Listen to the dramatic reading by Court Sullivan:
Son, if you’re reading this: I am dead. I’m sorry I did not live to be the father that you deserve. So I wanted to leave you the only advice I know how to give, father to son.
Download podcasts before you leave the house. Three should do it for the day, depending on how long your commute is. Just don’t waste data. Perhaps try a Westworld recap podcast, just like Dad would.
By now, you are a man, and men respect hard work. Vary up your podcast diet. For every big-time NPR show there are a hundred tenacious recap podcasts that need your love. Come on, if you’re going to engage with the medium, take a deep dive. A dive I wish we could have taken together, sharing a pair of earbuds while playing catch in the backyard.
A rating doesn’t do anyone any good without a good comment to match. If I were alive, I’d want you to make your comments heartfelt and specific, to love unabashedly and with passion, and to tie back into what just happened on Westworld, otherwise you’re going to look like a poser and get drowned in the algorithm. That’s not the future I’d want for my boy. Not for my brave boy who will graduate high school as I watch from the clouds, wishing I could remind you to savor every moment, and not skip forward fifteen seconds at a time.
If by any chance you’re interested in listening to my Westworld podcast, it’s available to download on iTunes, Overcast, SoundCloud, Stitcher, Podfeed, GPodder, TruMix, and on a dusty pile of cassette tapes locked in an old family chest, to be opened when you come of age. It took me a long time to hit up so many platforms, so if you love me you’ll subscribe on all of them.
Your mother will be lonely after I am gone, and perhaps she will look for companionship. That is understandable. But, if her new partner hosts a rival Westworld recap podcast, put an end to that as soon as you can.
And finally, my son, I will assume that at this point you have started your own Westworld recap podcast so as not to let my legacy die with my body. I was the breadwinner, but you are the man of the house now. Monetize monetize monetize. The going rate for advertisements is $25 to $50 per 1000 listeners, so to look after your mother as well as raise yourself, you’ll need to rack up 37,000 listeners a week in order to make $1135 a week in order to make the $52,000 medium yearly income for an average family, though I’d like to think my progeny would aim a little higher. I know that Westworld only airs ten episodes every two years, but that’s not my problem, and I trust you to pad things out and make it work. You are my flesh, my blood, my final tether to the world of the living, and as long as you keep me in your heart, I will never be truly gone.
Oh, and if Westworld gets bad, please disregard all of the above.