Thalia Kent Egan on vertical drama, AI theft, and why filmmaking shouldn't be brutal.

Episode Overview
Thalia Kent Egan was commissioned to write a 90-page vertical drama script. She was told she would direct it, that the company wanted bold storytelling, real actors, heartbeat moments. Then they went quiet. When she followed up, they replied to say they had already released it as an AI-generated project using her script without telling her.

Thalia studied languages at Oxford, did a directing master's at Goldsmiths, and has spent over a year inside the vertical drama world. She is one of the few people working in the format who will say clearly what it is: a tech industry making content for commercial gain, with a bingo card of tropes, racist casting, exploitative storylines, and crews paid below proper rates. She is also one of the few people trying to change it from within, and one of the most thoughtful observers of what the format is actually doing to audiences.

This conversation earns its runtime at every turn. The opening story is the sharpest possible account of where the industry is heading. The bingo card section is the funniest. The observation that the phone screen creates a cult fandom around actors that AI cannot replicate is the most interesting. And the Garden of Eden feature she has been developing since her year abroad in France is the best note to end on.

Chapters
(00:00) Cold open: brutal sets, the world built by men, AI takes over
(01:00) Intro: Oxford, Goldsmiths, vertical drama director
(02:00) Tell me a story: the script they commissioned, the AI release she never knew about
(05:00) Oxford languages, Berlin and Paris, why film was always the destination
(06:00) Goldsmiths: finding her people, a year of practical filmmaking
(07:00) Communal directing: deconstructing the hierarchy
(08:00) What vertical drama actually is
(09:00) Six to nine days to shoot a feature film's worth of content
(11:00) "All you have to do is direct"
(12:00) Intimacy coordination and fitting two people into a tight vertical shot
(15:00) Constraints, creativity, and being a square peg
(16:00) Quiet time, freeform pages, writing on the tube
(18:00) The bingo card: drugged women, mafia bosses, tropes that never change
(20:00) Why vertical drama is always about rich people and luxury
(21:00) The phone as private screen
(23:00) Racism, straight-written queer storylines, who is funding this
(25:00) Actor fandom: intimacy creates cult followings AI cannot replicate
(27:00) Marketing budgets four to five times larger than production
(28:00) AI: keep its dirty mitts off the creative process
(29:00) 14 of the top 20 vertical dramas already AI-generated
(32:00) Better budgets, risk-taking stories, what a good version looks like
(35:00) The feature: Garden of Eden, Adam as abuser, Eve escaping toward a queer communal world

"Filmmaking shouldn't be like a brutal process. There's no point focusing on egos." — Thalia Kent Egan

About the Guest
Thalia Kent Egan studied French and German at Oxford and completed a directing master's at Goldsmiths. She has been directing and producing vertical drama for over a year while developing her own short films and photography work. She is also a trained intimacy coordinator. Her feature film is in development. She is on Instagram and Substack as Dolly Kentigan.

Listen Elsewhere
APPLE : https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/storyco/id1886770413
YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/@StoryCoPodcast
LINKTREE: https://linktr.ee/storycopod

Credits
StoryCo is a TellTale Industries production.
Host: James Kirkham.
Guest: Thalia Kent Egan.
Producer: Jago Lee.
Assistant Producer: Nelly Batt.
Editor: Nelly Batt.
Recorded at TYX Studios, King's Cross.
Theme: Doubt Point.
Special thanks: Craig Heptinstall, Jack Freegard, Tyler Newton, Isa Gibson.

Dr. Gab Astorga on microbial genomics, hiding the vegetables, and why science is not finished until it's communicated.

Episode Overview
Dr. Gab Astorga opens with the story of how tuberculosis invented the cowboy hat, which led to American culture, which led to Beyoncé's Cowboy Carter. It is exactly who he is and exactly what this conversation delivers for the next 40 minutes.

Gab grew up in the Philippines, moved to the UK at two, spent his childhood unable to communicate, hid in libraries and art rooms, got a PhD in microbial genomics, built a following of over half a million people explaining the invisible world, and was diagnosed with ADHD in the final year of his doctorate. He calls his method edutainment and describes it as hiding the vegetables: start with something flashy and fun, then slip in the physics, the chemistry, the biology underpinning it, then return to the fun. It is, by every measure, working.

This conversation covers bacterial genomes, the gut health industry's predatory relationship with people who lack the knowledge to push back, the difference between misinformation and disinformation, and why being queer made him a better scientist. The ADHD section is the most personal. The Stetson story is the best opener this show has had.

Chapters
(00:00) Cold open: disease, American culture, Cowboy Carter by Beyoncé
(01:00) Intro: microbial genomics, half a million followers, TikTok Creator of the Year
(02:00) Tell me a story: John B. Stetson, tuberculosis, the cowboy hat
(04:00) Born in the Philippines, moved at two: communication as the first obstacle
(05:00) COVID, a phone on a windowsill, and talking to numbers
(06:00) Misinformation versus disinformation: one is on purpose
(08:00) Vaccine hesitancy since the 1600s
(09:00) The edutainment method: hiding the vegetables
(12:00) Bacterial genomes: the instruction manual inside every living thing
(13:00) The gut microbiome: trillions of microorganisms and what they do
(14:00) Good and bad bacteria: why the framing is wrong
(17:00) Gut health products and who they prey on
(18:00) The One Health concept
(19:00) COVID as a lesson: rapid response to hantavirus and measles
(22:00) "Science is not finished until it's communicated"
(23:00) Being queer made him a better scientist
(26:00) AI in science: useful for the laborious, dangerous for the creative
(28:00) ADHD diagnosis in year four of the PhD
(30:00) The grieving period: checklists, alarms, forgetting to eat and sleep
(32:00) Life on hard mode: immigrant, queer, neurodivergent
(34:00) The gut health podcast problem: 14 harmful claims per episode
(35:00) Opinion dressed as fact and who needs to be held accountable
(37:00) Five-year-old Gab, 80-year-old Gab, and the joy of right now

"If you can't see people who are like you, how can you visualize yourself in a place of research, in a place that's creative?" — Dr. Gab Astorga

About the Guest
Dr. Gab Astorga is a microbiologist and science communicator with a PhD in microbial genomics. He reaches over half a million people across TikTok and Instagram, was named TikTok's Book Learning Creator of the Year, and works with researchers, politicians, and companies to make accurate scientific information accessible.

Listen Elsewhere
APPLE : https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/storyco/id1886770413
YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/@StoryCoPodcast
LINKTREE: https://linktr.ee/storycopod

Credits
StoryCo is a TellTale Industries production.
Host: James Kirkham.
Guest: Dr. Gab Astorga.
Producer: Jago Lee.
Assistant Producer: Nelly Batt.
Editor: Nelly Batt.
Recorded at TYX Studios, King's Cross.
Theme: Doubt Point.
Special thanks: Craig Heptinstall, Jack Freegard, Tyler Newton, Isa Gibson.

Matthew Manning on poltergeists, laboratory healing, and why he gave up fame at the height of it.

Episode Overview
When Matthew Manning was 11, objects began moving around his Cambridge home. His father, an architect, ruled out every logical explanation one by one. The police sergeant he reported it to turned out to have a personal passion for ghost hunting and knew exactly who to call: a professor of genetics at Trinity College, Cambridge, who lived five miles away and was the world's leading expert on poltergeist activity.

That was 1967. By his early 20s Manning had been tested by a Nobel Prize-winning physicist in Toronto, influenced cancer cells and blood cells in sealed laboratory flasks under controlled conditions, and sold over a million copies of his first book. Then he went to India, didn't find a guru, climbed to 12,000 feet in the Himalayas, and came home having decided to spend the rest of his life healing instead.

This is one of the strangest and most quietly compelling conversations this show has produced. Manning is not a performer. He describes bunk beds moving in a school dormitory with the same register as someone describing a delayed train. The laboratory results section, blood cells lasting four times longer with his hands present, is the best argument in the episode for taking the question seriously. And his observation that the thirst for something spiritual is stronger now than at any point in his 50 years of work lands at exactly the right moment.

Chapters
(00:00) Cold open: automatic writing, cancer cells, a performing monkey
(01:00) Intro: poltergeist, Nobel physicist, 50 years of healing
(02:00) Tell me a story: Japan 1976 and the turning point
(04:00) Walking away from fame at the height of it
(05:00) India, no guru, and 12,000 feet in the Himalayas
(06:00) The Presence at Nakurnd: two paths
(07:00) University of California: enzymes, frogs' nerves, cancer cells
(09:00) The Barcelona department store blackout
(11:00) Distance, Faraday cages, and results that got stronger
(14:00) Cambridge 1967: the poltergeist begins
(17:00) Poltergeist Over England and the father who had read it
(18:00) The police sergeant who loved ghost hunting
(19:00) Professor George Owen: geneticist, five miles away
(21:00) Boarding school: bunk beds and dinner plates from nowhere
(25:00) Automatic writing: the hand that went down by itself
(26:00) Automatic drawing: Picasso, Munnings, fooling art experts
(30:00) Science isn't equipped yet, but it will be
(33:00) The price of unchosen fame
(35:00) Blood cells in saline: four times longer
(37:00) Love as the scientific parallel
(38:00) Toronto, Josephson, and the oldest part of the brain
(40:00) Ancient ability, not futuristic
(41:00) McCartney, Gallagher, and the songs that write themselves
(43:00) 90,000 followers and a world looking for something spiritual

"When something happens in a test tube, you can't say that is the result of faith, placebo, or psychological factors." — Matthew Manning

About the Guest
Matthew Manning is a British healer and author who first came to public attention in the early 1970s. His first book The Link, published at 19, sold over a million copies globally. He has been tested in controlled laboratory conditions at the University of California, London University, and the University of Toronto, where his work was observed by Nobel Prize-winning physicist Brian Josephson. He has practiced as a healer for nearly 50 years.

Listen Elsewhere
APPLE : https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/storyco/id1886770413
YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/@StoryCoPodcast
LINKTREE: https://linktr.ee/storycopod

Credits
StoryCo is a TellTale Industries production.
Host: James Kirkham.
Guest: Matthew Manning.
Producer: Jago Lee.
Assistant Producer: Nelly Batt.
Editor: Nelly Batt.
Recorded at TYX Studios, King's Cross.
Theme: Doubt Point.
Special thanks: Craig Heptinstall, Jack Freegard, Tyler Newton, Isa Gibson.

Summary
Ros Barber on coercive control, the Shakespeare authorship question, and why writing is a survival mechanism.

Episode Overview
Ros Barber was six months pregnant when she learned the insurance software her husband had been contracted to deliver didn't exist. She stayed up 36 hours, learned C++ from scratch, delivered the system, went into premature labor, and came home from the hospital to make the client's tweaks while her baby was still in an incubator. Her husband watched movies on the sofa. That was year one of eight.

Barber is a Desmond Elliott Prize-winning novelist, a poet, a former mainframe programmer, and the person who standardized the baby change sign across a continent. She knew she was a writer at four. What the coercive control took from her was eight years of output. What she has been doing since is getting it back: a novel written in iambic pentameter in the voice of Christopher Marlowe, a female pirate epic her agent calls Booker-worthy, and a Substack memoir that went viral because hundreds of women recognized the exact words her ex had used.

This is the most emotionally complete conversation this show has had. The opening story earns every second. The food apartheid section, a stepfather who had Kellogg's and gold-top while four children had Wavy Line cornflakes and margarine, is the best account of how low self-esteem gets installed in a person. And the hotel window moment at 34, where she calculated whether the drop was high enough, is delivered with the same precision and dark humor that runs through everything she writes.

Chapters
(00:00) Cold open: Marlowe, Shakespeare, who gets to tell the story
(02:00) Tell me a story: six months pregnant, 36 hours straight, C++ from scratch
(05:00) Year one: the baby in the incubator and the wrong answer
(07:00) Punished for saying what she felt: writing as the only safe outlet
(09:00) Teaching herself to read with tracing paper before school
(11:00) Biology degree, £40 from writing, the pivot to programming
(13:00) 40 men in suits, one woman in a holey jumper: the only name called
(16:00) The people who love us write the first false biography of us
(19:00) The Marlowe Papers: a PhD, a funding crisis, calling on Marlowe's ghost
(23:00) The agent who said it had no commercial potential
(24:00) Read in a weekend, deal in five days
(26:00) The female pirate epic: Mary Read, the only pirate who got there herself
(29:00) Serializing on Substack in Dickens mode
(32:00) Open misogyny as a public service
(36:00) Food apartheid: Kellogg's for him, Wavy Line for four kids
(40:00) It was money: working it out at a crepe stall
(43:00) The death threat: if you leave me, you won't live very long
(44:00) The hotel window at 34
(47:00) Writing about it for the first time
(48:00) Were we married to the same person?
(50:00) Nobody Knew I Was in an Abusive Marriage Including Me
(52:00) The memoir: childhood, coercive control, growth on the other side

"I feel the need to share this story because I haven't, and I have been silenced, and it feels important." — Ros Barber

About the Guest
Ros Barber is a novelist, poet, and memoirist. Her novel The Marlowe Papers, written in iambic pentameter, won the Desmond Elliott Prize and the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize. She has lectured at Goldsmiths and the University of Sussex, and writes on Substack where her memoir-in-progress and essays on coercive control have found thousands of readers. Her female pirate epic is currently being serialized on Substack.

Listen Elsewhere
APPLE : https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/storyco/id1886770413
YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/@StoryCoPodcast
LINKTREE: https://linktr.ee/storycopod

Credits
StoryCo is a TellTale Industries production.
Host: James Kirkham.
Guest: Ros Barber.
Producer: Jago Lee.
Assistant Producer: Nelly Batt.
Editor: Nelly Batt.
Recorded at TYX Studios, King's Cross.
Theme: Doubt Point.
Special thanks: Craig Heptinstall, Jack Freegard, Tyler Newton, Isa Gibson.

Summary
Joey D'Urso on dirty money, soft power, and why the shirt on your back says more about the world than you think.

Episode Overview
A Schalke shirt is thirty years of Germany's addiction to Russian gas. A Colombian yellow kit became a factional political weapon in a single election. Joey D'Urso spent years as a political journalist at the BBC before the editor of The Athletic asked if he liked football, and everything changed.

His book More Than a Shirt was a Guardian and Waterstones Book of the Year. His investigations into Premier League gambling sponsorships were cited in Parliament. In this conversation he takes a Schalke shirt into the studio and traces the geopolitical story of Europe and Russia over three decades, explains why the Colombian yellow went from unifying symbol to factional weapon, and argues that state ownership is the thing that worries him most about the game's future.

He also makes the case that the Premier League is one of the only genuinely meritocratic institutions left in Britain, that the non-league boom is one of the most positive stories nobody is covering, and that football is now the last truly universal thing in a fragmented world. The man in Istanbul who lost three months' wages on a Paul Pogba fan token is the most human detail in the episode.

Chapters
(00:00) Cold open: the Schalke shirt, Gazprom, football as political object
(02:00) Tell me a story: Jimmy Glass and the greatest goalkeeper goal in history
(03:00) Politics was always in football: from Mussolini to Qatar
(05:00) Westminster, Brexit, BuzzFeed, and getting sacked on Zoom
(06:00) The Athletic: shady gambling sponsors in the Premier League
(07:00) Called to give evidence in Parliament
(12:00) Medellín, Escobar, and why dictators want football clubs
(13:00) The Colombian yellow: from national symbol to factional weapon
(15:00) 3pm kickoffs and the Industrial Revolution
(20:00) Football as the last universal thing
(21:00) VAR and the stolen moment of joy
(23:00) Schalke and Gazprom: the shirt that mapped the war
(25:00) Blue stickers over the Gazprom logo
(26:00) Newcastle, Saudi Arabia, and asking fans to care
(31:00) State ownership and the inflationary spiral
(32:00) Football as one of the only meritocratic things left in Britain
(35:00) The non-league boom: a completely different sport
(39:00) The man in Istanbul who lost three months' wages on a Pogba token
(40:00) Hydration breaks and destroying football's sustained tension
(44:00) Saudi Arabia 2034: real culture, propaganda vehicle
(48:00) Substack, the second book, a cabin in Scotland

"Football reflects people's politics back at them. I don't think it changes people's politics in a huge way, but it shows you exactly what's there." — Joey D'Urso

About the Guest
Joey D'Urso is an investigative journalist and author who covers football, politics, and money. He began his career at the BBC covering Westminster and Brexit before joining The Athletic, where his investigations into Premier League gambling sponsorships were cited in Parliament. His debut book More Than a Shirt was a Guardian and Waterstones Book of the Year. He writes a weekly newsletter on Substack and is currently completing his second book.

Listen Elsewhere
APPLE : https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/storyco/id1886770413
YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/@StoryCoPodcast
LINKTREE: https://linktr.ee/storycopod

Credits
StoryCo is a TellTale Industries production.
Host: James Kirkham.
Guest: Joey D'Urso.
Producer: Jago Lee.
Assistant Producer: Nelly Batt.
Editor: Nelly Batt.
Recorded at TYX Studios, King's Cross.
Theme: Doubt Point.
Special thanks: Craig Heptinstall, Jack Freegard, Tyler Newton, Isa Gibson.

Summary
Ben Lewis on the art market, the Salvator Mundi, and why the most beautiful objects are used for the ugliest purposes.

Episode Overview
In 2005, a painting sold at auction for $1,000. In 2017, the same painting sold to the ruler of Saudi Arabia for $450 million. Christie's marketed it as a Leonardo da Vinci. It probably isn't. Nobody can prove it either way because most of the original surface is gone. That is not why it sold for $450 million.

Ben Lewis is an art historian and investigative journalist who has spent his career reading the art market like a forensic investigator. What he found is a largely unregulated parallel financial system in which narrative manufactures value, forgers get hired as restorers, and the mechanics that made Damien Hirst worth hundreds of millions are the same mechanics that gave us crypto, NFTs, and meme stocks.

Chapters

(00:00) Cold open: the most beautiful objects used for the ugliest purposes
(01:00) Intro: art historian, investigative journalist, MTV
(02:00) Tell me a story: The Great Contemporary Art Bubble for the BBC
(03:00) The leaked inventory: 200 unsold Damien Hirsts worth £100 million
(04:00) Setting the journalistic trap
(06:00) Going viral two weeks before the auction
(07:00) Zero impact. Succalia.
(09:00) How value is actually decided: curators backing horses
(10:00) From art history to MTV: the transformation from cheerleader to cynic
(11:00) The visuals at The Fridge in Brixton in 1989
(13:00) The Gursky lookalike contest and the Channel 4 commission
(14:00) Art Safari: Cattelan, Murakami, Barney before they were household names
(16:00) The market goes crazy: $30 million for a Lichtenstein in 2006
(17:00) The art market as a canary in the coalmine
(19:00) When art history became the art market
(20:00) Style as brand, brand as machine: the Hirst spot paintings
(22:00) The late 19th century boom: record prices, worthless by 1910
(23:00) The Salvator Mundi: $1,000 in 2005, $450 million in 2017
(24:00) The family in Baton Rouge who got $700
(25:00) Christie's visited and walked past it
(27:00) Restoration, forgery, and where the lines blur
(29:00) Was it ever a Leonardo? Is it still a Leonardo?
(30:00) Why the Saudis bought it: pivoting from oil, building museums
(31:00) Forging provenance: you don't just forge the picture
(33:00) The Charles I stamp in Moscow: the evidence the protagonists missed
(35:00) Fake versus forgery: a genuinely difficult distinction
(37:00) The book: four years on Federico Joni
(38:00) Doorstepping Joni: caught in the act, photo book produced
(39:00) "Would you consider working for us as a restorer?"
(41:00) Joni appointed head of the Siena art school by the socialists
(42:00) The art market as template: NFTs and meme stocks learned from it
(43:00) The April Fool's NFT
(44:00) The contemporary market is crashing: 20% a year for three years
(46:00) The tsunami of revisionism is coming for blue chip work too
(47:00) AI and the search for originality

About the Guest
Ben Lewis is an art historian, investigative journalist, and documentary maker. He made The Great Contemporary Art Bubble for the BBC, created the Art Safari series for BBC Four, and spent a decade inside MTV before turning his attention to the art market. His book The Last Leonardo investigates the Salvator Mundi. He is currently completing a book about the 19th century Sienese forger Federico Joni.

Listen Elsewhere
APPLE : https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/storyco/id1886770413
YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/@StoryCoPodcast
LINKTREE: https://linktr.ee/storycopod

Credits
StoryCo is a TellTale Industries production.
Host: James Kirkham.
Guest: Ben Lewis.
Producer: Jago Lee.
Assistant Producer: Nelly Batt.
Editor: Nelly Batt.
Recorded at TYX Studios, King's Cross.
Theme: Doubt Point.
Special thanks: Craig Heptinstall, Jack Freegard, Tyler Newton, Isa Gibson.

Summary
Jago Cooper on living art, the Easter Island myth, and why things are better storytellers than people.

Episode Overview
What if artworks aren't objects but living entities? Jago Cooper, Executive Director of the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, made headlines when he became the first museum director in the world to change his institution's governance structure so that every artwork is treated as a living being, and every staff member's job is to give those entities their best lives. Yes, including taking a Francis Bacon painting to the pub.

In this episode, Jago sits down with James Kirkham to explain why museums have got it wrong for centuries, how a childhood digging up artefacts in Gloucestershire shapes his radical approach today, and what happened when he dismantled one of history's most enduring environmental collapse myths: the story of Easter Island.

This is a conversation about what happens when you stop seeing art as property and start seeing it as a relationship. One you can trust with your deepest secrets.

Chapters
(00:00) Introduction: artworks as living entities
(00:49) Jago Cooper's background
(01:40) The 2009 Copenhagen climate speech that changed everything
(03:30) Why climate storytelling needs a rewrite
(04:50) Digging up fields in Gloucestershire: Jago's childhood
(06:50) Archaeology and art: there's no difference
(10:50) Why museums feel unwelcoming
(12:20) Inside the British Museum: what's broken
(13:50) The Sainsbury Centre's radical concept
(15:20) No hierarchies, just emotional connection
(21:00) "Artworks are living entities": the governance change
(23:00) Staff reaction: "So basically, museums are like zoos?"
(27:00) The museum as a creative agency and media company
(28:50) Francis Bacon goes to the pub on day release
(34:00) Programming around life's biggest questions
(38:00) The Easter Island myth, dismantled
(41:00) Public backlash and not reading the comments
(44:00) How to curate a big question exhibition
(48:00) Next: what is the meaning of life, and how do we find love?

"Artworks are actually living entities. I mean literally." — Jago Cooper

About the Guest

Jago Cooper is Executive Director of the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts at the University of East Anglia. Previously curator of the Americas at the British Museum, he has made archaeology documentaries for the BBC and conducted fieldwork across the Caribbean, the Pacific, and Latin America. His work on Rapa Nui challenged the dominant Easter Island collapse narrative. He is a professor of both art and archaeology.

Listen Elsewhere

APPLE : https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/storyco/id1886770413
YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/@StoryCoPodcast
LINKTREE: https://linktr.ee/storycopod

Credits

StoryCo is a TellTale Industries production.
Host: James Kirkham.
Guest: Jago Cooper.
Producer: Jago Lee.
Assistant Producer: Nelly Batt.
Editor: Nelly Batt.
Recorded at TYX Studios, King's Cross.
Theme: Doubt Point.
Special thanks: Craig Heptinstall, Jack Freegard, Tyler Newton, Isa Gibson.

Summary

Dr. Jess Venner on Pompeii, the ordinary people history forgot, and why resilience is a better story than disaster.

Jess Venner grew up in Hainault on the end of the Central Line, at a school in special measures, having never heard of classics. She is now a research fellow at Oxford, and her book The Lost Voices of Pompeii reconstructs the final day of seven ordinary Pompeiians: a pub landlord, a female entrepreneur, a slave. Not emperors or generals, but the people the ancient world made deliberately invisible.

She got there by quitting her marketing job overnight, funding her own sabbatical from savings, and doing a master's on her lunch breaks in instalments. Her method is critical fabulation: take the material evidence as far as it will go, apply common sense, and stop the moment it runs out. This is one of the most enjoyable conversations the show has had, from how a book idea actually arrives, to a disaster porn argument that lands hard, to the Hampton Court visitors who said they never thought a place like that was for them.

Chapters(00:00) Cold open: resilience, and something she couldn't believe she'd found(01:00) Hainault, a marketing degree, the overnight resignation(03:00) The Devil Wears Prada, discovering Rome, a master's on lunch breaks(06:00) Access, classics, and the prejudice that perpetuates(07:00) Oxford, and The Lost Voices of Pompeii(09:00) Critical fabulation: reconstructing the invisible(11:00) Petronas the slave and the fish scales in the market(18:00) The forum, Vesuvius, and a calling(20:00) Nine visits in a year and the felt-tip map(22:00) Euxinus, the phoenix, and rebuilding after the earthquake(24:00) Julia Felix: female entrepreneur after the earthquake(26:00) An educational platform for people who weren't invited in(27:00) AI as a tool, not a replacement(29:00) Disaster porn and why we are trained to seek it(31:00) Humanising disaster: friends, family, dogs, and the refugees nobody mentions(34:00) Who painted the picture? Whose stories get told(35:00) Treasure hunting, smashed frescoes, and what got thrown away(37:00) The Leverhulme fellowship, and sitting on information like Smaug(40:00) Hampton Court: "I didn't think this place was for me"(42:00) Tactile memory, and why we never dream of our phones

"I wanted to tell a story of resilience and innovation in Pompeii, and show it differently." - Dr. Jess Venner

About the GuestDr. Jess Venner is an ancient historian and archaeologist, and a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow at Oxford University. Her book The Lost Voices of Pompeii reconstructs the final day of seven ordinary Pompeiians using the method of critical fabulation. She studied at Birkbeck and the University of Birmingham, spent a year at the British School at Rome, and specialises in urban agriculture and ordinary life in Pompeii. Her channel Life In The Past Lane has amassed hundreds of thousands of followers across TikTok and Instagram.

Listen ElsewhereAPPLE: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/storyco/id1886770413YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/@StoryCoPodcastLINKTREE: https://linktr.ee/storycopod

CreditsStoryCo is a TellTale Industries production.

Host: James Kirkham.

Guest: Dr. Jess Venner.

Producer: Jago Lee.

Assistant Producer: Nelly Batt.

Editor: Nelly Batt.

Recorded at TYX Studios, King's Cross.

Theme: Doubt Point.

Special thanks: Craig Heptinstall, Jack Freegard, Thailah Newton, Isa Gibson.

Summary
Emma Dabiri on hair, history, and why the Black/white binary is a design choice, not a fact of life.

Episode Overview
Emma Dabiri wrote a book about hair. Except it wasn't about hair. Don't Touch My Hair used braiding as a trapdoor into 6,000 years of African philosophy, pre-colonial constructions of time, and the question of who gets to name things, and what happens to the things that get named wrong.

That argument has driven every book she has written since. The new one, Born to Be Blue, begins with a discovery in the Irish language: that people racialized as Black were traditionally called not Black but blue, after the iridescence of light on a dark surface.

Chapters
(00:00) Cold open: ADHD, Irish words for Black and white, planetary consciousness
(01:00) Intro: Dublin in the '80s and taking the pen back
(02:00) Tell me a story: Irish grandparents on a Tobago beach
(04:00) The grandfather who never approved, the family she never met
(05:00) Born in Dublin, Atlanta, the Deep South
(06:00) Coming back to Ireland: "go back to where you come from"
(07:30) Discovering how Irish she was by leaving
(08:30) Irishness as an anchor: MBEs and why she could never go home
(09:00) Atlanta wealth, then Dublin during the heroin epidemic
(10:00) Always reading from a very young age
(11:00) The Victorian arcade bookshop: radical literature by accident
(13:00) Seven schools, hating school, a very ADHD profile
(14:30) Instability and nothing feeling safe or certain
(16:00) University in African studies: the first time learning worked
(17:00) The ADHD diagnosis
(18:30) The ADHD tax: life admin, spreadsheets, posting letters
(19:00) Raptures of joy from music, feeling things overwhelmingly
(20:00) Knowing things were true that other people couldn't hear yet
(22:00) Finding her people in London

(23:00) Alignment and attracting what you should have
(24:00) Don't Touch My Hair: smuggling philosophy through hair
(25:00) Cartesian binaries and the world organised into oppositions
(26:00) Divisiveness, social media, and the same problem
(27:30) Hair as a populist entry point for African philosophy
(28:30) The chapter on time: what does "too time-consuming" actually mean?
(29:00) Pre-colonial Yoruba time versus post-industrial capitalism
(31:00) Braiding, intimacy, and a day organised around what needs doing
(32:00) The connective tissue across all three books
(33:00) Solutions suppressed as primitive that contain the answers
(34:00) Irish language, Yoruba philosophy, rehabilitating Irishness
(35:00) Blindboy and recognising neurodivergence
(36:00) The new book: saying less, what stays with people
(37:00) Substack: testing ideas before the printed page
(38:30) Why social media killed good faith debate
(39:30) Early Twitter: Spike Lee, bell hooks, when it felt like a club
(41:00) When conversations get monetised: competition replaces collaboration
(42:00) Born to Be Blue: the Irish language word for people racialized as Black
(43:00) Blue and bright: both words describe a relationship to the cosmos
(44:00) The memoir, the dissident thinkers, the blue concept
(45:00) Blue and bright are not opposites. They share the moon and the sun.

About the Guest
Emma Dabiri is a writer, academic, and broadcaster of Irish-Nigerian heritage. She is currently completing her fourth book, Born to Be Blue, due October 2026. She writes on Substack and has contributed to the Guardian, the Times, and the BBC.

Listen Elsewhere
APPLE : https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/storyco/id1886770413
YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/@StoryCoPodcast
LINKTREE: https://linktr.ee/storycopod

Credits
StoryCo is a TellTale Industries production.
Host: James Kirkham.
Guest: Emma Dabiri.
Producer: Jago Lee.
Assistant Producer: Nelly Batt.
Editor: Nelly Batt.
Recorded at TYX Studios, King's Cross.
Theme: Doubt Point.
Special thanks: Craig Heptinstall, Jack Freegard, Tyler Newton, Isa Gibson.

Summary
Mike Figgis on Leaving Las Vegas, Timecode, and why the best creative work comes from stripping everything back.

Episode Overview
Mike Figgis shot Leaving Las Vegas in three weeks on Super 16 with a skeleton crew and no permits on the Las Vegas Strip. Nicolas Cage won the Oscar. The film cost almost nothing. That was the point.

Figgis has been making this argument for 50 years, from trumpet in Bryan Ferry's pre-Roxy band in Newcastle, to getting booed off stage in Hamburg by a diehard blues crowd, to Timecode, his real-time four-screen film written on music paper as a 95-bar string quartet.

This is a wide conversation that earns every turn. The story of the first Roxy Music rehearsal, Figgis standing in the room thinking it would never work, sets up everything that follows about being wrong in interesting directions. The worst test screening in Hollywood history, which left him sitting next to Richard Gere feeling oddly happy, is one of the best anecdotes this show has had. And the Coppola story at the end, one small camera following $120 million of someone else's vision, lands the argument the episode has been building toward: the people who invent the system are sometimes the last ones to escape it.

Chapters
(00:00) Cold open: does the world need a Beatles biopic?
(02:00) Get Back and the creative power of nothing happening
(05:00) Meeting Lennon in a Notting Hill macrobiotic restaurant
(07:00) Newcastle, Bryan Ferry, and The Gas Board
(09:30) Trumpet to impress his dad, guitar for the girls
(11:00) The Gas Board falls apart
(12:00) The first Roxy rehearsal and why Figgis didn't rate it
(13:30) Bridge to film: late '60s London explosion
(14:00) The Arts Lab: all art is one thing
(15:30) Free music and "just listen, man"
(17:00) Experimental theater: booed off stage in Hamburg
(19:00) Failure as second nature
(20:00) The worst test screening ever
(22:00) Theater into film: actors on stage and screen simultaneously
(24:00) Hollywood, the social contract, and being "cocky, arrogant, naive"
(25:00) Leaving Las Vegas: Super 16, three weeks, casting by personal contact
(27:00) Camera as creative control
(29:00) Boy porn camera tech vs. Bergman's locked-off face
(30:00) The Figgis box: constraint as method
(32:00) Timecode: four screens, no edit, real time
(34:00) Writing the script as a string quartet on music paper
(36:00) Salma Hayek doing other people's makeup in the toilet
(37:00) Four earthquakes and actors watching their own film the same day
(40:00) Marina Abramović: switch to your left hand
(41:00) Live mixing Timecode at the NFT
(43:00) "AI is as clever as Hollywood — not clever enough"
(45:00) Advice to young filmmakers: don't wait for the Netflix lifeboat
(47:00) Paul Auster on the attrition rate
(48:00) Megalopolis documentary: one camera, no plan
(52:00) "You invented this system — and now it's smothering you"

"AI is as clever as Hollywood, but that's not clever enough." — Mike Figgis

About the Guest
Mike Figgis is a British filmmaker, composer, and writer. His films include Stormy Monday, Internal Affairs, Leaving Las Vegas (two Academy Award nominations), Liebestrahl, One Night Stand, and Timecode. He has composed scores for his own films and others, worked in experimental theater with The People Show for ten years, and most recently directed a documentary following Francis Ford Coppola during the making of Megalopolis. He is currently developing a film shot in Korea and Japan.

Listen Elsewhere
APPLE : https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/storyco/id1886770413
YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/@StoryCoPodcast
LINKTREE: https://linktr.ee/storycopod

Credits
StoryCo is a TellTale Industries production.
Host: James Kirkham.
Guest: Mike Figgis.
Producer: Jago Lee.
Assistant Producer: Nelly Batt.
Editor: Zak Klein.
Recorded at TYX Studios, King's Cross.
Theme: Doubt Point.
Special thanks: Craig Heptinstall, Jack Freegard, Tyler Newton, Isa Gibson.