Latest / The Front / Why Meghan Markle’s podcast flopped - and some truly great shows to enjoy

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Why Meghan Markle’s podcast flopped - and some truly great shows to enjoy · The Front

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  Speaker 1: From the Australian. Here's what's on the Front. I'm Claire Harvey.
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  Speaker 1: It's Wednesday, January seven, twenty twenty sixth in South Wales's
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: newest Supreme Court judge is a silk who's worked closely
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  Speaker 1: with the Labour Friends of Palestine group. The state's opposition
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  Speaker 1: is demanding the government review the appointment of Philip Bolton sc.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: That's as a group of eminent legal figures demand Anthony
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  Speaker 1: Albanezi call a Royal commission into the December fourteenth massacre
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  Speaker 1: at Bondai. Every summer here at the Front, we try
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  Speaker 1: to serve up some episodes that match the holiday mood,
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  Speaker 1: a bit of a break from the grind of hardcore news,
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  Speaker 1: but still enough to get you thinking and laughing with
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  Speaker 1: us on your long drives, your walks on the beach,
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: all while finally cleaning out that cupboard. One of the
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  Speaker 1: most astute podcast listeners I know is The Front's producer,
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  Speaker 1: Kristin Amiot. So today she's going to tell us what
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  Speaker 1: she loves and what she doesn't among the podcast options
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  Speaker 1: out there. First up, Kristen introduces a show that's already
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  Speaker 1: become one of my new favorites, with the delightfully English name.
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  Speaker 1: Wanging on with Graham Norton and Maria mcurlain.
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  Speaker 2: Dear Graham and Maria, I've been happily married for thirty years.
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  Speaker 3: Done but my wife.
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  Speaker 2: I know I'm going to failt to laugh now, but
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  Speaker 2: my wife has just started to smell dead. I've been
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  Speaker 2: monitoring her showers.
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  Speaker 3: Who's going to tell him? I think.
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  Speaker 2: It's over.
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  Speaker 4: You've got that, so, Claire. Something that people may not
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  Speaker 4: know about me is that I am an absolute sucker
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  Speaker 4: for agony aunt style content. I love a letter writer column.
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  Speaker 4: I love nosing in on what people's problems are or
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  Speaker 4: what their perceived problems are, and I love to see
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  Speaker 4: the responses that are given by generations of writers all
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  Speaker 4: over the planet.
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  Speaker 1: And so when I saw.
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  Speaker 4: That Graham Norton and his very good friend in the industry,
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  Speaker 4: Maria McLane had a podcast in this ilk, I was
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  Speaker 4: absolutely thrilled and I was not disappointed.
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  Speaker 2: Hi, Graham and Maria. I'm a forty year old mamma
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  Speaker 2: three with a bizarre phobia of the wrinkly hands you
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  Speaker 2: get when you've been in water for ages. I have
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  Speaker 2: watered my children in the bath with yellow rubber gloves
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  Speaker 2: on since they were babies. Yeah, no fetishes there when
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  Speaker 2: they're grown up, right, and when I had to go
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  Speaker 2: swimming with them, much to my disdain, I walk around
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  Speaker 2: the pool with tea arms raised above the water for
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  Speaker 2: fear of wrinkling pruning skin.
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  Speaker 3: Why is that woman surrendering in the shallow end?
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  Speaker 2: Someone is going to shooter? Yeah, I give up. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: The Brits do advice columns so well, and they're fantastic
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  Speaker 1: columns in various British newspapers. The Americans do it well too,
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  Speaker 1: but the British ones are funny as opposed to the
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  Speaker 1: American ones, which tend to be very earnest.
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  Speaker 4: Yes, yes, the Americans very earnest. The Brits. That stiff
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  Speaker 4: upper lip kind of culture definitely comes through in this
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  Speaker 4: type of content, I think. But also then you layer
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  Speaker 4: on top of that Graham Norton, who in my mind,
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  Speaker 4: can do absolutely no wrong. He manages to be the
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  Speaker 4: most entertaining, the most compelling person in any room that
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  Speaker 4: he's in, and he is in rooms with the biggest
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  Speaker 4: celebrities on the planet on a weekly basis on his
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  Speaker 4: TV show, and yet he is just he has his
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  Speaker 4: own gravitational force, and then when he brings the friendship
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  Speaker 4: that he had with Maria McLane forged over decades in
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  Speaker 4: the industry together, it is just podcast magic.
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  Speaker 1: Have you got any problems you would like them to solve? Not?
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  Speaker 4: I mean, sure, yes, I don't know if they've got
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  Speaker 4: time on their podcast to solve my problems. But what
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  Speaker 4: I wrote in my review of this podcast was that
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  Speaker 4: as much as I love agony art style content, for me,
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  Speaker 4: the downfall of it is that I never actually get
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  Speaker 4: to know if these people implemented the advice that they
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  Speaker 4: were given, if they even heard it. I want to
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  Speaker 4: know if what these people are told maybe is the
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  Speaker 4: best course of action, if it actually happens, and if
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  Speaker 4: it works.
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  Speaker 1: I sometimes wonder if the questions are real. Do you
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  Speaker 1: get the sense that these questions are from real human beings?
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  Speaker 2: I think it.
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  Speaker 4: Could go either way. Some of them are so far
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  Speaker 4: fetched that you have to wonder if somebody invented them.
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  Speaker 4: But also would somebody dream up some of this kind
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  Speaker 4: of stuff? I don't know, but I like to think. Again,
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  Speaker 4: being nosy, I have to think, this is what's going
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  Speaker 4: on in people's lives.
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  Speaker 1: We're here to talk about your summer listening recommendations as
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  Speaker 1: are in house podcast expert, and I love the fact
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  Speaker 1: that one of them has got a water slide in it.
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  Speaker 4: I was so pleasantly surprised by this podcast. It's called
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  Speaker 4: Slippery Slope.
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  Speaker 5: Mount iSER one of the most remote places in Australia,
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  Speaker 5: nay the world, smack bang in the middle of Queensland.
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  Speaker 5: They had it all pub Cowboys Rodeo twenty four hour
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  Speaker 5: machas a massive mine, but something was missing.
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  Speaker 4: It's hosted by Australian comedians Brad Oaks and Dave O'Neill
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  Speaker 4: and they first heard about this story on a work trip.
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  Speaker 4: They were doing gigs in the Queensland mining town of
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  Speaker 4: Mount iSER. They heard about Mount Isa's missing water slide.
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  Speaker 4: And the podcast starts in this format of a kind
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  Speaker 4: of satirical true crime investigation about what happened to this
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  Speaker 4: water slide. And I don't want to spoil for anybody
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  Speaker 4: what that was, but it involves pirates, it involves the
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  Speaker 4: Sewers Canal, and it involves COVID. There's a small town
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  Speaker 4: rivalry with one of the other towns up the road
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  Speaker 4: who already has a water slide. It has everything and
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  Speaker 4: it actually evolves into this really nice look at Australian culture,
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  Speaker 4: at small communities, regional towns. And the really nice thing
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  Speaker 4: about it is that the comedians who host it are
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  Speaker 4: at pains to say through the course of these episodes
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  Speaker 4: that they are not journalists. But these are really great scripts.
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  Speaker 4: They've actually done some really good, interesting interviews. They're funny,
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  Speaker 4: but they're also not poking fun at people who live
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  Speaker 4: in small towns. So it's really fun to listen to
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  Speaker 4: over a summer, I think with your family in the
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  Speaker 4: car if you're driving somewhere.
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  Speaker 1: You grew up in the New South Wales central West
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  Speaker 1: Country town of Kunabara, brand was there a waterslide?
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  Speaker 2: There was.
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  Speaker 4: There's a water slide at a little theme park that
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  Speaker 4: we had called Miniland, which was dinosaur themed. There was
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  Speaker 4: one and the pool was the main event. It was
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  Speaker 4: always my great dream to purchase Miniland and run it
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  Speaker 4: as an adult, but unfortunately it is no longer there.
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  Speaker 4: Maybe one day.
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  Speaker 1: I grew up in Canberra, where there was no water
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  Speaker 1: slide at all, but there was a tower to jump
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  Speaker 1: off or be pushed off, which felt to me like
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  Speaker 1: it was three hundred meters high. I'm sure it was
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  Speaker 1: at a height that would no longer be approved by
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  Speaker 1: any council, and it has now been taken down after
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  Speaker 1: various broke ankles and necks and whatever falling off it
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  Speaker 1: or jumping off it. I remember vividly getting halfway up
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  Speaker 1: the stairs and then having to go back down in
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  Speaker 1: shame while my brother and his friends tormented me. It's
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  Speaker 1: in towns like that. Inland town's the pool and water
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  Speaker 1: are so important in summer, aren't they.
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  Speaker 4: Oh so important? That's where everybody congregates. And that has
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  Speaker 4: just reminded me about another feature of Miniland, which was
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  Speaker 4: one of those really big slides. Again absolutely would not
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  Speaker 4: get anywhere you're an approval in this day and age,
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  Speaker 4: because it was just metal about ten to fifteen meters high,
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  Speaker 4: sitting in the baking hot sun for hours on end,
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  Speaker 4: and all you got was this heitsian sack to sit
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  Speaker 4: on and slide down, and you'd come out the other
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  Speaker 4: end with third degree burns and go great, let's go again.
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  Speaker 1: That was Mom' say, stop complaining exactly. I love the
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  Speaker 1: fact that you honored the writing in that podcast. We
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  Speaker 1: work a lot on long form narrative podcasts and it's broader,
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  Speaker 1: kind of journalistic writing to audiences that perhaps would never
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  Speaker 1: click on a feature article or go on by a
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  Speaker 1: magazine with really long, multi thousand word pieces of writing.
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  Speaker 1: And these long form podcasts are really long. They're like
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  Speaker 1: multiple books, aren't they?
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  Speaker 6: They are.
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  Speaker 4: And what I wrote in my review of Slippery Slope
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  Speaker 4: was that the best podcast like this I like Keyhole Surgery.
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  Speaker 4: All the work, the intricate, detailed work, happens on the inside.
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  Speaker 4: You can't really see it, and that is what this
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  Speaker 4: podcast is. Despite the fact that these comedians don't want
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  Speaker 4: anybody to think that they are journalists, they've actually done
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  Speaker 4: a better job, in my opinion, than some journalists have
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  Speaker 4: done in pulling an expansive story together an informative story
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  Speaker 4: at the end of the day in a really entertaining way.
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  Speaker 4: And so what I said is that maybe the better
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  Speaker 4: way to explain it is to say that it is
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  Speaker 4: all killer, no filler. They've taken out the ums and
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  Speaker 4: the ars, they've taken out the long rambling conversations, and
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  Speaker 4: what's left is a really entertaining informative show.
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  Speaker 1: A lot of these long form podcasts are of course,
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  Speaker 1: based around much more serious topics like murder. We've produced
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  Speaker 1: several of them ourselves. Your podcast of the Year recommendation
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  Speaker 1: is a little bit like this, and it comes from
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  Speaker 1: Canada's public broadcaster Tell me about that.
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  Speaker 4: That series is called Sea of Lies, and I'm not
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  Speaker 4: unique in recommending it as the podcast of the year.
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  Speaker 4: It has appeared on I think every best podcast list
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  Speaker 4: that I've seen published to date, and absolutely justifiably so.
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  Speaker 4: It is a true crime investigation. It's hosted by a writer,
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  Speaker 4: journalist podcaster named Sam Mullins. He's Canadian and there's research
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  Speaker 4: and reporting done by Alex Gatonbe. It tells the story
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  Speaker 4: of a nineteen nineties Canadian swindler who at one point
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  Speaker 4: was one of the most wanted people in Canada or
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  Speaker 4: on the planet. He was involved in identity theft, fraud,
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  Speaker 4: and even murder, we learn at the outset of this series.
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  Speaker 4: But what was really amazing and compelling about this series
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  Speaker 4: is that as much as it is a serious, heartbreaking story,
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  Speaker 4: it doesn't feel exploitative of the subjects, and there are
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  Speaker 4: even moments of humor that are definitely woven in there
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  Speaker 4: by Sam Mullins and by his colleagues.
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  Speaker 2: Oh gosh, I would say he looked like a good
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  Speaker 2: looking Cliff Richard. Cliff Richard is good looking, but he
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  Speaker 2: reminded me of Cliff Richard.
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  Speaker 5: Hold up.
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  Speaker 3: This references a little before my Time Cliff Richard images
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  Speaker 3: search oh Elaine.
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  Speaker 1: One of the challenges with telling stories about murdering this
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  Speaker 1: format is that you have to walk a very fine
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  Speaker 1: line between journalism and entertainment. We know that people consume
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: long form podcasts as a form of entertainment. It's like
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: reading a book or watching a movie, but they have
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: high expectations of the gravitas and seriousness with which you're
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: going to treat the subject matter. A lot of people
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  Speaker 1: don't get that right. How did you feel that manage that?
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  Speaker 4: I thought it was really sensitively done. I think in
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  Speaker 4: the bad old days, at the outset of podcasting, when
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  Speaker 4: people realized that there was such a hunger for these
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  Speaker 4: types of stories, victims were not generally the center of
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  Speaker 4: those stories. This story, See of Lies starts with an
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  Speaker 4: unknown person being pulled from the water off the coast
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  Speaker 4: of the UK, and what it does over the course
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  Speaker 4: of that series is to give this person his identity back.
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  Speaker 4: It finds out the kind of life that he lived,
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  Speaker 4: It determines how he came to die in this quite sad,
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  Speaker 4: lonely manner, and so I think bringing victims back to
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  Speaker 4: the center of these stories and teaching us something about
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  Speaker 4: ourselves in the process is how the medium has evolved
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  Speaker 4: over a couple of decades.
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  Speaker 1: Now coming up, Kristen finally sees the light on Megan Michael. Chrissy,
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: you and I work together on our daily podcast, The Front,
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: and on lots of our long form podcasts, including one
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  Speaker 1: that is definitely my podcast of the year, It's Sick
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  Speaker 1: to Death by Headley Thomas. I had to put a
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: plug in for that, oh, I saidly we cross, so
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: we talk about everything all day every day. We're often
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: debating ideas and stories, and something that we have never
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: quite agreed on, and you've been very diplomatic about this,
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: is that I can't stand Meghan Michael, and I think
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: you were much more generous towards Meghan and I had
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: a moment of just exquisite triumph this year when you
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: listen to her podcast, I think against your will and
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: decided that you do also think she's a bit of
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: a pain.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, I look, I don't have strong feelings either way.
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  Speaker 4: I am Meghan Markel agnostic. I think you could say.
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  Speaker 4: But I listened to her podcast, which is to the
• 14:00
  Speaker 4: launch of her business as ever.
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: I'm Megan, and this is Confessions of a Female Founder,
• 14:06
  Speaker 3: a show where a chat with female entrepreneurs and friends
• 14:09
  Speaker 3: about the sleepless nights, the lessons learned, and the laser
• 14:13
  Speaker 3: focus that got them to where they are today.
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  Speaker 4: And almost from the outset, I just I couldn't figure
• 14:23
  Speaker 4: out the point of it. It was somehow all about
• 14:26
  Speaker 4: her and yet nothing to do with her. And I
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  Speaker 4: didn't ever buy that she is having the same experience
• 14:37
  Speaker 4: as a multi multimillionaire who is quite literally royalty, as
• 14:42
  Speaker 4: somebody who's sitting in their garage selling things on Etsy.
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  Speaker 4: I just couldn't buy it. As much as I was
• 14:48
  Speaker 4: prepared to give her the benefit of the doubt, it
• 14:50
  Speaker 4: just didn't come across as authentic to me. But what
• 14:53
  Speaker 4: I did enjoy was hearing those stories, was learning about
• 14:56
  Speaker 4: some of these founders, some more than others, and I
• 14:59
  Speaker 4: definitely we believe that those women deserve that platform.
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: That's one of the issues that I have with Meghan
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: Markeal look at I don't actually dislike her. I think
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: she's probably a very nice person, but her I think
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: content is absolutely insufferable. And one of the problems I
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: have with it is that she attracts because she's a duchess.
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: Just ask her pretty great guests, you know, really impressive people.
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: In her cooking show with Love Megan on Netflix, which
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: is now being canceled, she is able to get celebrity
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: chefs and very inspiring, really impressive people, and then she
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: shows them how to make croissants or something. You know,
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: it's like, learn from these people, let them tell their stories.
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: Why are you showing them how to decant pinut butter
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: pretzels into a plastic bag. And I haven't listened to
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: the podcast mainly because I just don't have time. But
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: that's the same thing. You've got people on there, like
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: Whitney wolf Heard, impressive business women. Listen to them.
• 15:54
  Speaker 4: Listen to them, Yes, listen to them. And she is
• 15:57
  Speaker 4: an extremely fascinating character.
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: Whitney wolf Heard.
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  Speaker 4: I did find some of the points that she made
• 16:04
  Speaker 4: again a little bit difficult, and I thought it was
• 16:06
  Speaker 4: an interesting choice to have that be the first episode
• 16:09
  Speaker 4: of this new podcast series, because Whitney wolf Heard famously
• 16:13
  Speaker 4: one of the founders of Tinder then left that company
• 16:17
  Speaker 4: and started Bumble which is another dating app that was
• 16:19
  Speaker 4: predicated on the idea that women should be able to
• 16:22
  Speaker 4: make the first move because men had buy and large
• 16:24
  Speaker 4: shown that they could not be trusted on dating apps
• 16:26
  Speaker 4: to be normal, and that was a revolutionary idea at
• 16:30
  Speaker 4: the time. She was also only in her twenties, I
• 16:32
  Speaker 4: think when she did that, but she got onto this
• 16:34
  Speaker 4: podcast with Megan Markl and then kind of insinuated in
• 16:39
  Speaker 4: my interpretation of the conversation that actually, women are being
• 16:43
  Speaker 4: treated badly in dating because they don't love themselves enough.
• 16:46
  Speaker 6: Down too, as I had to learn how to like
• 16:48
  Speaker 6: myself over the years, and when I look back on
• 16:51
  Speaker 6: these relationships, I'm like, oh, I must have really hated
• 16:55
  Speaker 6: myself because they tolerated that and I put up with that.
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  Speaker 7: Yeah, look, I think you and I have really connected
• 17:01
  Speaker 7: on that in a huge way.
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  Speaker 3: But I remember a quote from years ago.
• 17:05
  Speaker 7: I can't remember who said it, but it's something to
• 17:06
  Speaker 7: the effect of it's not verbatim. In a world that
• 17:10
  Speaker 7: capitalizes on your self doubt, loving yourself is a revolutionary act.
• 17:16
  Speaker 6: I love that quote. It's some version of that, You're
• 17:18
  Speaker 6: right or.
• 17:18
  Speaker 3: Even liking yourself is a revolutionary act.
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  Speaker 7: Yes, yes, you know you create a space with the intention,
• 17:24
  Speaker 7: even if it morphed into something that ended up dating
• 17:28
  Speaker 7: aligned the root, the origin was still about autonomy, self love,
• 17:36
  Speaker 7: making sure that you could really advocate for yourself and
• 17:38
  Speaker 7: be in a relationship or even the possibility of a
• 17:42
  Speaker 7: relationship that's rooted in something that's healthy.
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  Speaker 1: So it's our fault exactly.
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  Speaker 4: It is the fault of the women who have been
• 17:48
  Speaker 4: put through the ringer by the dating apps that she
• 17:51
  Speaker 4: and people around her created. So that was a little
• 17:53
  Speaker 4: bit hard to buy and that's probably where I went, oh,
• 17:56
  Speaker 4: this is not what I thought it was going to be,
• 17:58
  Speaker 4: and it's also not for.
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  Speaker 1: Me, Kristen. I'll be listening to those over summer and
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: I'll look forward to us getting back together after our.
• 18:05
  Speaker 4: Holidays, getting the band back together.
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: Thank you, but really the best podcast of the year
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: is Sick to Death, created by our team here at
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: The Australian, written and hosted by Headley Thomas and edited
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: by Jasper League. It's available right now at Sick todeth
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: podcast dot com.