I am submitting some extracts from 2011's episodes of GBA to something and I was wondering if any of you could recommend episodes or even bits of episodes that stood out to you?
Which episodes did you enjoy the most?
Was there anything people have said in episodes that have stood out or stuck with you?
Do you have favourite GBA moments and what are they if you do?
We are specifically talking about episodes that aired in 2011 which means anything in episode 1 - episode 36. Although feedback on other episodes is still welcomed :-)
I'd be so grateful for any suggestions. You can reply on this blog, tweet me, comment on facebook or email me at GBApodcast[at]gmail[dot]com with any suggestions, responses or thoughts.
So we’re talking here about comedy podcasts, pop culture podcasts, news podcasts, tech podcasts, educational podcasts, interview podcasts and music podcasts. This shows some of the range of what is out there.
Then you have 3 strands of content:
1.Podcasts made independently by people who are complete unknowns
2.Podcasts made independently by people who have an existing brand to draw audiences in
3.Podcasted versions of existing radio shows
In my view all of the above are great. Together they can form an on demand user created audio world. You get to choose your own radio station. And importantly you get to mix up “amateur” and “professional” content, both can, and should learn from each other, and both offer much to the listener. You have to seek out what you like which is actually one of the barriers not mentioned in this thread. Lots of people talk of not liking what is out there, but really they mean what they can find out there, since podcasts are not all long and not all anything. Sure it is an outlet for long form and free form audio. And I think audiences do desire long things and improvisational things. But that isn’t all that podcasting is.
One thing podcasting needs are filters. The tech stuff is getting better but people will still be overwhelmed by having to go through all the material on their own to find what works for them. Lots of people don’t want to have to search out shows they want them given to them by a reliable filter, such as a TV Channel. That is what is really great about the development of podcasting networks and of shows that review and recommend other podcasts, that stuff is important to mainstream audiences. And niche audiences too come to think of it.
In terms of the tech, app culture is helping to make podcasting more mainstream, now with apps like Stitcher Smart Radio there is less transferring and less hassle for you to programme your own stations. Smart phones are very mainstream and people have learned through them to download and use apps. They don’t consider that hard the way they do searching on iTunes. This means that it doesn’t matter that apple don’t really give a shit about the medium, we basically don’t (or won’t) need them anymore.
The genre that is missing from my list and from the discussion on this thread that will help take podcasting into the mainstream is drama. There are few great audio dramas or narrative serials out there, or at least none that I’ve managed to find yet, none with the same profile as the other genres. Most of podcasting has settled into conversations or documentaries. Even within comedy podcasting this is the case, although the sketch comedies do lead the way on this. Drama and serial narrative stories are genres that capture the public’s imagination. They also require more writing time, more performance development, more editing, and are generally a much harder beast to create to a high standard from an independent or DIY perspective. But they will come eventually I think.
Podcasting does offer new tones that you can’t find in other media. It is more intimate, more interactive, unmediated, due to how it is done and how it is consumed. That’s why free flowing conversation has become its strongest strand. This isn’t available in the same way anywhere, not even on talk radio where the pressures and structure is very different. Two people in a room is very different from two people in front of mics in a studio.
The potential DIY element of podcasting is something that feels fresh and new. It can take us into personal spaces, from the dressing rooms of the famous to the bedrooms of the unfamous, and to so many places in between, catching people in moments that are a world away from what you capture on TV or on most radio. The microphone can go anywhere and because podcasts can be fully independent often there is no one telling the podcaster where to take it and how to do it. They figure out their own rules on their own and so hit on different solutions to the ones we’re used to.
I make a podcast that tries to explore these elements of the form. It’s a series of conversations with people I know, from my closest friends and family, to someone I met once at a party. It’s tagline is “There are lots of shows about famous people this show is about the rest of us.”
Or search for it on iTunes or Stitcher under its name Getting Better Acquainted.
It’s one of a few independent audio shows that I work on. None of them make any money. I have a day job. They all cost lots of time and quite a bit of money to produce. But I love the form. I love the freedom. I love connecting directly with audiences. Which isn’t to say I wouldn’t be able to do all of them more and better if I could figure out the monetization problem. But I’m happy to keep pondering that problem as I work on making great audio.
Getting rid of the barriers between creator and audience is a wonderful thing and something that both creators and audiences want. Not all the time sure. We still want lots of mystery out there too. But in a world where so much is mediated, where so much is impersonal, where we feel fragmented, having this direct link, cutting out all the middle people, is a powerful and exciting thing. And that is what podcasting has to offer.
The following things are things I've learned, achieved and considered in my first year of making Getting Better Acquainted. Many of the things I've learnt have come from conversations that haven't come out yet but will be aired in 2012.
Having spoken to so many people about themselves, and tried to empathise and find common ground, I've been reminded that we are both similar to each other and very very different. Everyone is weird because everyone is not you, and you are weird to everyone else.
All three conversations with my mother (but especially the third) yielded both the revelation that if I am to forgive myself my flaws then I have to forgive my mother and her mother their flaws. For they are the same flaws. All of spring from the same river and it flows down.
The weekend I recorded those conversations was a highly emotional one where I also held a new born child in my arms, interviewed some old and dear friends and spent time with my 6 year old niece.
From that weekend came my new attempt to sum it all up:
"We're all just people trying to get through life in whatever way we can."
I've talked to people about these practices and I've come to the conclusion its time to get rid of both my sneer at, and fear of, meditation and yoga. My fear of silence probably needs to be conquered. These practices may help me find more peace in myself and give me perspective on all the chatter and clutter. I find that I crave a great stillness. But how do I find a way to fit it into my time? That's something I've yet to learn. Hopefully 2012 will offer up the answer.
Whatever my problems with fitting these new and possibly beneficial projects into my life, one thing I scribbled down after a GBA conversation was:
"I have the resolve and drive to get my shit done so I need to just do it. But also relax about it. Give myself space to breathe."
And I have done that. I'm less harsh on myself than I was. And I'm getting things done. Possibly more. But I take time out for myself and I'm enjoying the process more. I'm less desperate to race to the end.
Some conversations have been a revelation repeated. And sometimes I didn't notice what I learnt the first time properly!
Listening back to my conversation with Louise I realised I'd been on the path to the above mentioned revolution earlier than I'd thought and her wisdom in that conversation and the things I said in response informed and strengthened it.
Listening back to the conversation with my brother Tony I realised that it would be interesting to people who didn't know us. That it was in the words of Jen a conversation full of "startling honesty". At the time i'd been disappointed with it. In the edit I realised that it had been a really great conversation and one that I should reconsider and remember. One of many times this year I've learnt things on mic.
I didn't expect the conversations to be so personal. I should have expected it but sometimes you don't think about the most obvious things. You don't fully consider them.
So many conversations were journeys into shared history. And often at the heart of that history is shared love. So I've had a chance to examine the bonds of closeness I have with people.
I accidentally deleted GBA 1 which is why it now appears out of sequence. In the aftermath of that mistake I discovered that Soundcloud offers the ability to create a spotlight tab which I'm now using to house a set of episodes designed to introduce the new GBA listener to the show.
Soundcloud also allow you to create sets which has allowed me to start grouping connected episodes together. So the show has its actual order, that is designed with variety and range in mind. But now you can also follow strands of the show. I see GBA as a tapestry anyway but now it is easier to unpick.
I've been on four GBA road trips this year and this is an element I hope to expand in 2012. The other two (Coventry and Bristol) will be coming out next year.
Three of these four trips were journeys into my past literally, although the fourth one was even more related to my past in both less and more direct ways. You could say all of them were about facing and coming to terms with myself. Or my-selves, who I am now and who I was then.
I've also been travelled to other peoples homes and other locations to record people from The National Theatre to Hemel Hempstead.
The word blessed isn't one I'd normally use, maybe I've been influenced by all the conversations I've had. But regardless blessed is the only word I can find to describe how I feel about many of the conversations that I've had. This one for example:
The conversations have had big effects on me. It was nice to find that they had big effects on others. For example Hayley on listening to Elspeth's GBA was inspired to embrace her faith more. She was also inspired to write a song called "Leave the body" a song being recorded for The Reactionaries new album. We'll be performing the song at the Stand Up Tragedy launch date on the 6th of February 2012.
So often the conversations and socialising that happened off mic but nevertheless happened as a result of meeting with people to record the show have been even more illuminating than what you hear. I'm often catching myself thinking "Doh! Why aren't I recording this?" Although I'm trying to cut down in that and remember one of the rules I try and record by: "You get what you get and you don't get upset."
This year I've really heard myself. At my worst and my best. There is nothing like recording yourself for 4 days talking to your school friends to make you hear a facet of yourself properly. The year began with plenty of that as I worked on what I consider the failed project 4 Days in a Room.
In fact 4DiaR was a big influence on GBA. I learned what works and what doesn't. And I wanted people to hear the other me's. The people I was or could be with my other friends and in different rooms.
So I've heard my voice a lot. On GBA I hear my voice on monitor headphones during the conversations. And later I hear it again in the edit.
I'm very aware of how it sounds, it's tone, the vocal ticks I have. I still find hearing myself hard. I'll think I've become used to it and then I'll find another conversation where I do things I wish I hadn't.
But i'm more philosophical about it now. I've also heard and edited a lot of other peoples vocal ticks. I know my voice doesn't annoy other people as much as it does me. And that the balance sheet has a lot of good moments on it; for every time I talk over someone when they were about to say something amazing, is a time when I listen well, or ask the perfect question. It evens out.
I also think I now hear my own voice in everyday life closer to how it sounds in reality. This is probably a good thing, although I'm not sure in what way it is good yet.
I've been creating things for years but this has been the first project people have sent me emails telling me they like it. Often people I don't well at all. And even occasionally strangers.
It really made my day when Helen Zaltzman from Answer Me This tweeted the show saying:
And we've also had twitter support and respect from Risk and I Like You. The show has a consistent international listenership and was recommended by SoundCloud.
And I've had some really great iTunes reviews and soundcloud comments this year.
All of this plus the mind expanding journey this project had been for me has helped me to see my own strengths as well as my weaknesses.
It has been a surprise to realise that my work has been leading in this direction for years. In fact it was an off mic conversation with my friend Richard (whose episodes will air in the new year) where I first realised this.
It has also been strange to realise that I am the product here. That this form is such a personal one and that on my search to explore truth I have come to this point where there is no filter between myself and the audience. Or at least only the small but crucial filters of the edit and the context.
There is no author or rock star pose, there is just me. My life. The people I know. Our stories.
In many ways this has been very liberating.
The change in my understanding that this project had been us a big part of what has led me to "book the room". This phrase comes from The Dialogue Project's Karl James whose GBA will air in three weeks. The meeting we had only happened because of GBA. And that goes for many other meetings I've had this year.
(I didn't meet with Karl till just after I'd booked the room.)
The room is The Lounge at The Leicester Square Theatre. The show is Stand Up Tragedy.
I've thought a lot this year, both on and off mic, about the form of GBA. What things it offers that other shows don't. The kind of marvellous medicine that it's ingredients make.
The show is long form and takes the audience on a journey. In fact considering the nature of what the show is and how it relates to what I do (music, writing, performance) has led me to the conclusion that what I'm interested in doing is taking audiences on journeys. I am a jouneyman and not a jack of all trades.
The moments when life intrudes into the conversations seems to me to be the crux of what it's about. When a dog interrupts or a car revs it's engine it exposes the mechanics of the show. But unlike in most forms, where exposing the mechanics makes the show feel less real, in snatched conversations it makes them more real.
The conversations happen in places TV and radio don't go to. In the guests homes, on river banks, in din filled back gardens, walking round the streets of Brixton, Edinburgh and Cardiff. In crowded pubs. In silent front rooms. In sunny back gardens filled with birdsong. And they are captured moments. Spontaneous.
But a microphone is present and that both changes and frames the moment.
The phrase I've settled on that described it is: Heightened realism
I began GBA in my 30th year. I always thought I'd hate thirty. Ridiculously I've been depressed by getting and being older since I turned 22. But I actually like being thirty.
Partly because in meeting up with people I went to school with like and seeing how far they've come I've realised how far I've come. "We've left school behind" as an old friend who wishes to remain off mic put it.
Also kicked off by GBA has been a reanalysis of my past. This has been partially lived out on mic. It is important to try and forgive your past, embrace it as part of yourself, and I am both pleased and surprised to find myself doing both.
Getting older is ok. Being young was rubbish. I know myself so much better now.
One of the things I know is that I don't know anything very much. But one thing I do know is that I am very glad to have found Getting Better Acquainted. It seems to fit. I am very proud of it.
And we've also had twitter support and respect from 
