Things I've Listened To Lately: Part III

Time flies! We’re almost through Q1 of ‘24, and I’ve been so busy listening to stuff that I haven’t yet found the time to tell you about all the stuff I’ve been listening to. That ends now! Here’s some new or new-to-me podcasts I’ve heard recently, and my thoughts about them:

AI generated art of me listening to things lately but without a shirt for some reason

The Chris Chatman Do-over

Some of my first forays into podcasts were episodes of Comedy Bang Bang, so I’ve got a special place in my heart for UCB-aligned improv audio comedy. If you’re really into that sort of thing, The Chris Chatman Do-over, from Amy Poelher’s Paper Kite Podcasts, will give you a quick hit, enough to ward off the shakes. The conceit is that right wing podcast shock jock Chris Chatman (played by Ike Barinholtz doing a sort of Joe Rogan thing) has had to relaunch his show after being sort-of-cancelled, and brings along his usual sycophantic sidekick, plus a Zoomer woman included to improve his audience in the female demographics. Everyone is a character, guests join, hilarity ensues, etc. It actually gets better the further it wanders from the bro podcast parody at its core, and luckily it’s improv, so sometimes it really wanders from that core. Plus, each ep is only about 25 minutes, and it’s obviously heavily-edited, so it’s not overstaying its welcome. One minor gripe – there were a few moments in the first few episodes that were almost like bloopers, where the actors break character. It took me right out! If you’re going to do a deadpan immersive improv comedy thing, stick with it til the bitter end and edit your corpsing out. 

The Town with Matthew Belloni

All the news that’s fit to print from Tinseltown! As someone who both vaguely works in the entertainment industry and enthusiastically slurps up many of its products, this is an easy and enjoyable way to keep up with the business side of show business. Matthew Belloni founded Puck, which I have never read, but he is also a knowledgeable and, by the sounds of things, well-connected expert on the popular arts. Think movie studios, streaming platforms, awards ceremonies, major record labels, and sports broadcast deals. Belloni and a well-selected stable of guests deliver concise, enthusiastic insight into the business – and with multiple free episodes a week, it’s a good way for the time-poor to stay informed and cut through industry spin. The best part? Belloni and guests are not afraid to call a spade a spade. In an industry with surrounding discourse that can lean towards PR puff, it’s so refreshing to hear someone brave enough to deliver harsh criticism and even call bullshit on the bigwigs if required. 

Joel Golby’s Book Club

Joel Golby has been dropping his musings on books he’s read into his Instagram stories for a while now, and someone has cleverly swooped in and said “how about a podcast?” It really works, better than you might think it would. See, Joel is a writer, and his Insta reviews were written captions, but of course podcasting is an audio medium. Yet he nails the transition and carries his voice across into the world of soundwaves. Although it’s frustrating to find yet another guy really can do it all, we must instead focus on our gratitude for what we are given, and these episodes are like little gifts to the listener. Breezy, gentle, 15-20 minute discussions of books, thoughtful and interesting even if you haven’t read it. I guess it’s less of a book club than a book recommendation series, but even in that it feels so intimate, just like in real life when someone carefully curates a book suggestion just for you. So far he’s covered books as diverse as an Annie Proulx short story collection and Eat Pray Love. It might be a psy-op by Big Novel to get more people reading – Joel frequently addresses the listener as if they were in a “reading funk” with gentle encouragement for how to get out of it. If so, it’s a psy-op I’m happy to fall under the spell of.  

Dissect: Radiohead - In Rainbows

(sorry for the Spotify embed link, they made me do it)

I’ve never been a big Dissect head but boy did that change for this series – one of my favourite pieces of arts analysis I’ve ever read/listened to/consumed. If you haven’t heard the show before, it’s a close analysis of songs – the key, the meter, the timbre, the lyrics, the story behind the production, everything is considered in an attempt to dissect (ha) the music and find out what makes it tick, or not tick. This season, host Cole Cuchna presents an entire series on Radiohead’s In Rainbows, going track by track, episode by episode. Of course, being Radiohead, it very much does tick. I’m of the generation where this is the first Radiohead album I was really there for in real time, and this season of Dissect did something really special for me – it allowed me to listen to this old album with fresh ears, to hear new things in it, and to appreciate it all the more. Cuchna is an incredible host, an expert musicologist who can make everything accessible. And of course, this is the perfect format for a close musical analysis. The audio illustrations and recreations of all his points are executed absolutely flawlessly, and it really is a masterwork of podcast sound design that supports the content of a show. If you like In Rainbows, or Radiohead, or music, or life, I think you will find something interesting and maybe even inspiring in this show. I hope he makes a dozen more seasons about all my favourite albums.










Tiny Huge Decisions

Would you carry a baby for your best friend?

That's the main hook for Tiny Huge Decisions, a new podcast series I produced that has just released its last episode.

Mohsin and Dalia have been BFFs since they met at university almost twenty years ago. Now, Mohsin has married the love of his life - Matthew. They dream of being parents.

And then, one day, Dalia suggests: maybe she could be the one to make it happen?

The podcast follows the conversations between these two besties as they reach an answer together. It's a will-they-won't-they story, and it's more than a little complicated.

Best case scenario: they make a dream come true together, and bring a new life into the world. Mohsin and Dalia are chosen family, and this could be a joyful celebration of their bond.

But Mohsin has a lot to learn to about surrogacy, pregnancy and fatherhood, and Dalia has her own husband and child to think about.

There are other complexities to navigate - legal, medical, emotional. They'll speak to other surrogates and parents, and to their friends and family. And all the time, at the back of their minds: can we, should we, do this?

But this isn't just a podcast about a potential surrogacy. These are intimate, honest, and vulnerable conversations. They range from the nature of relationships, to the awkward realities of pregnancy; from cherished hopes to deepest fears.

Tiny Huge Decisions is for fans of Esther Perel, or Griefcast -- shows where emotional conversations are given space to breathe.

It's deep, it's moving, and honestly, some of it is really funny.

That's thanks to the incredible openness of Mohsin and Dalia. Listening to Tiny Huge Decisions, you'll hear how their ongoing conversation develops over months -- across lockdowns, video calls, studios and living rooms.

You'll laugh, you'll cry, and at the end, you'll hear their final decision.

This is a very special show and I'm very privileged to have worked on it alongside Ruth Barnes and Louise Mountain for Chalk & Blade, along with Joanne Griffith, Erica Kraus and the team at American Public Media!

The whole series is out now — perfect for a binge listen.

Clockwise from top left: Executive Producer Ruth, Dalia, Mohsin and myself making Tiny Huge Decisions!

Things I've Listened To Lately: Part 2

I last paused to take stock of my listening in Q1 2023. Now we’re well into Q3, and you’d be forgiven for thinking I’d given up on listening to podcasts. Well, you’d be wrong! Here’s a belated update of what I’ve thought about what I’ve heard over the last few months – new and new-to-me releases alike.

An AI artist’s impression of me listening to things lately

I picked this one up after it caught my attention in the list of Ambies award winners. Maybe it was the colourful tile art? Maybe the bilingual aspect appealed to the part of my brain that sends me on a biennial ill-fated quest to learn a new language? Regardless, I really enjoyed this series. One of the best things a podcast can do is make you feel immersed in a new and wonderful world, and in Ídolo, that’s the world of the narcocarridos — the drug ballads. Like a Mexican take on outlaw country, this genre has found an audience on both sides of the US-Mexico border, and Chalino Sánchez was one of its brightest stars – until he was murdered after a show. That crime gives the the podcast its investigative framework, but it’s so much more than just a grisly who-did-it. Chalino’s music meant a lot to the team behind this podcast, and you can tell that by the way they focus on his life, his culture and his music, not just his tragic death. Plus, the show features a bespoke narcocorrido for its ending theme. Who needs copyrighted music anyway?

One of podcasting’s superpowers is its ability to serve very niche needs. Life of the Record is a case in point. Who wants in-depth oral histories going track-by-track through cult classic albums by acts like the Pixies, or Low, or even Neu? The answer is me, extremely so. This is the perfect prescription – no bullshit, no interviewer, just musicians talking at length, with songs used to illustrate their reminiscing. There’s a nice big back-catalog too, so you can skim through and pick and choose any artists that tickle your fancy. One for the music nerds.

Did not enjoy this at all. I dip into this feed any time I see a subject that interests me, and I always get burned. When will I learn?
The problem is that I am interested in the subjects covered on British Scandal. The podcast, however, proceeds from the premise that I am not, and that I need to be hooked by other means. One of those means is a kind of audio-reenactment, a style of narration that puts you in the scene and in the heads of the people involved as if you were listening to a fiction audiobook. This necessarily involves a lot of poetic license-taking and pure speculation — I happen to think you should be able to find drama in recounting real historical events without just making up people’s inner monologues, but maybe that’s just me.
The real turn-off moments come when Matt Forde interrupts this story with forced banter about what we’ve just heard. Who wants this? Forde is unfunny at the best of times, and in this context he actively interrupts and belittles any kind of story-telling. Is this supposed to appeal to someone who will only listen to a history podcast when it contains eight minutes of the worst banter you’ve ever heard? I’m sure there are lots of people who enjoy this but I don’t understand it.

Now THIS is what I want. A solid middlebrow history podcast, some well-crafted narration, nicely-judged sound design. Dan Jones is just so soothing, not talking down to the listener but delivering narration with a quiet, contagious enthusiasm. The series zooms in and out at the right times, picking up on details and then sweeping the action forward with summary. One for the history dads out there. (He’s just started on Season 3, too)

Just when you think you’re over scam stories in podcasting, another great series comes along and hooks you. This story, about the suspicions that emerge around a sick girl running a charity, is murky, tragic, slightly sordid and uncomfortable. But it’s handled deftly and with grace by the team behind the show, who move expertly from retrospective storytelling to a meta-investigation, and eventually deliver an ending that must have taken some serious journalistic expertise. This goes to show how good the BBC still is in the podcasting space.

As maybe my all-time favourite podcast followed up its Erotic 80s season with an Erotic 90s sequel that promised to be bigger, better and badder, I was totally titillated. And I’ve mostly enjoyed it! Buuuuuut… At times the new season has lost me and I haven’t finished episodes. Part of that is a problem of scale. Erotic 80s discussed sex in Hollywood in the 80s with each episode focusing on an event in one calendar year of the decade. Meanwhile, at its mid-season break, Erotic 90s has reached 14 episodes and is only at 1995. There’s no thread left un-pulled, no rabbit-hole that isn’t burrowed into, and that sheer breadth and sprawl occasionally leaves you wondering what the point is.

I think the focus on the 90s is both a blessing and a curse. To me, host and writer Karina Longworth is at her best close-analyzing movies and biographies, and placing them into a historical context, like the McCarthy era or LA in the 60s. Conversely, I find her accounts of recent history can sometimes become… what’s the opposite of disinterested? Look, this 90s era is her wheelhouse, as she occasionally mentions – it’s when she really began to become a Hollywood nerd. At its best, that passion and firsthand insight can elevate her storytelling. But at its worst, the host’s interest in the minutiae of the subject outpaces the listeners – and it feels like you’re listening to Karina Longworth arguing with 30 year-old alt-weekly magazine articles.

A really interesting attempt to contextualise and canonise some very recent history. The Blog Era tells the story of how the hip-hop genre, the music industry, and our culture more broadly, changed rapidly with the proliferation of the Internet, in an era they call, well, you guessed it. The show is both by and for nerds who frequented hip-hop blogs in the 2000s, and as someone who lurked occasionally, I admire the project here. These guys are making the case for the importance of their community, respecting a cultural moment that might otherwise be dismissed. The show is well put-together and goes along at a good clip, even if it unfortunately has to avoid playing a lot of the music it references, for licensing reasons. But I do wonder how this all sounds to someone not already invested in this topic. The hosts are connected in the hip-hop scene and have access to a lot of the people who “were there” so to speak, and these people seem pleasant enough – but most of their stories are just “I went on the Internet a lot in 2007”. Is there a way to tell a story about an online community through another medium, while keeping it compelling to a general audience? It’s an interesting question but I’m not sure The Blog Era has it completely worked out.

When Science Finds A Way

One of my big projects for 2023 has been putting together When Science Finds A Way — a podcast from the Wellcome Trust that tells real stories from the cutting-edge of health research.

In the series, botanist-turned-Hollywood-actor Alisha Wainwright chats to scientists and researchers working on some big problems. Think climate change, mental health, infectious disease...

But it's not all gloom and doom. When Science Finds A Way delivers a dash of #hope, giving insight into some innovative solutions. This is health research brought to life, and delivered to your podcast app.

The show finished its first series in style this past week, with a special bonus panel discussion episode hosted by none other than Julia Gillard AC (the 27th Prime Minister of Australia)! Photo evidence of our collaboration below.

It was a truly global production. When Science Finds A Way features voices from India, Kenya, the UK, the US, Sierra Leone, Brazil, South Africa, Australia, Fiji, Indonesia, Malawi, Denmark, the Netherlands, Nigeria and Guinea.

So, in short — if you’ve ever wanted to chat about the global health impacts of antimicrobial resistance, now’s the perfect time to hit me up.

Social Audio Is Dead, Long Live Social Audio

If you’ve heard the term “social audio” being thrown around, you’re probably inside the media business bubble.  That means you’re probably also aware that “social audio” just isn’t hot anymore. 

If you’re not in the media business bubble, you might still have heard of something like Clubhouse, or a Twitter Space or Spotify Live. Social audio is the all-encompassing term for this kind of tech and practice – you might have called it emergent, before it started receding in recent months. If you’re still in the dark, think of something like a conference call, or live radio, except it’s run and hosted by friends, acquaintances, public figures, or experts. You log in, you listen to people talking live, maybe you’re even invited to ask a question by a moderator. Simple, right? 

Well, it might sound simple. From a pandemic-inflated zenith of big valuations and indiscriminate investment, “social audio” has crashed to something of a nadir. Spotify’s recent announcement that it was killing its version of a social audio feature follows in the footsteps of Reddit and Facebook, who’ve done the same. Amazon has laid off staff on its social audio app, Amp, and Clubhouse has gone from being the trendy new app of 2021 to being extremely not that.

Partly, it’s because a lot of these social audio apps were reinvented wheels – not doing anything that YouTube, Twitch, Discord and even radio haven’t been doing better for years. But let’s put aside the execution side of things and have a good look at the idea. I think there is something to that idea of “social audio”. Specifically, I think it’s a big opportunity for podcasting. Because podcasting is an inherently social medium.

What do I mean by that? Let’s start with a good working definition of what a podcast is – on-demand, digitally-distributed speech audio. Those are the essential characteristics of what a podcast is, and I would argue that they point towards a medium with a strongly social nature. 

Take the first part of the definition “on-demand”. Listeners self-select any podcast they listen to from a massive range, rather than being served a much more limited range of content through broadcast media like TV or radio. This means more narrowly-focused, or niche content, can thrive – and that in turn leads to more well-defined audience segments, or fanbases, who are more actively engaged with the shows they listen to. Now think of “digitally-distributed”. This means consumption is not restricted by space or time – you can live anywhere, and listen to a podcast any time after it's published. And it also means that podcasting is still largely free and platform-agnostic.

In sum, we’re talking about a medium that fosters well-defined audiences, and then makes it easy and accessible for new people to join in. To me, that’s fertile ground to build communities – and what is a community but a web of social relations?

Now let’s zoom in on that word, “speech”, and get a little bit more philosophically. Podcasting, as a medium, is almost entirely a human voice, speaking to either another human voice, or directly to the listener. And that’s powerfully, profoundly social, in ways that tap into our very nature.

Think about it like this – the spoken word is the most primal form of complex communication we have, hardwired deep into our monkey brains from millions of years of evolution. We can point to the invention of the printing press or the emergence of the written word, but the spoken word is so fundamental to our shared conception of humanity that it virtually defines our shared conception of humanity.

Wordless primitive people may have been able to use grunts and pointing to co-exist or even cooperate, but it is through speaking that they were able to establish the kinds of relationships that make us the social animal. It’s that simple – speech is social. And when we listen to Ira Glass or Sarah Koenig or Joe Rogan, we’re tapping into a literally ancient social ritual. 

Paradoxically, though, this is a social ritual we perform by ourselves. Research shows that when we listen to podcasts, we mostly do it alone. In fact, disproportionately alone, compared to other media (think about how common it is to watch a movie with an audience, or even have the radio on in a public space, and how unusual it would be to do that with a podcast). There’s an unresolved tension there – or perhaps unrealized potential. 

Even though we actually listen to them alone, podcast consumption manifests socially, in some interesting spontaneous or informal ways. Think of what that term “social” really means – relationships, communities. Then think of the position podcast hosts – the speakers of those words inside our ears – have in our imagination. These are not Hollywood stars we worship, but people we view as being socially related to us. There’s research into these parasocial relationships listeners develop towards hosts, and how that might fulfill social needs. When those same hosts read out ads on podcasts, research also shows we remember and trust this information more than other forms of advertising. But it’s not just the ads – we make lifestyle changes based on what we hear in podcasts, suggesting we think of these words from strangers similarly to how we think of recommendations from friends. Speaking of recommendations from friends, they are by far the most common way people discover new podcasts, showing that even if we consume them alone, information about these podcasts travels along social connections. 

There’s a social impulse there. And just because it hasn’t been completely captured, mediated and monetised by a tech start-up doesn’t mean it’s not real – or, for that matter, that it won’t be captured, mediated and monetised in the future. 

Because, when we look at Clubhouse’s valuation dropping and say “social audio is dead”, what we’re really saying is that “no media has yet emerged to effectively exploit the sociality of audio to the satisfaction of the market”.  Instagram has mediated the latent social potential of the image, and it seems TikTok has done the same for the video. It seems naive to think something of that scale can’t or won’t happen for speech audio like podcasting.

What will it be? What will it look or sound like? Will it be good or even bad for the world? This is where my thinking out loud ends, because I don’t have an answer. And if I did, I’d be working feverishly on it, not writing up a blog. I just think there’s a lot of value and potential in a “social audio” that doesn’t exist just yet. One that can fully reconcile podcasting’s fundamental potential for human connection, with its fragmented, solitary consumption. 

Things I've Listened To Lately: Part 1

If a tree falls in the forest but nobody hears it, does it make a sound? Great question. Another is, if I listen to a new podcast series, have some thoughts about it, but don’t write them up into a blog post, what am I even doing here?

Welcome to Things I’ve Listened To Lately, potentially the first of an irregular series. It’s nothing more or less than some thoughts about new (or new to me) podcasts I’ve listened to lately. Recommendations, reflections, rants — anything could happen.

In this edition you’ll read about post-Medieval Europe, coercive interrogations, the importance of scripting, one true crime show that sticks the landing, and one that doesn’t.

Read More

What's with the Podcast Doomerism?

Congratulations! You made it. We’re already one month into podcasting’s doom and gloom era – 2023.

Of course, the vibe shift started a while back. You can date the first rumblings to early 2022, when Bloomberg claimed that podcasting hadn’t produced a new hit in years. That caused some consternation in the industry.

Then there were the podcasting-adjacent layoffs and show cancellations through the rest of the year – CNN, Spotify, Acast. Recently there have been even more layoffs at Spotify, Pushkin, and Vox Media, including the team behind Cover Story, one of my favourite podcasts of 2022.

Over the last few months, grim soothsayers have been popping up in the discourse to bring the mood down. Nick Quah warned 2023 could be a rough year. The Pacific Content industry forecast had some muted overtones. The Hollywood Reporter spoke of a recession era. Ashley Carman wrote about a “great podcast market correction”. Nick Hilton even said that podcasting died in 2022.

The bad vibes are so tangible they’ve even had their own mini-backlash – a VP from Spotify came out swinging on LinkedIn, insisting: “I believe there have never been more opportunities for podcast creators and startups than there are at this moment.” Is he protesting too much?

It’s an emotional time for a lot of people in the podcast space. Fear, anxiety, stress, confusion. But I think there’s a lot of related but distinct conversations happening here. And a lot of different conversations happening at the same time become noise.

So I want to break down this podcast doomerism, and get my thoughts down. As far as I can see, there are a few different strands of bad vibe intersecting here. You can roughly split this doom and gloom into three strains: MONEY, FORMAT, and GENRE.

MONEY: The “market correction”

This is the big one for the bean counters, and therefore everyone else – money. Generally speaking, people in the industry are worried that investments are not delivering the expected returns, that big spenders in the space are drying up, and that therefore there’s less money in the podcast pool. Is the podcast gold rush over? Are we all about to go broke?

Firstly, a disclaimer is that I work on the production side, so I’m not on the pointy end of contract negotiations, media spends, winning business from corporate clients, that sort of thing. That said, anecdotally, it’s true that I’ve heard of a cooling market for branded podcast commissions and ad sales. It makes total sense. We’re in an economic downturn, and usually some of the easiest costs to cut are ad and marketing spend. With a lot of the money in podcasting coming that way, the industry has been and will continue to be affected. 

But a recession isn't just bad for advertising income. Over the last few years, podcasting has increasingly been the focus of big speculative spending. You could blame covid-19, in a way. Podcasting was remarkably resilient during the pandemic, a chaotic time for other media. In fact podcasting probably grew even faster due to an influx from other media – money and talent that couldn’t go elsewhere due to lockdowns and uncertainty. That coincided with a historical land grab, as Spotify and Amazon made big plays to establish themselves in podcasting, previously an uncontested domain of Apple. Meanwhile, companies like iHeart and Acast have been throwing their weight around to assert their status in the industry. In the wake of these historical events, we saw a bunch of eye-watering contracts and acquisitions, in some (many?) cases with little apparent return on investment. This is how venture capital works – a rush of hype and excitement, the money taps turned all the way on. But it’s a cycle, a pendulum of hype and bust, bull and bear. And now it’s time for the bear.

It strikes me that it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, in a way – players in the space felt good about podcasting for a while, and it was really good. Now, there’s that vibe shift, and suddenly things are not doing so well. I think, in a way, the reality follows the perception, not vice versa. A tech giant with a wad of cash to spend sees podcasting as an exciting thing, throws some money in, and makes it an exciting space to work. Then they read a few downer articles, excitement turns to fear, they yank their investment and freeze their hiring, and suddenly the party’s over and it’s time for the “market correction”. 

Obviously, none of this is the fault of hard-working, talented people in podcasting who will bear the brunt of the consequences when the vibe shifts in the board rooms. I’m sure the phrase “market correction” is no consolation to someone stunned by an unexpected job loss, or their small startup failing. But in its cold, euphemistic way, I think “market correction” represents the right way to react to predictions of podcasting’s imminent financial doom. That way is this: the podcast money pie is not shrinking, it is returning to its right size.  

I don’t think it’s a contradiction to believe that the podcast space has great value, and that as of 2023 it has been overvalued. Just compare some of those big-name deals with the earnings reports of the companies that made them, and the shows that came out of them. If it has a silver lining, it’s that it’s a chance to focus on building real tangible value in the industry, rather than riding up and down on waves of hype and fear. (Also we can once and for all ditch those godawful celebrity podcasts)

FORMAT: What is a podcast? And should we pivot to video?

Now to say that podcasting died last year depends on how narrow your definition of “podcasting” is. If podcasting is open, RSS-enclosed audio distribution, where small producers can reach huge audiences with a good placement on the Apple Podcasts carousel – yes, you could say that’s dead and gone.

But let’s substitute in a broader definition, one that’s effectively in common use already. “Podcasting” is just on-demand, mostly-speech audio. Whether that’s a half-hour mp3 on my podcast app of choice, a Spotify or Amazon exclusive, a filmed chat show listened to via YouTube, is up to the listener. Now, insert this new definition in, and ask yourself – is on-demand, mostly-speech audio dead or dying? It certainly doesn’t feel like it. And I haven’t seen any data to suggest it (send it my way if it exists!). What I have seen is listeners and downloads trending slowly and steadily upwards. They might access their podcasts in a different format to the tech geeks of 2006, but they’re listeners all the same, our listeners. This is the purest, realest measure for what we do – people listening to shows. If listeners were abandoning podcasts, that would be a cause for concern, if not a crisis. But when more people are listening to more podcasts – and in more ways, across more platforms – the rest is mostly just noise. 

I see this strain of doom as the latest manifestation of those old podcast anxieties – discoverability and reach. “Are enough people listening to podcasts? How can I get people to listen to my show?” That sort of thing. We look enviously at the shareability of other media, the potential for explosive audience growth – RSS feeds just don’t generate huge audiences quickly like TikTokers or YouTube channels. And so, one strain of the podcast doomerism that’s spreading around is the idea that podcasting urgently needs to become video, to become more like the latest hot media. We need to be doing film shoots, not audio recordings. We need to be taking podcasts onto YouTube and TikTok, and playing by their rules. Now, I don’t hate the thinking behind this, but I have some reservations – and I definitely don’t think this anxiety over podcast formats spells the death of podcasting. 

Firstly, I’m old enough to remember the pivot-to-video disaster on Facebook, and this is basically the same argument: to change what you do in deference to the opaque algorithms and analytics of tech giants (which could change overnight with no warning). Look, there have been calls for podcasting to make better use of short video platforms like YouTube and TikTok for a long time. But upending your podcasting practice to chase social media platform trends strikes me as a “fool me twice, shame on me” situation. Secondly, I’ve actually worked in video production, and it’s not a magic cure for problems of discoverability or reach or ROI. It’s a different medium, a whole new ball game. When some audio producers really get a feel for the costs and effort of producing high-quality video, I think you’ll see a lot of podcast people walk back the urgent calls to migrate over to the moving image. And if, as some people say, it’s really just as simple as “throw a static camera into the studio and film the recording” – is this really some revolutionary shift that has doomed the podcasting format as we know it?

It’s a horrible cliche, but this all reminds me of “Video Killed The Radio Star” in the 80s. The point of that little earworm was that the music video was going to revolutionize the pop charts, and all the stars who’d had hits on radio would now need to become on-camera personalities if they hoped to survive in this brave new world. I only bring this up because forty-odd years on from “Video Killed The Radio Star”, we know what happened: the music video was a revolutionary form that many artists rode to success; AND many other artists found huge audiences and had successful careers without MTV airplay at all. I wonder if there’s a lesson in there for us?

GENRE: The podcast mould is cracking

The final strand of doomerism I’ve identified is a lot vaguer and vibes-based than the other two. I’ve talked about podcasting-as-a-business, and podcasting-as-a-format. But I also want to try and articulate a vibe shift in podcasting-as-a-genre (or, as content – but I still have idealistic hangups about using that word too freely). Some of this could be thinking out loud, and there may be tangents. But as someone who works mostly on the creative side of production, it’s something that interests me. Because the way I see it, the content of podcasting is at a turning point. A hegemonic genre and style is losing its dominant position. The golden age of the prestige narrative podcast series is drawing to close.

Now, the Serial-centering origin story of the podcast boom is a cliche at this point. The show comes out in 2014, finds a huge audience, wins awards, and suddenly we have a standard for what this growing wave of podcasting can be. You know the types of shows: limited-run prestige productions; socially-worthy investigations; self-reflexive hosts; a middle-class liberal lens on the injustices of our society. Murders, scams, the American justice system. Coastal American journalists saying “here’s what you don’t know”, “...until one phone call changed everything”, “...or is it?”.

The prestige narrative podcast has been the big genre innovation of the podcast medium. Look at Serial’s various sequels and spinoffs like The Trojan Horse Affair, or similar shows like Sweet Bobby, Teacher’s Pet, In The Dark, Dirty John, Bone Valley. Prestige narrative series have precedents from outside podcasting, but their particular form and flavour is a development that’s unique to podcasting. They’ve captured headlines, transitioned to Hollywood, sparked whatever the equivalent of watercooler conversation is these days in middle-class offices. And speaking from within the industry, these are the kind of shows people hold up as benchmarks. You’ve probably heard the derisive gag, “a group of white bros is called a podcast”. Well, the counterpoint to that kind of show was the prestige narrative series – crafted, thoughtful, important.

But now, this genre form is becoming something of a trope. To explain, let me bring up a movie I recently watched on a plane, 2022’s Vengeance (it’s got BJ Novak from The Office in it). I haven’t seen industry people talk about Vengeance, which is a shame because it’s the first film or TV show that I’ve seen which depicts podcasting and actually gets it. 

In the film, a selfish shallow middle-class New York journalist finds a story about a death in rural Texas. He sees it as a chance to make a broader thematic point about America, and pitches it to a fictional New Yorker mag stand-in. When they sign off, he goes on location with a Zoom recorder to investigate – learning about heartland values and sending his dispatches back to a large editorial team in an expensive open-plan Manhattan office. 

There’s a few twists I won’t spoil, but Vengeance eventually resolves into an ethical critique of the style and viewpoint of these types of shows, how and why they’re made. The movie doesn’t just faithfully depict podcasting, it’s about the podcasting mode. It’s about journalism-as-entertainment, reporter-as-personality, people-as-characters,  everything-as-social-metaphor. And it’s able to be about this mode because it’s that mode is now so formulaic, so tired, that’s ripe for parody.

Tired genre – and potentially risky business. Imagine a 6-episode prestige narrative season that quickly gets 100,000 downloads per episode – a very solid hit, probably enough to push it toward the top of the charts when it launches. But that show has less ad impressions to sell in a year than a niche weekly always-on show with only 12,000 downloads per episode – almost ten times fewer. In theory, the IP behind your prestige narrative could get sold in Hollywood – but on the other hand, it probably won’t. Meanwhile, the steady regular audience for that small always-on show is easier to turn into a paying subscriber base, through Patreon or subscriptions in Apple Podcasts. Then factor in that it’s probably cheaper to produce 52 episodes of a low-quality chatty weekly show than it is to investigate, write, record and mix 6 episodes of our prestige narrative series, and you can see that the numbers don’t really add up, at least if you’re looking for direct, reliable return for your investment. Thinking as a producer, I almost winced in pain listening to the final episode of The Trojan Horse Affair. Serial Productions’ big show of 2022 climaxed with the two hosts getting flown out to Perth, Australia – the most isolated major city in the world – to try, and fail, to talk to a source. Airfares, accommodation and expenses: maybe $10,000. Hours spent interviewing guest: 0. Return on investment: little to none. Unsatisfying anti-climax to your series: priceless.

Now, I love a good gripping serialised narrative as much as anyone. But what I really love, and have always loved, about podcasting as a medium is the potential to do just about anything and take people along with you. Sometimes I look enviously across to YouTube and what it has incubated: new genre forms, new visual language, remarkable creative innovations. Podcasting has provided a nurturing home for prestige narratives like Serial. It’s been a space for them to reach audiences and tell stories and literally change the world. But what will be the next thing to find its home in podcasting? And are we trying hard enough to find it?

That’s the note I’ll end on – not quite doom, maybe more of an ambient disquiet. Because, yes, there are things to be concerned about in podcasting in 2023. But look, we’re already a month into the year, and the sky hasn’t fallen in, right? 

2022: What I heard

I know we’re well into 2023 now and you’ve probably read enough retrospective lists. But some of us (me) were on holidays through December and haven’t had a chance to pull our lists together until now. Better late than never!

For posterity’s sake, here’s some podcasts I listened to for the first time, or that put out a new limited series, in 2022. And, of course, some thoughts I had about them.

The Trojan Horse Affair
Another buzzy one from the Serial team, this time with a UK connection. If you haven’t heard, the Trojan Horse Affair was a British scandal to do with radicalisation within Islamic schools in Birmingham, that has had serious and far-reaching consequences. This series puts forward the idea: what if this whole scandal was obviously based on a load of shit? The producers find themselves taking on the establishment – school administrators, the media, even politicians, are all implicated. And it seems clear that there’s been a mass failure of our institutions in how the scandal was discussed and dealt with.
Unfortunately for the show, the British establishment blob knows exactly how to play a story like this. They close ranks – which you can see in the hysterical condemnation of the show upon its release. And, crucially, they delay and obfuscate. The reporters have to chase in circles through layers of bureaucracy, parse dry administrative documents, and butt their heads against denials and avoidance. Unfortunately, it hurts the show. At times the story is dull and confusing – you wait for the spark of a new bit of evidence to light things up but it doesn’t come. It all fades out with a whimper, an unsatisfying, inconclusive ending. Obviously you don’t know what’s going to come of an investigation when you commit to it. You can only hope it’s full of twists and turns and excitement. But if it’s not there it’s not there. Ultimately I found The Trojan Horse Affair to be a worthy, important piece of journalism that wasn’t super enjoyable to listen to.  

Football Cliches
A football podcast for the sports-hesitant, Football Cliches focuses on the things I truly love about football. That is, weird malapropisms from commentators, meaningless platitudes from players, and firm judgements on what cadence to use when saying “Champion’s League”.
The show’s beat is the way we talk about football, and it’s pitched at just the right intersection of inconsequential and mildly interesting. And even though I still can’t tell any of the male football nerd voices apart, I’ve generally found that the more you listen, the better it gets – consider me extremely invested in the ongoing saga of “cometh the hour, cometh the man”.

Killed
Lots of narrative podcasts end up being meta-narratives – half the story is how they got the story. Killed’s bright idea is to make this explicit from the jump. The show speaks with journalists to tell the stories behind stories that were “killed” – canceled by an editor or publisher. Each episode is a self-contained story with a climax and resolution — for example, episode 1 finds two magazine writers butting up against a metaphorical brick wall as they try to break the story of a sex abuser Hollywood director. I found this much more interesting than hearing another investigative podcast where the host talks increasingly about themselves as their investigation trails off into inconclusiveness (not naming any names). Don’t know why this didn’t get more buzz in 2022!

Fed Up
A nice little show at the intersection of two zeitgeisty topics – scams and social media scandals. What lifted this limited series about a high-fibre diet into a guilty little treat (and kept me listening through a storm of ads) was Casey Wilson’s hosting. If you ever want a good example of what a good presenter can do, listen to how she makes the script sing, and turns stretches of exposition into sheer delight.

Cover Story: Seed Money
This was my favourite traditional narrative podcast of the year. A limited series telling the story of a billionaire accused of sex crimes by a former friend, it begins by letting the listener know that basically everyone they spoke to for this story lied, in one way or another. It’s an intriguing way to set up a show that is ultimately a satisfying mix of hook-y story, sharp writing and dynamic presentation — with just the right amount of personality coming through from the hosts and reporters.

Dig: Sirens Are Coming
Coming from the ABC (the Australian one), this historical podcast about corrupt cops in Queensland is a bit more radio documentary than I normally enjoy. I stuck with it for two reasons: a) the dark history of Queensland police is fascinating and appalling; and b) the authority and expertise of journalist and host Matt Condon. You can tell he lives and breathes this subject, and it absolutely shines through – the kind of well-informed, nuanced reporting that makes you glad for the national broadcaster.

Normal Gossip
If you haven’t heard this show – get out from under the rock. Each episode, the host shares some reader-submitted anonymous gossip with a guest, and we all laugh/gasp/wince in unison. I had a lot of thoughts about Normal Gossip! I think the way they tease out the stories is perfectly pitched, and look, the show’s obviously working, it’s a big success. But I do feel that sometimes the guests add absolutely nothing, to the point of being actively annoying, and I usually find the opening segment where they’re introduced to be slow and skippable. That said, I’m definitely going to keep listening – and it’s also the easiest show to recommend to friends.  

Project Unabom
As a sworn enemy of industrial society, I’ll check out anything that slaps the Unabomber on the cover. And ultimately I enjoyed this Apple Original, even if I thought it needed to pick a focus. Is this a biography of Ted Kaczynski, through the eyes of his brother? Is this the story of the investigation, through the eyes of an FBI detective? Is this a broader look at the social backdrop behind the Unabomber case, and the threads that link then to now? Or is it just… all of these, at the same time? Maybe it was a deliberate decision to cover every aspect and angle of the Unabomber story, switching between and within episodes. But I’m not sure Project Unabom had the dexterity to pull that balancing act off.  

You Must Remember This: Erotic 80s
Probably my personal GOAT podcast delivered one of my favourite series they’ve ever produced – a year-by-year breakdown of a lost genre, the erotic movie, through the 80s. Think Risky Business, Body Double, Sex Lies & Videotape, and so on. This was right up my street, and I think the series did a great job of articulating how the relationship between sex and Hollywood cinema has changed in the contemporary era. Like always, host and writer Karina Longworth goes beyond the cliche and gives you something of an untold history – a fresh perspective on movies and stars you think you already know. I can’t WAIT for its follow-up, Erotic 90s.

A Closer Look: Season 2
They’ve cracked it: a scripted comedy podcast that’s both well-produced and laugh-out-loud funny. A Closer Look’s second season is about the doomed production of 90s sci-fi movie Cyber Cowboys in the Arizona desert, told through retrospective interviews as well as some unearthed archival audio from the set. It had me from the moment when Steven Segal gets into an aikido sparring match with Klaus Kinski’s dead body in his trailer – and if that tease doesn’t pique your interest, nothing will. This was my favourite podcast find of 2022.

2022: What I Did

2022 is in the rearview, and it was a busy one. So busy, in fact, that I haven’t really updated this blog with what exactly I’ve been working on. Better late than never, here’s a quick recap of some professional highlights of the year that was.

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My New Normal

Long time between updates! Since we last spoke I

  • moved permanently to London

  • got a visa

  • got married

  • went on a honeymoon to Scotland

  • had both shots of a covid-19 vaccine

  • visited Devon, Cambridge and Whitstable

  • got a full-time job

So there’s been a bit going on.

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2020 In Review

Hell of a year, that 2020. Maybe one day we’ll look back and laugh — and while it’s not that day yet, I think with the calendar finally turned to 2021 it’s probably safe to write about some achievements from the latter half of the year.

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Podcast birth announcements

In the last few weeks, not one but two of my beautiful podcast babies have been born into the world! 🎉🙌🍾

First up - Thinking Out Loud with Konnie and Liz.

I record, produce, edit and record this show for PodcastWorks, in collaboration with Acast and presenter, author and legend Konnie Huq.

“Thinking Out Loud is the podcast where there are no stupid questions. Every episode, Konnie Huq and her best mate Liz Owens pick a big topic, and share what they know (or what they think they know). Then, they invite a bona fide expert into the studio, to correct mistakes, answer questions, and teach us all some interesting facts. Think of it like a cross between your favourite class at school and a really interesting chat down the pub!”

Next up - Leading Edge.

I recorded, produced and edited the first season of this branded podcast for Henley Business School, in collaboration with their agency, their brilliant academics, and BBC journalist Thomas Mason.

“Leading Edge is a series of podcasts that gets inside the heads of great leaders. Thomas Mason, business journalist is joined by some of Henley Business School’s leading academics to explore and challenge their approaches and perceptions of what successful leadership should and could look like.”

You can listen above via the Omny Player…

Or click here if you’re on your phone, to be taken to your native podcast app…

Or go here for every possible link to the show.

What a treat to work on such varied, interesting productions with smart, excited people. And there’s no better way to learn about podcasting than makin’ ‘em and puttin’ ‘em out there.

Award-winning

I recently got the chance to add a few lines to my LinkedIn after winning big at the 2019 Chip Shop Awards.

The Chip Shop Awards is a no-holds-barred creativity contest. Entries don’t have to run, or even be plausible. Just get the idea, make the thing and enter.

The team at Maple Street Creative did just that and managed to pick up the Chip (ie: gold) in the Best Use of Bad Taste Category, for Backed The Wrong Side?: a speculative ad for Paddy Power making bold use of the Shemima Begum controversy. Have a listen below.

It was a great team effort, and a big achievement flying the audio flag in a competition dominated by graphic design. There were some full hearts and fuzzy heads in the studio the next day.

The Poster Boy For Great Production

Just a quick update to point out that I’m now a cover star on the revamped Maple Street Voices website - a resource for sourcing, booking and recording voice talent for all your audio needs.

Studio sessions come with free, incredibly handsome audio engineers

Studio sessions come with free, incredibly handsome audio engineers

Look at me, knowing what I’m doing with all those knobs and faders!

As a bonus, here’s my profile on the Maple Street Creative page. If you ever need audio production help in London, you could do a lot worse.

Besides starring in the shoot, I also wrote the blurb

Besides starring in the shoot, I also wrote the blurb

The Good, The Bad And The Photos

I spent the end of 2018 in California, road tripping between San Francisco, Palm Springs, Yucca Valley, Joshua Tree, Los Angeles and Arroyo Grande.

We had Christmas in the desert, burritos in the Mission, selfies on the beach and Dr. Dre on the car radio.

The sunshine was gorgeous and reliable - they should shoot movies over there.

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Paris, je t'aime

I visited Paris for the first time this past weekend. In between baguettes, croissants and steak avec frites, I tried a bit of amateur street photography, the City of Light living up to its name with gorgeous sunshine.

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The story behind Julie's story

Watching Julie's Story, it's a nice little video profile. But behind the scenes, this job was actually one of my trickiest production challenges.

That's because it wasn't my job at all, until 11pm on Sunday night before the shoot the next day. That's when my co-producer, who'd been been handling the project, texted to let me know he was in hospital and wouldn't be able to make it. 

He'd been trying to organise the shoot for weeks. The talent was a real person, and worked as a nurse so was hard to pin down. The client also wanted to be there, and their availability had been locked in too. Crew and gear had been booked in for the shoot as well. So, we wanted to avoid the headache of rescheduling.

That said, the director/producer was in a hospital bed. Did I mention the shoot was interstate - an hour's flight, followed by a ninety minute drive? And I had about ten hours before call time?

I booked flights and a car, and spent Sunday night poring over the brief, as I'd need to be interviewing Julie for an hour the next day and I didn't know anything about her.

I got the first flight to Sydney, landed, met the clients, reassured them that I was on top of everything, and headed to the shoot. There, I met the family of four, directed a small two-person crew, and interviewed Julie for an hour, while monitoring sound and with the client looking over my shoulder.

I left just in time to make it back for the evening flight back to Melbourne - a bit stressed and tired, but also relieved.

And the best part is, watching the video, you'd have no idea.  

HOOD TO COAST

Earlier this year I helped my friend Ayub made a video for a Nike employee contest.

We had no time or budget, so I used my personal Olympus OM-D on a dodgy old borrowed tripod, and relied on the golden hour lighting at a nice spot by the banks of the Maribyrnong river.

A little rough around the edges, but with a bit of colour correction it scrubbed up okay, and definitely blew away the other iPhone selfie camera entries.

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