What I Found In The Dirt
While planting my garden, I listened to three totally new, totally independent narrative series: The Final Service, Go And Find Out and You, Me and My (Mental) Illness
Two weeks ago I published Wow, Is It Quiet Out There, which was my attempt to sum up what I’m seeing out there in the podcast world. Perhaps more importantly, the piece highlights what I’m not seeing, specifically narrative series. I offered the details of my research in a database that I put up for sale, which was more popular than I had imagined. The Definitive Narrative Db can still be found here (I’ve continued to update it in these last couple of weeks, including a pod.link for each series).
Based on my inbox, dms and online activity, and a noticeable uptick in subscriptions (Hello! And thank you 👀 ) this piece really hit. Thanks for all your comments and messages. It’s helpful to know what’s coming down the pipe in the following months. You can always find me here:
Research begets research, or perhaps digging begets further digging, and thus I have been on a mission to search out any narrative series that are out there, especially the indie ones that don’t have the big release budgets, or a feed swap with an existing popular show.
I return from the trenches with dirt under my fingernails and and fresh new links for you. This actual dirt under my fingernails: I planted my veggie garden while I listened to these different series. Can’t wait to eat my own tomatoes and arugula in July.
Three new indie series for you to discover
Go and Find Out
pod.link HERE
Jonny Wright woke up one day and decided that he was too comfortable, too tucked in to his 20-something life in Asheville, North Carolina. So he decided to leave everything comfortable and known to him and explore the world. But not in the usual go to Eurorail or backpack through Thailand kind-of-way. Instead, he wound back the timeclock to re-discover the Beat Era, and headed out on the road by hitchhiking, with no real plan.
Wright is also a musician, so both the music and the sound design for this series is layered and complex. This helped me to understand how someone new to audio created a professional sounding narration and mix; he’s clearly a trained performer.
The drawback of the series for me is that although he talks all about getting in these cars and having great conversations, ending up on the side of the road in bad weather wondering if he would catch a ride, none of this seemed to be recorded. There’s very little in the way of scene tape, recorded in the moment. The storytelling comes through his reflections and is handily produced through sound effects and re-enactments.
This production choice makes it sound more like an audiobook written in a reflective state than of a narrative series that unravels timely revelations as the moment. If you’re a curious and ready-to-rewrite-it-all 20-something who is looking for a thought leader on giving yourself into the moment, dive in here and enjoy being swept along with his lowfi, carefree, anti-influencer, musical and whimsical adventures.
The Final Service
pod.link HERE
Producer Mateo Schimpf is a producer and editor at Colorado Public Radio. For years, he has worked with producer and host Ray Suarez on the podcast On Shifting Ground, funded by a nonprofit and broadcast by KQED. Then the duo pitched The Henry Luce Foundation to create a 4-part series as a stand-alone doc series that looks more deeply at church closures in the US…but then in 2024, the podcast was cancelled, so they decided to change the name of the feed to be The Final Service and run the 4-part doc as the capstone to the On Shifting Ground feed.
What emerges is a 4-part narrative which is (a bit wonkily) bookended by Suarez who opens by going to the final service at the church that baptized him, to the end where he is interviewed by Schimpf about what this means for the broader community of Christians. The middle portion, which is the reported narrative potion, Schimpf goes out into the field to meet public. These parts are deftly told, in a lovely, traditional public radio style. I do appreciate how the series was pieced together, with sympatico foundation money, to create a narrative series where there otherwise wouldn’t have been one. It’s crafty and mercenary, which is perhaps a survival skill we can all learn from.
The conceit: Given the prominence and position of religion in American culture and politics, isn’t it an obvious conclusion that Christianity is stronger than ever in the US? Aren’t Christian churches growing, with solid base of funding?
Schimpf’s reporting uncovers is a different story. Generations of families who find themselves feeling the pressure to keep going, despite the extreme volunteer commitment and declining attendance; A young pastor in Chicago who raps, but doesn’t want to put that on a billboard despite the fact that might drive more young folks to join; A young man who found his Lithuanian community and belonging through his congregation; The challenge that devout young Christians feel who also hold left-leaning and social justice values.
The series closes with this thought: “All of us would love to be part of a group where we heard, are seen and heard and accepted ….like AA…the the one place where you walk through the doors and you were seen and heard and there’s no pretense.”
You, Me and My (Mental) Illness
pod.link HERE
There are plentiful podcasts that explore and discuss the fertile ground of mental health crisis: the lack of supports, the personal challenges people faced, years before, now that they are in a better place. Let’s not forget the multitudes of true crime podcasts that detail the sordid outcomes of where some mental health crises end up.
Many fewer podcasts actually speak to the people who are in the middle of a mental health episode, and connect with the family members who support them through their different breaks with reality. In You, Me and My (Mental) Illness, Producer Mary Rose Madden calls it out directly and connects with different people who are experiencing mental illness about how they cope, and what they actually do to get by, day-to-day.
This gets real, and candid. It speaks directly to Remy, who was 17-years-old when she started to experience symptoms, hearing voices, and her mom Joy, who has been her number one support, through it all. In one episode, Remy takes the mic to ask her mom the questions that she hasn’t asked her before.
The series is captivating without being voyeuristic; connecting without being cheesy. It shows us that the power is through connecting; it does this without to telling us how to do this. Or even why it’s important. That part is obvious through listening.
It’s interesting to note
Two of these indie series are supported by foundations…You, Me and My (Mental) Illness through NAMI Maryland, the National Alliance on Mental Health. The Final Service through The Henry Luce Foundation.
This week I’ve been reading a condensed version of On Tyranny, by Timothy Snyder. He’s the Yale academic who has decamped to my hometown, Toronto, because, well, he’s watching tyranny unfold. [BTW, there’s a podcast for that too: The Torontonian]
His book is subtitled Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century, and when I think about the importance of podcasting, and what this powerful medium has to offer the public, I think the second lesson applies: Defend institutions.
Snyder writes:
“It is institutions that help us to preserve decency. They need our help as well.
Do not speak of ‘our institutions’ unless you make them yours by acting on their behalf. Institutions do not protect themselves.
They fall one after the other unless each is defended from the beginning.
So choose and institution you care about
—a court, a newspaper, a law, a labor union—and take its side”
The other option here not offered is: an organization that defends the marginalized rights of many; the storytellers who talk to these people, and the public or independent media channels who make sure these stories make it out into the world.
ADDITIONAL NOTES:
Tribeca Storytelling Festival … go and get your tickets here! There are some AMAZING Tribeca Selects to discover…and how I wish I could be there to see my girl, Sandra Oh, be interviewed for The Interview podcast live. The OG Nate DiMeo doing a live Memory Palace show…an live retrospective with Josie Long for [RIP] BBC Short Cuts, another In The Dark live program, Talk Easy live taping. Plus…there’s also certain to be a great amount of audio co-mingling opportunities and excitement… we all ❤️ NYC and love a good audio event there.
CBC open call for pitches - And you can read all about it from
in Pod The North DEADLINE SOONDid you know that Left Of Dial is almost ready to tabulate its entries for the ESSENTIAL LISTENING POLL? What are the top 100 podcasts ever to have been made? Have you voted yet? Get on this list HERE [go to FAQ and follow Who Can Vote?]
My vote, BTW, included three entries that had not been mentioned yet….wait to see the list to find out where the ears have gone.
It's Suarez, not Saurez. Thanks.
Hi Samantha,
I didn't have time to comment on your newsletter about the lack of English-language series in America this year. I wanted to tell you that the same thing is happening with Spanish content. Production has slowed down considerably, while conversational content has grown, in my opinion, to an absurd degree.
As you have done with your garden, I think that now we will have to look further and deeper to find good content, but I'm sure there's something out there. I just got back from The Podcast Show in London, where there was some discussion about narrative, but most of the conversation was about video and AI. Nevertheless, I attended some interesting panels on narrative series, and there are still people pursuing great projects.
I'll check out the series you recommended this week. Thanks for your work.