Podcast of the week – #Authentic

Some of you might be familiar with Sarah Tasker, she has a podcast called Hashtag Authentic and a book of the same name. She’s an incredibly inspiring woman. She lives with a chronic condition which means that she can’t stand up for long periods of time. Actually she can only stand upright for about 30 minutes I think. She used to be a speech therapist with the NHS (National Health System) in the UK and while she was on maternity leave she started an online business teaching people how to use Instagram.

I love her accent and her approach to life. Despite her success she seems to be very honest about the challenges of fame. She’s created a business worth a cool 250 million pounds per year without appearing to sell her soul. I’ve down-loaded her e-book on improving your instagram photos and am currently trying to apply her advice. Let’s see how that goes.

So here’s a challenge for you. Why don’t you listen to an episode or two and let me know what you think? We could compare notes, that would be fun.

If you are unsure how to download a podcast, or how the whole podcasting thing works, just let me know. I have lots more podcasts to recommend so I don’t want you to get left behind.

Cheers and have a great weekend!

Who says you need eight hours sleep?

I’ve been doing a lot of research about sleep lately, ostensibly for the purpose of producing a podcast on the topic.

Progress with my podcast has been slow, despite the fact that I received some very lovely feedback for the little promo I made for the Rode competition. I would really love to make a whole series and I’ve got the topics all worked out, but as ever, I’m struggling to produce something tangible (aka something finished/done/sent out into the world for everyone to see, criticise and comment on).

I recorded the bones of the first episode a couple of weeks ago which I’ve been trying to edit,  but when I listen to it, it sounds twee and a little bit ridiculous. My inner critic tells me it’s foolish for me to make a podcast, especially when the field is crowded with experts. What would I know about sleep, and who would listen?

But despite wavering in my resolve to finish even one single episode, I’m finding the research incredibly interesting. In particular, I’ve been reading a very provocative book by Darian Leader called “Why Can’t We Sleep?”.

Leader’s main thesis is that the concept of needing eight hours sleep is deeply rooted in the needs of the industrial revolution. Eight hours sleep fits neatly with the 24 hour production cycle and somewhere along the line it was decreed that humans needed eight hours sleep per night to be optimally productive. He argues that this is a poor reason to insist that humans need eight hours sleep, and that prior to the industrial revolution (and the invention of electric light), people would sleep when they were tired (often in the afternoon).

Biphasic sleep was also common. This involves sleeping from around nine or ten at night, being awake from around one to three and then sleeping again until morning. I know lots of people who sleep like this every night, but they are all obsessed with the idea that they should sleep for eight hours in one continuous stretch. Perhaps they are being fed a lie?

It takes me back to my studying days (I studied sociology, a fascinating if slightly useless area of study), where we were constantly reminded to ask the Marxist question “who benefits?”

The answer is always capitalism and I was reminded of this today when I read this article in Fast Company.

According to writer, a third of Americans experience brief stretches of insomnia, and a tenth experience three sleepless nights a week for months on end. This sleeplessness is responsible for an estimated $63 billion in lost productivity every year in the United States.

You’ll notice that the focus isn’t on the impact of sleeplessness on families, or relationships, or quality of life, it’s on the cost to the economy. It’s always about money and there’s money to be made from sleeplessness.

The sleep industry in the USA is worth $70 billion. That’s big business in anyone’s language. Products such as gravity blankets (heavy blankets that make you feel safe and secure) are catering to a market of wealthy Americans who can afford to spend $300 on a sleep aid.

Unsurprisingly, it’s not even wealthy people who are the most sleep deprived. The Centre for Disease Control found that poverty and sleep deprivation are closely linked. This is unsurprising, given that poorer people have a lot more to worry about, not least keeping their children fed and a roof over their heads.

But my favourite sleep aid in the article cited in the article is the hood that goes over your head to to block out the blue light emanating from your phone. For heaven’s sake, just turn your bloody phone off! Is that so hard?

Apparently it is…

I’m sure I’ve got more to write on this topic as I’m only a third of the way through this interesting and compelling book. If you are interested in the subject of sleep or have any other reading recommendations, I’d really love to hear from you.

 

 

 

My RØDE Cast Competition

Hello readers

I made a short (2 minute) podcast to enter in the Rode Cast competition.  It’s an intro for a series I’d like to make called SLEEP. Let me know what you think of the intro (constructive feedback is very welcome) and also if this is a podcast you’d be interested in listening to on a regular basis.

Thanks in advance for your feedback!

cheers

Marg

Source: My RØDE Cast Competition

3 podcasts for anxious minds

Although I seem like a very calm person, I frequently suffer from anxiety, especially at night when I should be sleeping. The nights are often very long and I often find myself worrying about things that I can’t control, such as the happiness of my children. They are all fully grown so I shouldn’t worry about them so much, but they all have their issues and I don’t think you ever stop being a parent.

I’ve got three favourite podcasts that I routinely listen to when I need to stop thinking and quieten down my mind.

Elis James and John Robins

This is my go-to podcast when I’m feeling stressed or my mind is racing with unhelpful thoughts. It’s the podcast version of a radio show broadcast in London every Saturday morning. These two guys are  really funny and I especially love listening to Elis’s lilting Welsh accent. They have quite a following amongst many people who are depressed or anxious, but its not a depressing show, far from it. It often makes me giggle. In fact, the only downside of listening to this show is that I worry about disturbing my husband lying next to me, usually snoring his head off.  I listen through my headphones but I’m often conscious that I’m making the bed shake with laughter.

John is a neurotic vegan and a massive fan of Freddy Mercury, so many of their conversations circle back to his love of all things related to Queen. They also talk a lot about “living your best life” and seem genuinely delighted when people write in to say that they have given up a job they’ve always hated or made some kind of improvement to their lives. Although the banter and argue, they are generally very supportive of one another and rarely nasty about anyone. In a world where everyone seems to be busy being better and more successful than anyone else, it’s wonderful to listen to a couple of guys being really open about their own worries and insecurities as well as their hopes and dreams.

John in particular is very open about his own struggles with ‘the darkness’ as he calls it. He completely normalises the fact that struggling with mental health issues doesn’t mean you’re weird or sad. Judging from the number of emails they receive from listeners who are facing similar situations, it’s clear that many people struggle with depression and anxiety, often cripplingly so.

One funny segment on the show features the “shame well”. Listeners write in asking to be absolved from the shame they feel about situations they’ve found themselves in, often long ago. My favourite story was from a listener who had found himself accidentally locked in at his office. It was at the end of the day and everyone had gone home so (very resourcefully) he decided to escape from the building through the air-conditioning vent rather than call for help. He didn’t want to disturb his boss because he was a thoughtful person and it was the weekend! He was unaware that he had set off the security system and even more embarrassingly, that his escape had been recorded by the security cameras, featuring a rather a large expanse of backside which had been revealed by struggling through the small opening into the air-conditioning vent. Needless to say, he cringed with embarrassment the next day when he arrived at work to find his boss and all his colleagues crowded around a monitor, watching the video and laughing at his antics.

I really felt for him as I was once caught in a similar situation in an office block in the city. I had inadvertently caught the service elevator and ended up stranded in an office foyer. I could see the street outside but I couldn’t get out and I couldn’t get the elevator to come back. I can’t remember how I escaped (it wasn’t through the air-conditioning shaft) but I remember panicking and feeling very, very stupid. In this segment John and Elis talk through the situation, have a laugh and reassure the listener that everyone does silly things sometimes, often for the best of reasons, but sometimes for no reason at all.

Adrift

This is a fairly new podcast, also English, that I discovered quite recently. It’s hosted by Annabel Port and Geoff Lloyd, two people who seem to know a lot about social anxiety. It’s also very funny as people write in with their own stories of weirdness. I find it very comforting to hear about other people who are just as odd as me. I especially love hearing that there are other people who don’t feel comfortable when the barista at the coffee shop gets just a little bit too familiar with you, just because you come into the shop every day. I completely understand that a person might decide to go to several different coffee shops just to prevent this situation occurring… It’s not that we don’t like people being friendly. We just don’t like them being too friendly when we hardly know them.

The show is described as…

A comic tragedy for anyone flailing in the sea of their own inadequacy. Sony Radio Award winners Geoff Lloyd and Annabel Port steer a life-raft through the choppy waters of being a functional human.

 

As a person who worries too much about nearly everything (including what other people think of me), this show makes me feel right at home.

The Adam Buxton Show

Adam is a comedian who is unfailingly cheerful and positive about life. He chats to people working in music, theatre, design and film. His “ramble chats” are just that. He talks to interesting people about random subjects. They often cover a lot of ground.

He also has some lovely jingles which I he writes himself. They’re very catchy and I occasionally find myself humming them to myself when I’m driving the car. He’s an excellent interviewer and I find his gentle and non-confrontational interviewing style to be really soothing in the wee small hours.  I like the way each episode starts with him doing the intro whilst walking his dog Rosie. He often describes her joyfulness at going for a walk and it’s an excellent way to set the scene and put you in the mood for a ramble chat.

I think the appealing thing about all of these podcasts is that the presenters are non-judgemental. They really sound as though they understand what it’s like to feel like you don’t quite fit and they make this not only ok, but a positive thing. I love the idea that imperfection is okay and that whoever you are, you’re ok.

I hope you’ll check out these recommendations if you have trouble sleeping or need to be entertained on a long journey. They are also good for killing time at the airport or waiting for your kids to finish their after school activities. They brighten my days and more importantly make the long sleepless nights more bearable. They also have long back catalogues, so there’s plenty to listen to if  you become a fan.

I would love to know if you have any favourites that you’d like to recommend.

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

I finally finished my first podcast!

About six months ago I decided to make a podcast called “Finding your Passion”. My idea was to talk to interesting people about their life journeys.

I interviewed my amazing niece Olivia who lives in London and works for an innovation organisation called Nesta. She was visiting Australia at the time, so I was able to catch up with her in Perth. We had a great chat, most of which has made it into the final podcast.

After six months of editing the interview and fiddling around with it, I thought it was time to take the plunge and publish, so here it is. I hope you enjoy listening to my first ever episode. You never know, I might even make another episode!

https://player.whooshkaa.com/player/playlist/show/2064?sharing=true

Full circle

When I was young and just beginning to think about who I wanted to be in the world I settled on the idea of becoming a sound engineer. I loved listening to music and to a lesser extent playing music. Even at a young age I knew I didn’t have the commitment or talent to become a professional musician, but I loved the whole idea of working in a creative field with people who loved music as much as I did.

Unfortunately I lived in a smallish city in Australia and the options for becoming a sound engineer were limited to say the least. There was only one recording studio and jobs in the music industry were few and far between. Somewhat naively, I sent off a few letters to all of the film companies and television and radio stations in Perth asking if they had a position for me. I was 15.

Funnily enough, I received two job offers. One was as a telecine operator at Channel 9, a job which I later found out was extremely boring. I didn’t even consider that taking job because it was located in a suburb way out in the sticks and I didn’t have a drivers licence.

The other position was for an editing assistant at a small production company in the city, and this was the job I took.

I soon found that the job entailed not only film and sound editing, but typing invoices, doing the banking, getting lunches and hauling around cameras and recording gear on location. It was an interesting way to start my career.

My interest in sound came to the fore again several years later when I took a position as a sound editing assistant at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in Sydney, Australia. This job involved replacing dialogue, recording sound effects and laying music tracks for television dramas. It was fun and in those days it was all analogue which meant that every track was a physical entity and had to be created and carried from the editing room to the sound mixing studio. The tracks were then laced up on big machines (dubbers) and mixed down into a single sound track. This is all done digitally now.

Since then I’ve had a lot of other jobs, some creative and some less so, but my recent foray into podcasting represents a return to something I’ve always had a yen for.

 

Telling stories with sound

I’m excited to let you know that I’ve signed up to do a podcasting course with the nice people who run Creative Nonfiction Org. I was moseying around the internet looking for a writing course and I found this course  – Introduction to Audio Storytelling which combines nonfiction storytelling with audio editing. Both of these skills come together beautifully in a podcast.

I might not have talked much about my interest in podcasting on this blog, but I’ve mentioned it a few times over here on my other website. (Why do I have two blogs I hear you ask? Don’t know really, I just wanted to write about two slightly different but related topics I guess. I think of this blog as a place where I can write about creativity and insecurity and also about the pleasure that comes with trying new things. My other blog is about clarity, simplicity and design. As I said, different but connected).

What’s the course about?

Over the next 8 weeks I’ll be learning about sound editing and how to write and produce a five minute podcast. The course starts today and I’m pretty excited to be embarking on a new creative endeavor. I’ve done some sound editing in the past, but to be honest it was a long, long time ago, so I’m really looking forward to refreshing my skills, working collaboratively with the other students, and trying out some new ideas.

For the podcast we need write about something that is true, but also personal. Not in a creepy tell-all kind of way, but to write about something that is meaningful to us. That will be a challenge and already I’m doubting my ability to come up with something sufficiently interesting. I’m thinking about writing a short piece on finding your passion as I always find this topic of interest and I seem to be drawn to books and articles on the subject. I suspect that if I can talk about it for 5 minutes with enough enthusiasm, then there are bound to be other people who find the topic interesting as well. And really, the point of the exercise is to make something that makes me happy, not everyone else. Much like a painting a picture I suppose…

I’ll keep you posted on how it’s going. Have you thought about trying something new?