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Another day with a lot of podcasting - like most days I guess, but this with two of the most charming people I know. I was a guest on Emily Dean’s Walking The Dog podcast. She came to my house and everything conspired to make it seem like I live in a pastoral idyll (which I suppose I do). The sun was shining and a family were trying to catch fish in the small river that runs near my house. That’s not something that I’ve seen before and it felt like I’d tried to set things up to be impossibly quaint and happy. But I hadn’t. I want to impress Emily Dean, but not that much. We had an enjoyable ramble chat going up the hill and cutting back through the woods. We dragged over my early career and the insecurities and traumas that that resulted in for me. I think I have largely come to terms with it all, but it really took me until I was 40 to properly get my life on track and maybe at some point I need to address it all. It wasn’t entirely other people’s fault of course, but I had to deal with a lot of shit and was not really equipped to know what to do. I am amazed at how little aftercare there was in those days for people that the system chewed up and spat out. I had to cope with everything I’d built up over ten years basically coming to a juddering halt and no one explained why any of it was happening or thought that we might need some kind of help to deal with the change in our circumstances. I don’t think it’s much different now.
But overall the chat made me realise how I have managed to turn things around. A combination of doing the Hercules show and gaining some much needed confidence to try things out and the stuff that happened to me when I was 40 (most notably getting together with Catie, but also the move into podcasting) really propelled me forwards and changed my life. It’s good to chat it out with someone with an outside eye and to realise how wonderfully lucky I am now. My priorities have changed and are in line with reality, but even though my career is no longer my motivating factor I have lucked into a position where I am able to do more or less exactly what I want to do.
Emily is a great person and very easy to talk to. And having our dogs along is a great way to put an interviewee at ease.
Twenty minutes after I’d got home I was up in my very hot attic to talk to Professor Alice Roberts about her great book Buried. She’s down to earth and wears her academia lightly, but is an incredibly knowledgeable and engaging broadcaster and writer. I forgot to ask her what books she recommends, but after the podcast she volunteered the info (it might have been recorded, so might end up in the podcast) and happily and enthusiastically recommended the work of others. Some might be guarded about promoting others when they have a book of their own out, but if you love what you do then you want to share the great work done by others. It’s not a competition. Which is possibly the realisation that came to change my own career trajectory.
This week’s RHLSTP was a really fun one, maybe the first one in a little while where I allowed myself to behave like the unpredictable host of old, but mainly because Amy Gledhill is a fantastically funny person.
Listen here
A few people are asking how to get access to the videos - these ones were live streamed and you had to pay for them, but we’re working on a way to get the videos out to those prepared to pay a small fee.
We’re changing the badger system at the end of the month and moving all the RHLSTP stuff to Acast+. There will still be a badger scheme for people who want to support my non-commercial projects, but if you want the ad free RHLSTPs and access to the backstage videos and to watch the videos of the shows then you will have to move over (or join) Acast+.
There will be three different levels and the top one will include everything and a monthly bonus podcast from me. There will be more info when we make the switch.
The ad free feed will only be £2 a month and it’s £5 a month to get everything, but of course the free version of the podcast (with the ads) will continue. These schemes are very much for people who can afford to and want to pay. I appreciate that that is not everyone and you’re contributing just by listening, so thanks for that. A recommend to a friend is worth just as much to us as a sub.
There will be some cool rewards for supporting our other podcasts via the badger scheme too and you are allowed to do both if you want!
And remember that’s for 8 podcasts a month (though not all the shows are filmed)
