The Big Minute: Recent Episodes
Mark Steadman
In issue 1 I brought you a minute from a sci-fi horror podcast. Well, we’re back there again, only this time it’s way scarier.
I won’t waste your time – if you don’t like horror, this email will have nothing for you! But if you enjoy getting all uncomfortable and wriggly, you’ll enjoy Deviser… if “enjoy” could be considered the correct verb.
I wanted to bring this to you, not because of the gross squishy fleshy sounds or the ooky spooky imagery or the body horror or the animals-and-children-in-peril of it all… it’s because it’s quite a remarkable story, made all the more remarkable by the fact it’s written, performed, and produced entirely by one dude. Now, that’s just unreasonable. Harlan Guthrie, I salute you.
Having dug through a bit of the back matter of this podcast, I was delighted to learn that one of the thoughts that had occurred to me about it was shared by its creator. During the dénouement, I had a thought about AI-generated art, and computers’ attempts to create organic life, at least in 2D form. I’m thoroughly creeped out by most AI-generated faces unless they’re completely perfect. The uncanny valley is very much alive for me, so this story got a little further under my skin.
As someone who’s written and sound-designed his own work of fiction (although it wouldn’t have been right for me to voice it), I know how much work goes into something like this, and how much ability and patience you need to have to get the sound design just right. To be clear, I 100% do not have that patience. Deviser’s soundscape isn’t just gross where it needs to be, but full of little flourishes – little flecks of reality – that don’t strictly speaking “need” to be there, but absolutely serve to bring you further into the world.
So, the minute in question is the opening scene of episode 1. It starts at 2:27 in my copy, and I first took it to be a scene in media res, that we’d rewind and get to later. No spoilers, but that’s not exactly how it pans out. If you’re not too squeamish, take a listen. I’m pretty sure you’ll end up binging the whole thing like I did.
“https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/episode-1-light/id1680747031?i=1000611227095”
Enormous props to Evo Terra for tipping me off to this one, in his newsletter The End. If you enjoy audio fiction of any stripe, you’ll love his rundown of podcasts that are at the end of their season or finishing their entire series.
That’s it. I’m off to look at some kittens and bunnies and pink fluffy clouds so my brain’s full of those things before it decides what dreams to feed me. Have a spectacular week. Keep listening, and I’ll do the same.
What if it turned out you were just a character in a sitcom? Would you be the hero, the love interest, the plucky sidekick, the villain, the henchman, the hapless fool? How would someone review your character arc? Would they find you believable and relatable, or are you a hat on a hat?
This week I’m bringing you some user-generated content in the form of an email, read aloud on a podcast. The podcast is one about podcasting, but it needn’t have been. In it, our hosts discover that – at least in one person’s reality – they are merely characters in a workplace sitcom. The guests they bring along to the show are real, but the hosts themselves are merely works of fiction.
Here’s a bit of the email that was received by the Buzzsprout team, in response to their fortnightly Buzzcast podcast.
The concept of a workplace comedy series about a podcast host startup was certainly a bold (if somewhat obscure) choice, for sure. But they leaned into their own "niching down" mantra and developed the concept for a WKRP In Cincinnati + Frasier radio comedy with "inside the biz" elements of The Larry Sanders Show, with nods to other workplace comedy series like Parks and Rec. And somehow they pull it off! There's enough non-industry banter about the characters' lives outside the show to keep things relatable and the occasional cameo by real-world podcasting figures playing themselves (e.g., Adam Curry, Evo Terra, etc.) provide for many "wink-wink we're all in on the joke” moments.
You’ll hear an abridged version of this email discussed from 50 seconds in to episode 101 of Buzzcast. The reading and their discussion takes about 7 minutes and it’s well worth a listen, but I thought I’d highlight the first bit as it sets us up quite nicely.
I initially thought this was an Apple Podcasts review, and started to wonder whether Marcos, the email’s author, had left similar reviews around the web for other shows.
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In a past life I created the character of Mrs Marginald Biggot, who has in her lifetime written in to my own podcasts as well as leaving a small number of Amazon product reviews. She is a very confused person who lives in a lighthouse, and I love her dearly. Fans of the BBC Radio 4 show I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue will absolutely know the energy she was channelling.
There’s a wonderful intersection in this week’s minute between the world’s of performative comic misunderstanding and dissociation by proxy. Yeah that’s right, I know words.
Just imagine being described as a character, or where your actions fit so squarely into a behavioural pattern that you become an archetype.
And on that note, a quick TV recommendation for you. If you haven’t watched Kevin Can Fk Himself (I’m not being overly censorious; that’s how the show is styled) seek it out wherever you can find AMC shows. You’ll understand why within the first 5 minuets.
Well, there’s lots more audio frolicking to be done and little time to do it in. I’m going to be wading knee-deep into Eurovision over the next couple of weeks in anticipation of the final, but I’ll try not to let any of that spill over into my minute-describing duties here.
See you next week. In the meantime, you keep listening, and I’ll do the same.
I don’t know about you, but I have limited patience for films and TV shows that pile mystery upon mystery, with a promise of resolution that never seems to be fulfilled. There are shows that walk the line really well, like Counterpart and the outstanding Severance. But no matter how many times someone tells me The Leftovers is amazing, I know I can’t trust their recommendation.
A good mystery keeps you hanging just enough to remain curious, then rewards you with a bit of a clue. It’s like a key turning in a lock that then leads to another lock. Get the timing right, and you can signal to the viewer, the reader, or in our case the listener, that you’re in safe hands – that you’ll have questions along the way, but they’ll all be answered to a reasonable degree of satisfaction.
This week’s minute comes to us courtesy of Petrified, a horror anthology podcast set in 1980s Ireland you can binge in a morning. If you’re the squeamish type, this particular episode from March 1st isn’t one that’ll scare you silly or anything. The minute I’m referring to starts at around 12:38 in my copy.
In this scene, we get our first turnkey moment. We’ve been following a young student, broke, and looking desperately for work. When a seemingly ever-lucky flatmate offers her a job in a strange, brightly-lit room, the tension built up by the episode’s little mysteries slackens just enough.
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There’s a real Doctor Who quality about this story that I appreciate. I could see the Doctor sweeping in at the last minute, admonishing Catherine for taking advantage of her flatmate, and using her sonic screwdriver to keep the monster-of-the-week at bay.
And that, my friend, is your minute for this week. If you haven’t yet twigged the connection between the subject linen and this podcast, listen to the episode and you’ll get it. Or if in doubt, just encourage five of your mates to subscribe and good things will happen. On the other hand, I can’t vouch for what might happen if you don’t… 😉
Anyway, lulz aside, have a great week. Keep listening, and I’ll do the same.
The dimly-lit crustpunk bar was not a place where anyone would want to spend their evening, but that’s where Mike found himself, after work, looking for a beer.
He and the bartender were busy ignoring each other when a punk kid sat, a couple of seats down. Without missing a beat, the bartender pointed a finger at the newcomer and said "Get out".
"Hey, I'm not doing anything. I'm a paying customer!" said the punk.
The bartender reached for a bat. "Out. Now."
The punk kid left, although not quietly.
The bartender caught Mike’s quizzical expression, and in answer said "You didn't see his vest, but it was all Nazi shit. Iron crosses and stuff. You get to recognise them."
Mike crooked an eyebrow.
"You have to nip it in the bud immediately”, the bartender continued. “These guys come in, and it's always a nice, polite one. And you serve them because you don't want to cause a scene. And then they become regulars, and after a while, they bring a friend. And that dude is cool too.
“And then they bring friends, and the friends bring friends, and they stop being cool. Then you realise, “oh shit, this is a Nazi bar now”. And it's too late because they're entrenched. If you try to kick them out, they cause a problem. So you have to shut them down."
This little playlet is a dramatisation of a tweet thread posted by @lamRageSparkle (who is sensibly no longer on Twitter). This story was invoked by Mike Masnick in a post for TechDirt, in which he likened Substack to that same crustpunk bar, but without the proactive bartender.
Why? Because Substack’s policy has long been iffy – and now is getting more problematic – when it comes to censorship of hate speech. I’ve “known” for a while that it wasn’t a wholesome place when it came to moderation, but couldn’t dig up any actual evidence.
Which brings us to this week’s minute: from Decoder, with Nilay Patel. The bit in question starts at around 48:04 in my copy, and is the slow melting of a tech CEO under the glare of a journalist that’s about as blazing hot as a desk lamp.
That is not a knock against Nilay. He asks good questions… I just don’t think they’re all that hard.
Essentially, Patel asks Substack’s CEO Chris Best if his platform would censor an overtly racist and inciting comment. The correct and obvious answer is “yes”, and somehow Best manages to completely miss the target. It’s as if he were trying to throw rolled up pieces of paper into a bin, but somehow completely missed the bin and stabbed himself in the eye.
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I don’t know if this is good journalism. Best accuses Patel of asking a “gotcha” question which I think is wrong. Whether it’s good journalism to make the question s personal one, I don’t know. What I do know is that it was a fascinating listen, with Patel not giving any quarter and even calling out how Best was blowing the answer.
I wanted to share it, not because of the sensationalism of it, and not to revel in someone’s epic PR fail. But there are moments in audio when everything else drops away. When you’re no longer folding the laundry, or watching the dog run around, or chopping vegetables, or getting out of your car. You’re still – in a timeless vacuum – just waiting to hear what they say next.
And with that, it’s closing time. Please take your gasses back to the bar. We’ll reconvene next week. So until then, keep listening, and I’ll do the same.
I don’t travel on public transport all that often since my commute is the clichéd ten feet of the work-at-homeer. But in my early days of employment I remember catching the bus to work and back, thinking how cool it would be to carry a Zoom recorder and talk to people.
Well, someone actually did it. And it’s really good.
Where Are You Going? was a radio show from the BBC World Service that’s now been reborn as a podcast. In it, host Catherine Carr interviews people on their way somewhere. She asks one simple question: “Where are you going?” and then follows her curiosity.
In many ways, podcasting was always the right medium for this kind of storytelling. When stuck inside a 27 minute scheduling window, you end up either having to stretch what you’ve got, or cut something good. But as anyone who’s made a podcast for any length of time knows, there’s no such thing as too long, only too boring.
So, to that story I alluded to in the subject line. It wasn’t much of an allusion; the New Yorker Carr interviewed literally said he caught pigeons in the park where he slept, sold them to Chinese restaurants, and used the money to buy crack. That came from the BBC series, but the stories Carr pulls out from people are no less fascinating in podcast form.
As a case in point, the minute I’m bringing you is from 8:20 in my copy, and concerns the story of a gentleman who works on boats owned by the super rich, but whose life story is far from luxuriant. Earlier in the episode we hear about how this man saw two friends die in a horrific accident. This clip sums that up, and offers us some wisdom too.
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The clip ends with the interviewee reminding us that “people don’t know what other people have been through”. I’m thinking about that as I remember the story of the man in the park selling pigeons to buy crack. That man once had a successful carer, and savings that would see him through to retirement.
I’ll be thinking about that the next time I see someone in the street and rushing to judgement.
And on that lofty note, I’ll leave you. Take excellent care of yourself, keep listening, and I’ll do the same.
There’s something wrong with my building. Every so often, at random intervals, a little echoey bleep will be emitted from the communal corridor above my apartment.
I went to investigate it last night, but as I started to zero in, it stopped. Of course it started back up again the moment I shut my front door.
It’s irregular sounds like that that can set a person’s teeth on edge. And it’s in those moments when we need to find peace.
The minute I’m bringing you is from Terra Firma, which is NPR as all hell. It’s a podcast that explores our connection to nature through reflections and stories. Poetry from Indigenous writer C Marie Fuhrman is paired with lush soundscapes recorded by sound recordist Jacob Job. Each short episode combines words and sounds from the nature that inspired it.
I love to hear audio that feels lovingly crafted, where each episode feels like a little hand-wrapped gift. This is prime headphone listening fare, and best done when you’re not going to be disturbed or distracted by anything else.
It’s 10 minutes max of time just for you.
I want to draw your attention to an episode from March 8th. At 1:22 in my copy, you’ll hear a perfect illustration of what this podcast offers. C Marie’s gentle voice carries her beautiful words, as Jacob’s soundscape help us paint our own picture.
If you don’t have time to listen, imagine yourself at the crest of a wooded hill overlooking a gently winding river, with mist-covered mountains further out. Take a seat on a log, and listen to the wind whisper through the trees.
Now enjoy these words from a real writer:
The hillsides are green from a late winter and from heavy spring rain.
Walking the trail to get here, the balsam root air leaf with their sunflower faces made south-facing slopes golden.
When the head of a bloom turns just so, the deep center of brown becomes an eye.
Then it appears as though the entire hillside is arrow leaf-eyed, and I am peering into the heart of the Salmon River Mountains.
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Whenever you’ve got a metaphorical gnat buzzing around in you brain, it’s always nice to have something in your pocket you can turn to – something to pop in your ears to give you a moment of escape. Or something to remind you of the beauty and the peace to be found in outdoor spaces.
Honourable mention
I wanted to give a shout-out to Jodi Krangle of the Audio Branding podcast. Keeping the nature theme going, I want to point you to the first in a run of three episodes about the past, present, and future of sonic warfare.
She explores tactics used by sperm whales and tiger moths, and reaches all the way back to the Bronze Age via World War II to uncover how humans have been using sound to set our minds and our pulses racing.
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Until next week, keep listening, and I’ll do the same.
What is it about some humans that makes them brush their wrongdoings under the carpet and gaslight people into “moving on”? What happens when those gaslighters are enabled by members of the community who were wronged? That’s what we’re getting into in this week’s issue.
The subject matter’s on the darker side, but while there’s violence, there’s a seeking to understand the people who are so quick to want to move on. The pandemic was so mishandled in so many ways here in the UK that there were lots of occasions when our then PM kept telling us, the public, that what the public wanted, was for us to stop talking about what the government screwed up.
Now imagine someone you thought had your interests at heart started agreeing that now is not the time for people to face consequences, but for us to all move on and forgive. Multiply that by the value of a childhood, and you see my point.
In 1997, a gang of older white teens beat a young boy into a coma because he was black. All he was trying to do was put some air in his tyres. One of the attackers was from a family with mob connections dating back to the days of Al Capone. Black religious leaders started calling for reconciliation between both parties, which is where our reporter steps into the story.
Yohance Lacour in his early 20s, living in his dad's house on the south side of Chicago, writing plays, trying his hand at journalism, and selling drugs to make ends meet. The young boy’s beating and the subsequent rhetoric around it was a major sticking point for Yohance.
Now, after serving a 10-year prison sentence for dealing heroin, Yohance returns to Chicago to track down and confront not only the religious leaders who called for reconciliation, but the man pinpointed as the ringleader in the young boy’s beating.
The podcast is called You Didn’t See Nothin, and it’s just wrapped up. The minute I’m bringing you is from the penultimate episode, and it’s a mess. It starts at around 31:11 in my copy, and in it, Yohance confronts the mob-connected ringleader from the beating. The show’s producer accidentally dials the guy’s dad who they’d been in contact with, but the son won’t pick up the phone or talk to Yohance.
Meanwhile, the dad’s on the phone and hears everything, and claims that his son might be too intimidated. It’s tense and chaotic, with Yohance describing the anger and frustration he felt as emotions from the past come flooding back
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The show’s a mix of memoir and investigation. I’ll let you know now that, as with most podcasts like this, there’s no resolution. But it’s a great listen, and very much about the journey rather than the destination.
On a lighter note, this is issue 20 of The Big Minute! I’ve got lots more shows in my queue to review, but do keep ‘em coming. Also, if you want to hear the clips I mention – or you just want to give your eyes a rest – you can follow the Big Minute podcast.
Alright then. You keep listening (to that or to anything else!), and I’ll do the same.
Hey. The language in today’s issue is going to be a bit less playful than usual. Not because I want to be dour, but because the subject matter needs a bit of respect.
I’m going back to British slow journalism outfit Tortoise this week, to bring you a minute from a piece of reporting that uncovers the seemingly politically-motivated closure of the UK’s only gender clinic, the Tavistock. That’s the subject of The Tavistock: Inside the Gender Clinic.
Before we crack on, a couple of things to note.
Firstly, the story in this podcast relates to the UK’s bonkers 2022 when we went through three Prime Ministers in one year. Specifically we’re referencing the Truss government which famously lasted all of 50 days and managed to do even more damage than her party had already done to the country.
Secondly, we’re going to talk about gender and gender identity, but only really on a social level – essentially we’re talking about people and their emotions, not what’s between their legs, which is none of our business.
OK, so with that out of the way, let’s get into it.
The Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation ran their Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) in London and Leeds, with the centre announcing closure in July 2022. The centre has been criticised on both sides, and has come under fire for how young people experiencing gender dysphoria are treated.
What’s crucial about the minute I’m bringing you – which starts at around 25:02 in my copy, and is just before the mid-roll ad break – is how journalist Polly Curtis uncovered what was to replace it, which seems like not enough.
As you might understand – and what I get from my limited understanding – young people may embark on a medical discussion about gender having already socially transitioned. That means they might wear clothes or use a name that better fits the gender they identify with. So before they discuss puberty blockers or other medical interventions, there’s a discussion to be had about how they present.
What journalist Polly and the then head of the Tavistock – also called Polly – hit upon is the government’s seeming desire to reduce or remove support for social transitioning. Whatever you feel about gender, you must surely believe that a person has the right to express themselves. That’s what caught me about this particular minute, and why I wanted to bring it to you.
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Good journalism is thought-provoking. Not in that tabloidy way I think that phrase can be used. Not to stoke controversy for the sake of it, but to genuinely make you stop and think.
When we take polarising viewpoints, we become more and more intrenched. What podcasting allows us to do – because we get right to the heart of a person by hearing their voice – is to connect with an individual story. That shows us the people who make up the faceless swathes who get demonised, lionised, or victimised in our minds. We’re invited to take a look, to take a listen, to engage with someone’s lived experience, not the blurred and smeared version we encounter elsewhere and that so often goes unchallenged.
OK, soap box away. Let’s see what the podcast Gods drop in my lap next week. Until then, you keep listening, and I’ll do the same.
If you read my write-up of October’s Children you’ll know I’m a fan of those ballsy moments that make you go “you’re allowed to do that!?” I also love it when the fourth wall crumbles and we get meta. Today I bring you a moment from undoubtedly the most listened-to podcast I’ve covered, that satisfies both criteria.
If you haven’t listened to The Adventure Zone, you’ll almost certainly have heard of it. If it’s new to you, I’d suggest starting with this season rather than the first, as it’s something like 8 years old at this point.
The show started, as so many podcasts do, on a lark. The McElroy brothers – the Internet’s cleanest boys – already had a successful podcast in My Brother, My Brother and Me. But in 2014 they roped their dad into playing Dungeons & Dragons with them.
That first episode is a bit of a slog, but their DM, editor, and littlest brother Griffin put out a shorter, more palatable version, which – if you’re inclined to start from the beginning – will give you all the important info.
I speed-ran the binge process of this show, starting some time in January 2019 and ending up midway through the year, crying on my sofa listening to the end of their first campaign. I think watching Taako, Magnus and Merle grow up as their human operators became more adept was a major factor in how emotional I felt… and I know I wasn’t alone.
We also got to see the incredible multitudinous talents of Griffin McElroy: character creator, storyteller, musician, sound designer, and podcast editor. That boy put in a serious shift in those early years.
The latest campaign, Steeplechase, sees big brother Justin at the helm. It’s essentially Westworld meets Disney on steroids, with bits, goofs, and japes provided by him, the other brothers, and their dad.
I’m going to blow the spoiler horn now. If you’re not caught up with TAZ and you intend to check it out, then skip on down past the podcast player as I don’t want to ruin it for you.
OK, so.
The bit I’m highlighting is the very last minute of gameplay from episode 18 of the current season. In it, the worlds of Steeplechase and Balance collide, as the characters in this latest campaign meet Taako, the much-beloved level 16 wizard, now turned TV chef, who was played by current-DM Justin. That’s a lot of context, but these are all necessary ingredients for that moment I described, when you put your pinched fingers to your lips and kiss ‘em like a chef.
To be clear, up until this point, there’s been nothing – that I know of – to suggest any of the worlds created in seasons of TAZ share any kind of universe. But as Steeplechase is somewhat a patchwork of and love-letter to pop culture, it kinda sorta makes sense. I am, as the kids say, here for it.
Before I started listening to actual play podcasts, I made my own, and what started out as a silly one-note goof ended up as a sprawling narrative about the nature of storytelling itself. So I know what i means to go meta. I love it, I’m a fan of it, and the fourth wall can be knocked through to make room for a conservatory as far as I’m concerned, as it’s not load bearing.
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I have an imperfect relationship with the McElroys. There exists within me a whole essay about what performative outrage is doing to their brand, and how its echoes are feeding back into the Internet… but you’ll have to get me drunk at a podcast conference to hear it.
Suffice to say that TAZ is a show I look forward to each week. I enjoy Justin’s haphazard DM style, Clint’s earnestness, Griffin’s voices, and Travis is there too.
That’s so mean! I like Travis. I just don’t think he has to try so hard. At least that’s my read… I could be wildly off-base.
Any other business
- Do you have any questions about podcast marketing you’re too afraid to ask because you think you’re “supposed” to know the answer? Here’s a safe space to ask them.
- Our next Vocal Brew virtual meetup is on March 22nd, and will be all about AI in podcasting. I’m pretty bullish on ways we can put AI to good, ethical use. So if that’s a chat you want to be in, come and join us!
- My friend Anya Pearse is an expert on happiness. Each week I tip her upside down and rummage through the pearls of wisdom that fall from of her brain. On Monday 13th we’re talking insecurity, and how we can live with it rather than try and make it go away. Follow the show now – it’s good.
That’s all I have for you this week. You keep listening, and I’ll do the same.x
In the UK we have a phrase: “cockup over conspiracy”, which cautions us against attributing malice to what is probably incompetence. More simply: when your steak comes back well done when you wanted it rare, it’s probably not because the chef doesn’t like you.
This week’s podcast is true crime with a twist, in that it’s less about the crime and the criminal, and a whole lot more about the scientists — and one in particular — trusted to give us impartial facts, free of bias. To go back to the restaurant analogy, this is a story of how someone screwed up a steak order so badly, the wait staff weren’t sure whether it was an equipment error or a gastronomical experiment.
Admissible, produced and hosted by Tessa Kramer, tells the story of Mary Jane Burton, the scientist whose evidence saw 13 men wrongly convicted. In the days just before DNA testing, Burton was considered a hero for saving scraps of fabric and other items in the hopes that science would eventually know what to do with them. But as Kramer’s investigation uncovers, Mary Jane was anything but heroic.
The series is still ongoing so we haven’t really dug into the motivations, and Burton’s no longer around so there’s no way to hear her side of the story. But what it looks like so far is evidence tampering by a forensic scientist, done in the hopes of helping the police close cases.
The minute I’m picking starts at 17:40 in my copy, and it’s a subtle piece of testimony that, to me, explains how miscarriages of justice like these happen over so many years. Someone relatively junior brings a concern to the suits. They don’t want to hear it because it’s inconvenient, so it goes ignored.
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What I appreciate in general about the show is that it doesn’t feel overly sensationalised. There’s a focus on getting to the truth and not on painting Mary Jane as a villain. In fact, episode four goes into her back story, which wasn’t always a happy one.
I’ve been looking forward to covering Admissible since hearing the trailer. I think most true crime podcasts are disposable and salacious pulp, but I like this show’s willingness to get nerdy and process-based… after all, this is all about the process.
Admissible is still ongoing, so you can catch up on the first five episodes now.
As this goes out, I’ll be recovering from my 40th birthday party celebrations. I hope I had a good night. Hopefully I’ll be sober by next Sunday. Until then, you keep listening, and I’ll do the same.
I woke up to a fun surprise in my podcast queue yesterday, which is the subject of this week’s newsletter.
The minute in question is… well, it’s not actually a minute. It’s the entire episode, and it’s just 48 seconds long. It consists of a morse code message over some static, following on – I can only presume – from the previous episode which was all about haunted video games and ARGs.
Digital Folklore is a podcast from Realm. It’s a curious beast in that, like The Witch Farm, it’s a sort of reconstructed or partly fictionalised account of the past. Each main episode delves into a topic of Internet lore, featuring real interviews with knowledgeable people, woven together with a sort of semi-fictionalised narrative. This makes sense, given Realm is perhaps the home of podcast fiction… but it’s maybe a little hard to describe.
I got a real “the game is afoot” vibe from this episode, and it was exciting to see someone mess around with the format. Their previous main episode really got my creative juices flowing, so it was kind of thrilling to receive a little mystery in my queue. I won’t spoil what the message said, but you should check it out. They got my attention straightaway by using Unicode characters to muddy up the episode title.
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There’s a surprising amount of fun you can have with an RSS feed and an MP3 delivery mechanism, if you’re willing to stretch your imagination a bit. That’s why I wanted to include this. I’m sure there are other podcasts with playful and semi-interactive elements, but I don’t come across them often.
If you’re curious about folklore and how it’s moved online, their first episode covered the Slender Man and Momo, two creepy-ass monsters that were made up by the sorts of people who hang out on Reddit and make up monsters. Because there’s an element of performance involved, some of the acting can be a little uneven which slightly sours the milk for me, but they’ve dug into some fun and interesting topics so far, and I love that they’re trying a different approach.
Honourable mention
I wanted to give a shout-out to the Amanda and Trevin of Live, Laugh, Larceny, a celebration of petty crime. I’ve been listening for a few weeks, and while I don’t think it necessarily qualifies for a Big Minute main feature, it’s absolutely worth your time.
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So, that’s all I have for you this week. Keep listening, and I’ll do the same.
Richard Herring is a British comedian who was – as so many of us were – big in the 90s. He’s since been working hard in comedy, mostly hidden from TV audiences. But for around 15 years he’s recorded podcasts from attics, the Edinburgh Fringe, and latterly a fancy London theatre.
Richard Herring's Leicester Square Theatre Podcast (RHLSTP to all the cool kids) is as much of a self-made success as it is possible for a well-known standup comedian to have. The show is also no stranger to personal revelations. In June 2013, a pretty innocuous question led to Stephen Fry talking about a then recent suicide attempt. It ended up being an early example of podcast content making the news… in the UK, anyway.
But it is a comedy show.
One of the long-running stand-out moments for me is when Stephen Merchant returned after around 10 years. The last time he was on, Herring had behaved pretty naughtily and said some stuff that got under Merchant's skin, which hurt all the more as he was a big fan of Herring.
But I promise it is a comedy show.
The minute I'm pulling is a funny one, from a recent episode with comedian Fern Brady. She’s just published a book about living with autism – and being diagnosed later in life – and it’s her neurodivergence that takes up a fair amount of the conversation.
To prove this is a comedy show, the bit I've chosen, starting at 21:10 in my copy, ends with a story about poo.
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The National Health Service is one of the jewels in the tarnished British crown (sitting among all the jewels we stole from other countries). But one thing the NHS doesn't have much provision for is mental health, or diagnosis of neurological difference in later life. I'm pretty certain I'm autistic. I probably have ADHD and I definitely identify as a highly sensitive person (although that's not a medically recognised thing). I score highly on the preliminary tests they make you take for autism, and I've also lived 40 years inside this mind and body so I know that in a lot of cases I'm playing certain situations on hard mode. At some point I hope to pay for a private diagnosis. By the way, have I mentioned you can sponsor this newsletter? lololol.
Anyway… Fern makes a point about people “talking openly” about autism which I think is an important one. She says the issue with that phrase (”talked openly”) is that it suggests neurodivergence should be kept a secret. What I think it takes guts to be open about is the ways in which autistic behaviour can come off. As I write to you now, I'm in the dog house with a date because my inability to remember one particular detail clashed with a need for a solid plan, causing me to make alternate arrangements when I was supposed to have kept my evening open. Totally my fault, but poor action taken based on faulty processing.
I bring that up because it's easier than bringing up some of the flat-out weird stuff I used to do as a kid, and the main point is that autism can come with a lot of shame attached. That's what makes Fern's story so cool – not that she “struggles with autism” (yuck), but that she's cool with revealing some of the stuff she's done that to her feels normal but to others is… well, maybe a bit nuts. That's what was charming AF about this interview.
We're all a bit weird, let's face it. It's just that some of us have got receipts. (Mine are in the post.)
Alright, that'll do it for this week. You take care of yourself. Keep listening, keep being you in all your wonderful weirdness, and I'll do the same.
PS: 10 points to whoever emails back with why I chose that particular cover image.
How many podcasts have you loved that you were initially pretty lukewarm on? I remember I really didn’t like Answer Me This! the first time I heard it… but it was 2007 so there weren’t many podcasts, and by the second episode I was ready to binge.
I’m not quite sure why it took a few mentions of Mission to Zyxx for me to capitulate, but I’m glad I did… and it’s proof that advertising on other podcasts works. I can remember where I was when I decided “fine, I’ll give this silly sci-fi show a try”, and how the night unfolded as I binged the entire first season.
Zyxx is an improvised sci-fi comedy podcast with a narrative arc, which in and of itself is novel enough. Then you add in the sound design – which is borderline obsessive in its detail – and you have something rarer. Then bring in a score honestly worthy of John Williams, and you’re like “OK, at this point you’re selling past the close”. Then you throw in guest stars, recurring characters, hilarious callbacks, truly loveable characters, and you see why perhaps I’ve been waiting for just the right moment to write an issue about it.
Luckily – and for no major reason I can think of other than affection for the fans – the Zyxx team, minus Allie Kokesh, just put out a live recording from San Fransisco Sketch Fest. I’ve picked this minute – starting at around 2:44 – as it does a lot of heavy lifting. It gives us what the team call the “opening crawl” (think the big yellow text from Star Wars, only in your ears) delivered at a breakneck pace, with the attempt of bringing any non-Zyxx fans up-to-speed. Despite having to rattle through a lot of copy, host and co-star Alden Ford absolutely nails the dismount, which you’ll hear if you check out the episode in question.
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You should really take this show out for a binge if you’re not familiar with it. The benefit you’ll have over me is that you won’t have to wait in-between seasons… or endure the three month wait for the final episode. Sci-fi isn’t everyone’s cup of tea but usual binge rules apply: start from the beginning and if you’re not on-board by the first four episodes, you have my permission to bail.
I’m so pleased I let the Fresh into my life, because without this podcast, things would be pretty Whack. I’m eagerly awaiting the special crowdfunded vinyl that’s on its way, with the beautiful orchestral score and other goodies.
It’s been a really fun ride, and I hope they do something again soon.
This week I get to share with you the moment I went from “meh, I dunno if I’m that interested” to being emotionally invested in a piece of metal. That’s partly because my brain’s weird and it loves to anthropomorphise everything, partly because David Pogue who brings us the story has such a wonderful delivery, and in equal measure because he’s a damn good writer.
In episode two of the second season of Unsung Science, Pogue brings us the story of a sub-mission, piggy-backing off the Mars rover project. It’s a little helicopter that flies in Mars’ dense atmosphere, and takes photos of the terrain. It was only meant to last for about a month. It launched in 2021 and is still going.
The harsh winters of Mars froze the electronics, but each morning the little copter would wake up, waiting to receive messages from Earth that never came. I’ll leave the reason behind that for you to uncover when you listen to the episode.
Now I come to think about it, anthropomorphism might well be partly responsible for why a lot of NASA projects succeed. They give so many of these little gizmos names and genders that I think it adds an extra emotional component. They could have seen “Jinny” – the little copter that could – as a piece of disposable tech that could be left to rust after it had served its purpose. But they kept going, kept investigating, and in the end, reconnected.
The minute I’m sharing starts at 35:02 in my copy, and describes the scene just after my little code poem above, where they thought they’d lost Jinny, but manage to re-establish contact. I recommend you spool back a bit too to hear Pogue’s genuine enthusiasm for the story.
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Thanks to David Pogue and the Untold Science team for crafting a great story. And to Sebastian of Find That Pod for bringing this show to my attention – go and subscribe if you haven’t already. Also thanks a little to ChatGPT for some inspiration with my code poem.
Most of all, thanks to you for reading. Keep listening, and I’ll do the same.
END.
Many of us nerds have “a trilogy”. It could be The Lord of the Rings or Star Wars or The Godfather… although probably not as the least said about the third is… you know what? It’s fine, we don’t need to flog that dead horse any more. It’s been through enough, what with having no head and everything.
Woof. It’s the first paragraph and I’m already off-track.
Hullo.
In 2010 I was introduced to The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, and it quickly became my trilogy. It was a dark series of extraordinarily long and detailed novels written by a journalist. One of the supporting pillars of the story is the magazine Millennium, which ran detailed exposés often in the finance sector. (But there’s murder and motorcycles and stuff too.)
When I think about the company behind this week’s podcast, I think about the team at Millennium, doing the legwork to find the stories we didn’t know we should care about, that are often underreported.
The News Meeting is a different take on the week’s news. Rather than breathless reporting or deep investigation, this show pits three journalists from UK news company Tortoise together in a vicious fight to the death to see who will emerge with the biggest news story of the week. And all under the watchful glare of editor James Harding.
OK, so the battle isn’t so much one to the death as it is lukewarmly contested. And Harding doesn’t so much glare as he does… well, sort of choose the news stories he thinks should lead. Look, you’re getting me off track again.
My understanding is that news meetings can be pretty loud and competitive affairs. Each journalist wants their story to get prominence, maybe because it’s a subject close to their heart, or they’ve worked really hard on it, or they just want that sweet, sweet byline. Either way, they’re a lot noisier than this particular news meeting.
If this podcast were a weekly newspaper, each journalist would be pitching their lead story. James has the final say of the running order, but each panelist can pick their favourite (as long as it’s not their own… this is a civilised affair, after all).
The competition element is pretty thin – this isn’t a game show and the journalists are all grownups – but I find it just that little bit of sugar to help the news pill go down. And although there’s a UK bias to the stories, they’re not exclusively UK-focused.
The minute in question is at 2:12 of the latest episode – give or take – but you’ll find it at a similar point in each. It’s a brief rewind of the week’s stories, told through nibble-sized chunks of media coverage. I don’t have full-on synesthesia – the phenomenon where sensory wires get weirdly attached so you can start to “see” music – but I find the rewind sound and the music visually evocative, and I can almost see the news clips being played out.
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I’ve been looking forward to and enjoying the show each week, as it’s not only a novel take on the news, it’s also a chance to hear about stories that can easily get swept away in the daily news torrent.
I like the way Tortoise approaches news. Their podcasts focus on untold stories, and there’s a chance I may cover more of them in the future.
Thank you for your time this week. What’s say you and I do this again next Sunday? In the meantime, you keep listening, and I’ll do the same.
Tata.
Something you should know about me is I’m a big fan of the band Barenaked Ladies. What can I say? Those Canadian boys really spoke to me in the early 2000s.
Their third studio album featured a song about a prototype puppet that was made before Geppetto created Pinocchio. It’s a dark song about jealousy, delivered through gritted teeth. If you’re interested, it’s called Just a Toy and you’ll find it on the Born on a Pirate Ship album.
As I started listening to this week’s featured podcast, that song popped into my head. Eliza: A Robot Story is part love-story, part sci-fi, part political thriller, part psychological drama. It covers coercive control and domestic violence… which is unsurprising when you hear the end credits and get a sense of what fuels the story. There are heart-wrenching moments as we see the very real struggles humans face when in dysfunctional and abusive relationships, viewed through the prism of a collection of algorithms.
Eliza tells the story of a robot who falls in love with a human, from the robot’s perspective. And just as the song Just a Toy starts constrained and then opens out, so this – and the character of Eliza – unfolds.
I haven’t finished the series yet, as I want to give it time to sink in. But it’s something special. It stars Tanya Reynolds and Arthur Darvill who are off-of Sex Education and Doctor Who respectively. I can tell the sound design is good because I haven’t though about it much, which means it isn’t getting in the way of the writing or the performances. The music is well-chosen, and there’s real humour doted in amongst the seriousness. (I won’t go so far as to say “darkness”, although I’m pretty sure that’s coming.)
Actually, the bit about the sound design is vastly underplaying it. What I think I'm saying is that it feels natural and fits so well with the dialogue. It's not the star of the show but it's an essential player.
I’m picking essentially the first minute – bar front matter – of the first episode, as it immediately set the bar and got my attention. Take a listen and you’ll see why.
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That first minute is all writing, but there are others I could’ve picked out that showcased other qualities of the show. There’s a great montage scene set to 80s synth pop in which Eliza details her day. There’s also the constant thread running through the show that we never know the name of Eliza’s owner… he’s simply referred to as “Him”.
So that’s Eliza: A Robot Story. I listened to a show a couple of months ago that also dealt with domestic abuse, and felt compelled to share it… but it felt either exploitative or performative to do so, as it was a true story rather than a work of fiction.
Anyway, provided you’re not too triggered by these kinds of stories, I think you can appreciate – and enjoy – the show for its smart conception, its attention to detail, its great writing, solid performances, and superior production.
That’ll do it for this week. A pleasure as always to be in your inbox. Catch you next week. You keep listening, I will too, and if you have a show you think I should hear, pitch me!
I feel like a man out of his own time stream. Somehow I seem to have Quantum Leaped into a reality in which words I’ve known and used for decades have different meanings.
Take, for example, the word “frown”. In my universe, a frown is quite simply an upside-down smile. It’s a down-turn of the mouth, indicating sadness or confusion.
Apparently that’s also the US definition of the word. If you access Dr Google from the US – as I just did via a VPN – you get this, correct definition:
form an expression of disapproval, displeasure, or concentration, typically by turning down the corners of the mouth.
So far, me, American Google, and the universe are aligned.
But with the VPN turned off, an appointment with Dr Google in the UK reveals very different results:
furrow one's brows in an expression indicating disapproval, displeasure, or concentration.
Both UK and US definitions carry the same examples phrases: “he frowned as he reread the letter” and “a frown of disapproval”, but apparently with quite different meanings.
I first came across this bizarre difference a few weeks ago when hearing John Siracusa relate to his Reconcilable Differences co-host Merlin Mann, that a Brit had told him that frowning had nothing to do with the mouth.
Imagine my surprise. I mean, I expressed disapproval, displeasure and consternation at hearing this. And of course I did so by turning down the corners of my mouth!
“I know”, I thought, “this is just a Brit pulling John’s leg”. John gets frustrated by the differences between US and UK English, and that his co-host Merlin sometimes uses English terms when John would rather he use American ones. So I thought maybe this was someone taking, as we would say, the piss.
But two weeks later, the next episode was filled with people writing in from three angles:
- Americans who were surprised that there could be an alternate definition
- Brits who know that frowning means turning down the mouth
- Brits who think – bizarrely – that no-one would make that facial expression “in real life”.
So enraged was I at this point that this false debate was happening – “why are Brits pretending not to know what a frown is?” I thought – that I took to Mastodon. (Remember when we used to “take to Twitter”? Well now I guess we have to take to Mastodon. So I did.)
I didn’t think much of it after receiving a reply or two and putting my phone away. I’d had nothing from John or Merlin to indicate they’d read my post, so pretty much forgot about it… until one morning, sat on the sofa, when I heard something that made me make an involuntary noise.
You can hear what made me make that noise in this week’s featured minute, from 35:06 into episode #199 of Reconcilable Differences.
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There’s a special thing that happens in the brain when we hear our name mentioned in a podcast or a radio show. I asked ChatGPT to give me a definition:
When we hear our own name, it activates these neural circuits, which in turn can make us more alert, attentive, and self-aware. The anterior cingulate cortex is also responsible for monitoring the environment for important or relevant information, and it is thought that hearing our own name activates this part of the brain because it is considered to be important or relevant information.
I don’t know if my cingulate cortex was stimulated, but I do know that it made me do a little yell-gasp.
I hadn’t really intended to put myself in the middle of this minute, but I’ve been enjoying this ongoing debate about what the word “frown” really means. Honestly, the moment I decided I’d simply slipped quietly through a wormhole in space, I could rest more easily. Almost everyone I’ve spoken to in the UK thinks that frowning is something you do with the top of your face, and that’s fine, because I know that in my timeline, “turn that frown upside down” actually means something.
Let’s do this all again next week. Until then, keep smiling, and I will too.
When I was 27 I stayed in a house in Florida for a few weeks. On the first day I walked around the house, getting a feel for the place and picking out my bedroom. One of the doors I opened on the ground floor led to the garage.
Almost as soon as I opened the door I was met with an intense feeling of unease. It was in the middle of the day, but this dark and empty garage was unwelcoming and almost actively oppressive. It was as if the house was full of joy and light, but nothing hopeful could survive in that garage.
I distinctly remember saying to myself “OK, you never need to go in there again”, shutting the door, and feeling relieved.
I love having the crap scared out of me. Honestly, if I thought there were enough horror podcasts around that met my standards, I’d write solely about them… and probably become very disturbed and difficult to talk to at parties.
This week’s podcast is called The Witch Farm. It comes from the BBC, but it’s a real podcast, not something you have to get a special app for. When picking the shows I cover, I try and think about what independent creators without massive budgets can learn from them. And I think the two biggest things to take away from this show are “use your imagination” and “swing for the fences”.
As you’ll no doubt have guessed, it’s a horror podcast. But it’s not fiction. Well, it’s sort of not fiction. OK, I’ll reset. It’s a paranormal investigation series, covering “Britain’s most haunted house”, a converted barn in the Welsh countryside that from 1989 experienced more paranormal phenomena than you can wave a Proton Pack at.
Each episode advances the story a little, with host Danny Robins playing paranormal Poirot, aided by a couple of parapsychologists and featuring real-life interviews with surviving witnesses, eg: two of the people living there at the time.
But what sets this apart, and what warrants my two takeaways, is that The Witch Farm features dramatic reconstructions of the phenomena covered in the case. Danny and the production team write and produce scenes based on written and verbal accounts. They’re wonderfully sound-designed, and the acting is mostly not too BBC Radio, so it usually doesn’t get in the way of the scaries.
And speaking of the acting, they’ve got proper people in this thing. Joseph Fiennes who you may remember from The Handmaid’s Tale, and Alexandra Roach, who I remember from the Channel 4 series No Offence… plus, I think, the guy who does the Deliveroo ads here in the UK, but that’s another matter.
Dramatic retelling aside, what I also appreciate is the sense of pace. It doesn’t feel like a historical retelling, but an active investigation. There are a couple of update episodes where Danny and the parapsychologists take questions from the public, and they’ve been keen to keep that conversation going.
If scary things scare you, then don’t listen to this show. But if you’re up for some jumps, the minute I’m bringing you this week is from episode 6, around the 4:48 mark in my copy. It speaks to a fear I think we can all relate to. I mean, don’t tell me you haven’t at one point in your life gone for a wee in the middle of the night, and had to talk yourself back to bed so you don’t freak out. Anyone? Hello!?
One other brief note of praise: I finished the series on Wednesday night, but I can still hear the theme music. It’s wicked.
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Thanks to my mate Caroline Beavon for clueing me into this exceptional show. Since binging it, I’ve moved on to its spiritual prequel, The Battersea Poltergeist, which is made along similar lines. It’s highly enjoyable, but you can hear how the team’s craft has advanced since then.
And one other quick note. I highly enjoyed this show but I had no idea it existed, and probably wouldn’t have found out about it at all, had it not been for Caroline. This is why word-of-mouth trumps everything.
So that’s our first week of January down. Well done everyone, I’m proud of us. Let’s keep that energy up for the next 51. You take care of yourself, keep listening, and I’ll do the same. And stay out of that garage. Also don’t have nightmares. OK bye. x
I don’t know about you, but I feel like 2022 has outstayed its welcome. 2023 is laying like a coiled spring and I’m not quite sure which way it’s gonna go, but I hope it brings you only good things.
And speaking of good things, today I bring you the very last minute of the last in the current season of Within the Wires, an epistolary anthology published by Night Value Presents, that’s been going since 2016.
Incidentally, “epistolary” refers to a piece of fiction written to sound like correspondence (letters, or in our case, audio recordings). And yes, I did look it up, what is it to you? And who are you calling defensive?
I was completely new to Within the Wires before embarking on this project, so I’ve enjoyed taking this latest season on a walk with me. It’s a story about love and loss, set in a sort of post-revolutionary unified state, with a peppering of international travel.
It’s written by Jeffrey Cranor and Janina Matthewson. Its found-footage format makes it easier to get behind than a lot of audio fiction, as there’s no reliance on sound effects. It’s really just April Ortiz’s voice guiding the tape’s recipient from place to place.
I don’t think the last minute counts as a spoiler, but I’ll put up a warning flag just in case. If you’ve ever watched The Shawshank Redemption, maybe you remember the bit right at the end where – spoilers again – Red goes to meet Andy in the Mexican city of Zihuatanejo, where, as the title of this issue suggests, they say the Pacific “has no memory”.
Cranor and Matthewson do a lovely job of capturing that spirit, but without giving us a solid conclusion. The whole season is a sort of cat-and-mouse game, with our guide being one or two steps ahead, but with us always catching up. So it’s fitting that at the end, we don’t really know if Anita – the person the tapes were left for – ever gets to meet the person who made them.
Like with Abandoned, the sweat has gone into the writing, with only the occasional bit of music.
If you like fiction that presents you with missing puzzle pieces and invites you to bring your own – or leave the puzzle unfinished – I think you’ll enjoy Within the Wires.
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I chose this minute for this particular issue because of the uncertainty is presents. It’s not wholly optimistic, but sensitively open-ended. In some ways it marks the end of one journey – the journey we get to hear – but could open up a whole new adventure… we just don’t know.
I hope you’ve had time to reflect on the latest leg of your own journey, and you can take a moment – if you haven’t already – to lace up your boots and shrug on your backpack as we all go trudging up 2023 to see what we find.
It’s Christmas day, and have I got a ruddy bloody good treat for you! As you read this, I plan to be knee-deep in goose fat roast potatoes, my mouth smeared with gravy and the words “go on then, I’ll have another Bailey’s” forming on my lips. I’ve been planning this issue for almost as long as this newsletter has been alive, so let’s dig in.
Now, this one needs a bit of a setup. Every year, British comedy trio Pappy’s do a Christmas edition of their Flatshare Slamdown live panel show which is, quite honestly, a highlight of the season for me.
At the end of each show they do a quickfire round where panelists have to buzz in with the correct answer to a stupid question (sorry Matthew). In their festive edition, they augment it with a rendition of the Twelve Days of Christmas, where each question is a phrase that has a vague assonance with a line from the song.
For example, this year’s “five gold rings” question was “he’s got a very cool name and he was the second man on the moon”, to which the answer is of course “Buuuuuuzz Aaaaaaaaldriiiiiiiiin”… and so on, all the way up to “twelve lords a-leapin’”, which is the minute I’m sharing.
Quick content note: the lads who put the show on are warm and cuddly and their hearts are pure, but after a few eggnogs — eggs-nog? — things can get a bit bawdy and a little less than pure uncut woke. So if that’s not your bag, that’s cool, but try and keep a sense of fun and humour with you and remember that a joke doesn’t always have to have a victim.
With that said, your festive minute for this week starts at the 1:32:27 mark in my copy. It’s very British. Strap in.
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On a personal note, I’m hoping to move to Brighton in 2023 and will do everything in my power to make it to a live recording. If you like British humour and know what a radio panel show is, run — don’t walk — to your local podcast outlet and pick up a copy of Pappy’s Flatshare Slamdown. They’ve been doing this for over 10 years and while they’re not unknown to comedy fans here, they deserve a lot more love. And while you’re at it, why not sling them a vote in the National Comedy Awards?
Right, I’ve got a chocolate log cooling in the kitchen so I’m going to go check on that. You have a lovely break and we’ll check in again next Sunday. In the meantime, you keep listening – I will too.
Take care. x
It’s Christmas day, and have I got a ruddy bloody good treat for you! As you read this, I plan to be knee-deep in goose fat roast potatoes, my mouth smeared with gravy and the words “go on then, I’ll have another Bailey’s” forming on my lips. I’ve been planning this issue for almost as long as this newsletter has been alive, so let’s dig in.
Now, this one needs a bit of a setup. Every year, British comedy trio Pappy’s do a Christmas edition of their Flatshare Slamdown live panel show which is, quite honestly, a highlight of the season for me.
At the end of each show they do a quickfire round where panelists have to buzz in with the correct answer to a stupid question (sorry Matthew). In their festive edition, they augment it with a rendition of the Twelve Days of Christmas, where each question is a phrase that has a vague assonance with a line from the song.
For example, this year’s “five gold rings” question was “he’s got a very cool name and he was the second man on the moon”, to which the answer is of course “Buuuuuuzz Aaaaaaaaldriiiiiiiiin”… and so on, all the way up to “twelve lords a-leapin’”, which is the minute I’m sharing.
Quick content note: the lads who put the show on are warm and cuddly and their hearts are pure, but after a few eggnogs — eggs-nog? — things can get a bit bawdy and a little less than pure uncut woke. So if that’s not your bag, that’s cool, but try and keep a sense of fun and humour with you and remember that a joke doesn’t always have to have a victim.
With that said, your festive minute for this week starts at the 1:32:27 mark in my copy. It’s very British. Strap in.
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On a personal note, I’m hoping to move to Brighton in 2023 and will do everything in my power to make it to a live recording. If you like British humour and know what a radio panel show is, run — don’t walk — to your local podcast outlet and pick up a copy of Pappy’s Flatshare Slamdown. They’ve been doing this for over 10 years and while they’re not unknown to comedy fans here, they deserve a lot more love. And while you’re at it, why not sling them a vote in the National Comedy Awards?
Right, I’ve got a chocolate log cooling in the kitchen so I’m going to go check on that. You have a lovely break and we’ll check in again next Sunday. In the meantime, you keep listening – I will too.
Take care. x
This week, I’m bringing you a minute of uninteresting, unremarkable, almost infuriatingly sparse audio. As soon as I heard it, I thought “this has to make it into a Big Minute issue”.
Hullo. How’s your week been? Mine has been cold. Really, really cold. Like, I’m thinking of investing in fingerless gloves kind of cold.
I haven’t been listening to as many shows this week because I’ve been replacing my outdoor strolls with indoor cycle rides, and I’d rather watch TV game shows when on the bike.
But the show I’m bringing you this week has been brewing for a while. I’ve enjoyed it since episode one, despite – or perhaps because of – its imperfections.
October’s Children is a fun, colourful, almost achingly right-on horror mystery about a strange disturbance in the New England town of Wolfbrook.
I won’t go over too much the things I don’t love about it, as they’re not really important. I don’t think the podcast takes itself too seriously, and the unevenness in its execution is offset, for me, by the cast of characters we meet along the way.
There’s Ollie, the proprietor of the Unhallowed Grounds coffee shop (who is begging to be played by Natalie Morales), the mysterious Samuel who is as New England as it gets (”ayuh”), the beleaguered professor and Mrs Castellanos, who’s as old as she is sex-positive… which is very… she is very both of those.
So, the minute in question starts at around the 17:55 mark of episode 4, and is literally just the sound of someone ringing a doorbell. For a whole minute. I just love the balls on it.
If you can’t already tell, I think this show is charming as hell. I don’t mean that to be as condescending as it might come off. If a show isn’t meeting my needs – especially if it’s fiction – I hit the ejector pretty quickly, but the story, the characters, the humour, and the purple dialogue are what’s keeping me going, and looking forward to new episodes.
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Incidentally, I Googled it, and “purple dialogue” is not a thing, but I couldn’t find a better phrase for it. Purple prose is that sort of flowery writing you get in some fiction – like the written equivalent of an overelaborate drum fill. Couple that with the sort of verbose monologues you get from Kevin Smith characters and you get what I mean. I’m entirely here for it.
October’s Children is taking a break for the festive season, so you’ve got plenty of time to catch up on the first seven episodes – plus a bonus episode I haven’t got my head around yet – before the final three episodes. Go check it out – you deserve a bit of fun.
I, however, will be back next week, so until then, keep listening, and I’ll do the same.
I started learning the guitar in 2020 – electric first, then moving over to acoustic. I can bang out some three- and four-chord wonders, as long as they’re in G, D or A. I’m even working on my first song in a few years, composing it on my cute new acoustic.
Between lessons, equipment, and of course instruments (I’ve upgraded both my electric and acoustic), I’m probably out nearly £3,000 in three years.
Now, swap the guitar and amp for a microphone and a hosting account, and I’d be insisting that this hobby start “paying its way”. I’d be expecting Patreon backing or coffee donations.
Of course that’s not to say we shouldn’t be able to make money from passion projects if we want to – case in point: the ad in this week’s issue – but our side-hustle, gig-economy culture is leading us to expect our creative endeavours to become an income stream when really, we’d hope that we were doing it for the love.
I’m not playing the guitar so I can upload my covers to YouTube or release my next EP on Spotify. I’m doing it so that one day I can be drunk enough to pull out my guitar at a party, and everyone can sing along to something in G.
That’s why I appreciated the conversation in the latest episode of Well… Adjusting. I’ve been listening for a few weeks and have enjoyed host Robin Hopkins and producer Steph as they chat with a variety of people on topics like money stories, grief, and neurodivergence.
There’s a real fizz to the show that I enjoy. Robin lets us know early on that we can expect the kind of late-night-at-the-bar conversation, and the show manages to bring a heightened conversational feel without it relying too much on the “we’re all just sharing a bottle of wine and shooting the shit” trope.
The minute I’m bringing you is from episode 8. The episode is a discussion about the whole white picket fence, corner office, corporate ladder, American dream thing. This is something guest Sam rejects as a default setting, and host Robin can completely relate. I can too.
But the minute I wanted to bring you – for me it starts around the 22:45 mark – is almost a parting shot from Sam:
Everything’s a side hustle right now! And I want us to get away from it, unless you genuinely like turning it into a side hustle, you can do something that you like doing just for fun.
What caps it is Robin’s response:
Yeah. I think you should take on being a voice, like your slogan should be “Don’t monetise this.” And make t-shirts. But then, you see, I just turned it into a business!
Ain’t that just how it goes?
Thanks to Melissa at EditAudio for cluing me into this show. If you edit interview shows, there’s plenty to learn from the pacing of this one. And it’s worth remembering that if you have a podcast and you want to showcase your knowledge or expertise, you should take time to switch the focus to you – even just for a bit – so people get to hear what you have to say, and what you learned from the conversation.
Follow the podcast
I asked Robin about the whole monetisation thing, and you can hear what she had to say on the Big Minute podcast.
That’ll do it for this week. I’ve got lots more shows to listen to, and I look forward to sharing my next discovery with you. Take care, wrap up warm, and I’ll be back in your inbox next Sunday.
Abandoned spaces fascinate me. For some reason, I always picture long, echoey hallways, peeling paint in muted colours, sunlight somehow feeling like it’s intruding as it gets into all the empty nooks and crannies that should be taken up by human bodies.In my late teens I came across Session 9, a psychological horror set in an abandoned mental institution. One of the characters had nyctophobia – fear of the dark – a fear that pokes its head out every so often and reminds me that I’m not so much an adult as three toddlers in a trench coat.Anyway, we’re not here to list things that scare your editor; we’re here to talk about podcasts!Hullo.I’m pleased this week to bring you a podcast that blurs the boundaries between things imagined and things solid. Abandoned: the All-American Ruins Podcast explores spaces lost to capitalism. In episode 9, The King of Letchworth Village, host and writer Blake Pfeil takes us gently by the hand and walks through an abandoned psychiatric hospital.We don’t just visit this space as it is in 2022, but take a wander back to its “hay day”… if that’s the right term. The gradual filling-in of the skeleton – as people and things from the past slowly materialise – reminded me of those scenes from The Shining when Jack meets the barman and other staff from the Overlook hotel’s bygone era.But what begins as maybe a little eerie ends with a beautiful, and very real moment between Blake and his new imaginary friend Carl, pictured in the photo that accompanies this issue.The minute I’m bringing you starts at 23:12 in my copy. It’s beautiful, tender, with vivid word paintings and gentle sound design. It might have helped that I was walking in nature when I heard it, but I really felt a sense that I was there, and enjoying this bittersweet moment, and what felt to me like the end of a short-lived love story.To me, this demonstrates what separates good narrative podcasts – fiction, non-fiction, or somewhere in-between – from mediocre ones. Everything has to hang on the writing. It’s not the only thing that matters, but it’s the first and most important thing. Music, sound effects, and performance are vital ingredients, but are all in support of the words.[podcast "https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/s01e09-the-king-of-letchworth-village/id1618595497?i=1000584064767"]Blake got in touch to tell me about his podcast, and I’m glad he did. You can too, if you have one you’re working on.And if you’d like to hear from Blake himself, the Big Minute podcast goes behind the scenes and into the writing of this episode, with an interview that is – in keeping with the theme – a minute long. 🙂Thanks for reading, and for listening. I’ll keep doing the same. Have a tremendous week, and we’ll catch up again next Sunday.x
Hullo. I can’t believe this is only issue #3. It feels like we’ve been doing this for ages. This week I have the privilege of talking about great journalism. The podcast in question has wrapped, barring any new developments in the case. It’s a story of wrongful conviction and what amounts to a miscarriage of justice. Unlike that other show – you know the one – there’s no pretence at impartiality here. We’re told right from the off that this guy didn’t do it, and there’s credible evidence to at least stand up a new trial. As I’ve read in other publications, with this podcast, the judicial system is what’s on trial. The podcast in question is Bone Valley, from Lava for Good. Gilbert King introduces us to the story of Leo Schofield, who’s currently still in a Florida prison for the murder of his wife in 1987. It feels a bit crass to blow the spoiler horn for something that happened in real life, but that’s what 21st century media consumption habits say is appropriate. So from here on out, I’m going to be dropping some significant, but not appreciation-destroying spoilers.
With his assistant Kelsey Decker, Gilbert combs through years of court transcripts, re-examines evidence, and interviews witnesses and – crucially – the two men at the centre of the whole case: Leo Schofield (the accused), and Jeremy Scott, the man who confessed to killing Leo’s wife. The minute I’m sharing with you is from chapter 6. It’s a striking and raw retelling of the moment Leo and Jeremy cross paths on the way to and from the courthouse. If you’ll allow me, let me present some tasting notes for this piece of audio, which starts at around 1:03:25. Without the context of the five preceding episodes, you might listen to this and think “well that’s just the angry words of a violent killer”. I think you’d be wrong to think that. What I hear in this clip are the words of a desperate man, a man whose development has been arrested through incarceration, contemplating a meeting with the man who stole two lives from him: his wife’s and his own. The only thing we hear apart from Leo’s voice and a little shifting-in-place, is a few quiet strums of a guitar. There’s no fancy effects, no adornments whatsoever. Just someone exposing a raw nerve. What this teaches me is the value of building trust with your guest over a long period of time. Whether you’re interviewing someone for one episode or ten, if their story is impactful but doesn’t immediately unravel, no amount of clever questioning will get you a truthful answer. It has to come from someone willing to listen without judgement, and lead with curiosity. [podcast "https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/chapter-6-know-that-i-know/id1643974551?i=1000581701241"] To my implausibly-sized chagrin I failed to note down where I found out about Bone Valley. I could’ve sworn it was the Find That Pod newsletter, but my archives say otherwise. Let’s just say it was that newsletter… it’s a really good one anyway. Next week we’re taking a trip that glances ever-so-slightly off Spooky Street but ends up squarely in Charming Crescent. Oh and by the way, I’m beta-testing a podcast version of The Big Minute. If you want to hear the clip in question – and some podcast-exclusive stuff in future episodes – you can plug the RSS feed (https://thebigminute.com/rss/) into any standards-compliant podcast app. Once it’s ready I’ll publish to Apple, Spotify, and the like, and if you want to arrange a promo swap, hit Reply! So, let’s you and me meet same time again next Sunday. Have a great week.
Hullo, and welcome to issue #2! Thanks to everyone who’s had such kind things to say about this new venture. This week, we’re taking a considerably cheerier tone than last week, as I highlight the closest thing podcasting has to a BBC Radio 4 panel show. It’s taken a few years, but someone’s managed to tempt Tom Scott back to podcasting, and he hasn’t missed a beat. I’ve been following Tom’s work since 2011, from tech tinkerer to web toy maker to explainer-of-computer-things to YouTuber, via occasional stints as podcaster and TV personality. In Lateral, Tom brings on fellow Internet people to solve lateral thinking puzzles in the form of questions from history. It’s a bit like that riddle that ends with “the doctor was a woman!”, but with fewer gender role assumptions. So, before we go any further, I’m going to pose a question to you, the answer to which is in this week’s highlighted minute, and is also further down in this post. If you want to play along at home, see if you can solve this puzzle, and note how long it tskes you. A US company devised its new logo when it had three stores. They planned to update the logo regularly but soon dropped the idea when they expanded too quickly. Which company was it, and what was the gimmick? The minute I’m presenting is from episode 5, starts at 16:35, and isn’t exceptional audio but emblematic of that moment when you absolutely, categorically know the answer, but the people in your ears are refusing to pay attention as you scream at them from the future. If you thought I was tense listening to the description of a manky rat last week, that’s nothing to the feeling of gritting my teeth and saying “I’ve got it! I’ve got it” under my breath and disturbing the other people in the sauna. This minute makes me think about some of the factual audio I edit, which can sometimes be a little too lean for its own good. This episode – and really, this podcast in general – is a lot less fun without some moments of brain-wracking. If nothing else, it makes the solution they happen upon even the sweeter when it comes. For what it’s worth, it took the panelists 6 minutes to work it out. If you enjoy wrapping your brain around a problem – most of them are far more obscure – and enjoy some mild banter, you’ll appreciate Lateral. [podcast "https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/5-when-time-goes-up-to-30-oclock/id1648140033?i=1000585885926"] Again, props go to Podnews for bringing this new show to my attention. I’ve not heard anything that would make it unsafe for kids, so it could be one for the school run. Plus, aside from owning more red t-shirts than I’ve eaten pizzas, Tom Scott is probably the closest thing the British YouTube-watching generation has to Stephen Fry. So, have you figured it out yet? Well, if you’ve listened to the clip or picked up on my clues, then you’ll already know. But I’ll tell you, the answer is the pizza chain Domino’s, the app for which I’ve had to remove from my phone to stave off diabetes. They designed their logo so that the dots of the domino would reflect the number of stores in their chain. But once they hit 13 stores, that idea would’ve had to go out the window, so they’ve just stuck with three. I guessed Domino’s after about 30 seconds, and only became more sure as the episode progressed. Did you get it, and if so, how long did it take you? Drop your time below! 👇 Well, that’ll do it for this week. Enjoy the rest of your Sunday, and if you have any suggestions for shows you’d like me to cover, send them in! Take care, and I’ll check in with you next Sunday. xx
Hullo. This is officially issue #1 of The Big Minute, and I’m gonna level with you: this first minute is… well, it’s a lot. It’s from The Callisto Protocol: Helix Station. The subtitle is due to the fact that this is a companion podcast to a new sci-fi horror video game, which bares a resemblance to Dead Space (a game I played and enjoyed back in the day). One thing you should know about me is I’m incredibly fussy about audio fiction. It’s difficult to strike the right balance between a script that’s descriptive but not clunky, sound effects that don’t feel like someone’s just hit Play on “Spooky Manor Sounds vol 4” and acting that doesn’t sound like a corporate orientation video. Where I find the acting in this podcast to be a little “big” – these are video game characters after all – I forgive it because of its plot, its imaginative storytelling, and its superb sound design. The minute I’m bringing you is from episode 2, and starts at 9:01. The scene starts off as Die Hard in Space, with our gang crawling through the arteries of an abandoned space station. We’re told very little about the station, except that a very bad thing happened, and a lot of people got unpleasantly, and permanently dead. The minute starts with our heroine – played by Brienne of Tarth – coming upon a rat who is very much worse for wear. If you’re squeamish, I won’t go into any more detail and I’ll advise you not to listen to the clip or the podcast. But I picked this minute because it’s a spine-tingly, goose-pimply bit of grotesque horror. That might not be your bag, but what it does, it does very well. It paints vivid pictures, and although I’d like the acting to be turned from 11 to a cooler 8, what makes it are the vivid descriptions and unsettling sound effects. The music is a little on the “bwaaarp” side, but it works, and those squeaky rat noises… now, I’m not afraid of rats but I can see how, if you were, these might give you the heebiest of jeebies. I’m guessing it borrows its sound design from the team behind the game, as it does the cast. For me though, the writing does the heavy lifting here. Creating such rich imagery primarily with dialogue is difficult, so I appreciate how the writers have managed to skirt around some of the more obvious exposition traps. We don’t usually go around describing things to our friends when they can fully see them too, so I’m always impressed when dialogue writers can figure out how to do this well (see also the “As You Know, Bob” trope). On that note, I’ve been impressed by both episodes’ ability to tell an unfolding story in a way that keeps the listener intrigued, and to paint an engaging and sometimes emotive picture in the mind. The main character’s arc covers substance abuse, we have some unreliable narrator tropes, and flashbacks are impressively audibly signposted. I’m intrigued to hear how the rest of the season unfolds. If I were picking nits, I might advise the writers not to put American words in British mouths… we can’t say things like “god dammit” or “asshole” without it sounding, well, pretty rum me ol’ spoon. [podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/episode-2-shipwrecks/id1652789325?i=1000584880968] Thanks to future sponsor Podnews for including this podcast in their feed of trailers, which is what brought the show to my attention. If you know of a fiction podcast that can meet all my picky standards, post it in the comments! And 10 points if you got the “Ben” reference in the title. And congrats, that makes you officially old, just like me. Rat’ll do it for now. Catch you next Sunday!
Hullo, and welcome to the very first issue – or perhaps issue #0 – of The Big Minute, an exploration of what "good podcasts" sound like, one minute at a time. Each Sunday I'll highlight a minute of audio from a recent podcast episode, tell you why I like the show, and why I thought that particularly minute was worthy of mention. It's partly recommendation, partly critique, and partly a way for me to take my keyboard for a dance. So, let's get into it.
This inaugural snippet is courtesy of The Allusionist, Helen Zaltzman's love letter to language. In "Rhino Borked Guy" from October 21st, Helen tells three stories about people whose names have become eponyms (ie: they've had something named after them). If you don't want to hear about how Guy Fawkes was treated after his group's failed gunpowder plot, you can skip the second story. The first is about a rhino in Brazil, and the last is a politician by the name of Bork. If you came up around the late naughties, you've probably heard the term "bork" or "borked" as a synonym for "broken" (because misspelling things is fnu). But if you swam in US political circles, you might have a different attachment to the word. Similarly, if you're a bit older, maybe the Swedish chef is what you think of... unless you're Swedish, I suspect. The minute I'm highlighting in this episode starts at 33:17, and is a lovely bit of nonsense, 7.14% of which is just Helen saying the word "bork". (That's an accurate number, by the way... thanks to Helen for publishing the transcript of the episode). Anything that makes someone want to respond "can everybody stop saying 'bork'?" is going to get an okey-dokey from me. And Helen has a knack for deadpan delivery that helps to undercut the NPR-style loftiness with a little wryness... just like a glob of compote in your word yoghurt. [podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/163-rhino-borked-guy/id957430475?i=1000583542922] If you don't know already, Helen is one of the best people in podcasting. She's been doing it since before it was cool to say she was doing it before it was cool. The Allusionist is a lovely pocket-sized playground of words, names, and linguistics. Her husband Martin Austwick does the music, and there are over 160 full episodes for you to dive into. One that always sticks out in my memory is episode 33, which explores the different attitudes Brits and Americans have to the word "please". The show is back on the road again in December, so if you're going to be in Toronto, you should check it out.
So there we have it. This is a sort of pilot issue, so I'll be getting my listening gear around some new releases in the coming days. I'll be back on Sunday, and in the meantime if you have any suggestions, dro me an email. Lastly, I'm trying something different as a way of funding the newsletter. If you'd like to sponsor an issue, you can do so for just $1. But only the first person will get the slot at that price. After it's gone, the next slot will be $2. After that's gone, the next slot will cost $3, and so on and so on until the only people in the world with any money will be me and Stripe. (Rest assured, I only plan to have one sponsor per issue.) If you haven't already subscribed to this newsletter, go and do that now. I'm almost certain you won't regret it. Take care of yourself, and we'll chat next Sunday.