Hello, everyone, Kirk here with an episode of one of my favorite podcasts for you, along with a pretty cool Strong Songs update.

I am, of course, still hard at work on season 8, and I'm getting some more interview episodes ready to run for you all in the interim.

But first, that news. Strong Songs is now an

international award-winning podcast. A few weeks back, the audio jury at the Reaper Bond Music

Festival in Hamburg, Germany, picked Strong Songs as its winner for the International

Music Journalism Award in 2025 in the audio category.

That is the first time that Strong Songs has won an award in the more than seven years I've been making this show, and it makes me so happy and so proud.

There are, of course, plenty of awards that are given to podcasts every year.

A lot of those awards have an entry fee you have to pay, though they

have, you know, really qualified judges that pick the awards. I just haven't really ever made the time

to deal with it or to try to submit the show to any awards like that. But this award did not

work that way. This was just an independent award that was given out in a ceremony and they picked strong songs to win.

I gave a video acceptance speech at the festival and everything.

It was really cool.

So I thought you all might enjoy knowing that.

I can now accurately describe strong songs as an internationally recognized award-winning podcast,

though I'll probably just keep calling it a podcast about music.

All right, you are about to hear a recent episode of the podcast, 20,000 Hertz, all about the

music of Super Mario, which features a guest appearance from yours truly.

I've done my own episode of Strong Songs about Mario Music.

I'll link it in the show notes if you've never heard it.

That's part of the reason that Casey from 20,000 Hertz reached out about having me on. This episode is really good and it covers some cool territory that my episode didn't. I think you'll dig it if you haven't listened to it. And while I've done plenty of crossovers with 20,000 Hertz in the past, I do want to, you know, mention they're a great show. If you aren't aware of them, you should totally check out 20,000 Hertz. If you like strong songs, you'll almost certainly

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