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Podcast fans from all around - come and nerd out about podcasts and discover new shows along the way!
On Podcast Book Club - a different group of podcast industry pros sit down each week to pour over an episode of a show they admire.
We're a group of podcasting professionals who spend every day scripting, producing, engineering, and promoting podcasts. And in our free time? We’re podcast fans just like you. We love to listen to even more podcasts and figure out what makes the best podcasts so good.
So tune in and join the club - listen to podcast reviews of some of our favorite gems. We’ll give feedback on podcast content but also sound design, production, scripting, storytelling, and more.
Want even more? Catch Podcast Book Club on Twitter: twitter.com/podbookclub
Podcast Book Club is produced by Alex Bennett, Head of Post Production at Lower Street. Alex is a domesticated audio nerd, who has spent the past five years learning about human social conventions via the medium of podcasting. From Edinburgh, Scotland he is an audio engineer that helps produce audio dramas in his spare time. Alex specialises in soundscapes and creative mixing. He has a deep and abiding love for sandwiches, and is the 2nd worst bowler at Lower Street.
Lower Street provides next-level podcast production services for ambitious companies: everything from podcast strategy and creation to growth. We’ve worked with companies like BCG to develop multiple podcasts like Climate Vision 2050, BCG Compliance, BCG Fintech Files, and BCG In Her Element. We’ve also helped produce: Cadence Bank’s In Good Companies; HPE’s Technology Now, Zuhlke’s Data Today, Northern Trust’s The Road to Why, Zoobean’s The Reading Culture; ICR’s Welcome to the Arena and ZeroNorth’s Navigating Zero.
Find out more at https://lowerstreet.co/ and sign up for our newsletter to keep in touch https://lowerstreet.co/newsletter-sign-up
00:00 Alex B
Welcome to Podcast Book Club from Lower Street Media, where we take a look at what makes great podcasts so great. Our day job is making podcasts, but we're also fans of the medium, and I think it could be really useful to dig into what makes the shows we love so good. This episode, we're listening to two episodes of one of my favourite podcasts of all time, a history of the world in 100 objects. It does exactly what it says on the tin. The objects in question are from the British Museums collection, and it's hosted by Neil McGregor, who was the museum's director at the time. It's produced by the BBC and was originally made for Radio 4. There are 101 episodes, the 101st being a retrospective on the series, which was released I think in 2020, and each is around 10 to 15 minutes long. During the pandemic lockdown, I binged the entire series, and I've listened to the entire series again since. For me, it's the apex of comfort listening. So the two episodes that we are focusing on today are the old device stone chopping tool, which is from almost two million years ago, and Japanese bronze mirror, which is from the 12th century. I am Alex. I'm the senior audio engineer at Lower Street. I spend most of my time doing mixing, sound design, etc. It's my turn to host, and so I got to choose what we're listening to today. But I'm not alone. I'm joined by other people. So why don't you guys introduce yourselves starting with Elizabeth.
01:35 Elizabeth
I'm Elizabeth. I'm the production manager here at Lower Street, and I'm based out of Toronto, Canada.
01:44 Andrew
And Andrew. My name is Andrew Gannum. I'm a producer at Lower Street, based out of Minneapolis, Minnesota, and I started more than a few months ago.
01:51 Marion
And last, not least, but at the bottom of my screen, Marion. I am Marion Gruner. I am a producer at Lower Street, and I'm based out of Guelph, Ontario, Canada.
02:07 Alex B
So let's begin with broad thoughts on the episode. I'll go first. I pretty much said I need to say in the introduction, which is if a podcast could be made of like tweed and corduroy and smell like a grandparent's home, it would probably be this one. And I mean that in the best possible way through pretty minimalist use of music and sound design and soundscaping. They've managed to create a pretty much perfect sort of erudite aesthetic that I really, really enjoy. And the way they construct larger stories around what could be potentially quite simple and boring objects, I found to be really, really engaging. Marion, what did you think?
02:58 Marion
Yeah, initial thoughts, same thing, very comforting. I thought it was really interesting to compare the two because the chopping tool one, it was much more location sound, which I loved. I loved being there. I loved being in the museum. I loved listening to them moving, like you could understand that they've got this thing in their hand and they're turning it over and they're feeling it and they're really examining it.
03:25 Clip
Picking it up, your first reaction is it's very heavy. And if it's heavy, of course, it gives power behind your blow. The second is that it fits without any compromise into the palm of the hand and in a position where there is a sharp edge running from my forefinger to my wrist.
03:46 Marion
I really appreciated that. It was less so with the Japanese mirror, but still very spare, lovely, comfortable sounds and really great use of guests and experts as well.
04:01 Elizabeth
Elizabeth, what did you think? I think that if one of the goals of this podcast was to encourage people to want to go to the British Museum and take a look at their exhibits, it 100% was effective in doing that because I was desperate to go to the museum and see these objects in person and maybe even listen to this podcast while I looked at the objects in the museum. This really, in a way that other podcasts don't, left me feeling really eager to look at something at the same time. Now that I'm saying that out loud, I saw that as a positive, but now that I'm saying it out loud, it feels like I'm saying it wasn't effective as audio alone. But I don't know that that's true. I just really wanted to be there looking at the objects.
04:49 Alex B
Absolutely. I think it's interesting as well. I haven't been to the British Museum more than a few times because I lead a wild and exciting life. You would also miss some of these objects when you go around it because it's just so jam-packed full of stuff. I think having it as a jumping off point for going and learning more about them is great. Actually, the show does have, I'll put a link to it in the show notes, it has its own kind of wiki website kind of thing where you can go and look at the objects and whatnot.
05:23 Andrew
Andrew, what did you think? First of all, I think it's so lovely that this is your comfort show and I think it's so indicative of who I know you to be, Alex. I am a big dummy with a short attention span and I think that's a good, important perspective to have in this conversation. And I've never listened to the show before, so I was coming to it completely out of context and that's also something that I want to talk about. But the most interesting that I thought the show was doing was this kind of object narrative structure and it's something I've seen other shows do and I find it super appealing when I'm kind of browsing podcasts to download, things that will inform me and have, even in the title it's a very clear narrative, the story of the world and 100 objects. So I'd like to unpack that structure a little bit, but overall, you know, very charming, very lovely, very tweed. It's a show with elbow patches on its suit jacket, I think.
06:29 Marion
100% and it smells of pipe tobacco as well. I was just going to add pipe smoke, yeah.
06:41 Alex B
Homer, that's supposed to be leather patches on a tweed blazer, not the other way around. You've ruined a perfectly good jacket. Incorrect, Marge. Two perfectly good jackets.
The first main thing I'd like to discuss kind of hops off what Andrew was saying, which is about the structure and format of the show. The decision not only to choose one object, but to build quite a substantial, I think, story around them and to limit themselves originally because of time slots on the show. I think some of them have been cut down even further for the podcasts to these sub-15 minute episodes. This was, I'm sure, obviously both by design and there's probably some very strict editing that went into it. So what do you guys think about the format? Do you think it works?
07:30 Marion
Yeah, I have more and more appreciation for brevity in podcasts. Like 20 minutes or less is like beautiful for me. I mean, I like to dive into something long and glorious, but just in terms of life and everything. And when I get to listen, it's great. And so much is packed into those episodes. Like, I didn't feel that they were skimming the surface. And you can do that. You can do 15 or 20 minutes when you're just talking about one object and the impact that it has and what it means for the cultural development of the world, basically. Amazingly, you can do that in 15 or 20 minutes.
08:20 Andrew
So yeah, I really love that. And I thought it was really effective. I think something that is maybe inherent to these types of shows where it's like 100 different objects, to me, it kind of feels like pointillism a little bit where you don't see the whole picture and look at all the different dots. And as someone who has only experienced these two points, I found it a little hard to not just situate myself, but see kind of the broader narrative that they were telling. And that's in part a function of if you design a podcast that's 100 episodes that someone is supposed to listen to, then maybe not each one is its own perfect total encapsulation. I'm really fascinated by this structure. I wanted more story. And I was thinking hard about what that meant. And I think that meant I wanted a protagonist of some kind. And I think in this structure, you can have the object be the protagonist, maybe. You could have maybe the person who discovers the object or that be the protagonist or structure the story about how the object is discovered. There were elements of that in each of these. You could have it be the host, their kind of journey of figuring out what the significance of these objects are. I think there's many ways to do it. But it felt a little bit to me like that it didn't have a complete structure within each episode. I do think that as much as these types of shows entice me and promise education and information, it's really alluring to see, you know, oh, if I just listen to these 50 episodes, just these 100 episodes that I can have a really broad understanding. If I jump in and the episodes don't grab me, then the probability that I'm going to keep listening, I think, is lower. And so that was just something I was thinking about. And I think, you know, they're beautifully constructed. I think there are some threads in each of them that I would definitely say have narrative elements and could be pursued. But I just wanted those fleshed out
10:31 Alex B
more. Yeah, I think it's a totally fair point. And if you were to judge the show purely based on how it delivers on what's promised in its title, which is A History of the World and 100 Objects, it probably doesn't deliver on that. It's more like 100 historical objects in vaguely chronological order. It's almost like a hopping off point, I think, as a sort of introduction to something which you then go on to learn more about. And I do think from different episodes, sometimes it works better than others. But no, I absolutely see what you mean. It sometimes has the
11:09 Andrew
feel of like a mini magazine show, maybe. They'll mention Louis Leakey, who discovered the Olduvai stone chopping tool. They'll touch on Harada Masayuki, who figured out what the provenance of that mirror was. But that's maybe 45 seconds or a minute of the podcast. And I'm all for the brevity, but it's sometimes trying to have it all or tell all those different stories. And I think
11:38 Elizabeth
Maybe just focusing on one could be really compelling. A structural component that I didn't get listening to the podcast, but now I'm on the website clicking through and I see that these episodes are arranged into kind of series of about five episodes each. And so the stone tool episode falls under the category of making us human. And the bronze mirror episode falls under a category called pilgrims, raiders and traitors. And I wonder if when you listen in order, as it sounds like Alex did, but the rest of us have not, if you get kind of a collective feeling of that, I guess, piece of history being told a little more fully if you listen to
12:24 Alex B
the five episode series kind of as a collective. Yeah, I think it's really interesting you mention that because I did go to that site and see the way that they had segmented the episodes. And that was
12:35 Elizabeth
news to me. Yeah, I wondered if they could have in the body of the audio of the podcasts kind of connected to those thematic threads a little more clearly so that we could follow that because they feel like helpful headers in understanding the relevance of those objects to the kind of history of humanity that the show is like purporting to tell. I'm also in like, I think the Japanese bronze mirror episode structurally was a lot more experimental, like not that it was experimental, it was still, you know, it was still a BBC produced museum show. But it felt like they were experimenting with different components a little bit more than the stone tool episode, which also was an earlier episode. I'm thinking, you know, they were on site at the Trevi Fountain, which was otherwise unrelated to the bronze mirror other than it had this like storytelling component. So they were pulling audio from that. I think they did some like, quote segments that were related that they had like a narrator read. So structurally, it was kind of interesting to see the jump from one to the other in terms of what they were trying
13:52 Alex B
to play with in their building blocks for the episode. The sound of the famous Trevi Fountain in Rome, where every day tourists throw coins worth about 3000 euros to secure good luck and a return visit to Rome. I think that also covers probably a challenge for the series as a whole, which is kind of the dearth of context for that stone chopping tool. It's 2 million years old. And so to treat that in the same way that you would treat a later artifact, which was you exist at the same time as like novels, you know, is really difficult. So yeah, I absolutely see
14:33 Elizabeth
what you mean. I think almost necessarily it would have to change. Yeah. So that's it. Because with the bronze mirror, they can give us the history of the famous Japanese novel that the art on the back of the mirror could be representative of or reminiscent of. You can't really do that with the stone chopping tool. So what they did instead was spend a lot more time chopping up a chicken. Yeah. Or like the tactile, like discussing the tactile elements of it, telling us what each like cut that went into carving that tool was about, which I do think, you know, if the theme for the early episodes was what makes us human, I think maybe structurally it was telling that story in a way that, you know, including other pieces of context wouldn't have told in such a like kind of raw way. I don't know. It worked for me and was interesting, but I would be now curious to go back and listen to things in order and see if I can kind of find more of a thread and find more of a build
15:32 Alex B
in the structure. Yeah, for me, it really came together as a more complete thing right towards the end where they start to look back and relate objects to earlier objects and themes a bit more.
15:45 Elizabeth
No, I think that's a really good point. We don't have any African buildabists to hand. So in fact, I'm using a bit of roast chicken. It was, this is so unrelated, but it was kind of extraordinary that they discovered new information about the bronze mirror while creating this audio story. Like that's amazing that this project, this podcast had the effect of like uncovering
16:12 Andrew
historical information. Yeah, and that's, I wanted more of that. I wanted, that's insane and feels, you know, very relevant and very immediate and present in a way that I'm sure is hard to capture
16:25 Marion
when you're discussing things that are 900 years old. It's funny because I was way more compelled by the chopping tool episode than the Japanese mirror episode. And I think that was partially because, I mean, I feel like David Attenborough might've had something to do with it because he's just so good at getting you interested in things that you might not have normally been interested in, but also the connection between that tool and the fact that it permitted us to have ever more complex tools by virtue of the fact that it allowed people to, you know, eat meat and grow their brains larger. And so that's fascinating just in terms of like the evolution of humans and the effect of one tool. And so those are the things that really sort of blew my mind. And then in terms of the Japanese mirror, I was like, okay, yes, aesthetics. Yes, fascinating, interesting, and like just, you know, the magical effect of mirrors, but there was something less profound. And I don't know if that was about the way they structured it and why, and because there was no David Attenborough, maybe, I don't know.
17:41 Clip
8 specific actions by him knocking it with another stone to take off a flake and to leave this almost straight line, which is a sharp edge.
17:51 Alex B
That's a good link to another point I want to discuss, which is the guests. So in episode one, they had David Attenborough and Wangari Mathai. And in episode two, they had Ian Baruma and Harada Masayuki. So I'd be interested to hear your guys' thoughts on the impact of the
18:11 Elizabeth
guests and so the importance of choosing guests. I have thoughts, but I feel like I'm talking a lot. So maybe Elizabeth, you go. Oh, I don't have a good thought about this. I just, there are a lot. Oh, my thought's not good. I don't mean to imply that my thought is anything. There are a lot of voices in each of these episodes, and sometimes I think that's quite effective. Like, I think the voice that reads kind of the title card you'd see at the museum, I think that really sets the scene, really makes it feel like you're at a museum, strengthens that link. Japanese mirror. 12th century. Made of bronze. There's a lot of male voices, and I kind of got lost in the wash, even though they have different perspectives and different histories themselves. I didn't leave them feeling a huge differentiation between the points of view expressed in these episodes, which maybe is a strange thing to say since they do have different points of view. But it kind of all feels like, one, to me, at the end of the episode. It's hard for me to think back and differentiate the different speakers.
19:34 Andrew
Yeah, I definitely felt that too, Elizabeth. Part of that might have to do with the amount of time that each speaker was given, and it was a strange choice to me to include the voice of the British Museum. I think that was a good choice to include the experts that I assume are from the country that the object was from so late and so briefly in the episodes. In a 15-minute episode, I think both of them came in around minute 11 or something like that, and were only really talked to once or twice. I don't know. It seems like a strange choice for the British Museum. I don't know if I would have given their reputation, but it was a little inconsistent in how they were presented and kind of going back to narrative and protagonists and things like that. Not that everybody you introduce has to be the main character, but I think there probably was enough room to give them a little more of a background. In a two-minute news spot, you can just have a man on the street quote or something or an expert come in and just give one line, and it's really the information that is the important part. But I think in 15 minutes, especially if you just choose one, I think they can be really valuable. Speaking of voices, did the host ever introduce himself? I think he does in the first episode. Okay. I think that might have also been something that was tripping me up just because, yeah, I want to know who this guy is. I think it adds a lot of context that he was the head of the British Museum. I wanted to know more about him. He was kind of
21:14 Alex B
just this faceless guide through these objects. Yeah. It's like an apparition from the Tweed dimension. Just the voice of God for the show. I felt that the earlier episode, the old Dubai stone chopping tool one, did a really great job with the guests, having David Attenborough, both as a personality, but also just his function as a curious person who gets to have a tactile experience with the object and talk through it. I thought it was really, really great. I don't imagine it would have had the same impact if you were talking about, wow, it's a mirror and I can see myself in it. But maybe somebody handling it, talking a bit more about it in that way would have been great. And Wangari Mathai, the Kenyan environmentalist and Nobel Peace Prize winner, her point of view is really interesting and again helped build that sort of story and context around the object, kind of bringing it back to the history of the human race and how our differences are more superficial than some people may think. I think in the later episode, or it's kind of middle of the pack, the bronze mirror one, I thought the guest choice was really interesting. The researcher was great. That's a slam dunk. Like a really good person to have in there who very recently uncovered new information about the object. However, and I'm going to cut this out if it turns out that I've done my research poorly, but Ian Buruma is a Dutch novelist who has a degree in Chinese history and literature and a specialist specialism in 20th century Japanese cinema. I don't know why he was the guy they picked to do the legwork for the history and context of that mirror. I would have much rather had somebody more familiar with it, maybe, God forbid, somebody from Japan to talk through it. I think that would have been a bit more interesting. As it stands, you think you're just, why are you the one giving me this information? It was just an odd choice, I think. I was wondering almost the whole time whilst he was speaking, why is this the person that they chose? With By the Way, this series, they took four years to put it together, so surely they could have found someone more interesting.
23:58 Andrew
It's not like there's a huge dearth of Japanese historians or people interested in that time period.
24:06 Marion
For sure. It was the first thing that came to mind, actually. Yeah, immediately, I was like, here we are at the British Museum looking at an African artifact. Yeah, and then I was like, okay, where are we going with this? And then I was like, all right, fine. I mean, it was, I suppose, regardless. These were artifacts found by British archaeologists and then carted back to the UK, but it just sort of calls to mind all of the other things that are in that museum that shouldn't be potentially. And that was sort of floating over in my mind over the rest of the episode. And maybe this is an opportunity for the BBC to address those and have that discussion as
24:54 Alex B
part of the series, like in a separate episode, I don't know. Well, you guys were not the only people to think this. Shortly after the series was released, there was a project made in response called 100 histories of 100 worlds in one object, which is a more crowdsourced version of it. And their whole point of view is that, quite rightly, the provenance of an object, which includes when it was taken and put on display somewhere, is as important or is as much of a part of its story as its original function. They have a website, which I'll link in the show notes for anyone who's not that familiar with the British Museum. It's also the building where the Elgin marbles are stored, which are a lot of the sculptures from the Parthenon in Athens. So there's a big room and all those bits of the Parthenon that you see in pictures where you think, I wonder where those sculptures went. They are 30 minutes down the road from me in central London.
25:56 Elizabeth
Yeah, I was interested. I listened ahead to the next episode after the Japanese episode, which was about a Buddha head that was from a location in Java. And a lot of the episode, they were there on site of the temple where the stone head had come from. And that was, it made me believe that this object was actually not in the British Museum collection, that we were on site looking at it. I don't think that's true. I think it is in the British Museum, but it was interesting that they were on site in the location where this object had come from. That belongs in a museum. So let's wrap up with some closing thoughts, any takeaways that you have from listening to these two episodes. Elizabeth? I think it's a good example of short form storytelling. I would look for maybe stronger thematic threads or arcs, especially across the different episodes. But that kind of tactile, we're here, I think, in terms of giving the impression of an object or a place and creating a sense of wanting to experience that object or wanting to be part of the experience that the narrators are having. It was an extremely strong example of that kind of storytelling.
27:29 Marion
Totally agree. Marion? Yeah, definitely. Location, location, location, location sound is always, always lovely to experience and to feel that you're there. And it just makes the story more complete and more effective. And then in terms of narrative, I think maybe some of the points that Andrew made about narrative might apply there. I think with objects, there's object theory, which is that objects are actually social actors. They influence things. They change things. They change courses of events. If they didn't exist, certain things wouldn't happen. So they actually have these personalities. And I think that's a good example of that. I think there could have been a way into the story with that sort of idea in mind, particularly with the Japanese mirror, because I think they achieved that with the chopping tool. The world changed because these early humans figured out how to chop. But I don't totally know what really changed or was different because of the mirror. I know how it influenced Japanese culture. But I just wanted more of a story would have been helpful to illustrate that. But otherwise, lovely. And I'm going to check out more episodes.
28:54 Andrew
Thank you. Andrew? Yeah. I mean, for all the things I've said, and I feel like they've mostly been negative, I did really enjoy it. It's one of my favorite shows that I've listened to for this. And I think there's a lot to take away. I think this format of object theory, object narratives, can really lend itself to podcasts and branded podcasts, maybe especially. It's episodic. It highlights things that you have, maybe, or things in your collection. Like Elizabeth was saying, made her really want to go to the museum. I think that's a really cool outcome for a show. And I think that's really powerful. And I was just like, off the top of my head, there were a bunch of shows that are doing something similar. There's 60 Songs that Explain the 90s, which I think is a Ringer podcast. There's another BBC show that is called 50 Things That Made the Modern Economy. So similar premise. I think there's other similar museum podcasts. And I think what I would be thinking about going into those is that concept can kind of build in an overall narrative for the show and the series of episodes, but just making sure that each episode also has some sort of arc to it that keeps hooking people in. And I think this show has the best call to action of any show
30:22 Alex B
I've ever listened to, which is if you have an object of significance, why don't you donate it to the British Museum? That's the post-colonial grindset, Andrew. You've got to ask more nicely nowadays. Yeah. So yeah, I think that overall, this confirms for me again, how if you just get the writing right and pick a few key guests, you don't really need anything more than that. And I'm saying this as someone who does not do any of the writing and does not pick any of the guests, but just those two core things when they come together really well, I think can make a really, really special end product. And I think I am definitely a little bit, you know, you're deluded a little bit in favor of the things you love. And I really, really like this show. But for context, I am also someone who's rewatched Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister multiple times, which is one for the Brits. I genuinely enjoy that. That's another insight into my twisted mind.
31:36 Marion
Wow. Oh, yeah. I love that, Alex. God, you're like my grandfather. Are you my new grandfather?
31:48 Alex B
If you've listened, what did you think about the history of the world in 100 objects? Let us know you can reach me on Twitter at Bennett B, E, double, N, E, double T underscore FM. Hit follow in Apple podcasts or Spotify. And we'll see you in the next episode of podcast book club with a new show and a new host. Bye.