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Famous and Gravy: The Recipe for Podcast Fulfillment · Your Mic

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Welcome back to Your Mic.
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Today, we step into the story behind Famous Engraving, a podcast that's all about turning celebrity biographies into celebration, gamification, and meaningful life lessons.
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Michael Osborne, a pioneer in independent podcasting and creator of three successful shows, crafts each episode with sharp trivia, clever hooks, and a blueprint for creative fulfillment.
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The journey is what he lives for.
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And each story is a reminder that success is not about the finish line, but loving the process along the way.
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You're going to see Michael live as a keynote speaker, one of six, at SpeakFest 2025,
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happening next month at the National Museum of Funeral History in Houston, Texas.
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Grab your tickets now at speakpodcasting.com slash speakfest2025.
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Michael, you have had tremendous success in monetizing not one, not two, but three different
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podcasts.
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And I love what you said pre-show, pre-recording that you're trying to use the current one,
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Famous and Gravy, as a case study for independent podcasters.
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So let's start there.
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Yeah.
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So Famous and Gravy has been an exciting journey in terms of kind of how we put the show together
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and how we are executing it on a shoestring budget.
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So I've developed a little bit of a framework for how I try and get people going if they want to develop a show that can be monetized and lead to success.
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And for me, step one is inspiration.
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What are you listening to?
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What are the shows that you're really into?
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And can you deconstruct them, begin to critique them, take them apart so that you can apply what's working on other shows to your concept?
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I think there's a lot of opportunity for innovation in the podcast space overall.
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And so those are steps one and two for me in terms of putting together a show that can have a really high ceiling.
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Let's go back to the name Famous and Gravy because the show is a history show, but it's not just history.
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It's about dead celebrities, but not just any dead celebrity.
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It's about dead celebrities who have recently passed.
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So I got to know, selfishly and for the audience, why the name Famous and Gravy?
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Oh, God, I need a better answer to this question.
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So, well, I'll tell you the back story.
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Part of it is it's a little ambiguous and almost deliberately ambiguous.
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We wanted to secure the IP.
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And when we were looking around at other podcasts and what are the names of other shows, nobody had famous and gravy.
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Nobody had combined those two terms.
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Yeah, right.
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Exactly.
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Because it doesn't make any – but I have a brother-in-law who's an ad guy.
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He was a creative director for a number of years.
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And we had written a bunch of names out on a napkin when we were brainstorming that,
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you know, over Tex-Mex one night.
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And he's like, that's the one.
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I don't know what it means, but I want in.
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So I was like, okay, that, cause that's like the main thing.
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You want to try and get somebody to click on it.
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I think that's, what's interesting is that our audience will sort of backfill information.
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They'll make up a story about what gravy means.
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I mean, I think famous is pretty self-explanatory.
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On every episode, we have a famous figure.
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Gravy can be interpreted different ways.
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It may be like, you know, what's the special sauce?
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What's the secret sauce to life on some level?
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It actually, the real answer is way more academic and boring.
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There is a Shakespeare play, I think it's Romeo and Juliet, where a character is saying,
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look for me tomorrow and you shall find me a grave man and the use of the word grave in that context
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it was one of those shakespeare things where it was a double entendre and i was like grave maybe
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there's something there and my friend ahmet was like famous and gravy i wrote it down on the
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napkin and it became the name of our podcast so uh it's a little bit wow yeah i know but okay
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i get it now i mean i but i think that the thing is there's only so much to get it really is
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because every episode we ask this question, would you want that life?
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Right.
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And that is a,
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you know, conversation starter.
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It's a thought experiment.
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It's a way of talking about somebody's
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biography and somebody's story, but also turning it back on ourselves.
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And I think the gravy piece
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is like really asking what makes for a meaningful life.
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You know, what are we actually after in
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terms of our own desires, aspirations, fears, trade-offs, you know, what makes for a meaningful
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life is, you know, not exactly well captured in the title, but that's what we're after in terms
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of the concept.
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It never occurred to me that gravy meant like, was some kind of reference to grave,
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but the podcast is because the podcast is indeed about dead celebrities
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and graveyard is where they are.
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Right.
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Right.
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Right.
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Gravy is spelled like
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gravy with mashed potatoes and steak exactly nobody nobody ever reads grave into the gravy
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part of famous and gravy i mean the thing is it is a dead celebrity show but we're not like
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deathy you know we're not like fixated on what happens in the afterlife it is quite the opposite
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if anything it's a you know it's a celebration of a life story and another way of looking at you
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you know, what we're trying to do episode to episode is it's almost more like literary
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criticism that, you know, it's like a book club, right?
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You read a book in a book club and
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everybody gets together and talk about like, what did you get out of it?
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What did you think of the
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main character?
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How about the plot?
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How was the story?
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How was the, you know, how did it go down?
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Celebrity biographies are kind of similar.
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There's a common narrative.
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It's almost as if we have all
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read this book collectively, because we just know so much about celebrity life, that we can begin
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to deconstruct it and add elements to it with the lens of a kind of English seminar class.
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Let's go back to how you open up each episode, because it is my opinion that a lot of newbie
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podcasters don't really know how to start.
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And it's either the obscure clip from the middle of
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the episode that has zero context, or it's a three minute long cold open.
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I love cold opens.
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Yeah.
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Or it's the three minutes, no, no cold open, no produced intro, but it's,
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it's Freddie and Mike bantering about their weekend before they get into the actual topic at hand.
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And so what you have managed to do with Famous and Gravy is flip the script when it comes to how to begin a captivating podcast episode.
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So please, why don't you tell everybody who's not familiar with the show how you do this?
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Absolutely.
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Before I do, let me just say, dude, you and I are in 100% agreement.
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I think the first three minutes, if not the first 90 seconds, if not the first 15 seconds of a show, you know, the listeners are automatically saying, am I in or out?
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So you have got to set a hook early.
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And if there is no context or if there's no like anything that grabs your attention immediately, like, you know, you risk them bailing and never coming back.
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So we start every show with a kind of bluff the listener quiz.
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um it started i was i was really into the show heavyweight i don't know if you know that one
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um that one it's a fun show it's it's uh i think that the producer was at one point on this
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american life but he's he's very dry sense of humor in every episode he calls this woman jackie
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up and kind of messes with her head uh and it's it's funny he's like you know can i curse on this
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show absolutely he's fucking with her and it's great the way he's fucking with her is like hey
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Jackie, it's me.
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And she's like, what, what do you want?
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And then, you know, 90 seconds in the
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show starts.
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The other point of inspiration was, wait, wait, don't tell me the NPR bluff,
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bluff the listener thing.
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So what we do on Famous and Gravy is I will read a subject's
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obituary.
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I'll find some clues from their obit.
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And I'll, I'll make a quiz where I give one clue
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at a time and the listener has to guess who the person is.
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And I try and throw them off the scent.
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So there's like four or five clues.
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And then it becomes increasingly revealing over time.
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But it's also a way of introducing kind of trivia information and beginning to prime the listener
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for what we're going to do in the full length of the episode, right?
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We're starting to like
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pepper it with some of the spicy stuff from their life, like little bits of trivia you didn't know.
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It's like you're gamifying the podcast episode.
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And that's what I love about it,
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because the first time that I listened to your podcast, it was like, wow, this is not just a
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cold open with three talking points, which is what I do and I'm a fan of.
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Now this is how you start
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a podcast episode about Stan freaking Lee or Anthony Bourdain.
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This is how it's done, baby.
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It's a different take on it.
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I love it.
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Well, thanks.
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I mean, I do think like,
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gamification, I'm glad he brought that up because the whole show is kind of gamified in a way,
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but there is something about, you know, there's a reason we watch game shows.
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We're playing along
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And audio for me has always been a vicarious experience.
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You know, the best shows, I feel like I'm sitting in the room in a conversation or I'm
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picturing the story as it's being told.
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Or if it's a game style show, then I feel like I'm a contestant.
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I feel like I'm playing along.
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So this was a way of sort of like bringing people into that mindset of a vicarious experience,
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you know, from the get go, right from the gun.
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And you're making, yeah, you're making the listener a part of the show.
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And it's like, oh, well, you know, I want to see it.
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Does this next does this next guy get who it is?
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No, he doesn't.
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Does this next woman get who it is?
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And then by the time you know it, you're roped into the episode and you're like, all right, I got to know who it is.
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Now I want to know what Michael has to say about this week's topic.
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And it's also sadistic.
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I mean, to be clear, like I am fucking with him and which is the delight for me.
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Right.
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But the other thing I'll say about this, this is this is actually I'm so glad you were talking about this.
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segment, I think I shared this with you before, Freddie, this has actually become a kind of hack
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that I'm really encouraging people, especially new creators to consider.
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I, so the show is now
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at a place where we've got a critical massive audience where people are, you know, calling in
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or writing in and saying, Hey, I want to be on the bluff, the listener segment, that sounds kind of
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fun.
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I am now using that opportunity to when I record with a guest, I'll say, Hey, can we hang
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on for 15 or 20 minutes and just have a conversation.
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And I'll ask them questions like,
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how did you find the show?
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What other shows are you listening to?
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Where are you exactly?
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What do
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you do?
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And I have been able to use this segment and this listener call-in device as a way of doing
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audience research.
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And I got to tell you, man, that has totally unlocked all kinds of thinking
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for me.
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I have such a better theory of the audience because I've been working in podcasting
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for 15 years or so now.
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And this is the first time I've gotten a show where I am having like
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regular organic conversations with an engaged conversations with our audience.
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I think this
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is a problem.
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A lot of newbie creators run into, you launch a show, you put it out there,
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you're broadcasting it, and you have no idea how it's being received.
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You're just not hearing,
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you know, what people are getting from it.
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So, so this, this whole segment is doing like
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triple duty for me.
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Let's build on that because you and I have an affinity for new podcast hosts
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and we want to see these guys and gals succeed, right?
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So someone's listening to this episode.
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They're like, Michael, that is genius.
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I want to do what you're doing.
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Oh, wait a minute.
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I don't
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have the tech technological capability or, Oh, that sounds too complicated or, Oh, insert your
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excuse here.
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What is your advice?
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I think that it's interesting because I think that there's a
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lot of myths out there about podcasting.
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There's a myth that it's cheap.
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There's a myth that it's
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easy.
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There's a myth that it's inexpensive.
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There's a myth that it's lucrative.
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And I think
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that there are ways of making it cheaper and easier.
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And even, you know, lucrative is a
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an injurious word, but at least like a way of monetizing and earning a living, if not,
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you know, a side hustle, whatever your expectations are.
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You know, so I do start
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whenever anybody comes to me and says, I want to start a new podcast.
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A lot of what I do is
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expectation setting.
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And I say, look, it is hard to build an audience.
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It's a very crowded space.
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And I want you to first and foremost, consider this to be an act of creative self love that I
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I want you to be doing this for you.
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It's like learning an instrument or writing a book or learning whatever kind of creative activity.
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So that's sort of thing number one.
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I feel like it always has to come back to that.
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And I can say, like, in all honesty, for all the success I've had with my shows, Famous and Gravy, actually all of my shows, but Famous and Gravy continues to, like, be really fulfilling.
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I love working on every single part of this show.
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I love the research.
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I love getting my notes ready.
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I love recording.
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I love editing.
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I love publishing.
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I love talking with my audience.
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So that's one thing I say.
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I then also say, it kind of goes back to what I was talking about earlier.
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I really do think that it helps a lot to become mindful of your own tastes and your own habits.
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Start by like, what are the shows that you're into?
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And start to ask yourself, why are you into it?
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What is it about the either story being told?
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What is it that you're learning, that you're getting, that the need it's fulfilling?
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What's the vibe?
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What's the parasocial relationship?
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Why are you into particular creators?
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Why do you want to hang out with them?
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And then see if you have some of those qualities.
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How do I tell a story like that or introduce value like that or, you know, bring out the side of me that I think people are really going to like?
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And I think that third thing is the hardest, right?
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Because being a host, you know, your ego kind of gets tangled up in it.
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It's kind of hard not to, right?
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Just a little bit.
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Teeny, tiny bit.
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I am a big goddamn deal because I'm on microphone.
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And I think everybody knows, okay, I want the good side of me to come out.
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And how do you get that step back advice from somebody saying, the good part of you is coming out in these places and the shitty part of you is coming out in those places?
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So I do think that a lot of, you know, what's necessary at the outset is finding people you trust who can offer that kind of step back guidance.
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I do think, though, if you spend time on those things, looking at story and what are you learning and what is the, you know, parts of your personality that are coming out.
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And you look at your core concept, you know, what your show is about.
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And can I can you make it very original?
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If you set that stuff up at the outset, I think that there's all kinds of opportunity for growth, success, audience capture, monetization, all of those things.
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So to answer your question, I am a big believer in, you know, spending time on the creative development process at the outset and then, you know, establishing a workflow, establishing a concept, establishing a structure.
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And then once you get that in place, you can be off and running and go from there.
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I've never heard it put that way, Michael, where you're wanting people to listen to their favorite shows and take apart what it is they like.
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It reminds me of back when I was writing.
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I have three novels, and they would be like, well, if you're not writing, you need to be reading.
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And you'd be reading your favorite writers.
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Well, this is the same concept.
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You're not stealing.
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you're just absorbing what it is you like, and you're incorporating it into your style and into
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your workflow.
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Totally.
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I mean, I sometimes like to think that, I mean, I draw a lot of inspiration
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from Quentin Tarantino, right?
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I was, you know, grew up in the 90s, or was an adolescent in the
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90s when Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs came out.
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And there was all this discussion about how he,
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His movies were paying homage to all kinds of eclectic interests, old Westerns and Kung Fu movies and Scorsese.
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And, you know, and they're kind of an homage and a pastiche.
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There's nothing wrong with drawing.
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In fact, I think it's a healthy thing to draw inspiration from, you know, what you love.
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And there's an adage out there that great art begins with mimicry.
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And I believe that.
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I think that to grow into yourself as an artist and as a storyteller, you know, it's good to channel your heroes and to be, you know, I don't know, like conscious about that process.
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And so, yeah, I the other thing is that I just think that like becoming a student of the form is only going to lead to success.
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It's only going to it's going to give you a language for describing and understanding what you're doing.
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And then if you can also involve other people, whether it's producers or assistants or whoever else is part of the collaboration, if y'all are talking about what you're into, then you can develop a little bit of a shared language and a shared culture for how to make whatever it is you're doing even better.
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And also seeking the negative feedback, not just, hey, Michael, what did I do right?
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It's, hey, Michael, I have a feeling I may have screwed up on this episode.
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Can you please tell me where I went wrong?
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Yeah, 100%, man.
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I mean, because, like, we're all imperfect, and we're all – I cannot agree more.
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A lot of what my work is doing as a consultant is exactly that, trying to offer constructive feedback.
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And, you know, I've done enough of work as a host to sort of know where I've screwed up.
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I had a friend describe me recently as a player coach, and I feel like that's actually not a bad way of –
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And I would actually put you in this category, too.
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By producing this show, you are able to report back to people you're working with, this is what's working, this is what's not, this is where I fucked up in the past.
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This is how I opened myself up to the right kind of criticism so that I could grow and become better.
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Because that's a never-ending process.
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We can always be better at what we're doing.
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Oh, absolutely.
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To me, this is so much better than sports.
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minus taking the hits from 300-pound offensive linemen,
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we get to stay in the game.
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And our workout can be daily and as long as we want
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because we can study the greats.
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We can listen back to our own episodes.
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We can go to guys like you and seek that constructive feat,
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that constructive criticism.
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And that's so hard, though,
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because we all want to be told that our baby is pretty.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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I mean, I am able to find things that I like, if not love, in anybody I work with for the most part.
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I think that it's a funny thing, though, how I will meet, and I'm wondering if you have this experience too,
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I'll meet people who have great taste and who have the right ideas.
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And there is this gap between the thing you think you're doing and the thing you're actually doing.
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There is this kind of weird creative disconnect of like, why?
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You know, this is my intention.
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I think I'm doing this.
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And it's like, it's not quite coming.
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And I think we just have a hard time being objective about ourselves.
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That's what it boils down to.
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So I'm a big believer that the sort of atomic relationship of a great show is between host and editor or producer.
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That you need somebody who is there representing the concept, and you need somebody else who is there representing the audience.
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and that if you have that division of labor, then you can begin to close that gap.
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Kind of like you can think of them as the COO, the operations, how is it going to be efficient?
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And then having the creative director who's the artsy fartsy, oh, you know what, Michael?
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I love how you said this word at the three minute mark and yada, yada, yada, yada.
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Totally.
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Yeah.
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I mean, and I think, you know, my favorite, like this is a collaborative medium, you know, almost all storytelling is and should be.
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So I think that there's going to be overlap in those roles.
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It's the division of labor is only so clear.
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But the more you can parse it out, the more, yes, you can have somebody who is, you know, honed in on the practical aspects and then some who are honed in on the creative parts.
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I want to go back to famous and gravy what is if you had to narrow it down to one and if you have
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to go to two that's fine too but what is one of your favorite lessons that you have taken
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from past episodes that you're able to apply to your professional life wow wow wow wow um
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um it's one or two my god okay okay that's a good challenge i gotta be able to answer this question
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it's so corny and so trite but i cannot be reminded of it often enough it's never about
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the destination it's always about the journey you know that i think that one of the things about our
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show we look at celebrity lives and we think about their accomplishments what awards did they win
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what movies did they make, what albums were awesome, what championships, whatever.
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We think about the finish line accomplishments.
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What we are interested in in the show is, yeah, but what was it like to get there?
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And did you enjoy the process of getting there?
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And I'm somebody who believes very much in one day at a time and mindfulness and trying to be present.
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I am the world's worst Buddha, but I'm trying.
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And I think that this is a lesson that we learn early in life, but it's one of those things we've got to revisit over and over and over again.
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And if there's one sort of cross-cutting message that I feel like I'm reminded of in every episode, it's that the more I'm in the present and enjoying the present and not obsessing about where I'm trying to get to or any kind of finish line, the better off I am.
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It puts me in a place of gratitude.
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And when I'm in that grateful state, that's the best version of me.
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That's the most generous version of me.
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That's the most useful version of me.
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And, you know, it's where I'm able to zero my ego out as best I can because my ego is always getting in the way, you know.
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one more question because the premise of the show is just so fascinating to me
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that if you if you could cheat if you could and go back somebody from the past
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and i want you to think in terms of 18th or 19th century and if they died recently so this
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this would kind of involve time machining the art of podcasting back back in the day right
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It's Marty McFly with a podcast.
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You got to go and do a podcast interview about somebody.
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Who would that somebody be?
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Wow.
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Okay.
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Um, you know, that's, I mean, it's probably some Mark Twain, I think, you know, if I,
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I think I'm so attracted to somebody who's got a great sense of humor, first and foremost.
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And I think that there is something about humor that almost always has a shelf life.
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It exists within a certain kind of cultural context.
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And when you find comedians, like modern-day comedians, who like the stuff from the 1960s or 70s or whatever, is still funny,
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it's because there's a level of incisiveness and insight and cutting to some deeper theme that is,
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um, you know, that is, that, that is durable, that has a longer shelf life that has more,
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you know, truism to it.
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Uh, the fact that Mark Twain is still held up as this great humorist,
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and it's been a while since I've read any Twain, but I do remember reading it at one point and
25:40
laughing out loud.
25:41
And I think that, you know, there, he still gets quoted as a funny person.
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So there's a sense of humor for me is a real signal of deep genius.
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So if I'm going way back in time, I think I'd probably be how I think about it.
25:56
And he's the first person I landed on.
25:59
Fantastic.
26:00
Y'all, please join us for SpeakFest 2025 Night of the Living Pod, October 10th and 11th.
26:06
Michael is one of several keynote speakers that is going to be on hand at the National Museum of Funeral History.
26:14
and you got to watch them if you enjoyed this episode and if you enjoy famous and gravy which
26:18
you will if you haven't listened yet then you are definitely going to want to see michael and you're
26:23
going to see all of our speakers workshop hosts and panelists as well you get your tickets at
26:30
speakpodcasting.com speakfest 2025 michael thank you so much for taking the time to be on the show
26:38
freddie what an honor and a pleasure i look forward to the event in a few weeks
26:43
Thank you.