HAVE YOU HEARD? // This Game Changed My Life

Have You Heard? is a series in which the team from Pod Bible meet the people behind the podcasts you may not have heard of yet. While the Oh. My. Pod. section in the magazine gives a quick shout out to shows of that ilk, Have You Heard aims to go deeper in an effort to spread awareness for shows that deserve more exposure! In this edition we sat down with Aoife Wilson and Julia Hardy to discuss their podcast This Game Changed My Life, which comes to BBC Sounds on March 26.

What is it about podcasts that appeals to you?
One of the best things about podcasts is that it can be quite an intimate medium. You are in someone’s ear and so close to them, more than you can do with TV content. You get the opportunity to really burrow an idea into someone’s brain!

If you could go back to just before you recorded the first episode of your podcast and give yourself one piece of advice, what would it be?
Bring more snacks! Also trusting our instinct and chemistry because that is one of the unique things about our podcast is the fact that we are best friends in real life and we know each other really well. We found the more recording we’ve done, the more comfortable we felt interjecting more of ourselves into it.

What makes a great podcast guest?
Someone who is willing to allow themselves to open up and trust that we will treat their story with respect because some of the things we are talking about on our podcast are very intimate moments from people’s lives. 

What makes a great podcast host?
Being nosy and having never ending amounts of questions about everything. 

What’s been your worst podcast moment?
The worst and funniest moment from recording the podcast was when Julia was interviewing someone over the phone, having a really in depth discussion and Aoife burst into the studio and made a really funny noise. It was really funny, the colour just drained from Aoife’s face when she realized I was on the other line. I think we still have the recording of it somewhere!

What is your podcast/podcaster pet peeve?
Over-editing. It’s sometimes nice to just listen to podcasts that let conversations breathe and think if you trust in your story and content, then sometimes you don’t need a lot of sound effects. There’s strength in just letting it be.

Is there anything you found annoying as a podcast listener… but then understood when you started making your own?
Trying to stay on target about what you are talking about is challenging and I’ve started to understand how annoying it must be for our producer every time we just go off on a tangent. 

Which one podcast episode of your own means the most to you?
That’s like choosing children. There are some really important and precious ones for lots of different reasons, some of the stories that we’ve been trusted with are so powerful and it’s hard not to be affected by them, but we did also get to meet Charlie Brooker which was really cool.

Which one podcast episode (not of your own) has had the biggest impact on you?
Julia: I listen to old school podcasts like TED Talks and there’s too many of them to choose.
Aoife: A Reply All episode called Autumn, about a girl who created this world in The Sims to spend time with her grandmother after she passed away. It was this beautifully told story about grief and a coming of age tale. 

Finally, what are your plans for the podcast moving forward?
We are going to run out of stories to tell, so it would be great to have a season two to show more of the incredible impact that gaming has on people’s lives. We are hoping that after people listen to season one that it will open their eyes to the fact that gaming is so much more than what is usually covered.

You can follow Aoife and Julia on Twitter and subscribe to the podcast on BBC Sounds.