In my opinion, the non-fiction monologue is a hugely underrated podcast style. As a listener, I get the entertainment of storytelling, the rawness of reality and the simplicity of a single voice. What’s more, the stories are often told by the writers themselves, directly speaking to me in a way that makes me slow down, really listen and consider their lived experience.

If you’ve heard one non-fiction podcast, it’s probably The Moth. One of America’s longest running podcasts (it’s been in podcast format since 2008) it constantly ranks in the podcast charts. Recorded in front of a live audience, each episode is short, well-crafted and you’re never quite sure what you’ll get – I have both cried and laughed out loud at stories whilst shopping!

So if you want to spend some time with great storytellers, here are some podcasts like The Moth that might speak to you.

TED Talks Daily

Okay, you’ve probably heard of this one! But if you like The Moth, TED Talks Daily is a great choice. Whilst The Moth tends to focus on one part of a person’s life, TED Talks often do big overviews and grand concepts. Some of the episodes cover topics at a more societal level, but many stem from a person’s own story and the emotions are often obvious. Running as a daily show for several years, there are literally hundreds of big subjects and narratives you can choose from. Why not start by stepping into the mind of a non-human narrative, with ‘What’s it like to be a giant sequoia tree? | Ersin Han Ersin’. Listen now >>

Out There

If I could have a favourite podcast (which is really difficult in this job!) it would be Out There. It explores big questions through intimate stories in the great outdoors, and those stories range from the biggest hikes across continents, to the smallest moments of feeling sand on your feet. There are some interviews and in-depth reporting, but it’s the narrative episodes that stand out. Produced by a wide range of people, the monologues are accompanied by music and field recordings that help support these stories from the heart. You could start with my episode about hiking the Camino, or learn more about International Women Podcast Awards founder Naomi Mellor’s relationship with swimming. Listen now >>

My Love Letter Time Machine

This podcast is quite unique in the way it mixes snippets of history with personal storytelling. The show is basically co-written between host Ingrid Birchell Hughes and her great-great-grandparents, Fred and Janie. Ingrid is reading us the love-letters between her great-great-grandparents spanning 1878 to 1882, and her narration does a great job of explaining the ‘characters’ (including, her ancestor Fred, his friend – also called Fred – and their friend Ted) as well as sharing her own thoughts and giving historical context. We’ve recently had a ‘save the date’ for Fred and Janie’s wedding, but it’s worth starting this on-going story at the first episode. Listen now >>

Anthropocene Reviewed

The Anthropocene is the time in which humans live a.k.a. now. The Anthropocene Reviewed is a monologue podcast where writer John Green reviews anything and everything from the world in which we live, and gives it a rating out of 5 stars. His topics have been literally anything, from ‘The Plague’ (1 star) to ‘Scratch ‘n’ Sniff Stickers’ (4 stars). Each review is like a literary commentary and they often include personal anecdotes. John is a harsh critic who rarely gives 5 stars – but it has happened. You’ll have to listen to this episode to find out what for! Listen now >>

A Mile In My Shoes

A Mile in My Shoes comes from The Empathy Museum, which tours the UK with an interactive shoe shop. The live project asks people to wear a pair of the shoes, and walk a mile in them whilst listening to the previous owners telling their story. The podcast uses the same stories, but tells us what the shoes look like at the start – it’s incredible how often the idea I get from the shoes is completely different to the story told. Proof you can’t judge a person by their shoes – and helps you empathise by ‘walking’ a mile in them! Listen now >>

Anthems

A Pod Bible favourite, Anthems from Broccoli Productions is a similar concept to A Mile In My Shoes, but with more edge and ask of the listeners. With different series covering different themes, we hear from underrepresented groups – Anthems Pride, Anthems Women, Anthems Black – as they share real life stories and rallying calls for change. The series that is likely to resonate with the widest range of people is ‘Anthems Home’, which was an amazingly quick creative response to the Covid restrictions. Listen now >>

Seize Your Adventure

As a fan of the format, it will be no surprise that I love working with monologues in my own work. Seize Your Adventure was my first step into podcasting and many of my favourite episodes have a person with epilepsy telling us a story of adventure. You get to join someone on his last ski before brain surgery and learn about carrying medication in a backpack across continents. There is sometimes rough-and-ready remote production as I was learning, but I think the episode with Amanda’s episode about trail running stands up well. Listen now >>

This article was first published in September 2021

The post 7 podcasts you’ll love if you love The Moth appeared first on POD BIBLE.

It’s taken criticism from some quarters over a few editorial choices, but The Trojan Horse Affair restates again how podcasts as a medium can take complex, morally grey stories and tease them out into a story rich with characters and twists which are all the more fascinating for being real.

If it’s got you hankering after more deeply reported investigation podcasts, you’re in luck. Here are some of the best of the last few years.

Death by Conspiracy?

When 46-year-old Gary Matthews died of Covid in January 2021, his family’s grief was made all the more disorientating by conspiracy groups claiming that Gary’s death had, in fact, been part of a cover-up. Marianna Spring, the BBC’s specialist disinformation and social media reporter, goes to Shrewsbury to find out who Gary was from his family and friends, how he drawn into the conspiratorial thinking of the Shropshire Corona Resilience Network, and how much responsibility they feel they bear for Gary’s passing. You’ll likely inhale all 10 episodes in one sitting. LISTEN NOW >> 

S-Town

The breakout hit that set the investigative podcast mode for the next decade, S-Town is a gripping, twisty, intensely characterful listen. The red herrings, the local eccentrics, the tiptoeing pace and sudden revelations are all part of the furniture now. The bigger question is whether you think it’s an exploitative piece of yokel-baiting or a thoughtful meditation on life itself. When horologist John B McLemore got in touch with This American Life asking them to investigate an alleged murder in his hometown of Woodstock, Alabama, it quickly turned out to be nothing. But a much bigger, more moving, and more profound story was there already – McLemore’s own life. LISTEN NOW >>

Bellingcat

A lot of podcasts do punditry and analysis. There aren’t that many doing proper investigative journalism. There are even fewer doing the kind of laborious, fiddly work that goes into disentangling the confusion which piles up around international incidents from original, open source material. Bellingcat has been doing that for some time now, and the two series of its podcast showcase how it does things. The first tried to get to the bottom of how flight MH17 was shot down over eastern Ukraine in 2014, and the second a video apparently showing militiamen killing women and children in an unknown country. It’s extraordinary stuff. LISTEN NOW >> 

The Tip-Off

The big stories which break in the national press are frequently shocking, engrossing and revealing in themselves, but the stories of how they came together are often equally as fascinating. That’s what The Tip-Off focuses on. Maeve McClenaghan speaks to the journalists behind some of the most complex and important stories of recent years – including Liz MacKean and Meirion Jones, who broke the story of Jimmy Savile’s crimes – about the complex business of getting to the truth. LISTEN NOW >>

How It Happened

Axios’ behind-the-scenes strand has included a couple of Trump stories: first, reporter Jonathan Swan traces how the Capitol riot came to happen, going all the way back to Trump’s recovery from Covid and attempts to jump-start his re-election campaign; and second, the attempts to broker a peace deal between Israelis and Palestinians which first failed, and then were rescued. They’ve also started a new Putin themed season this month. LISTEN NOW >> 

Where is George Gibney?

Reporter Mark Horgan sets off on the tail of George Gibney, a former Irish Olympic swimming coach who was charged with 27 counts of sexual assault and rape against young people under his charge, and who fled to America via Scotland in 1994 before he could stand trial. This pod isn’t about having a triumphal moment of catharsis, though; rather, it’s the culmination of dogged detective work and a particularly empathetic understanding of what Gibney’s accusers went through. LISTEN NOW >>

A Very Fatal Murder

Just went it felt like investigative podcasts might be disappearing up their own Dictaphones, satirical newspaper The Onion’s show A Very Fatal Murder arrived to spoof them all beautifully. David Pascall is a journalist on the lookout for the perfect death to make his Great American Podcast about, with help from ETHL, an MIT-engineered robot constantly sweeping news reports for “the most interesting, violent, culturally relevant murder cases in America”. It’s pitch perfect, and extremely funny. LISTEN NOW >>

The Walkers Switch

The closest British equivalent is about an appropriately British outrage: the fact that at some point in the nineties, Walkers switched the colours of its salt and vinegar and cheese and onion crisp packets – a fact that the company denies ever happened. Overnight, it seemed, the world of deep fried potato was turned upside down. Or… was it? What starts out as a deadpan gag turns into an oddly absorbing examination of the Mandela effect, the Illuminati, and Gary Lineker. LISTEN NOW >> 

The post 8 Great investigative podcasts to listen to after The Trojan Horse Affair appeared first on POD BIBLE.

Sorry. But puns aside, they really are. The magic of hearing a ghost story isn’t in what’s being said as such, but in the images being conjured up. Your brain is capable of forming terrors far more terrible than anything you could actually see, and around the virtual campfire those images are that much more vivid with artfully deployed sound design.

We’ve been living through a mini-golden age of audio horror lately too. Led by the megahit The Battersea Poltergeist, a strain of podcasts which mix real-life spookiness with dramatic reimaginings has hit a nerve with listeners, and more and more producers and writers are taking advantage of the uniquely chilling atmosphere that they can create in sound.

As well as that, though, there’s long been a vibrant line-up of paranormally inclined shows which follow the My Favourite Murder format of hosts chatting amiably about something horrific. However you want to be chilled this Halloween, there’s a lot out there for you.

The Battersea Poltergeist

It’s not often that a Radio 4 drama-doc becomes so vast that it gets its own live show, but The Battersea Poltergeist is exactly that Radio 4 drama-doc. Part paranormal cold case, part dramatic reconstruction, it follows Danny Robins and his team as they go back to 63 Wycliffe Road in south London to investigate a haunting which gripped the UK in the fifties.

The Harrowing

The frame of this audio drama is a police investigation into a mysterious tragedy on a remote island off the west coast of Scotland called Toll Mòr. A growling stranger walks into a church warning of doomsday and demons, and local police sergeant Jackie O’Hara (Downton Abbey’s Joanne Froggatt) arrives just as a huge storm rolls in.

Welcome to Night Vale

This was one of the very first fiction podcasts to make it really, really big. The hook is that we’re listening to radio broadcasts to a small community somewhere in America – adverts for carnivals, local election reminders, that sort of thing. Except the carnival sounds horrific and the only vote in the election comes from disembodied voices in a hidden gorge. Both funny ha-ha and funny peculiar.

Alice Isn’t Dead

This horror-leaning thriller from Welcome to Night Vale’s co-author Joseph Fink follows a lonely trucker as she traverses America on the search for her wife, who’s gone missing. Their relationship isn’t straightforward, but then neither is this America: it’s full of ghostly no-places lost in time, not-quite-human serial killers and, at its heart, a sprawling conspiracy.

Lore

Though the horror pod wave has been driven by mixtures of fact and faction, some of the most spine-tingling are those like Lore, which meticulously research true scary stories which inspire folklore. Each time there’s a different theme – opportunity, confidence, music – which are explored by the tales different cultures tell each other about them. There’s a truly vast back catalogue of nearly 200 episodes here to creep into.

A Podcast to the Curious

This one started out as an exploration of the life and work of MR James, the master of the English ghost story. It’s literary rather than alarming, digging into the context and the story of how each story was written as well as dissecting the tales themselves. They’ve tip-toed into the dimly lit library of other English ghost stories too, from Dickens to writers who followed James’ lead.

Did we miss your favourite podcast? Let us know on Twitter!

The post 6 Spooky podcasts for Halloween appeared first on POD BIBLE.

QCODE is a Los Angeles based audio production studio who develop innovative and immersive scripted narrative stories. Normally what would occur in the Point of Entry series is episode recommendations, however QCODE now have 13 different shows. Instead, I will recommend some of my favourite shows, as I feel if I recommend individual episodes, I will be giving away spoilers.

For people who enjoy watching television but don’t always have the time to sit down, narrative fiction podcasts are great – you can listen to the drama unfold on the go. If you are already an avid podcast listener who enjoys an interview style show, you may enjoy scripted audio because there is still an interesting back and forth, chemistry between people and great audio design – it is just at a bigger scale because the visual aspect is taken away.

BLACKOUT

The first QCODE fiction podcast release was a drama starring and executive produced by Academy Award winning Rami Malek (Bohemian Rhapsody). BLACKOUT tells the story of a local radio DJ named Simon Itani who is based in small town Berlin, New Hampshire. One of those small towns where everyone is in your business and something shady is going on. One night a blackout occurs and Simon gets fatally shot, whilst his son Hunter Itani’s (T.C Carter) camping trip with his friends takes a disastrous turn. The whole town is turned upside down – food, medicine and essentials are in low supply.

In the midst of this Simon is determined to keep the community spirit alive with his show and continues to play selected rock tunes with his signature “Look out for each other” thrown in for good measure. A fascinating thriller where the listener is moved through the Berlin woods into the back garden of the Itanis through a random field with a crazed neighbour with a shotgun. This can only be done by a meticulous sound department team – where every detail is thought of, the eerie music is just as important as the cereal during breakfast. Along with most podcast recommendations, this is best listened to with earphones. However if you want to avoid jump scares in public, I recommend it on a loud volume at home.

With all this being said, with what has happened in the past year, perhaps indulging in an apocalyptic thriller about modern civilization falling apart, may not be the best choice for a form of escapism. The characters explore themes like control, authoritarianism, freedom of speech and justice.

With a second season of BLACKOUT featuring How To Get Away With Murder star Aja Naomi King just announced, if you choose, now it the perfect time to catch up with the first season.

Soft Voice

The second series I would recommend is Soft Voice – a psychological drama that delves into the dangers of the mind. Soft Voice (Bel Powley) is a voice inside Lydia’s head (Naomi Scott). Soft Voice is a blunt and no-nonsense entity that values perfectionism – it controls every aspect of her life down to Lydia’s diet and love life – Lydia doesn’t know any different so she goes along with it as it comes with a peace of mind and much success. It is not until one day Soft Voice stops talking and Dark Voice enters (Olivia Cooke) and Lydia’s life takes a turn in the most dramatic manner.

What it does well in the same way the TV show Black Mirror does – is it makes you question ‘what would I do if I were in that situation?’ and then it makes you sit and wonder maybe I am closer to being in that situation then I would like to admit. Think the ‘Nosedive’ or ‘White Bear’ episodes – it may seem dramatic, however if you get to the heart of what issues are being explored and take away the hyperbole – they hit closer to home.

Listening to Lydia navigate her inner thoughts is unnerving and unpredictable. She faces the same insecurities that many others do, acted brilliantly by Naomi Scott, you can hear her cleverly switch from moments of panic, uncertainty and relief – perfectly depicting the trials of the mind.

Unwanted

After you indulge in two intense podcasts you can have a go at an action-comedy. Unwanted is about two 30-year-old best friends Ben (Lamorne Morris) and Grant (Billy Magnussen). They are strapped for cash and unwilling to get a job. One day while driving they accidentally hit a woman who bizarrely just walks it off. It is not until later they find out the woman was a hard as nails runaway convict, named Shelley O’ Keith (Jamie-Lee O’Donnell) worth a million pounds if found.

After much deliberation both Ben and Grant go on a mission to get that prize money. With a fun back and forth between the two main characters as they have their hand at the bounty hunter/good cop bad cop persona, this podcast series packs plenty of laughs. We are treated to our favourite movie clichés like a good old catchphrase, they opted for “LET’S DANCE!” and the evergreen “we’ll ask the questions here!” followed by silence and fumbling to develop an actual helpful question but a random debate over buying and renting whilst someone is tied up in the basement (a few episodes in and this will make sense).

Shelley is frightening and shows no mercy to anyone who crosses her path. Her no nonsense attitude is balanced well by a hilarious ex-convict named Darko (Flula Borg), an old friend who owes Shelley a massive favour after his betrayal led to her six years in jail. He runs an electronics store and seems to be more interested in leading a quiet life with the occasional trip to TGI Fridays.

With a catchy 80’s synthwave-style theme song sung by the legendary Rick Astley, and the constant mention of Arnold Schwarzenegger, for those who want their movie clichés with a fun script, this is a great introduction into scripted audio because it is still familiar but with a few twists and turns.

The post Where to start with… QCODE Podcasts appeared first on POD BIBLE.

Who are you and what’s your podcast about? 

I’m Vickie Donoghue. Natalie Mitchell and I are playwrights from either side of the Thames estuary who also write for screen and radio. Our podcast drama is a thriller set in Kent about The Pied Piper returning to contemporary Britain. It’s about a detective and her daughter uncovering a terrifying force and their battle to discover the truth. It’s an unnerving, spooky story enhanced by an incredible soundtrack by Bat For Lashes’ Natasha Khan.

What was the first podcast you ever listened to? 

I’m still a bit of a podcast novice (having two small children has helped that!) but the first one I listened to was by Simon Stephens for The Royal Court Theatre in which he interviews a different playwright in each episode. I absolutely love it as I am such a nosy person and I adore hearing how each writer works, their process, and even how they set out their working day. It’s the little secrets that come out that is so engaging and the rapport that Simon has with each fellow writer. It’s very inspiring.

As a writer, why did you decide to write for the podcast format?

With both of us having previously written drama for Radio moving to tell stories in a podcast format seemed very natural. The story of The Piper and it’s connection to music leant itself to the audio form. In fact, music was absolutely key for us. We always knew we didn’t want a physical embodiment of The Piper, and wanted a haunting motif. Getting someone of Natasha Khan’s calibre who totally got and nailed the brief was amazing. The music is a character in it’s self. We were also really excited to get stuck into long form storytelling because as a writer opportunities like that don’t come up very often.

Tell us about the process of writing and producing your podcast?

The Piper was produced by Somethin’ Else and directed by Kate Rowland who has years of experience in producing and directing Radio and was previously Head of Radio Drama for the BBC. The idea for The Piper came to us quite a few years ago but once Kate had successfully pitched it to Something Else, Natalie and I only had a few months to write it before we went into an intense week of recording it. Kate likes to record on location rather than creating soundscape and atmosphere in a studio so it was a cold week in December 2019 that we got the series completed (my god the actors were incredible!). Kate and Steve Bond (our Sound Designer) then got the first edit done, but then the first lockdown happened. The process was then slowed up, however, on reflection, coming out in the Autumn of 2020 was perfect as it’s a Halloweeny, spooky thriller and a podcast that you definitely want to snuggle up and close the curtains for!

Which podcasts do you take inspiration from?

As I said, I’m nosy, so any podcast where I can hear about an artist’s process is a winner for me. I love learning from other creatives. I’m also a bit of news junkie so love the BBC’s Newscast. It’s really interesting watching journalists that have very serious roles on our televised news programmes being a bit looser and a bit more honest about what’s going on politically in the world. Hearing them actually laughing is so weird! I also love supporting my mates and their fantastic podcasts – Funny Mummies, Hardcore Listing, Hoovering and I love anything by Fearne Cotton – Happy Place or even Sounds of the 90’s (where I can relive my youth!).

Where can the Pod Bible readers find out more about your podcast?

Head to BBC Radio 4 or BBC Sounds and search The Piper, where the trailer and all episodes are now available to download and listen to. Enjoy!

The post Introduction to The Piper podcast appeared first on POD BIBLE.