Podcast Platform

Elevated Thoughts Podcast

I co-host a bipartisan political podcast with Mike Marro. I'm on the right, Mike's on the left. That's the whole point of the show. I also built the entire web platform, distribution pipeline, and newsletter system from scratch.

Co-Host & Technical Lead

2024 – Present

Spotify, Apple, YouTube, Web

Where Left Meets Right

Elevated Thoughts is a bipartisan political podcast I co-host with Mike Marro. The premise is simple: I'm right leaning, Mike is the left wing pundit. We sit down, we disagree on things, and we actually talk it through in good faith. No screaming, no gotchas.

And we have very different viewpoints on many things, but a lot of these issues are American issues. Right? That's the whole point. Most political content lives in echo chambers. We built a show where disagreement leads to understanding. Beyond the conversations, I built the entire technical infrastructure: website, distribution pipeline, analytics, newsletter, and audience growth systems.

Challenge

  • Political media is stuck in partisan silos, everyone preaching to their own choir
  • Zero technical infrastructure to start with, building from nothing
  • Had to distribute across audio and video platforms simultaneously
  • Small budget, but the quality bar had to be high
  • Podcast market is crowded, standing out takes more than just showing up

Solution

  • Bipartisan format is the differentiator. Not a gimmick, genuine dialogue
  • Built a fast Eleventy static site deployed on Cloudflare's edge network
  • RSS pipeline pushes episodes to Spotify, Apple, and YouTube automatically
  • Buttondown newsletter so we own our audience (not the algorithm)
  • SEO-optimized blog content for organic discoverability

200+

Newsletter Subscribers

99.9%

Uptime

4

Distribution Platforms

<1s

Page Load Time

Fast site, simple stack

The site runs on Eleventy (11ty), a static site generator. Pages get pre-rendered at build time, cached at the edge via Cloudflare Pages, and served globally in under 100ms. No bloated CMS, no loading spinners.

Content updates trigger automatic rebuilds. The RSS feed powers Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and every other podcast directory. Email collection runs through Buttondown, a privacy-respecting newsletter tool that gives us direct audience access outside of platform algorithms. If Spotify changes their algorithm tomorrow, I still have our subscriber list.

Eleventy Cloudflare Pages RSS / Podcast Feeds Buttondown Schema.org SEO Spotify API

Everything from branding to distribution

I built every piece of the Elevated Thoughts technical stack. The result is a system that basically runs itself. New episodes automatically propagate to all platforms, email notifications go out to subscribers, and analytics track engagement. Mike and I just show up and talk. The tech handles the rest.

Custom podcast website
RSS feed generation
Multi-platform distribution
Newsletter system
Blog infrastructure
Analytics & tracking
SEO optimization
Cloudflare deployment
"Cooper built our entire podcast infrastructure from scratch. The site is fast, the distribution is seamless, and I don't have to think about the tech. I just show up and talk. That's exactly what I needed."
M

Mike Marro

Co-Host, Elevated Thoughts

Got something you want to build?

Whether you're launching a podcast, building a platform, or need someone to handle the technical side so you can focus on your thing, let's talk.

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