Behind the Scenes
Some people are surprised when they find out that Ray and Steve aren’t in the same location when they record Beyond the Box episodes. So we thought we’d pull back the curtain a bit and give you some insight into the behind-the-scenes operation that you know as Beyond the Box.
When Beyond the Box launched in July, 2008, Ray and Steve had already been getting together and talking in this format for several years. What started out as weekly lunch meetings transitioned to weekly breakfast meetings, and often included one or two other friends as well, as well as Steve’s two children. These breakfast discussions often lasted two hours or more, but basically were very similar to the type of conversation you hear on BtB.
Ray first approached Steve with the idea of podcasting, and in fact, recorded a couple of “solo” episodes of his own (these episodes are not found on the BtB site). Steve was immediately enthusiastic about the idea, and they began putting the details together.
Originally, Steve would come to Ray’s house one evening a month (or so) and they would record three or four episodes at a time. Steve donated two condenser mics to the effort, and they used Ray’s PC and Audacity to record the episodes. Often, Steve’s 16-(at the time)-year-old son, Dylan would sit in on those episodes, so you may hear reference to that in early episodes, but Dylan did not actually join in on-mic.
In November, 2008, Steve and his family moved from Boone, NC to Abingdon, VA, and some questions about how to continue the podcast arose. No longer close enough to easily spend a late night recording at Ray’s house, the team had to come up with a new solution. It ended up being a rather seamless transition for our listeners, and most people probably don’t even realize how it all works.
Ray still uses his PC with Audacity, but on Steve’s end he uses a Mac G4 with ProTools. Ray and Steve each own Zoom H2 microphone/recorders that each uses on his end of the conversation. Each week (or thereabouts), Ray and Steve hook up via phone to have their conversation. While Ray records his end of the conversation at his house, Steve records his end. To synchronize the audio files for later mixdown, once they are ready to begin recording, Steve counts down “5…4…3…2…1”. Ray joins in when Steve reaches “3” so that they have “3…2…1” on both audio tracks to line them up.
Once they are done recording the episode, Steve saves his audio as an MP3 file and uploads it to a place on the BtB server where Ray can access it. Ray then downloads Steve’s audio, lines up the “3…2…1” with his file in Audacity and then deletes the “3…2…1” once they are lined up. He then adds the intro that you hear each week and the outro, does a little bit of mixing of the levels, and bounces the entire mix out to MP3 and uploads it to the BtB server.
Steve usually handles the actual posting of the episodes. Once Ray has uploaded the final mix, Steve writes the summary (sometimes listening to the episode to refresh his memory!), creates the link to the audio file for that episode, and posts it to the site. This site uses WordPress for the actual content management of the site, and the PodPress plugin to incorporate the player into each post so you can listen to the episode on the site.
The Twitter Tools plugin for WordPress automatically sends a tweet out from the BtBPodcast Twitter account to alert the listeners on Twitter to the new episode. Steve also pings iTunes to update its content after posting the episode.
Some people have wondered how we can have these conversations over the phone and yet still sound so natural. Apart from the technical aspect spelled out above, it seems that people are surprised by the natural flow of the conversation. This seems to be a direct result of years of talking regularly about these topics. Steve and Ray seem to understand how each other presents their thoughts so that rarely do they find themselves wondering if the other person is done speaking, or experiencing lulls in the conversation. And so it just flows rather naturally, as if they were still sitting across the table from each other in a restaurant.
Future thoughts about the technology behind BtB include the possibility of live streaming the actual recording so that others can participate through Skype or live chat while episodes are being recorded.
May 18th, 2011 at 10:10 pm
This background info is amazing! I still don’t understand how a telephone works so…. 🙂 I don’t actually care HOW you guys do it, just keep up the good work of encouragement and enlightenment in Christ.
June 3rd, 2011 at 3:24 pm
Visiting the website for the first time in a while. Love the new look and content. I especially like your little “busting out of the building” logo. Will that be appearing on your iTunes podcast menu? It’s just a generic logo there last time I checked. The other logos are bullying and mocking your generic logo there.
Enjoyed this background info as well. Just once, for me, include the “3..2..1..” with some spooky heavy reverb and echo ripping into the rockin’ intro music.
July 19th, 2011 at 7:06 pm
Hey Guys,
How about doing a discussion about the Trinity? I came to know (or thought I did) God in a United Pentecostal Church. They believe in the oneness of God. That God manifested himself in the flesh as Jesus and the holy spirit is God’s spirit. No Trinity. I still believe that for the most part because He did say the Lord our God is one not three. I believe it is three manifistations of the one God. Most people say they believe that but when they start talking it sounds like they are talking about three different people. Some scriptures make them sound separate and those were always glazed over by UPC. Please tell me your thoughts on this matter. I’d be interested to hear your view on this.
July 19th, 2011 at 7:07 pm
Forgot to check the box for the follow-up comment via email.
August 5th, 2011 at 2:14 pm
Serena, we just posted an episode in response to your suggestion. Thanks!
May 29th, 2012 at 8:35 pm
Hi there.
I’m listening to your interview with Dr. Richard Beck and I thought I would add some comments.
I’m within the Celtic Tradition which has survived (albiet in a smaller form) since early times. We have similar views as the Eastern Orthodox as discussed here with some slight differences, which I thought you might find pertinent to this discussion.
Essentially calvinism and Roman Catholocism and to varying degrees different branches of Protestantism would cling to the Augustinian understanding of original sin…. While as he mentioned Eastern Orthodoxy would believe in ancestral sin, and be sem-pelagian.
Essentially Celtic Christianity would view humankind in a similar light as Eastern Orthodoxy yet have an even higher view. We would say that the early Christians saw humanity as inheriting death and the consequences but at our core still are Christlike in our design. Essentially that we have our consciences which are in tune with God’s law… and the light inside that the darkness cannot put out.
Our understanding would be that Augustine muckied up the understanding of the fall with his take on original sin….. so therefore humankind is designed Christlike (as Christ was like us in every way shape and form) but is influences by the demonic and the sin filled world etc right from the parents womb. In other words Like St. Basil says – we choose to sin and fall from our heavenly place. Our light inside becomes scathed over but will never go out.
Christ came to rekindle the light through our faith and thus his spirit coming to work inside… so that it will shine bright again.
Essentially we don’t believe in an animalistic type aspect to humanity like the Eastern Orthodox but that we become deceived and corrupted through the influences of sin etc. We are the same in nature as Adam and Eve, but have the problem of living in a sinfilled world and the problem of death. It’s worth noting that in the Genesis story Adam was deceived and sinned before the fall…. with this in mind how much more would we being like Adam sin in our present world.
So this leads to the understanding of sin and death. We would say that the sarx is essentially good in it’s design as was Christ’s…. but it comes to suffer from what Paul mentions in Romans as the law of sin and death, which is close to the understanding that Dr. Beck has mentioned.
Essentially the law of sin and death could be considered to be like an addiction. After the fall the flesh is good… but it is also dying, and thus craving life. But we get deceived into going after false things in order to try and find life…. drugs, what have you… that seems like life to the flesh…… but is really death and death giving.
So these things (being sin) bring death to the flesh which causes it to have a greater craving for life. Thus the human being has fallen into an circular habitual behaviour of addiction… leading to Paul saying “Who can save me from this body of DEATH. Christ”. This was Paul’s understanding… not of a nature that we are born with… but rather an habitual nature that has been developed….
So in this understanding Christ comes to save the persons flesh through offering it life. The main ways being the life giving sacrament of baptism and the eucharist. But also in the life offered to us through God’s creation and other means. We are to seek after life giving things.
This life helps with the law of sin and death and helps defeat the death cycle in the flesh.
Of course we are always being influenced in to sinning through the world and our phsycological issues and what not. But that is not how we were designed…. we didn’t inherit a sin nature ect from the fall…. otherwise how could the Bible say that Jesus was like us in every way….. and say that he was also fully God…. who of course cannot have a sin nature.
Sorry for the long E-mail. But I thought I’d like to share that there is even a higher view of humanity and God’s dealing with us out there than Eastern Orthodoxy, that is actually just as ancient. We believe that in the Augustinian Pelagian debates that these are some of the concepts that Pelagious (His real name was Morien) was trying to get across but he was sorefully misunderstood and maligned. Augustine was the father of Calvinism and Pelagious was the father of Arminiasm.
We would have a higher view of humanity than the Arminians though (as do the Eastern Orthodox) as that view was still influenced to a certain degree by Augustinian thought. We believe that all humans do fall from their state of goodness, and simply need to be restored through Christ’s love working in believers lives. Thus we have a similar view to theosis…. but more along the lines of what Ireaneus called “recapitulation”.
The early Christians talk of the fall and death coming originally out of God’s concern for humanity … so that we wouldn’t live eternally in a sin filled world, with the sin problem, and after correction would return to the a better state. And yes that means all of humanity. So the fall was a correction but also at the end of the day a kindness (although it’s surely hard to see this now). As well a seed need to die before it turns into a huge beautiful tree.
In our understanding Christ died as Christus Victor but also according to “the way”, which Paul talks about. The early Christians called themselves “the Way”…. linked to the John’s idea of “Make way a path (the way) in the wilderness” which was taken from the mention of the highway (the way) in Isaiah. This is the way we should live which is written into the fabric of the universe… thus Paul speaks of things being perceived in the creation of the world.
Paul touches on the idea of Christ dying according to the way. “The way” is that of sacrificial love… to die not only for your friends but also for your enemies. This is what Christ did on the cross. Not to appease an angry God, but to die according to “the way” in order to set the captives free. He shed his blood into the ground in order to pay what was righfully owed it after the fall (and the pain this and human violence has caused it). God was in Christ paying the price for us out of sacrificial love. He blood shed a covenant whereby humanities sins are taken away once for all time.
Justification in better translations is translated as “right according to the way”. In other words everybody was forgiven on the cross…. but when we accept Christ we are considered right according to the way in God’s eyes and are then called to live this out.
Thus the early Christians called themselves “the way” and Celtic Christians speak of “the Celtic Way”. Walking according to the way is the path of shining our light inside bright again, and overcoming the law of sin and death through life. In the light of life that overcomes darkness and death.
If that makes any sense.
Thanks for your time. I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts on my comments.
Christopher Angus.
Oh. And many of us also believe in ultimate reconciliation, and hold to a “semi preterist” view.
March 20th, 2016 at 9:57 pm
Hi…just wondering if you are or intend to do more podcasts?? It has been quite some time since I saw anything new. Can I expect more podcasts or should I delete this from my iPad? I have enjoyed the messages of the past and would love more!
January 29th, 2020 at 2:25 pm
REALLY MISS YOU, STEVE AND RABORN!!!!!!
~JUDY