Erick Galindo and Megan Tan
Erick Galindo and Megan Tan co-host WILD. Follow Erick on Twitter here and Megan on Twitter here.
Describe the new season in ten words or less.
EG: Couple breaks up then goes on awkward road trip.
MT: It’s a show about one man’s journey to trust love again after being in a toxic relationship.
Erick, we’re getting to hear your story. Megan…what’s your role on the show?
MT: WILD Season II is a mirror reflection of WILD Season I: Episode 7: How Do I Love Someone? In that episode I told Erick my love story. In this episode, Erick tells me his love story. My role is to be the engaged audience member. The first listener. The person who you get to hear scream at the television or roll their eyes, whenever Erick is telling his story. I’m also a live laugh track. Lol.
How did making this show change your relationship with love?
EG: It really made us think about the power of romcoms to shape the language of love and how we evaluate grand gestures.
MT: It helped me understand and analyze the loops that we often find ourselves in. With love, with relationships at large, with ourselves.
What did making this show teach you about the world?
EG: Lizzo will sometimes say yes to letting you use her song on your podcast.
MT: If you fully believe in an idea (and don’t give up believing in the idea) others will also start to believe in the idea. And then that idea will be turned into something tangible. A gift for the world.
What did making this show teach you about yourself?
EG: That I am resilient AF and also, I don’t have to make lemonade when life gives me lemons because I love lemons.
MT: I love directing actors in a studio. Their ability to access a range of emotions and talent based on a few simple directions is really astonishing to witness. I have a lot of respect for actors.
How did making this show change your relationships with each other?
EG: Making a fiction podcast together allowed us to really stretch our individual skill sets to help bolster each other's talents. I’m a big fan of TV and film writing and Megan can make real stories in audio sound like movies. So it was really cool to see how we could really push ourselves to do that.
MT: We had never made a fictional series like this before in an audio format, so there was a lot of trust falling that happened. Which is incredible because everyone took their roles in stride. Erick wrote the majority of the scripts in record speed. He also taught us about being in a writers room, creating characters, script formats, working in Final Draft, etc. Anjuli Sastry-Krbechek was an incredible senior producer. She wore more hats than I probably know exist. The producers/sound designers of the show Kyle Chang and Emma Alabaster really explored what we could do with the sound and texture of every episode. Donald Paz made sure every episode sounded incredible. And our EPs: Antonia Cereijido and Shana Krochmal supported the vision of the show, made sure we managed our resources, and gave us high-level notes that helped make every episode more universal. And our incredible actors/actresses: Melinna Bobadilla, Gabriel Ruiz, Atsuko Okatsuka… I mean I could go on. As someone who started in this industry as an indie creator, to make something like WILD S2: I Think I’m Falling In Love, really took a village. And I didn’t even mention all the people who helped us with marketing (!).
How much traveling did you do? Did you bring your mic with you everywhere?
EG: Our team did take the mics all around to get sounds. I even had my 11-year-old nephew push me into an ice cold pool to capture sound.
MT: We didn’t bring our mics everywhere we went. We were very strategic. One word: Spreadsheet. After the scripts were written, Anjuli and I went through each script and envisioned what sounds would go where and what we could communicate with sounds rather than with words or writing. And then I made this giant spreadsheet that cateloged every sound we would manually go collect (which we did). So when you hear Erick closing the car door, someone actually went out and recorded themselves closing a car door. I think that’s what makes the sound of WILD Season II unique. We didn’t want to have any canned sound effects. We wanted everything to sound real.
Can you tease something about the season? What’s a moment we can look forward to?
EG: If you’re a fan of season one of WILD, there are a bunch of easter eggs in there, especially in the final half of the season where some of the stories intermerge.
MT: I think every good story makes you think you’re going in for one thing — let’s say love — but really you’re going to be sweeped up by something else. This season does that too.
How do you bring in a feeling of place (LA) into the show?
EG: There is a lot of intentionality in that. It’s a roadtrip audio romcom so we were taking LA on the road. We wanted to make sure everything about our characters was LA from their vernacular to the music to the way they interact with the outside world. Like they are taking LA sensibilities on tour.
MT: Erick Galindo embodies Los Angeles. Point blank. It’s who he is. Naturally, it’s in the work that he does. Specifically from the lens of Southeast LA. So you’ll hear it in the music that is played throughout the episode, the language that is used, the accents that are present and that are missing. The lens is naturally through the lens of Erick’s LA lens because Erick was born and raised in LA. Are there any rules you think all podcasts should adhere to?
Did any shows serve as inspiration?
EG: There are a lot of rom-coms that inspired the season which we talk about here.
What was the hardest part about making this series?
EG: Taking a visual medium that uses a lot of shortcuts in terms of the language of film and trying to do that in audio with none of that.
MT: When we did table reads, it was hard to hear the show three-dimensionally.
Are there too many podcasts?
EG: I don’t know. That depends on who you ask. Because there aren’t enough podcasts about Southeast LA if you ask me.
MT: Are there too many types of cheese? There a lot of everything everywhere all at once.
What’s a podcast you love that everyone already knows about?
EG: Unspooled.
MT: Memory Palace.
What’s a podcast you love that not enough people know about?
EG: Locatora Radio.
MT: Buddhability.
If you were going to start another podcast, don’t worry about the logistics or whether or not anyone would like it, what would it be? Your budget is $1M.
EG: A deep dive, investigative, bar-by-bar breakdown of Beyonce and Jay’s hit Drunk In Love.
MT: I would take that money and invest it in property and then make a podcast about buying the property.
Erick, did you share it ALL or are there any secrets you had to hold? Care to share anything that didn’t make tape?
EG: The story is based on my life but it is a work of fiction with characters and story beats created by a writers room. So it all kind of stayed secret in a way.
Tell us about your launch party for the new season. Do you think other podcasters should try it?
EG: It was fun. We danced and had tacos and played romcom trivia with Sam Sanders and Gabrielle Ruiz and members of the live audience. If you like that kind of stuff, I would highly recommend.
Hot take:
EG: Out of Sight is a rom-com!
Self-care tip:
EG: It’s okay to amke typos.
Thanks, Erick and Megan!