Those familiar with nonfiction audio documentary maker Jess Shane, may know her as the producer of BBC 4 Lights Out: Accounts and Accountability which explored the ethics and monetary value of storytelling, so this is nothing new to Jess. In the five part series Radiotopia presents Shocking, Heartbreaking, Transformative, she takes it further

In its first episode Jess recalls making ‘Perfect Woman’ for CBC’s Love Me. Perfect Woman is the story of her reading her ex-boyfriend’s diary and changing herself depending on what he wrote. At the time, Jess found making it therapeutic because she got to tell the story to her own accord. Things started to get complex when she received an email from a Hollywood producer about adapting the story for a documentary.The producer promised this big platform to tell her story, even though she would have no editorial control. This interaction made Jess doubt the benefits of documentary making.

I sat down with Jess to discuss the process of making the show and what the aims for the series were.

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity

JESS: My series is particularly engaged with the relationship between neoliberalism and personal storytelling because the documentary industry relies on the packaged morsel of the individual story in order to mass produce products. And it works because culturally we’ve been told that telling your story will be somehow cathartic, redemptive, brave, useful, et cetera. And so lots of people are talking about the importance of telling your story on an emotional level, but I’m trying to look at how personal storytelling operates in the world of trade and austerity.

You let us into your inner monologue and the many frustrations producers face. What was the aim of highlighting these issues?

JESS: Audiences are used to being handed the story on a silver platter. I wanted people to become hyper aware of the work and the choices that go into preparing said silver platter. A lot of people who’ve listened to the series have said, “can you stop navel gazing and telling us about the process and just give us the story? But this is the point I wanted to make you look behind the curtain whether you wanted to see it or not. And so I think that even if it creates discomfort, making audiences grapple with the fact that what they’re listening to is a construction, [that] is a useful way to make listeners feel less like audiences and more engaged, more like they are actually part of the mechanics of the sale and consumption of stories.

During their audition process to make one possible participant more comfortable, you say that they can ask you questions. What’s your advice to make sure the questions do not get too personal and make sure we divert back to the interviewee?

JESS: Well, I think that it’s okay for people to have personal questions. I think that to pretend that a purely business or a purely professional relationship is happening is dishonest. Obviously in this series I play with boundaries and push boundaries in a way that I think is irresponsible and that’s not an accident. I think depending on the relationship, there’s no one-size-fits-all. So I think, be open with people, but also be thoughtful about how much you want to share.

I think that in many ways the least you can do is to give people part of the benefit of being interviewed, which is arguably if the story isn’t going to lead to meaningful policy change or change that person’s life – which a majority of stories don’t do. Those are the outliers, not the norm – at the very least, you can give them a meaningful experience of recording.

But with that in mind, I think it’s important for people to be clear: I am doing a job. We’re acting like friends, but for the purpose of this interview, I’m doing a job and we’re not friends, and my job is to take what you say now and to turn it into something shorter, more concise. That’s ultimately what I want this piece to be about. I feel like being clear about making a distinction between the joys of the interview process and the horrors of having yourself vulnerable – your voice out in the world and no longer belonging to you in the same way, to coin a phrase by the TV producer featured in the episode.

That openness is evident through your relationship with one of the interviewees, Judy, an unhoused widow in her 70’s . We experience a blossoming friendship that has its conflicting moments, especially when Judy actually needs help regarding her personal situation. What did you learn from blurring the lines?

JESS: I was like, “I can’t promise that whatever I make about you is going to help you with your problems, but I have skills that might be helpful”. And there was a moment deep in the process where I realised that the methodology I thought would be helpful, actually it wasn’t, but could be harmful to her.

I also learned that in my attempt to help, I was not actually being a very good listener. I was thinking about what I thought was best for her as opposed to listening to what she thought was best for her. And that’s not even a lesson about journalism, that’s a lesson about life that can be applied across many spectrums. There was a moment where I just was like, “I don’t know what I’m doing here”. By totally throwing these boundaries that journalists normally have out the window, it was unknown waters and it was evident because I wasn’t necessarily being the most mindful. I don’t think I made anything worse, but I don’t know. I don’t think I improved anything and I realised I was out of my depth.

Away from the role of documentary maker, are there things that you learned personally about yourself?

JESS: I used to think that finding the perfect subject with a life story that was already shocking, heartbreaking, or transformative in some way was the kind of story that I had the power to make beautiful for them and for the world. I really am not interested in telling personal life stories. I’m not interested in turning people’s lives into products anymore and haven’t been for a long time. I’m interested in finding places where there are shared goals with potential subjects.

In the show there is a focus on the consequences of the Top Down approach where the audience gets to understand the power that the decision makers have and how little the subjects have. Going forward, what approach are you taking?

JESS: I’m interested in a framework of collaboration that is not “Top Down”. So in the series, I kind of show what not to do with collaboration. You can’t just call something collaboration and also still call all the shots. I think that I’m much more mindful of who I select as my collaborators and make sure that there’s a shared stake in these shared goals. And then we come up with a framework for collaboration together at the start.

That often relies on having a similar sense of media literacy. So [in Shocking, Heartbreaking, Transformative] there were huge power dynamics and that was intentional. Normally, I’m not trying to work with people where there are such big power dynamics. Maybe that will change over time as I become more experienced. But for now, I would rather work with people where I feel like we are operating with the same knowledge and in some ways privilege and power.

When talking about power dynamics and privilege I think about Ernesto’s story, the 20 year old model and recovering addict. In his episode, you admit that somebody else may have told his story better. What advice do you have for producers that struggle to navigate an interviewee’s story?

JESS: I was trying to make a point about how budgetary concerns and timelines dictate how ambitious a producer can be in the stories they tell. And in this case, what I realised about Ernesto’s story was that the story that he was sort of gesturing to, he wasn’t an appropriate central, sole subject. The story, actually, would need a much more systemic perspective, and that would require a timeline and a reporting budget and a scope that the project wasn’t really set up for.
I wanted to reveal why the personal story is often the fallback: because it’s actually cheaper and easier to make. But I do think that it’s always really important to acknowledge your positionality and ask – why am I the right person to tell this story? And if not, how can I make this work?

Something that I say in this series, and something I still stand by is if you are taking a not-Top-Down approach to collaboration, it doesn’t necessarily matter if you are the wrong person to tell the story. So long as you set yourself up in a collaborative framework where you are not being the expert on someone else’s life, you are letting your subjects truly lead. And that means factoring in a lot more time, making sure that you set up the collaborative process from the start, making sure that you are, and whoever’s funding you or distributing you, is also signed up for that. At the same time, I think it’s worthwhile to be wary that not everybody should tell every story.

There are rules stated in the first episode about journalism must nots and throughout the process you obviously bend them to make a point. I know this was an experiment, but are there any practices you’re taking for future projects?

JESS: Shared goals, much greater transparency, acknowledgement of the way in which documentary storytelling does operate as an exchange and clarifying the exchange, but in tandem with this idea of shared goals, and I also pay people whenever I can.

[NOTE: Paying subjects is one of the first rules that Jess throws out the window in the series, a subject she’s also written about. She expands on why this is important.]

JESS: I don’t think that paying people is more coercive than somebody promising to tell your story to the media already. I have no problem with splitting whatever I make with the people whose voices and work is featured in the projects. I come up with a split that feels right for the project based on the time and effort that’s put in and based on what I can afford and what we both can afford. I am very transparent about what I’m making with them, and we come up with a rate that feels good.

Listen to Shocking, Heartbreaking, Transformative on Apple Podcast, Spotify and other popular podcast apps >>

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Podcasts based on scandals are so ubiquitous that it takes a juicy story to stand out nowadays. Thankfully, Wondery has really upped the ante with Hooked on Freddie, the true story of a dolphin sex scandal set in a sleepy English town in the late 1980s.

The podcast tells the story of animal rights activist Alan Cooper, who developed a close friendship with a wild bottlenose dolphin (nicknamed Freddie by locals) when the mammal appeared in Amble Harbour in Northumberland. The quiet town was concrete and grey before Freddie turned up but soon became a vibrant tourist trap, with B&Bs selling out for the first time in years and everyone from New Age digeridoo players to the Blue Peter team turning up to get a look at Freddie.

As well as the friendship with Freddie, we hear about Cooper’s rivalry with Peter Bloom, dolphinarium manager and head trainer at Flamingo Land in North Yorkshire. Both men claim to be animal lovers, but Cooper rails against the idea of exotic animals in captivity and hates everything Bloom stands for. The feud will threaten one of the men’s livelihoods and destroy the other’s life.

The six-part podcast series is hosted by Becky Milligan, who first covered Freddie’s appearance in the North Sea as a student journalist. Milligan, who once reluctantly swam with Freddie herself, draws on original interviews from the late 1980s and early 1990s and new reporting — including interviews with Cooper and the Bloom — to tell the tale.

I had family local to Northumberland who lived through the scandal, so I’d heard about the “man who loved a dolphin a little too much”, as my older cousin tried to describe the story. However, I knew little beyond the tabloid headlines and nothing of what happened next. Hooked on Freddie is a podcast that benefits from knowing as little as possible, so I suggest you don’t Google the case before diving in.

But it is worth saying that Cooper became the subject of nasty rumours about potentially inappropriate behaviour with Freddie in 1990. Cooper laughed these off, but by 1991, the animal rights activist faced criminal charges of sexually assaulting a dolphin — setting off a tabloid storm.

The first unfounded accusation changed the course of Cooper’s life, and the series details the aftermath of his arrest for, as a police officer couldn’t bring himself to say without laughing, “wanking off a dolphin.”

The accusation seems barely credible to Cooper’s friends, but the case goes to the crown court, where the animal lover faces a deeply humiliating trial. The charges could hardly be more disgusting for a vegan animal rights activist. And however unbelievable the accusations are, they cause other activists to distance themselves for fear of guilt by association.

Wondery is known for its incredible range of true crime podcasts, including Dirty John, Dr. Death, and The Shrink Next Door, and Hooked on Freddie features the same levels of suspense, intrigue and twists we’ve come to expect from the network. With vivid soundscapes scoring the story and Milligan’s excellent reporting, the episodes (clocking in at under 40 minutes) whiz by. I greedily gobbled up the first three episodes and now face the prospect of waiting weeks for the story’s conclusion.

It’s a ridiculous story that you wouldn’t imagine having lifetime consequences, but the ripple effect on Cooper’s life after the accusations add a layer of tragedy. The episodes may have a heavy subject matter but feature real moments of genuine levity to break the tension. Milligan gets some great quotes from her interviewees, and her delivery is full of wit. Hooked on Freddie is a great and sometimes tragic story of love and rivalry, truth and rumour and the relationship between humans and the natural world. I can’t wait to see how it all plays out.

Listen to Hooked On Freddie on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and other popular podcast apps >>

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Catherine Renton is a freelance journalist specialising in lifestyle and culture. Her work has been featured in the likes of The Guardian, the i, Metro, Vogue, Refinery29, PodPod and Empire Magazine. She regularly appears on live radio and as a guest on BBC Radio podcasts, including Woman’s Hour and the Digital Human. When she’s not writing, she will likely be walking her dog while listening to one of the hundreds of podcast episodes she refuses to delete from her phone. Find out more about Catherine >>

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Fiction podcasts are having a bit of a golden age! From independent podcasters creating their own stories, to the behemoths of television stepping into the game, there’s a wealth of scripted shows right now. At first look, the most popular fiction podcast lists can seem dominated by U.S. companies like QCODE and Wondery, who bring A-List celebrity names and big budgets to their Blockbuster-style show. But we also have some fantastic fiction podcasts produced in the UK and Republic of Ireland that are making waves worldwide, and setting trends that other shows are closely following.

So here are nine of the best UK and ROI fiction podcasts, that I think are definitely worth your listening time:

The Magnus Archives

Probably the biggest fiction podcast to come out of the UK, The Magnus Archives is a horror/paranormal extravaganza, centring on the mysterious Magnus Institute and the eerie, inexplicable investigations they’ve uncovered. The central character, The Archivist, takes us through these cases with his audio statements, but as the seasons progress, the story develops into a much wider narrative tale. The main show ended in 2021 after five seasons, but there’s plenty to sink your teeth into – and now is the best time to listen as audio drama stalwarts, Rusty Quill, have raised a whopping £700,000 on Kickstarter for their follow up show, The Magnus Protocol. Listen now on your podcast app >>

Holy Sh!t

In a sea of horror/sci-fi/fantasy fiction podcasts, Holy Sh!t is a breath of fresh air. A young adult, comedy-drama from Hat Trick Productions (the producers of Derry Girls) about two friends, Meg and Lydia, navigating life at separate Uni’s, where one of the freshers may, or may not, be the second coming of Christ. The story is told in an unique way through WhatsApp voice notes and is a light-hearted take on religion, but at its core deals with female friendship and, most aptly, forgiveness. Fans of TV shows like Sex Education and Euphoria will definitely enjoy this one! Listen now on your podcast app >>

The Chronicles of Wild Hollow

Here’s one if you have younger listeners in your family looking to get into fiction podcasts! Wild Hollow is a high-concept, fantasy series featuring a colourful cast of anthropomorphic animal characters ranging from outlaws to pirates and bourgeois city magnates. If you’re used to fantasy books, you’ll enjoy the fact that you can explore the interactive map of Wild Hollow on the company’s website, which features the locations from episodes. Plus there’s lots of further artwork, and info, of the cute and cuddly characters. Created by a group of Drama School graduates, and with plenty more episodes from this imaginative world to come, this is a franchise worth keeping an eye on! Listen now on your podcast app >>

Wooden Overcoats

Ask a fiction podcast fan to name a British audio drama, and they’ll without doubt mention Wooden Overcoats. It centres on a family-run funeral parlour in the tiny, fictional village of Piffling Vale, and the lengths the family will go to sabotage a rival undertaker who sets up a competing, well-resourced, business across the street. This beloved sitcom is much in the vein of TV shows like Fawlty Towers or The Vicar of Dibley. Filled with the dry humour and eccentric characters you’d expect from a traditional British sitcom, it should be on every fiction podcast fan’s download list. Listen now on your podcast app >>

Forest 404

We couldn’t complete this list without mentioning the BBC. They have been champions of audio dramas for decades, first with Radio 4 and now also with the fiction podcasts created by BBC Sounds. One of their best offerings is Forest 404, a futuristic, dystopian thriller starring Pearl Mackie (Doctor Who) playing a 24th Century sound archivist, whose job is to sift through ‘ancient’ 21st Century soundscapes. Most of the sounds she’s archiving are foreign to her – especially those depicting natural and organic life. This is a clever use of sound design to tell a unique story, something many fiction podcasts have been experimenting with ever since! Listen now on your podcast app >>

The Dial-Up

With only four episodes of ten minutes, anyone looking for a quick fiction-podcast-fix should check-out this time-travel tale. The Dial-Up tells the story of two lonely men, both from Glasgow, who encounter each other randomly on an internet voice call. But they soon realise that one of them is speaking from modern day and the other is talking from late 1999… This bitesize podcast was featured on a Buzzfeed ‘best of’ list in 2022, and was also written and produced by me! Our second season is set to be released August 2023. Listen now on your podcast app >>

Whistle Through The Shamrocks

From the creative mind of Irish starlet Nicola Coughlan (Bridgerton, Derry Girls) this is a tongue-in-cheek, scripted retrospective of Irish history covering everything from the Potato Famine to The Easter Rising. Told through the voices of the O’Flanerhyn family, listen as they struggle to deal with their unscrupulous British landlord, who comes over to lay claim to ‘his’ land! The highlight of this show is the repeated meta interruptions from Nicola and her co-writer, Camilla Whitehill. It’s great to hear them ‘argue’ with the actors about the cliché-ridden and borderline offensive Irish stereotypes in the script. Listen now on your podcast app >>

HAUNTED: The Audio Drama

Since launching their first season in 2022, this is one of the fastest growing indie horror podcasts to come out of the UK and has topped Spotify charts worldwide. A satisfying mix of X-Files and Doctor Who, HAUNTED tells the story of a retired paranormal investigator, and the enthusiastic podcast host who propels him out of retirement into a series of adventures, battling monsters of mythical origin. Now on their second season, and just off the back of recording their first ever live episode in their home county of Essex, HAUNTED is only going to keep getting bigger and better! Listen now on your podcast app >>

Eliza: A Robot Story

For those of you hooked on stories dealing with AI or ChatGPT, Eliza is the fiction podcast for you. Its central character is a robot played by Tanya Reynolds (Sex Education) who starts experiencing emotions and feelings. She falls in love with a human, and works together with him to make her even more sentient, but very soon her new relationship turns abusive and controlling. More than just a sci-fi, robot tale, Eliza was made in partnership with The Pankhurst Trust/Manchester Women’s Aid, and deals with a number of topics including domestic abuse, and women’s rights. Listen now on your podcast app >>

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Philip is a Northern Irish writer, living in London, who writes for screen, theatre and audio. He is the creator of the fiction podcast, The Dial-Up, and is currently a personal assistant to a BAFTA Award winning film producer. Follow him @pip_writes and @DialUpPod.

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Season 1 was filled with the fuzzy twinkle of Game Boys and the muffled murmur of Sony Walkmans, as well as a star-studded cast including Akie Kotabe (Mad Men) as Jim, Omari Douglas (It’s A Sin) as Staten, and Sharon D. Clarke (Dr. Who) as Ellis. Set in the economic climb of 90s America, Jim Yang, a financial manager at Enron, one day receives an email from the future. The introverted video-gamer is catapulted into the greed, chaos and debauchery of the late 90s tech boom, juggling feelings for his one true love and those mysterious – and threatening – emails from the future. With the fate of humanity as we know it lying in Jim’s inbox, he makes choices that will change history forever.

Now returning for a second season, BOOM kicks off in the year 2000. The millennium is barely an hour old when Jim finds himself hiding in a Las Vegas Casino as federal investigators storm the building. Have those emails from the future finally caught up with him? As the USA prepares to welcome George W. Bush to the Whitehouse, Jim Yang navigates the chaotic world of Enron’s impending doom. His personal life is in tatters as he remains unable to explain to the love of his life, Cora, just why he is unable to commit to a meaningful relationship. As he goes even further down the futuristic rabbit-hole, he is being ruthlessly tracked every step of the way – and when he discovers he is not the only ‘Chosen One’, the revelations have a devastating effect.

Joel and Adam have dominated the podcast fiction space for many years with their production company Holy Smokes Audio. Their female-led thriller, Jackie the Ripper, topped the UK fiction podcast charts and was optioned by UK production company Goldfinch. They have just concluded the final season of football mockumentary and British Podcast Award winner, The Offensive, after 3 million downloads and five years of releases. Now, with BOOM! coming into its second season, they’re back for more.

Don’t miss the second season of BOOM, which will be released on July 10th, or if you want to catch up with season one you can find it right now wherever you get your podcasts.

Subscribe to BOOM! now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and other popular podcast apps >>

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This article was produced as part of a paid advertising package. To enquire about advertising with Pod Bible email info@podbiblemag.com.

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Greg and Stuart both have music journalism backgrounds and an ingrained knowledge of the podcast world. Stuart explains how and why their journey with Franz Ferdinand began:

Stuart: Having worked together on independent music magazine Loud And Quiet for years, myself and Greg launched the production company New Allotment in 2020. We have learned how to make podcasts since 2016 and we wanted to set up a podcast production company that could make shows about artists away from Loud And Quiet editorial. We know Domino, Franz’s record label, really well, and they came to us with news that in 2022 they’d be releasing a greatest hits collection for Franz Ferdinand titled Hits To The Head. They told us about this idea to tell the story of the band in a podcast and asked if we’d be interested in making it. Of course we bit their hand off!

From concept to release, what was the process like? How much research, how much production work, and how did you find the whole process?

Stuart: First and foremost we worked out the format of the show – the best way to tell the story, in how many episodes, will it be narrated, will it feature the interviewer’s voice; big questions that would then inform everything.

We had a brilliant lead researcher in Fergal Kinney who mapped out the story of the band in a document informed by Domino’s press archive, and that then allowed us to work out who we’d interview. We then interviewed all the contributors throughout October, November and December. January was a month dedicated to editing, which was where the actual story telling started. We had 30 odd hours of audio to get down to around 2.5 hours over 4 episodes. We were also writing the narration script as we went, which we knew was going to be recorded by Rose Matafeo once we had everything in place and were happy with the edits.

It really was a mammoth job, which we realised most in the edit. Personally, I found that part really rewarding. It was like a giant puzzle, fitting together the audio we had (of course we had little idea what people were going to say on record beforehand) and making it come alive with the band’s music. Of course it helped that the story itself is so compelling, and that everyone we spoke to were so good at telling it. It was just a joy to be honest. Personally I didn’t stop to think how intimidating it was, which is probably for the best. It was all there for us to slot together, and I think a lot of that came from our early research and planning our episodes and interviews properly.

The response from the podcast world has been significant, how has the audience reaction been, and crucially, what has the band’s feedback been like?

Greg: It was really pleasing to see such an immediate, positive reaction from Franz’s huge energetic international fanbase. Even within the first couple of hours of release seeing comments and listens coming in from every corner of the world. That meant within the first couple of days of release the podcast made its way up the charts, reaching the top of the Apple Podcasts Music chart and featuring highly on others. It’s also been a thrill, a couple of months since release, that people are still coming across the podcast. Because of its evergreen nature we hope it’s a podcast people will come to discover and enjoy for years to come. Rightfully there’s lots of interest from the music community in making podcasts, but I think this was a great example of the right band, a compelling story and the ideal format. We hope to work with other collaborators to do more of it.

Why this podcast – what was it about Franz Ferdinand and their story?

Stuart: It felt like a perfect one for us. Greg and I were both at university when Franz broke, and they really did change British guitar music. Take Me Out charting at 3 after a long period of terrible nu metal and lots of straight up pop being in the charts was really exciting. That was 2003, and even since then not many bands have blown up in that way, so quickly. There’s a lot of appeal in that story alone – what’s it like to be in a band that goes from playing in a friend’s house to opening the Grammys in a year? But beyond that I’ve always been fascinated with what happens after that. How do you keep that going? What’s it like to constantly tour as much as Franz famously have? How does it feel when a member leaves?

I loved hearing about it all, and the band were very open about it, which we were really thankful for. We thought it was important to interview them all separately for that reason. It added to the production time of course, but meant that everyone could speak freely. While editing, I must have listened to the featured songs a thousand times, and yet I still really like them.

As a four part series, how does the podcast break down – with each episode what can we expect to hear and learn?

Stuart: We start in Glasgow with the band forming. Bob and Alex are trying to get a band together when they meet Nick at a party who lies to them in order to join. Nick says he’s a drummer but he really isn’t. There’s a highlight in this episode where Alex retells how he and Nick met having a fight over a bottle of vodka. We’ve also got some rare early recordings and demos in this first episode, as the band talk about their formation, playing gigs at art school house parties and getting interest from the music industry.

Episode two is all about the recording of their debut album, the impact of it and the single Take Me Out, what went into that unusual song and the extremely glamorous world it suddenly thrust the band into. Expect stories of meeting David Bowie and parties in Hollywood.

There was a lot to pack into episode three and the band reached breaking point, resulting in a punch up in Paris, and they recorded two more albums whilst barely taking a breath from world tours. Episode 4 is the band patching themselves up and reinventing themselves for what’s going to come next. Two members leave and three join. It’s a hell of a story really. Like I say, few bands have had the highs of Franz this century. And we hope that in hearing them tell the story people will get a real sense of that time in British music, and just how important Franz Ferdinand’s songs are. It helped, of course, that we had Rose narrating the series, who was the icing on the cake.

Words So Leisured – The Story of Franz Ferdinand can be found on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and all good podcast platforms.

Main photo credit Franz Ferdinand by David Edwards.

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My Love Letter Time Machine came to our attention via a few networking events, and most recently when it was Shortlisted for the International Women’s Podcast Awards 2022. Host Ingrid Birchell Hughes has both sides (extremely rare) of a correspondence between her great great grandparents spanning 1878 to 1882. Her narration does a great job of reading the letters whilst explaining the ‘characters’ (including, her ancestor Fred, his friend – also called Fred – and their friend Ted) and sharing her own thoughts.

We caught up with Ingrid to ask her more about the show!

Who are you and what’s your podcast about?

I’m Ingrid Birchell Hughes and I’ve been an art director, writer and journalist for about 30 years now. My podcast is ‘My Love Letter Time Machine’ where I am serialising the 200+ love letters of my great great Grandparents, Janie and Fred. The letters have been passed down the family – a bit like grandma’s wedding dress – and when I first read them I was amazed how much their characters and wit sparkled off the page. So now, each week I take my listeners 140 years back in time to catch up with Fred and Janie’s story, and take a look at Victorian history through their eyes.

What was the first podcast you ever listened to?

Probably RHLSTP with Richard Herring, which is huge now, but when he first started it I think I probably didn’t really understand what podcasts were about, I was just tuning in because it was fun.

Why did you decide to start podcasting in the first place?

A lot of podcasts have as their strength a conversation developing over time, well I’ve got both sides of a correspondence here (which is super rare) – it’s basically a conversation, albeit one that took place 140 years ago. Presenting that within the framework of a podcast felt more natural than I could ever have hoped. I’d been searching for a long time to bring Janie and Fred’s words to life, especially after blogging my research on the letters, on and off, for about five years. Whenever I shared their story with people – they sort of get hooked and want to know more. So rather than waking up one morning and thinking ‘oh I know, I’ll be a podcaster’ it was more that the story in the letters was driving me to find the right vehicle. Although now, I completely love doing the podcast and when the story eventually comes to an end, I know I’ll be wanting to do another.

Which podcasts do you take inspiration from?

Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green taught me that podcasts don’t have to be interview based to tell a story — that with a good script, a single voice can bring people along on a journey. I found Griefcast by Cariad Lloyd a real comfort, and showed me that podcasts have real power in enabling people to tell their stories to a depth you don’t often experience outside podcast-land.

Who’s your dream guest for the podcast?

Historian Dr Kate Lister from the podcast Betwixt the Sheets, I love the work she’s been doing to rewrite our preconceptions about the history of human sexuality. The letters are not exactly ‘my great great Grandfather wrote a porno’ but if you read between the lines of the (often startling) Victorian euphemisms, Janie and Fred share a lot of intimacy. It would be a total dream to get Kate’s expert and refreshingly down to earth opinion on their relationship and how it might relate to her research.

What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learnt so far as a podcaster?

Writing a script for a serial podcast is completely different to writing for anything else – you have to really pay attention to the flow and not let anyone get left behind, especially as my ‘co-writers’ — AKA my great great grandparents — constantly need their letters putting into context. And I’ve also discovered the dubious joy of making historical sound effects, which has been a bit of an adventure. Recreating the atmosphere of holiday makers on the seafront of Blackpool in 1879, or a street brawl outside a pub that’s then broken up by the local bobby, has been a challenge but such a lot of fun.

Which episode would you say is the perfect introduction to your podcast?

If you want the set up for the early part of the story obviously start with the first one. But if you want get a flavour of the back and forth of the correspondence, try the first episode of Season 2. It’s called ‘From City of Steel to Ironopolis’ where Fred and Janie are learning how to deal with a long distance relationship, after Fred moved from Sheffield to Middlesbrough to start his new job as a clerk at the North Eastern Steel Company.

Is there anything else you’d like to add?

The next season (season 4) of My Love Letter Time Machine will be out the weekend just before Valentine’s Day. I also share lots of Janie and Fred’s letters and pictures on the @MyLoveLetterTimeMachine’ Instagram.

Listen to My Love Letter Time Machine on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and other popular podcast apps

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City of Ghosts is a supernatural audio drama that does just that. Set in 1990s NYC, it’s a neo-noir about corruption, murder, and the things that haunt us, and one of the elements that stands out (beyond the quality of the story and the audio) is their beautiful cover art by artist Emilee Graverson. As well as captivating cover art, each episode has its own image, characters are visualised and the scene is set through bonus artwork on their website.

I caught up with Emilee, alongside producer Ryan Patch, and writer Carina Green, to talk about the hidden value of podcast artwork.

Episode 3: The sisters. The artwork draws on 1990s New York.

Why did you decide it was important to illustrate each episode differently?

Ryan: To be honest, for me it was mostly a marketing decision. The internet and social media, where we knew many listeners would be discovering us, is such a visual medium – even text articles need images. Because we’re a podcast, we don’t have a lot of great visual collateral already – and especially because we recorded in quarantine, we didn’t even have great stills of actors in the studio (they were all zoom frame grabs) and we knew we needed something visual. Having Emilee create more content was a perfect solution to help us with this, and we were blessed with having someone like Emilee who was a font of inspiration and great perspectives who could develop new ways to visualize the themes in each episode.

Emilee Graverson: As a listener, I think it’s really fun to have something visually to look at each new episode. Because of that, I was excited the team wanted to do a new artwork for each episode. It also meant that I got to listen to the entirety of the show, and really immerse myself in the whole plot before working on even the main hero artwork.

Carina Green: Echoing what Ryan said, I think it was a good way to help each episode stand out and provide it with a visual for potential listeners, since social media marketing depends highly on visuals. Emilee did a fantastic job capturing the essence of each episode in a single piece of art.

The 90s aesthetic and technology was a big influence on the artwork.

Emilee, why were you drawn to this project?

EG: I was immediately drawn to the era it took place in. I thought it would be super fun to play around with and draw from technology from the late 90s, and I also love drawing spooky environments and atmospheres. It was a match made in heaven!

Is this first time you’ve done artwork for a podcast? How does it differ to other artwork you’ve done?

EG: It’s my first time doing the main artwork for a podcast! Although I’ve worked with my friends at Lunatics Radio Hour Podcast for many years many doing illustrations and merch. I think podcast art is interesting because it’s kind of a secondary medium, after the more important audio medium. It’s like a fun treat to be able to visualize and see elements of the story as you hear them. Its almost like illustrating for a children’s book or comic, because you have a set script or plot and you get to then riff off of it in your own style.

Mr Orange character card. Each character in the drama was given an illustration.

Ryan and Carina, you both have a strong background in drama/film/theatre before starting a podcast. Do you think that influenced your want for very distinctive visuals?

RP: I wouldn’t actually say that it affected my desire for visuals, but I will say that it certainly helped me listen to my gut more when Emilee came to us with stuff that’s really visually arresting. The show art, for example, is brilliant, and it was one of the first concepts that Emilee brought to us (see concept sketch here). It was weird. But it had something about it that made me stop and say “wow, I don’t know why but this is really impactful.” This wasn’t necessarily the design that made the most SENSE for the show, but it was by far the most ARRESTING design, and years of working in film I think has taught me to listen to my gut in situations like this.

CG: I echo Ryan that I don’t think it really influenced my desire for visuals, but I do think it helped form my idea of the kind of art I really envisioned for the podcast. Part of writing is to paint pictures with words, even for film and theater since you always start with just the words in your script. But for podcasts, especially, you are trying to help someone visualize a world. So as I was writing, I was paying a lot of attention to what kind of atmosphere we wanted to evoke with the show. And I think that’s part of why I felt that Emilee’s art could line up so well for it.

What were your influences for the artwork?

RP: First and foremost, the haunted nature of New York City, of course! I was really excited when we interviewed Emilee to do the art to learn that she lived in the city for several years – this was important for me. The character cards (in this folder) – which I’m really proud of – were influenced by tarot cards, so the Rider-Waite aesthetic I would say figures heavily into what I was hoping to achieve. Also, the bold, solid colors of screenprinting were a bit reference point. However, we hired Emilee for her style, as opposed to having her try to emulate someone else, so I’d say that Emilee is our largest influence!

EG: Style-wise, my illustration work is heavily influenced by screen printing, which is an art form that I love doing! I find that the graphic, limited color palette style of my digital work always stems from my work in that medium! For CoG specifically, though, I was super influenced by my memories of living in NYC, riding the train late at night, and the liminal spaces haunting the city. As Ryan said, tarot snuck in as an influence, which ended up being cool because I have experience illustrating my own tarot deck.

CG: I really love the tarot influence that we all landed on because I think it brings forward the more supernatural aspect of the show. For me, personally, other inspirations and influences came from the NYC I was picturing as I was writing the show, which similar to Emliee was influenced by my time in the city and all the ways it can feel strange and haunted at certain times of night or in certain places. I wanted our art to capture that same feeling of a world that is recognizable as our own, but has a darker, more stylized feel to it and I think Emilee did an amazing job at capturing that.

Were there any images that you wish you were able to use but just couldn’t find a place for?

RP: Yes, there is. This one. Its just so evocative. Since we used this vibe for the cover art and having a large title was very important to us, we lost the opportunity to use the phone in this setup – but I love it so much. It says so much about the character and the era.

Are there any other podcasts whose artwork you really admire?

RP: I love Wolverine, both The Long Night and Lost Trail – how they give you the setting of the show, but keep the characters in silhouette. The redacted visuals of the Homecoming art is simple and effective. Even something as simple as LORE, where its only the handwritten title are great, because simply the typography tells you what you need to know. Cover art is so small, you really need to have it read very simply upfront. What I love about ours is that I think it reads very simply upfront, but has layers as you start at it for longer.

EG: I always think of the original Welcome To Nightvale artwork. I love a limited color palette (as you can see from CoG) and I think it was so cool how the aesthetic from that really led the rest of the show’s aesthetic and color and vibes. It was also the first time I’d seen something illustrative for podcast artwork.

CG: I really love the artwork of The Black Tapes, which I think is simple but incredibly evocative with its muted colors except for the red of the protagonist’s jacket. Similarly, the artwork of Old Gods of Appalachia is really arresting and has many layers to it the longer you look at it.

Where can readers find more of your work?/Where can readers find out more about you all?

RP: People can read more about me at ryanpatch.me, or follow me at @ryanpatch in IG and @d_ryan_patch on twitter. Don’t forget to follow @cityofghostspod on twitter and @cityofghostspodcast on IG as well!

EG: I am on Instagram @emileehere and my original tarot deck that I illustrated can be found at: personalspacepress.com, along with more of my artwork.

CB: I’m working at having more of an internet presence but folks are welcome to follow me on twitter @cagreenwrites. I’m also writing an online novel for Tapas Media, Return of the Keeper, which will be launching on the 21st of March, so you’ll be able to find me on their website, tapas.io, as well.

Listen to City of Ghosts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and other podcast players.

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Who are you and what’s your podcast about?

I’m Scarlett Kefford and I founded Script Sirens, a Midlands based group for female and non-binary scriptwriters. I produced and directed our new show Script Sirens Presents: Siren Screams a six-part horror anthology series of audio plays, each designed to frighten the listener in their own unique way.  I also wrote one of the plays and acted in a few of them, it all got a bit ‘write the theme tune, sing the theme tune’ (ironically two of the only things I didn’t do) – Shout out to the very patient David Bernie!

The Script Sirens. Top Row: Carmen Capuano, Annabel Brightling, Scarlett Kefford, Miriam Sarin, Cassiah Joski-Jethi Bottom row: Kayleigh Watson, Alexandra Taylor, Louise Osbourne, Melly DeNiro, Holly Louise Psaliou

What was the first podcast you ever listened to?

It was either The Adam & Joe Show or Kermode & Mayo’s Film Review.

Why did you decide to start podcasting in the first place?

Well in all honestly, I was kind of forced into it by the coronavirus…with the usual film & theatre avenues closed I wanted a way to keep our group sane, safe & scripting during this time. Having had success (I was nominated for a Royal Television Society Breakthrough award) with producing our own web series Script Sirens Presents:#GoingViral (all on zero-budget) this year and being a podcast fan myself I saw it as means of producing and distributing our own radio plays. And this time we bagged Arts Council Funding to boost the project. Enterally grateful to them!

Which podcasts do you take inspiration from?

The main inspirations for the series weren’t actually podcasts but The Archers (we’re mostly Brummies of course!) and the TV series Inside No. Nine. However some of the podcasts we take inspiration from into our writing practice and living ethos are: Films to Be Buried With with Brett Goldstein, Script Apart, Fuckbois of Literature, Writer’s Routine, The Final Girls and The Guilty Feminist.

Who’s your dream guest for the podcast?

As our podcast is audio theatre rather than interview-based I’d say if we do another season I’d like to feature some spooky music by Birmingham band Sunshine Frisbee Laserbeam as they do these incredible Halloween albums every few years. And a dream actor to feature would be Susan Wokoma – besides being generally incredible I can’t get enough of her voice.

What are the biggest lessons you’ve learned so far as podcasters?

It’s definitely worth paying the back end fees for proper analytics! And also you can create a soundproof booth out of a tent, a chair, a walking stick and many throws.

What episode would you say is the perfect introduction to your podcast?

As the series is an anthology, each episode a unique story, you can start and listen in any order. My personal favourite happens to be called ‘Perfect – By Alexandra Taylor’ – in every stage of the process from the first draft to record and edit it made me laugh. I wish I’d written it.

Where can Pod Bible readers find out more about you?

You can find us on our Script Sirens website and social media channels. We also have a web series on YouTube.

Listen to Script Sirens Presents: Siren Screams on Acast, Spotify, and your favourite podcast app.

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