Happy Christmas Eve, everyone. I hope you are somewhere safe and warm.

Here’s a little holiday treat for you: I recorded my first Voltscast.

Matt Yglesias runs a newsletter called Slow Boring. He is interested in the energy bill that Congress passed this week. I just wrote a long post about that energy bill.

We wanted to chat about it. Starting a whole official podcast with professional editing and music and a name and all the rest sounded a bit daunting, so as an experiment, we decided, in the immortal words of Bill O’Reilly …

We talked, we recorded it, and we’re sending it to you, unedited. Fast and loose. Let me know what you think and if you’d like to see (er, hear) more like this.

I’d like to get into doing more audio in the future. Apparently some people don’t have time to read 3,000-word pieces, but they can listen to me read pieces while they wash the dishes or walk the dog, so I might try a bit of narration. And I’ve had a few early talks with people about doing something more professional and produced.

I’ll be honest: I don’t really want to launch an Actual Podcast and get tied to a particular format and schedule. I’m terrible at satisficing and I know if I did it I would obsess over it and it would eat up all my time, and I’d rather spend my time writing.

I’d like to do it on a less formal basis, though, at least if y’all are into it, so let me know.

In the meantime, stay cozy like Mabel and Forest.