on my website. Stay tuned for more information about this as well!

Finally, I hope to continue to share my research outside of podcast making. I’d really like to attend the American Folklore conference again in 2024, both as a speaker and an attendee. There are a number of other conferences I want to attend, people I want to get to know, organizations to join and contribute to, and many, many things I want to write about. We will see what I can reasonably get done in the year. I’m the type of person that is way over ambitious in her goals because I just get so excited about this. 

Call for Donations and Financial Assistance

Speaking of being overly ambitious, I have many plans and goals for 2024. Mostly, I’d like to produce more quality content for you, my lovely listeners. I’m also asking for financial help to pay for podcast upkeep as well as research opportunities. Producing a podcast takes a lot of time, energy, and resources and I’d really appreciate it if you can assist me in what I love doing. I will have a breakdown of expenses on my website so you know exactly what you’re funding, and I’ll be doing different drives throughout the year. Any little bit helps me do what I love and love what I do, so I really appreciate all of your support.

Overall, I am stunned at what I accomplished in 2023 and have some truly spectacular goals for 2024. I hope to speak at the American Folklore Conference again this year as well as pursue some other great research opportunities. You all have helped me really find my stride again as a researcher and help me find passion and energy in delving into the unknown. From the bottom of my heart, I thank each and every one of you and I hope you find my content entertaining and enlightening.

For the time being, this is Gina signing off. Stay tuned in 2024 where I continue to talk about the weirdness of nursery rhymes.