When this newsletter lands, I shall be in the middle of my latest Speed Awareness Course. I don’t mean to boast, but this is my third, so I must be really good at them as they keep inviting me back. Bit of advice – look out for the bit where the M32 turns from a motorway into a 40 mph zone as you head into Bristol. It’s got me twice now.
Wednesday was a tremendous day. Well, apart from, you know, the election victory for the Dark Side. It was tremendous because we had our first ever Fresh Air client meeting in my home town of Swindon. I was able to give the senior team a drive round the Magic Roundabout in the wrong direction, show them the flat that Billie Piper used to live in, and thrill them with the fact that Swindon Town is the only Football League team that doesn’t contain any letters that are also in ‘mackerel’.
Our very exciting latest new client have their HQ in Swindon, so we’ll reveal more about that in due course.
Fresh Ears
While in Swindon, Michaela – Direct or Content and Head of Loud Nose Blows – and I recorded the latest episode of ‘Fresh Ears’ – our own podcast looking at the work of branded podcasts. Our special guest this week is Raquel Bubar – the Managing Director at T Brand Studio, The content studio of New York Times Advertising. This year, we’ve produced shows with both Cartier and L’Oreal in partnership with T-Brand, so we took a deep dive into why luxury brands and podcasts are such a great match.
Just four episodes into the new season of Fresh Ears, and my presenting style has been variously described as ‘a bit too selly’, ‘a bit too grumpy’ and this week ‘perhaps a bit too slick’. Please judge for yourself.
Listening Quickly
Some people like to listen to podcasts at 1.5 and 2 times speed. I don’t get it. Bill Simmons thinks it’s sociopathic.
But, thankfully, scientists who have nothing better to do have had a look at why people do this, and found that they take in and retain information just as well as listening at normal speed. We can file this under ‘Stuff Neil and other audio snobs find a bit depressing’ alongside ‘people talking about watching a podcast’, ‘the general quality of radio ads’ and ‘the incorrect placing of microphones in films about podcasts’. When you play your podcast quickly, your mind is less likely to wander, and the retention of information only starts to decrease when you go over twice the intended speed.
If that’s what you like to do, you go ahead. Just don’t tell me about it.
It’s the Pods What Won it
There has been lots of discussion about whether podcasts influenced the US election, including in this esteemed newsletter. There will be more in the days to come, but let’s just agree that they did. More so than any election in history. Do you want to read more about this? Good – here’s an article about it.
It was also noticeable that Goalhanger’s ‘The Rest Is Money’ had an exclusive audience with Rachel Reeves after last week’s budget, recorded in 11 Downing Street. If you want in-depth time with an audience who you know are interested, you go on podcasts.
Giovanna is Lovely
Now, we don’t have favourite presenters or guests at Fresh Air. They’re all lovely. But Giovanna Fletcher is especially lovely. So it’s fitting that she has rounded off this series of Auto Trader’s ‘Show on the Road’. I wasn’t there for the recording in the car but I’m reliably informed by the Fresh Air team that she was friendly, very nice, lovely and lovely. She takes us on a tour of Ingatestone, Chelmsford and Hylands Park – three glamorous spots that are nearly as nice as Swindon. We hear about bullying, her Italian Heritage and of course McFly. And she’s lovely.
Paul Russell blurs fact with fiction…
Here’s a story where truth is stranger than fiction and explains how a classic 90’s horror film is weirdly linked to a 1987 true crime story.
So back in 1992, a British film director Bernard Rose was making a film based on a Clive Barker short story, which became Candyman. The film follows a Chicago graduate student completing a thesis on urban legends and folklore, which leads her to the legend of the “Candyman”, the ghost of an African-American artist and son of a slave, who was murdered in the late 19th century for his relationship with the daughter of a wealthy white man. It was a chilling, successful and well received film.
Amazingly, this series details how this fictional film has a link to a sensational murder that happened back in 1987. A woman called Ruthie Mae McCoy was murdered in her apartment in the Chicago social housing projects. Before her murder, she made a 911 call and reported that invaders were coming in through her medicine cabinet. She tells police this very strange sounding incident and partly due to her history of mental health problems and partly because of her poverty and background she was ignored. Previously she had reported similar incidents with her housing authority.
What the series unearths is that actually it was all true and, in trying to save money for ease of maintenance, McCoy’s flat and those of her neighbours, had been built with service hatches behind the bathroom mirror, leading to a maintenance shaft. In apartments where the bathrooms aligned, burglars could wrench one cabinet off the wall and force their way through to the other.
Chicago journalist Dometi Pongo tells this story magnificently in an audio page turning way that’s never sensationalist but always sensitive to the family of McCoy. We hear from all the important and relevant people involved and this six parter, wisely limited to approximately 30 minutes to each episode, is highly recommended. True crime journalism of the highest order.
Oli Seymour is still in spooky season…
To get into the Halloween spirit last week, I went on the search for horror podcasts and found this gem. Knifepoint Horror is a long-running series of horror tales that is significant for its minimalism. Every ep tells a different scary story: its almost always just the narrator (usually the writer Soren Narnia), some sparsely used music and sound effects – and absolutely no intros, outros or ads. This means you get right into the story straight away, and that the writing does almost all of the work – and you really appreciate just how good (and scary) that writing is. The episodes are really immersive: you feel as if you are transported into Narnia’s weird, creepy world for half an hour or so. I’ve only just started listening but the podcast has been around for 14 years and has built up a loyal community; check out its subreddit if you want recommendations of which episodes to start with. For full immersion, listen to an episode somewhere quiet – and ideally in one sitting.
What we’ve been listening to this week
My voice slowly disappearing. What started as a bit of a cold on Monday turned into me losing my voice almost entirely yesterday, which was very inconvenient on a day full of zoom calls.
I would think of a great point to make .. you know, the kind of thing you say on a zoom call that results in everyone nodding … but then when I went to say it, I would just squeak.
The best way to describe the current state of my voice is that it’s a montage of characters from Police Academy. Sometimes I’m Bobcat Goldthwaite and sometimes I’m Officer Hooks.
What we’ve been doing this week
It was my birthday on Monday (thanks), and Martin – Head of 90s band T-Shirts bought me a very special T-Shirt. It’s not a band T-shirt. It simply says ‘Yes, I can hear you Clem Fandango’
When you’ve directed as many voice sessions as I have, produced as many radio ads as I have, and looked through the glass at people as many times as I have, you are very used to people calling you Clem Fandango. As a result I will treasure this T-Shirt forever.
Go on, treat yourself on a Friday morning to ten minutes of Toast and Clem.
