How a Quincy Podcast Takes Local History to a Worldwide Audience
Thanks to a 'wild' local podcast, a national audience is learning more about Quincy history. Chris Koetters and Travis Hoffman explain how their team effort began with a simple interaction on Facebook to become one of the most popular podcasts in our area.
Chris Koetters gained podcasting fame with his Lost Boys of Hannibal series on the disappearance of 3 young boys in back in 1967. That's the story of Billy Hoag, Edwin Craig Dowell and Joel "Joey" Hoag. That podcast is currently in season 3.
During a Facebook live promoting that podcast, Chris had Travis Hoffman who described himself as being "from the peanut gallery" during that video flick a switch in Chris' mind about a podcast on Quincy history that he had always wanted to do and how he could see Travis as the co-host. That's exactly what happened.
That became the "Wild Quincy" podcast. Both Chris and Travis admit they are lovers of history and not experts. That's led them to bring in TV personalities past and present including Richard Cain and Chad Douglas among others. The podcast has been so popular that it has a vital Patreon community and even a merch store.
They are notorious (in a good way) for finding vintage local TV commercials including this one featuring Dennis Oliver and me talking about the Cardboard Boat Regatta around 1994-95.
Recent podcasts have covered everything from ghost hunts at Quincy's Washington Theater to civil war soldiers dying in an accident. While some podcasts cover a wide range of topics in many different areas, Wild Quincy and Lost Boys of Hannibal have a hyper-local focus on where we live.
What's the future for their local podcast? Chris and Travis have been friends since childhood and used to create recordings of their fake radio station. At some point, they plan to maybe release the audio from those days which should be fun. They also plan to do a series of "what if" scenarios. The skies the limit for what these guys might do.
Lost Boys of Hannibal is a very highly-rated podcast on Apple and the same goes for Wild Quincy. It's an impressive effort from a 2-man team who are taking local Hannibal and Quincy history and stories to the masses.
The best is yet to come.