MetaPod

The Apology Line podcast tells the unsettling stories of a secular confessional telephone line.

The Apology Line project invited the public to call a telephone line and leave anonymous apologies for wrongdoings on an answering machine. The project was started by artist Allan Bridge, anonymously, in the early 1980s in New York City. Allan ran the project for more than a decade and also published a magazine companion to the telephone line.

Questions about morality and the criminal mind intrigued Allan and drove his work. Before the Apology project, Allan created an interactive art piece called Crime Time. Crime Time replicated the act of stealing. A user could either get away with the act or be caught with one’s hand, literally, in the act.

This interactive art was reportedly Allan’s way of coming to terms with his own shoplifting. Later, his purpose for the Apology project was “to provide a way for criminals and wrongdoers to apologize for their misdeeds in the hope that this will help them turn over a new leaf.”

In this episode of MetaPod, we talk to Marissa Bridge, widow of Allan Bridge and narrator of The Apology Line. Marissa talks to us in detail about the podcast and the original Apology Line project. As a result, we learn that the original project had far greater scope and insight on human behaviour than the podcast.

Marissa also recounts life in Manhattan in the 1980s and the historical context of the Apology project. She speaks candidly to us about her life with Allan and the callers whose apologies occupied much of their time together.

Show notes

• The Apology Line project
• A selection of calls to The Apology Line
• New Yorkers Who Said Sorry

About Marissa Bridge

Marissa Bridge is a painter and multi-media artist who lives in New York with her husband, three cats and a dog. Her art work is inspired by nature and its structures. One of the most important influences in Marissa’s art and life was her relationship with the conceptual artist Allan Bridge, also known as Mr. Apology. She met Allan in November 1980, a few weeks after he launched his groundbreaking project, the Apology Line. They spent the next 15 years together, until Allan’s untimely death in a scuba-diving accident in 1995.

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Twenty Thousand Hertz tells “the stories behind the world’s most recognizable and interesting sounds.”

Are you conscious of sound – especially sounds that you hear all the time?

“Our brains are very good at filtering out – especially things we hear a lot,” explains Dallas Taylor, sound designer and host of the Twenty Thousand Hertz podcast. “Sound is something that generally we have a hard time making conscious – but it’s very easy to.”

The Twenty Thousand Hertz podcast is an enjoyable way to become more aware of sound. Dallas and the podcast team devote a great deal of care and craft to each episode. As a result, listeners will gain an appreciation for sound, as well as the people and devices behind those sounds. Whether it’s a microphone, dinosaurs, a drum machine, or a corporate jingle, you’re sure to learn something interesting on Twenty Thousand Hertz.

“I hope that we start to really understand how sound can have a hugely negative influence on our life and how it can have a hugely positive influence,” says Dallas. “If you ever want to become conscious, just say ‘I want to become conscious about sound, right now’ and you can start to hear things that your brain filters out all the time.”

In this episode of MetaPod, Dallas Taylor explains the work of sound designers in enhancing emotion, plus his own emotional objectives for the Twenty Thousand Hertz podcast. Dallas shares the backstories of several episode of the podcast, explaining how he chooses topics for the show.

He also reveals two significant moments in the show’s history to date (thank you, Bose and thank you, Roman Mars). We also discuss the changing relationship between humans and the sonic environment. Finally, MetaPod host Kevin May quizzes Dallas on some of the sounds in his personal life.

Show notes

• What silence can teach you about sound
• Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD)
• Celebrating 40 Years of the TR-808 Drum Machine

About Dallas Taylor

Dallas Taylor is the host and creator of Twenty Thousand Hertz, a lovingly crafted podcast revealing the stories behind the world’s most recognizable and interesting sounds. He is also the creative director of Defacto Sound, where he has led thousands of high-profile projects ranging from blockbuster trailers and advertising campaigns to Sundance award-winning films and major television series. A sought-after speaker, Dallas is a frequent contributor to conferences and publications, and a respected thought leader on the narrative power of sound.

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Decoder Ring “takes a cultural question, object, or habit; examines its history; and tries to figure out what it means and why it matters.”

The mullet isn’t just a peculiar haircut from the 1980s, (strangely) loved by hipsters in the 2020s – it has a backstory all of its own, from sports stars to soft metal bands. The same goes for why clowns are feared more often than they’re enjoyed, or why some television shows have a “laugh track”.

Cultural phenomenon don’t just get thrust into the mainstream overnight (although some do, admittedly) as they are often the result of years of slow evolution, twisting and shaping here and there.

That’s where the popular Slate podcast Decoder Ring comes in. In each episode, host Willa Paskin unravels the origins of a different mystery and breaks down its impact on society and culture.

In this episode of MetaPod, Willa tells us about her favourite mysteries on the show. She explains how one slice of contemporary or historical significance might make the cut and why others will not.

MetaPod co-host Wendy Morrill also sends a barrage of quick-fire A or B questions at our guest. Fellow host Kevin May admits he’s never heard the phrase “business at the front, party at the back” in relation to the mullet.

Show notes:

• “Karen” – Wikipedia article
• Why the mullet is the hairstyle of 2021
• Willa Paskin on the Oscars 2021.

About Willa Paskin

Willa Paskin is a TV critic at Slate and the host of the Decoder Ring podcast. She has also written for the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, and New York, among other publications. She lives in Brooklyn.

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“On a long weekend in the summer of 2002, Lisa Marie Young went out to celebrate a friend’s birthday. That night Lisa got into a red Jaguar with a young man from a prominent local family and was never seen again.”

A mysterious and hardly straightforward case, Island Crime tells the story of a young woman who went missing on a celebratory evening surrounded by friends.

Lisa Marie Young was an energetic and bright 21-year-old from Vancouver Island. Her disappearance on June 30, 2002 was initially played down by local authorities. Police deemed the case as that of a young woman who may have been partying too hard and failed to get in touch with family afterwards.

However, those who had been with Lisa on that night knew something was wrong. In the absence of an official search for Lisa by the police, the community initiated their own. Almost immediately, speculation concentrated on the driver of a distinctive red Jaguar. Some of the darker elements of the local Nanaimo scene came into view too.

Lisa would have turned 40-years old this week.

Island Crime host Laura Palmer originally set out to pay tribute to Lisa Marie. A former producer for CBC, Laura uncovered many new leads and witnesses while investigating for the Island Crime podcast. As a result, the mystery of Lisa’s disappearance continues to unravel.

In our episode this week, Laura details her work on the case and the impact of the investigation on Lisa Marie’s family and First Nation community. We also discuss issues surrounding institutionalised bias against indigenous Canadians.


Show notes:

• Frequency Podcast Network page for Island Crime
• Disappearance of Lisa Marie Young – Wikipedia
• Podcast breathes new life into historic case of missing Nanaimo woman – Nanaimo News Now article

About Laura Palmer

Laura Palmer is an accomplished CBC radio producer. Before moving on from her Executive Producer position, Laura produced Network radio & TV shows, racking up numerous awards and becoming a respected industry leader. Island Crime is Laura’s first independent podcast production. Season 1 ‘Where is Lisa?’ shot up the Apple podcast charts in the summer of 202 and is now one of Canada’s top True Crime podcasts.

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"Hit Parade is a podcast of pop-chart history that dissects how songs become hits: the intersection of art and commerce that is popular music."

How do songs and albums achieve success on the charts and become lasting memories, for better or worse, in popular culture? Chris Molanphy, a pop-chart analyst, looks at both culture and commerce to arrive at answers.

The answers, along with plenty of trivia, song clips, unexpected stories and entertaining cultural analysis form the Hit Parade podcast.

“I’m always looking for the best stories,” explained Chris. “For ways to make the audience go, ‘oh yeah… I’ve experienced that… that’s the song about the such and such with the so and so’.”

In this episode of MetaPod, Chris Molanphy makes the case that the music charts still matter. He also outlines the key developments that have shaped the evolution of the Billboard charts up to the streaming era.

We discuss with Chris how he uncovers chart phenomena and conceives topics for episodes of Hit Parade. Plus, Kevin and Wendy quiz Chris on some of his favourite music-related picks, which leads to Chris revealing a cherished item from his clothes closet.


Show notes:

• How the Hot 100 Became America’s Hit Barometer
• Christmas Is All Around
• The AC/DC Rule

About Chris Molanphy

Chris Molanphy is a chart analyst and pop critic who writes about the intersection of culture and commerce in popular music. For Slate, he hosts the Hit Parade podcast and writes their “Why Is This Song No. 1?” series. His work has also appeared in Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, Vulture, NPR Music’s The Record, The Village Voice, Billboard and CMJ. Chris has also been a frequent guest on National Public Radio (All Things Considered, Soundcheck, Planet Money, On the Media) and on Slate’s podcasts The Gist and the Culture Gabfest.

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“Hidden Brain explores the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior and questions that lie at the heart of our complex and changing world.”

Imagine years of academic research distilled down to a 45-minute conversation. The conversation is easy to understand and offers new ways to look at things. It’s unimposing, yet applicable to your own life. It’s also calming to listen to. That is roughly what you can expect from a podcast called Hidden Brain.

Hosted by Shankar Vedantam, a social science correspondent for National Public Radio (NPR) in the USA, Hidden Brain draws on social science and storytelling to examine everyday social dynamics. It aims to “connect the ivory tower with the public square”. Its team is guided by the principles of “scientific and journalistic rigor” and “deep empathy” for listeners and contributors. As a result, listeners gain new perspectives on culture and society.

“We’re almost sort of wincingly earnest as a team and as a show, laughs Tara Boyle, the executive producer of the show. “I like that about us. I think there needs to be more space in the world for vulnerabilities.”

The show started out as a podcast in 2015 and later spun off a radio programme for NPR stations. In late 2020, the show spawned an independent production company.

In this episode of MetaPod, we talk to Tara Boyle, Executive Producer of Hidden Brain. Tara shares the origin story of the podcast and explains Shankar Vedantam’s skill in bringing together a wide range of research topics into accessible discussions about society, culture and self. Tara also discusses how listener feedback and suggestions are incorporated into the show. Plus, she reveals some of the most popular aspects of the show according to its global base of listeners.

Show notes:

• Useful Delusions: The Power & Paradox of the Self-Deceiving Brain
• Unsung Heroes

About Tara Boyle

Tara Boyle is Executive Producer of the Hidden Brain podcast and radio show, and the head of content for Hidden Brain Media. Tara oversees the production of both the Hidden Brain radio show and podcast, providing editorial support to host Shankar Vedantam and the shows’ producers. She also provides strategic support to Shankar in the development of new projects for Hidden Brain Media. Previously, Tara spent a decade at WAMU, the NPR station in Washington, D.C. She has reported for The Boston Globe, and began her career in public radio at WBUR in Boston.

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“The Battersea Poltergeist is a paranormal cold case, re-investigated through a thrilling blend of drama and documentary. The true story of one of Britain’s strangest hauntings.”

Danny Robins doesn’t believe in ghosts, however, he thinks that we need them.

The Battersea Poltergeist is the story of a haunting in south London that started in 1956. At the centre of the decades-long drama is the Hitchings family, its teenage daughter Shirley and a noisy ghost known as “Donald”.

At first the family is spooked by loud sounds and moving household objects. Then more threatening acts start to occur. Scrawled messages on the wall, flying pots and pans and a fire – all of it unexplainable. The podcast blends documentary, expert commentary and drama to recount and analyse the happenings that tormented the Hitchings family at 63 Wycliffe Road.

In this episode of MetaPod, we talk to Danny from his shed about ghosts and “bringing the dead to life” through the use of dramatisations in the podcast. We also discuss his experiences listening to people tell their own ghost stories, including Shirley Hitchings.

Danny also talks about the community of believers and sceptics that has formed on social media since the podcast started, both camps trying to understand what happened to Shirley and her family during those years.

Show notes:

• Gallery of pictures from the original case
• How to Create a Haunting
• Fear in your ear: the unstoppable rise of the horror podcast
• Danny Robins feature in SCAN Magazine
• Lily Allen to make West End debut in new Danny Robins play 2:22 – A Ghost Story

If you liked this conversation, check out our episode with Danny Robins that is devoted to his series Uncanny.

About Danny Robins

Danny Robins is an award-winning writer and journalist. He writes and makes drama, comedy and documentaries for TV, audio and the stage. On The Battersea Poltergeist, he writes, presents and co-produces.

His interest in ghosts stems back to childhood. He has made several shows about the supernatural, most recently the acclaimed podcast Haunted, exploring real-life ghost stories.

Danny grew up in Newcastle and started performing and writing comedy aged 15. As a comedy writer for BBC Radio 4, he has written the hugely popular shows The Museum of Everything, Rudy’s Rare Record and The Cold Swedish Winter. For TV he co-created the RTS-Award winning CBBC series Young Dracula and has presented for shows such as BBC2’s The Culture Show and Newsnight. He has written two critically-acclaimed stage plays.

Amongst his weirder achievements, he also once had a Number 11 hit single without realising it, entered North Korea for a few minutes and came second in the UK AirGuitar Championship final (he was robbed). He lives in Walthamstow in East London with his Swedish wife and two sons.

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"Peta and Chris are in paradise – they sail into hell. Why does it take 38 years to arrest the only suspect: Silas Duane Boston?”

Murder cases that take nearly four decades to solve are rare and usually reserved for when there is no idea as to the identity of the perpetrator.

The brutal killings of Peta Frampton and Chris Farmer in Latin America in 1978 should have seen the suspect Silas Duane Boston arrested and convicted quickly – especially as there were two witnesses: his sons.

But a case such as this doesn’t get a podcast – the BBC’s Paradise – devoted to the tale if things are straightforward. Far from it, in fact.

Boston’s sons were young and scared of their father, only coming forward decades later. Law enforcement agencies, armed with snippets of information about the disappearance of Peta and Chris, did not put the pieces together for years.

BBC journalists Dan Maudsley and Stephen Nolan tell the story of Chris and Peta, Silas and his sons, and the investigation – uncovering many new details and discoveries along the way.

Their journey takes them to a crime convention, lawyer and police offices in the US, the homes of Chris and Peta’s family members in England and a trip to the region where the murders took place, including a graveyard as Dan and Chris’s sister search for the graves of the victims.

Listeners will soon realise that Dan’s work on the Paradise case is not over, as he explains in this episode of MetaPod.

Show notes:

• Picture galleries
• Discovery of the graves in Guatemala
• The Paradise theme music: Paradise by The Neighbourhood

About Dan Maudsley

Dan is a senior journalist for BBC Radio 5 Live and producer of the 2020 British Podcast Awards Best True Crime winner, Paradise, and 2020 Foreign Press Association Media Awards shortlisted On The Ground.

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“Lost And Sound is a podcast series bringing the stories of people who make exciting innovative music from across the world to your ears.”

When did music first come into your life? Who was there and how did you feel? Where did that moment or period of time lead to?

These are some of the questions answered by guests of the Lost And Sound podcast, hosted by Paul Hanford. The podcast features a far-flung list of guests yet hones in on innovation and creative process.

Listeners will discover personal conversations with well and lesser-known artists from various genres of music, all of whom speak to their individual influences and creativity.

In this episode of MetaPod, Paul talks about the evolution of the Lost And Sound podcast and its backdrop, the city of Berlin.

Paul also explains his interest in the human, rather than technical, aspects of music and how those feed the identity of people and places. We also learn about when music first came into Paul’s life. Did we mention that Paul might be the only DJ that moved to Berlin to stop being a DJ?

Show notes:

• Berlin clubbing and COVID-19: how Europe’s party capital is changing
• Broken English

About Paul Hanford

Paul has written for WIRED, Beatportal, Mixmag, WePresent, Boiler Room, Somesuch Co, Crack, Highsnobiety, Borshch Magazine, Wire, Dazed and Little White Lies. He has curated music for events at Tate Modern, Tate Britain, The Victoria and Albert Museum, Somerset House and Top Shop.

From 2015 to 2018, Paul presented a weekly radio show on Hoxton Radio and the music news on London Live TV. Have radio on BLN.FM. Before this, he was Head of Music for London based event company Secret Cinema.

At the very dawn of this millennium Paul was part of indie electronica act Brothers In Sound, who released three EPs and an LP with Regal/Parlophone Records, before releasing two electronic LPs as Sancho for Superglider and then Seed Records. 

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“Sonixcursions explores the far reaches of modern music – space rock, dream pop, post-rock, shoegaze, electronic, ambient and other outer sounds from that end of the spectrum.”

If you were into the spacey fringes of 90s alternative music that only got played on college radio stations, you’ll probably know a band or two mentioned in this week’s episode. If you’re wondering what happened to those bands, there’s a good chance that our guest Ryan Anderson knows.

Ryan was part of the psychedelic synth pop/rock band Füxa which hailed from Michigan’s space rock scene of the mid-1990s. During that time, Ryan also compiled the zine Masstransfer. The DIY publication covered bands of the space rock and related genres. Ryan’s commitment to independent music and the DIY spirit remains but is actualised in a modern format – a podcast called Sonixcursions.

In this episode of MetaPod, we talk to Ryan Anderson about the origin and evolution of the mid-90s space rock scene of the Detroit, Michigan area. We also discuss changes in music formats since the 90s and how he chooses bands to feature on the Sonixcursions podcast.

“It’s kind of like a whole resurgence and rediscovery of this music from the mid-90s. A lot of it only exists on 7-inch or possibly even cassette tape,” Ryan told us.

We also discuss the role of Big Tech platforms like Spotify in music discovery and distribution. Plus, Ryan mentions some of the current projects by musicians of the mid-90s that he’s kept up with and tells us about his new e-book, Masstransfer: A Zinethology.

MetaPod Special Cut

Our MetaPod special cut dips into 90s college radio and that pink vinyl split 7 inch of Füxa and Bright. We also learn there could be tapes out there of Füxa and Bright, recorded in the summer of 1996 in Allston, Massachusetts.

Show notes:

• Masstransfer: A Zinethology
• Füxa on Bandcamp

About Ryan Anderson

Ryan Anderson is a musician and writer who was part of the 1990s space rock scene in Detroit, playing in such bands as Füxa and Delta Waves. He also published the DIY Masstransfer music zine. He currently produces the Sonixcursions podcast, which promotes the latest dream pop, ambient and electronic music in a 30-minute escapist mix.

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