Behind the Mic: Insights from Podcasting 101 Graduates

Behind the Mic: Insights from Podcasting 101 Graduates

Mike Roth hosts the Open Forum in The Villages, Florida, where he discusses local happenings with residents and leaders. In this episode, Mike speaks with Mark Christopher, a recent student from the Podcasting 101 class, about his experiences both in podcasting and his background in agriculture. Mark shares insights about the complexities of podcast production and recounts his journey from the Midwest to engaging with public speaking. He also delivers a dramatic recital of 'The Stonecutter,' highlighting lessons from his childhood. This episode underscores the vibrant community life and educational opportunities in The Villages.

00:00 Welcome to Open Forum in The Villages

01:03 Support the Podcast

01:44 Interview with Mark Christopher

03:14 Mark's Background and Agricultural Insights

08:08 The Stonecutter Story

12:02 Discussion on Alzheimer's Disease with Dr. Craig Curtis

13:39 Closing Remarks and Supporter Shoutouts

Transcript

Behind the Mic: Insights from Podcasting 101 Graduates

​[00:00:00] 

Emily: Welcome to the Open Forum in The Villages, Florida. In this show, we talk to leaders of clubs and interesting folks who live here in The Villages to get perspectives of what is happening here in The Villages, Florida. We are a listener supported podcast. There will be shout outs for supporters in episodes.

This is Mike Roth. I'm thrilled to share with you this podcast, which is my passion project for you. This podcast brings you knowledge, inspiration, and a lot of things that people need to know About the villages and the people living here. Be sure to hit the follow button to get the newest episode each week.

Creating this podcast is a labor of love. Even though it [00:01:00] demands more time, I can easily spare. Now, here's where you come in. You can help us keep the podcast alive and thriving. How? By becoming a supporter. The easy way for you to support us is to visit our podcast webpage. OpeForumInTheVillagesFlorida.Com and click on the supporter button at the top of the page or the purple supporter box. Even a small donation of three to ten dollars a month makes a big difference and you can cancel your subscription at any time. Your support means the world to us. Stay curious, stay inspired, and keep those headphones on.

I hope everyone enjoys today's show.

Mike Roth: This is Mike Roth on open Forum in the Villages, Florida. I'm here today with Mark Christopher. Thanks for joining me, Mark.

MARK CHRISTOPHER: Thank you Mike. 

Mike Roth: Mark, today's episode is going to be a little bit different. I'm bringing on two guests who were students in our Podcasting [00:02:00] 101 class.

at the Enrichment Academy. You've attended the class in the last month.

And we spent about an hour here talking about how to get a recording of a podcast done. What did you learn here today about how to do a podcast that was a kick in the head? 

MARK CHRISTOPHER: Oh, quite a few things. I guess one thing is the amount of work you go in production before you ever have the finished product that goes out to the public. Had no idea of the depth that you have to go through to achieve that quality. And then just trying to understand the whole thing, because I came in totally new to it, and it's fascinating, but it's more involved than I realized .

Mike Roth: Was it worthwhile taking the course? Oh, absolutely.

MARK CHRISTOPHER: Definitely. It's, it showed me a direction before it was just like this vague idea of it was a big cloud, but I didn't quite understand it. Now I sit there and understand the nuts and bolts.

Mike Roth: The course was designed to take people from ground zero to get them to fire the [00:03:00] rocket engines and begin to get that rocket off the ground.

Exactly. It didn't cover re entry. That's podcasting 102 and we I haven't decided that we're actually gonna offer that. Maybe we'll offer that next year. Mark, you brought in something. Tell our listeners a little bit about your background before you got to the Villages.

MARK CHRISTOPHER: Oh, mine was pretty basic growing up in the Midwest.

I grew up on a farm and, had the farming activities. I was feeding calves when I was like six years old out of a bucket. that the mother had gone dry and couldn't feed her babies. Went on to learning how to drive a tractor when I was about eight or nine. My mother went crazy because I was pretty little and

it was just a grand life to grow up.

I'm very lucky that I had that. I had horses and during the, oil embargo when nobody had gas. I was on the farm, we had all the gas we had, so I was pretty popular there in high school because I had a car that could actually drive someplace. And [00:04:00] then just went on from there majored in agriculture been involved with agriculture all my life.

Mike Roth: I had a experience. at the Ohio State Farming Expo. And I was talking to the guys who were selling seeds. And I said if I don't want to buy genetically modified, corn what do you have?

MARK CHRISTOPHER: Absolutely. Yes you have traditional seed heritage seed genetically modified seed. And I know on the farm the markets sometimes GMO corn has a higher value than the non GMO depending on what products it's the customer's making. So we had bins of both. And we would sell, whichever one was paying higher that day that's what went to the market that day. 

Mike Roth: They were telling me probably in 2014 that the GMO corn, genetically modified,

MARK CHRISTOPHER: Would be selling about 95 percent of the product that they sold. 

Of course, it's a very controversial subject.

MARK CHRISTOPHER: I don't think we're going to get into it [00:05:00] today, but GMOs have offered a lot of benefit, both from impact carbon impact economics a farmer can grow a cheaper crop, therefore he can deliver where the value is carried out there through that. And I to do a GMO speech, but ever since the COVID thing, and now a lot of our medicines are GMOs.

That is real. And I think we've broken. that barrier, just like when they came out with electricity, people did not want to have electricity near their house because they thought waves were coming out and going to infect them and their children. anytime we have new technology, there's always a resistance, but over time, it's going to prove itself as a superior way to survive as we go into the future, climate change, we're going to have Dryer weather, wetter weather, colder, hotter. We're going to see all these extremes, where if you use the traditional way of corn breeding, that could take [00:06:00] decades, at least five to six years. GMO, you can solve it in one season. We can adapt, and I think as time goes on, we can get corn that requires maybe half or a fourth of the amount of water, Corn is very thirsty and there's a way of growing it in less dependable rainfall. We've got GMO rice now that is called golden rice that three times the amount of protein. So if you're in Southeast Asia and working with a limited piece of land and you've got to feed more and more families to have something that has three times the amount of protein Is very important at a subsistence farming level.

Mike Roth: I never thought of rice as a protein crop. Is it?

MARK CHRISTOPHER: Rice is a staple for Probably what?

75 percent of the population, I would guess. I don't know.

Mike Roth: Okay Mark, you brought something that you wanted to read to our listeners or actually recite to the listeners. Yes. Why don't you give us a little bit of a history of [00:07:00] that? 

MARK CHRISTOPHER: When I was young, I had a stuttering problem. And my mother was never one to Run away from a problem.

So apparently she had done this research and says, Mark, the reason you're stuttering is you have this stuff you want to talk about, but your mind is not in with your voice. You need to think it out as you talk. And so she said, I want you to go into public speaking. I was mortified. I barely liked to talk in class because I stuttered.

Now she wants me to get up in front of a group and talk? Anyway, she was pretty suave in her salesmanship and convinced me that, hey, this is going to work. And you know what? She was right and through that I got involved with public speaking debate and Through that course of that time you come up with these little oh, I'm trying to think of the word, little

Mike Roth: Monologues. 

MARK CHRISTOPHER: Things, and I have tacked these along over decades of just making little notes and now I have a computer. I used to have a big file in my file cabinet and just accumulated. And this [00:08:00] one, it just always liked it. I've been rehearsing it probably for 20 years.

I'll probably not do as good today since I'm on the pressure's on, but, 

Mike Roth: What's the name of it?

MARK CHRISTOPHER: The Stonecutter .

Floor is yours Mark. 

It was to be a wonderful, bright, sunny day. The old stone cutter could hear the rooster crow as the village came to life after a long, dark night.

MARK CHRISTOPHER: The old stonecutter grabbed his tools, prepared his small piece of cheese, some bread and some water for his noonday lunch. Then he set off to find some stone. Now as a stonecutter, he needed to cut up stones for the villages to build their homes, build their barns, and any other buildings that they may need.

Maybe some walls and things like that. So there was a good demand for stone. the old stonecutter was running through the land Up the hills and through the valleys. He came upon a stone that he had never seen before. It was massive. He looked at it. He thought, I bet you I can get a hundred blocks and we could build many [00:09:00] homes and many barns with this. So he pulled out his tools, grabbed his chisel, grabbed his hammer 

and began to cut the stone into small blocks.

At noon, he took his lunch break and he looked up into the sky and saw the and he thought, If I could only be the sun, I would be important, I would be powerful. So he wished he was the sun, and thus he was.

Now as the sun, he felt very powerful, very important. There were countries that even worshipped him as a god, as a sun god. People feared him for his fierce heat. And he realized that he was the most important thing in the world. But then one day a very large cloud, came and blocked out the sun.

And the old stonecutter thought, Gee, here it is, the sun, the mighty sun, is blocked out by the cloud. Therefore, it must be more important. He wished he was the cloud, and thus he was. Now as the cloud, he felt powerful, he felt [00:10:00] important. He could block out the sun. But then one day, a large wind came and blew the cloud to all destinations, north, south, east, and west. And at that time, the stonecutter thought, wow. Here is the cloud that can block out the sun, was important, but now this wind can blow the cloud to all destinations. It must be more important and more powerful than the cloud and than the sun. So he wished he was the wind, and thus he was. Then one day, as he's blowing across the land, he's blowing down trees, roofs off homes.

People were fearful, but he felt important. He felt powerful. Then one day, as he's blowing across the land, he saw this very large stone. He tried to blow it from the north the south the east and the west no matter what he did He could not budge that stone He thought oh my here We got the stone that is not affected by the wind that blocked out the Sun and [00:11:00] Became the Sun and now the stone is here and he became The Rock. Okay, he became the rock, and now he thought, look at me, with all the wind and the sun and the clouds, nothing can affect me. I am the most important, I am the most powerful. Then one day he noticed an old man walking down the path. As he got closer, he noticed they had a little bag of tools with him. The old man got up and looked at the stone.

Sized it up. Decided this was going to have a lot of return as far as new stone for houses and buildings and barns. And the old stone cutter, pulled out his tools and chipped away at the stone. The end.

Mike Roth: Thank you, Mark.

And thanks for being on Open Forum on the Villages, Florida, today.

MARK CHRISTOPHER: It was a pleasure, and this is the first time. A little nervous, but being a little nervous is supposed to be good, keeps you on your toes. I think maybe I'm a little too much but, I appreciate the opportunity.

Mike Roth: You did [00:12:00] well.

This is Mike Roth and Dr. Craig Curtis. We're talking about Alzheimer's disease. What is the diagnostic process to split the difference between someone who has Alzheimer's and someone who has a different form of dementia? That's a great question, Mike. So, Alzheimer's disease in the past was a clinical diagnosis.

Dr. Craig Curtis: And we would talk to the patient and the family and they would tell us about this progressive memory loss and maybe other symptoms that had been occurring, been occurring over the past three to five years. And we would simply test their memory and maybe wait another year or two and retest their memory to look for decline.

Nowadays, It's completely different. As a matter of fact, now our diagnostic process involves actually looking for amyloid in the brain, which we now know causes Alzheimer's disease. How do you see amyloid in the brain? We can see amyloid in the brain using [00:13:00] PET scans, which is the most common way. And now we're working on using blood tests, which are going to be coming out in the next few years.

In fact, there's already one blood test that is FDA cleared to detect amyloid in the blood, which is reflecting. Amyloid in the brain, and that would be the differential between another type of dementia and Alzheimer's. Yes, sir. With over 20 years of experience studying brain health, Dr. Curtis's goal is to educate the village's community on how to live a longer, healthier life.

Warren: To learn more, visit his website, craigcurtismd.com, or call 3 5 2 5 0 0 5 2 5 2 to attend a free seminar.

Emily: Remember, our next episode will be released next Friday at 9 a. m. Should you want to become a major supporter of the show or have questions, please contact us at mike at rothvoice dot com. This is a shout out for supporters Tweek Coleman, Ed Williams, Dwayne Romich, Paul Sorgin, Kathy Loving, and Dr. [00:14:00] Craig Curtis at K2 in the Villages.

We will be hearing more from Dr. Curtis with short Alzheimer's tips each week. If you know someone who should be on the show, contact us at mike@rothvoice.Com. The way our show grows is with your help. Text your friends about this show if you enjoyed listening, or just tell your friends about the show.

We thank everyone for listening to the show. The content of the show is copyrighted by Roth Voice 2025. All rights reserved.