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Greg Larsen tells a familiar story of life as a comedian during 2020. He had a show ready to debut at the Melbourne Comedy Festival when covid cancelled the festival. But rather than scramble to move his work online, Larsen had been podcasting for some time, and had built a loyal audience. 

“I was doing a one man play. And it was probably the most ambitious show I've ever done. And I spent a lot of work on it, a lot of time on it, and then it was cancelled. Okay.”

Before I had a chance to offer condolences, Larsen was quick to point out “people working on a check out counter or in a distribution centre” have had a worse year than he has. 

“I’m in two minds about it, to be honest, because on the one hand, there's been a lot of shit stuff that's happened and a lot of work that's been lost. But on the other hand, it's actually been quite good for someone like me, who makes podcasts, to do that more.”

Larsen’s podcast The Grub, is a sketch comedy podcast with Anne Edmonds and Ben Russell. When the pandemic hit, the group moved many of their episodes behind a Patreon paywall.

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Red Hot Australian Christmas is a darkly funny 45 minute radio play set during last year’s devastating bushfire season. It’s the story of Heather, a matriarch trying her best to ignore the fires and host Christmas for her extended family. She stays strong even as the mercury rises and smoke starts to engulf her homestead in Maffra, Gippsland, until a code red is called, and all are forced to evacuate. 

The play was written and directed by comedian and author Tegan Higginbotham. The radio play is semi-biographical, and appears in the feed of Paul Verhoeven's Loose Units

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You know that meme of the girl sitting beside the ice cream sign, "this is what its like to listen to podcasts"?

That's me whenever a new episode of Oh No Ross and Carrie drops.

If you've never heard their show, you're in for a treat, there's so many amazing episodes in the archives to explore.

https://ohnopodcast.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Marc Fennell is the busiest man in podcasting. Beyond his weekly technology podcast, Download This Show, Marc has made a series of short run series for Audible, and is now back at the ABC with Stuff The British Stole. 

Marc shares how he came up with the show, from development to pitch, and then how the hell do you record a podcast that takes the listener to all parts of the globe when the world is locked down? 

Marc is always generous with his time and incredibly entertaining when talking about a passion project like this. 

Check out Stuff The British Stole wherever you listen to podcasts. 

You can also read the article over at SMH. https://www.smh.com.au/culture/tv-and-radio/the-story-of-colonialism-told-through-stuff-20201116-p56eyg.html

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Days Like These, the latest podcast from ABC Studios, will feel immediately familiar to podcast fans. The series has the structure and tone of classic non-fiction podcasts, like This American Life, while still sounding completely Australian and unique.

Producers Rachel Fountain and Ian Walker are happy with the comparison, and cite Reply All and Heavyweight as further inspiration for the show.

Ian and Rachel tell us about putting a podcast together remotely, and how they created a very firm storytelling structure they could apply to stories of almost any genre.

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Podcasts can be incredibly niche affairs, allowing creators to indulge in their obsessions without chasing mass market appeal. Case in point is comedian Tim Ross' latest, House Stories; a short run series on the rarely seen tapestries of the Sydney Opera House.

When I mentioned how niche the subject matter was, Ross laughed and pointed to the recently wildly successful Netflix documentary, My Octopus Teacher, as evidence that "a great story is a great story, despite what it’s about." - read more at SMH

Tim and I talk about modern art and architecture, the Opera House, his podcast, and the Sirius towers in The Rocks.

..and that f**cking Octopus movie.

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Dr Amantha Imber is an organisational psychologist, best-selling author, and founder of Australia’s leading innovation consultancy Inventium. Her thoughts have appeared in Harvard Business Review, Entrepreneur, Forbes, and Fast Company and she is the author of two best-selling books: “The Creativity Formula” and “The Innovation Formula”.

Amantha is the host of the number one ranking business podcast How I Work, where she interviews some of the world’s leading innovators about their habits, rituals and strategies for structuring their day. Every episode contains practical tips and insights on how the world’s most successful people manage their day.

Check out Amantha's podcast here: https://www.amanthaimber.com/podcast/

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Nazeem Hussain was preparing for a month-long run at the Melbourne International Comedy festival, followed by a national tour, when COVID-19 upended his plans. Knowing all Australian comedians were in a similar situation, Hussain launched a podcast: The Survivor’s Guide to Coronavirus.

Hussain was buoyed by the "family spirit amongst comedians" who supported each other, emotionally and financially, while live venues shuttered across Australia.

Nazeem talks about life in Melbourne's lockdown, about appearing in the Victorian Government's public health campaign and the interesting feedback he received, and how Shane Jacobson and Susan Carlin taught him how to react to trolls online.

Read more at SMH

https://www.smh.com.au/culture/tv-and-radio/when-covid-19-upended-live-gigs-nazeem-hussain-launched-a-rescue-podcast-20200921-p55xsw.html

Nazeem's Survivor's Guide Podcast:

https://podfollow.com/survivors-guide-to-coronavirus

Rogue Son:

https://www.audible.com.au/pd/Nazeem-Hussain-Rogue-Son-Audiobook/B08FBJCSMX

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Brianna Peterson may have one of the most recognisable voices for the under ten set. For the last two years Peterson hosted Imagine This, an ABC science podcast for kids, that answered the big questions like why we get hiccups, and why mosquito bites are so itchy...

Peterson has since gone independent, and her new podcast At Home With Brie is now available. The show is divided into day and night playlists; one to encourage kids to explore the world around them, the other to calm them down for bed.

Read more at SMH.

This was such a fun episode to record and edit. My daughter Penny is a massive fan of Brianna, so in keeping with the theme of At Home With Brie, I let Penny take the mic for some hard hitting questions. I think the whole damn thing is adorable, but I'm pretty biased.

Rate and review Meta on Apple Podcasts if you can, or buy me a kebab.

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American singer-songwriter Amanda Palmer was part-way through a world tour when COVID-19 shut the world down. As luck would have it, she was in New Zealand when her flights were cancelled.

"I think I won the jackpot on this one very much by accident, but I am really, really lucky, as an American and especially as a parent of a small child," Palmer says.

Palmer has spent her time in New Zealand finishing a podcast she started two years earlier. The podcast, The Art Of Asking Everything, has Palmer interviewing artists and activists, including Tim Minchin, Dan Savage and Tim Flannery. Palmer recorded interviews on tour, tracking down the thinkers she’d always wanted to speak to.

"I used the podcast as an excuse... to just go very very deep with someone I wanted to befriend anyway, and I use it as my excuse to talk to them and cut through all of the small talk and the bullshit," she says.

"I've recorded about 20 episodes of it, and it's just incredibly deep personal conversations with big thinkers. Mostly artists, but also psychologists and climate scientists and all sorts of people who were just great conversationalists."

Recording the episodes so far in advance, Palmer was "afraid that the episodes would get stale and wouldn’t stand up in a COVID world" but she was pleased the conversations are "much deeper than that, so they’re evergreen conversations".

And her fans supporting the project on Patreon have access to "live follow-up chats with all of the guests, to just check in post-COVID. Where are we, where is your work at, how was your lockdown?" she says.

"The painful paradox of the pandemic is that in times of crisis, we are instinctively called to move towards one another and to gather and to rely on our collectivism and our collective effort. And we've been physically unable to do that.

“That's the big one-two punch and the big paradox of this pandemic is that we've been separated and then separated again."

Palmer has been watching the civil unrest, protests and failed response to COVID-19 with horror – a completely predictable horror, but a horror nonetheless.

"It's devastating. I just feel like we are watching the wheels fall off the bus. I wake up every day and I read the news and listen to what's happening and there's … a part of me that shakes my head and thinks, 'This can't be happening. We live in a constitutional democracy. The President's not allowed to say that.'

"So I am doing what I think most Americans are doing, which is I am not trying to forecast, because I feel that that's probably a waste of energy. Instead Ir'm trying to batten down my emotional hatches and try as best I can to use my platform to get people to register and to actually vote."

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