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‘Basically’ Nominated for two Awards Recognising Mental Health Coverage

Basically has been shortlisted in two categories for the 2021 Headline Mental Health Media Awards! These awards recognise excellence in the coverage of mental health issues, and so podcast host, Stefanie Preissner, has a lot to proud of. As do we, because Basically is part of the The Headstuff Podcast Network.

Stefanie said: “It’s really heartening to see the work we did on mental health this year being recognised. I know from the response from the audience that it brought people great relief and support during a really tough time.”

‘What’s the Story with Therapy, Mark?’ was nominated under the category of Mental Health Digital Content. The second category which Basically is nominated for is the Headline Impact Award. Basically is standing alongside submissions from Tommy Tiernan, Michelle Heffernan, Damian Cullen and Joe Finnegan.

In ‘What’s the Story with Therapy, Mark?’, Stefanie talks about Mental Health Month. She spoke to psychologist and outgoing president of the Psychology Society of Ireland, Mark Smyth, about mental health and therapy. There were questions about social media, life in 2020/2021, anxiety. What is therapy? What is a psychologist, a counsellor, a therapist, a psychoanalyst, a psychotherapist and who needs one? How to pick a therapist, how do you know the right fit and should you get to know your therapist?

The winners of each category will be announced on December 1st. The Headline Mental Health Media Awards were established over a decade ago and were relaunched in 2019. They reflect the challenges, lived experience and realities of people living with mental ill health.

You can listen to the most recent episode of Basically now!

From Hedge Schools to HedgeRadio

The HedgeRadio Podcast

presented by Chris Hayes and Alan Boland

Sometimes the only good thing about school is that it makes you realise how much you don’t want to be there, especially on those warm, bright early days of summer. And you feel it so intensely that you go on the hop the next day, and you end up finding a sheltered spot where you lie in the sun and feel free. That’s the warmest sun. I remember being 16 when Nelson Mandela was set free and thinking that’s how he must feel now, like being on the hop from school.

It was in these sunny spots under hedges that Irish children used to go to learn when the Penal Laws made it illegal for many Irish kids to receive formal education in the 1700’s. The aim of these wide ranging laws was to make the Irish Catholics convert and accept the primacy of the Protestant religion, and the colonial overlords thought the best way to do this was to ban Catholics from owning land, voting or setting up a school.

The response of the natives was to establish hedge schools, where a teacher would set up under cover of a hedge and teach local children. Sometimes these teachers moved around, some worked as secret revolutionaries, and for a fee they taught Irish, reading and writing, Greek, Latin and religion- the Catholic one. I love the subversive nature of this movement, hiding under a hedge just out of view and getting on with doing the thing that the authorities have outlawed.

HedgeRadio takes its inspiration from such activities, we try to idle for a time when we hear the whisper of a story, make enquiries as to the origin of the story then make our way deeper into the hedge and find the quiet spots where the wind won’t whip the story off the end of the mic. Along the way we hear about other stories and make notes and file them away, all the time listening for a sound or a voice that will make the difference, that will cause the listener to stay with the story and wonder about it.

Of course if you ever listened to HedgeRadio you haven’t found it on the FM dial, or even on a crackly AM one. The digital space of the internet is where we broadcast from, and we are delighted to be moving over to the Headstuff podcast network. As a lone podcaster slinging our audio it is an unforgiving climate but to be part of a wider group is exciting and we are looking forward to being inspired by the other shows on the network. Although more than that, and here is the eternal optimist in HedgeRadio, we can’t wait to actually meet some of the other people involved in those shows once lockdown rules are lifted. While leaving the golden beaches of Wexico is always challenging it will be good to wander further afield and to meet other podcasters who are putting out such a great mix of content for the listening pleasure of the public.

Your hosts:

Chris Hayes is from the gold coast of Wexford and has picked strawberries that have fed the rest of the country, but we never export the best ones. He grew up in a busy house and his mother always told her four boys that they had two ears and one mouth and to use them in that proportion, she also had a strict ban on TV before the news at six.

Alan Boland left the big city behind for life in rural Ireland many years ago. The city never suited his soul and life in the open spaces of rural Wexford has given him the space to grow. He tried his hand at dairy farming before being drawn back to the creative life. In his house there was a strict ban on TV after six.

Two HeadStuff Podcasts In The Running For The Irish Food Writing Awards Best Irish Food Podcast

The Irish Writing Awards have just announced their list of finalists for the category of Best Irish Food Podcast and we are delighted that two of our HeadStuff Podcast Network shows are in the running for the top prize! That’s Bangin’ and Spice Bags join Chew The Fat in a fight to gain the honour of becoming the first podcast to claim the title of Best Irish Food Podcast.

This is the inaugural year for The Irish Food Writing Awards, finally giving food writers, broadcasters, podcasters and journalists a place where their work can be celebrated and held in high esteem for national praise and critique.

“We are delighted to be nominated for best podcast at the Irish Food Writing Awards, alongside some other great names in our industry,” said Chris Mellon from That’s Bangin’

“That’s Bangin’ is a podcast about food & drink, but also about the great stories and memories people have through their experiences cooking or eating in restaurants.

We speak to some of the best chefs in the country and also to people who are just passionate about food. All of this while trying to keep it from being a straight interview, but a really fun and interesting conversation.

Season 2 has recently launched and the feedback has been incredible. Between that, some super exciting unreleased plans and now this nomination, myself and Marcus are truly grateful.”

Mei Chin from Spice Bags also commented “We are three friends who love food, Ireland, culture, and chats. However, what brought us together was a passion for the international people who are helping to shape what makes Irish food and Irish culture so vibrant today. We are thrilled to be nominated, but it was HeadStuff that provided us with the platform in which to explore our obsessions in depth, and also an excuse to hang out, bicker, laugh, and learn. We are forever grateful to them.”

Our shows will be judged by a panel of well-known international names from the world of journalism and food. This global panel will include René Redzepi of Noma in Copenhagen, writer and broadcaster Jay Rayner, investigative journalist Joanna Blythman, author and food columnist Trish Deseine, chef and author Richard Corrigan, critic Tom Parker Bowles, founder of Saveur magazine Colman Andrews and The Guardian wine writer Fiona Beckett. All of these judges are food broadcasters at the top of their field, who recognise and appreciate the high quality of food journalism and broadcast that can be found in all of the podcasts featured in the finalist shortlist.

The first ceremony will be held online in September due to covid restrictions, with the hopes that each year that follows the show can then adopt a more traditional format of judging meetings and a Gala Awards Ceremony each autumn.

You can listen to their most recent episodes of both That’s Bangin’ and Spice Bags now!

A Look Inside Double Love – The Sweet Valley Podcast

As my co-host Anna explains in the intro to our podcast, Double Love explores the strange and terrifying world of Sweet Valley High, book by book.

For the uninitiated, Sweet Valley High was a young adult series that ran from 1983 to 1997 and centred on the lives of blonde identical twins Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield in the fictional California town of Sweet Valley.

It was essentially a teen soap opera in the form of short novels with pastel-coloured covers, complete with dramatic and emotional storylines (the first ten books alone involve a motorbike crash, a coma, a personality swap and a college guy with an ill-advised moustache) and was written by a team of ghostwriters, presided over by creator Francine Pascal. The sixteen year old Wakefield twins have blue-green eyes the colour of the Pacific ocean, they’re beautiful, popular, and the absolute worst. Elizabeth is the sensitive, kind and studious twin, while Jessica is a carefree party girl with a different love interest in almost every book, but rereading the series as an adult, it’s clear that Elizabeth is actually a judgemental pushover and Jessica is a terrifying sociopath who will stop at nothing to get what she wants.

Much like The Babysitter’s Club or the work of Judy Blume, Sweet Valley High was a childhood staple for many girls in the 80s and 90s, and the sheer volume of spin-offs (Sweet Valley Twins, Sweet Valley Senior Year, Sweet Valley University, etc) meant that there was always some iteration of the twins’ adventures being published. Our podcast focuses on the original series, set when the twins are juniors in high school and we discuss each book in order (there are 181 in total) with an occasional Super Edition or Super Thriller thrown in as a seasonal special. The storylines range from being hilariously ridiculous (the twins and their mother Alice are lured to a spa where the owner plots to steal Alice’s face) to deeply worrying (Jessica bullies a girl who wants to join the cheerleading squad to the point that she almost overdoses on pills, but all is forgiven because Jessica in particular never faces any major consequences for her terrible actions) and we spend each episode dissecting the plots, affectionately slagging off the characters and trying to figure out what the hell is going on in this town.

We also enlist the help of our American listeners as we try to understand the intricacies of 80s American high school culture, including finding out what Homecoming is and whether high school sororities were really a thing. More often than not, there are extremely interesting outfit descriptions, we keep a running tally of how many times the twins’ hair or eye colour are mentioned per book and sometimes, although increasingly rarely, a character will suddenly start talking like a 1930s gangster for no reason. The twins and their friends breeze from one crisis to the next without any lasting damage to their psyches and their problems can vary from being kidnapped and held hostage to needing to come up with a scheme to earn enough money to buy a new outfit for one of the school’s very frequent formal dances. The messages are often terrible (there’s a lot of badly-handled weight and diet content) but there’s also enough to enjoy so that our show stays light and funny, and we’re very much at the fluffier end of the scale when it comes to podcasts about books.

Sweet Valley High was popular enough to be adapted into a television show in 1994, falling somewhere between Saved by The Bell and Beverly Hills 90210 in tone, without quite managing to be as good as either show. When HeadStuff+ was announced, we had initially considered recapping the pilot episode as bonus content, but when we discovered that all four seasons were on YouTube, it seemed like the obvious choice was to recap the whole thing as regular bonus content. Now it’s become a sister series to our usual podcast, released in the gaps between Double Love episodes, so that subscribers have a weekly dose of Sweet Valley shenanigans.

We named it Pi Beta Alpha, after the implausible sorority that Jessica and Elizabeth belong to in the books, and as all the episodes of the tv show are currently available online, we invite our listeners to watch along and then in each bonus episode we discuss what happened and often compare plot lines and characters to the books. Neither of us watched the show with any regularity when it first aired, (although the theme tune remains an eternal bop) so it’s all new territory for us to cover.

There are a lot of changes from the books, some necessary, like bringing tertiary characters of colour to the forefront, as the town of Sweet Valley in the books is suspiciously white, while some changes some make no sense at all, such as the complete absence of everyone’s parents. It seems to dip into the book series every so often for plot lines, character names or to use unrelated book titles as episode titles but we’ve found that it is best enjoyed as its own entity. We’ve started to look at it as a sort of unhinged fan fiction loosely based on the series that has plenty of entertaining moments of its own. Just as we enjoy detailing the tropes from the book series, the tv show has provided us with plenty on that front too, with montages in every episode so far whether they’re necessary or not, Jessica having her own musical cue to signal that she’s about to do something devious and establishing that Liz’s boyfriend’s catchphrase is “I’m gonna kill that guy!” Not to mention the aggressively early 90s flavour to the character outfits, as it’s a veritable treasure trove of babydoll dresses, skinny rib-knit tops and plaid shirts.

It’s been surprisingly enjoyable to watch our way through the series, as it does provide actual laughs, either through baffling production design choices or genuinely comedic moments and we have a great time pulling it all apart and keeping watch for any deep cut references to the books in our Pi Beta Alpha episodes.

Knowing your way around the halls of Sweet Valley High isn’t a prerequisite for listening to our show. In fact, some of our listeners never even read the books but still enjoy the bonkers storylines and extremely questionable behaviour shown by the town’s inhabitants as we recap each book. As for the bonus series, anyone who enjoyed cheesy teen television from the early Nineties will most likely get a kick out of the tv show and our accompanying episodes. So dust off your best stone-washed jeans and we’ll meet you in homeroom. No wait, we’re still not 100% sure what homeroom is, so let’s say the cafeteria instead. We’ve saved you a seat!

Paying for Free

For as long as I can remember I have been an ardent music fan. I remember a quote from Morrissey where he said that as a teenager when he bought a record, he would smell the vinyl on the bus on the way home. Now I would never profess to being as discerning and cool as a pre-cancellation Morrissey but at the time I remember thinking there was no smell from vinyl. Though sometimes the fresh covers smelled like raspberry Chubba Chups. Like Morrissey (yes I’m aware of what I’m writing)… Like Morrissey, I always loved the hallowed moment of opening a gleaming new CD single on the bus. Sometimes, if you were lucky, you got a thin slice of silicone dust, a remnant of the pressing, inside the case. I relished the first squeaky spin of a newly minted CD single in it’s shiny plastic case, more than I ever would the four remixes of the track I had just bought.

But in 2003 the world changed a little bit. I always considered myself a techie and I read an article about the new phenomenon of mp3s and the looming threat of file-sharing. The idea that the future of music might no longer involve the clatter of CD Racks or the FUUUUUUUUUMPH of vinyl records flopping onto each other was genuinely horrifying. But I was very excited by the possibility of always having my whole music collection with me. There was literally no Eternal B-side that would not be within my grasp as I navigated my paper round.

It was heady stuff. Most importantly it meant that getting music would be easier. Nothing needed to be shipped and it was cheaper. As a paperboy I had limited funds, most of which were funnelled into my interests in the docklands; Virgin Megastore on Aston Quay or Freebird Records when it was under Bus Stop Newsagents on Eden Quay. It was indeed easy to get mp3s. In fact, it was too easy.

I continued to read about the exciting prospect of music leaking on file-sharing sites. Unreleased tracks, live versions, even demos. It was very exciting. I thought of the many times I had missed a CD single of a song that had flopped and been deleted before I had bought it. That song was then gone forever. That wouldn’t happen with mp3s. Yes, we were losing the complimentary artworks of CD single 1 and CD single 2 but we were sticking it to the music industry man! That felt fair. A couple of weeks later while trawling a file sharing site I believed I had found an unreleased Wilson Phillips track which turned out to be a track by early 80s girlband Exposé. The shame descended. I had been a fool and my love affair with digital piracy and the theft of intellectual property ended and I went back to my heaving book cases filled with CDs.

As we all know, what actually happened is the music industry collapsed and the opportunities for new artists evaporated because there had been a shift. That few years of a music vault free-for-all had reframed consumer thinking: music isn’t something you pay for. It is only in the past few years with the resurgence of vinyl that music consumers are getting back to paying properly for music.

Streaming services became an apologetic attempt to salvage the industry. Monthly fees to give the illusion of free music but not handing over the money at the point of acquisition. The screw-the-little-guy-to-save-the-big-guy streaming model ring-fenced bigger artists and decimated others. Just 13% of the revenue earned by Spotify is paid to artists who provide the content. Yet it remains the go-to streaming service for the almost-free music model. But free costs. Fiona Bevan, songwriter for Spotify heavy-hitters such as One Direction and Lewis Capaldi, recently revealed to a digital, culture, media and sport select committee inquiry into the economics of streaming that she had earned just £100 from streaming for a song she co-wrote on Kylie Minogue’s new album “Disco”; one of Spotify’s biggest albums of 2020. Nile Rogers made the point to the same committee that artists don’t actually know what a stream is worth because of non-disclosure agreements between record labels and streaming services.

The idea of free is an interesting one in creative endeavours. A number of years ago the Edinburgh fringe introduced the free fringe. Shows you could walk into and pay what you think the show was worth at the end. A concept which should have left the destitute performers even destitute…er. If a show was good, word spread quickly and the audience were more than happy to pay the equivalent of full-whack by chucking the money into the bucket at the end. The only caveat was the lack of quality control, but in a saturated market you really only heard about the good shows.

The same is true with podcasting.

At a time when every artist in the world is locked up, the market has never been more saturated. The great irony is an industry based on the worldwide dispersion of a free product is thriving and experiencing massive growth. But what is podcasting doing right?

In the arts the concept of poverty and a lack of prospects is actually quite freeing. Apparently. I presume the idea is; if you are willing to starve for your art then surely you are only willing to create what you truly want to create. So if you’re going to make a podcast, you already accept that it is unlikely that you are going to make money from it, so you might as well make the show the way you want to make it because creating it might be its only reward. This has led to creative people making something that they are passionate about, the way they want to make it. Whether or not a show finds an audience is in the lap of the marketing department.

A while ago I was asked why I don’t make more podcast episodes and I said because every episode takes about 5 days to make. I then realised that I had made 50 of them so essentially it was an unpaid working year. While I never expected to make money from the show, I was left slightly reeling from achieving, no, SMASHING, that goal.

Podcasting has emerged as one of the most intimate forms of entertainment. We listen on earbuds; they speak to us. When you connect with a podcast it is like finding a new best friend and you can be as needy as you like. You binge the whole lot and wait each week for the RSS to refresh with a new episode. With such a strong connection it is unsurprising that supporting shows to keep the lights on has become the norm. Shows have launched merchandise, parlayed into live shows and launched subscriptions for premium content. Essentially, more of what you like, in return for paying for what you already love.

I think that sounds fair.

Gearóid’s podcast, Fascinated, is part of the HeadStuff Podcast Network. Season seven of the show has just begun and the first guest is Samantha Mumba. The show will drop a new episode the first Monday of every month. Gearóid is on twitter and instagram. You can support him, and all the shows, at HeadStuffPodcasts.com

A Chat with Jessica and Callum from new HPN show ‘What Would You Do If?’

So, you’re one of the newest shows on the HPN. Can you tell me a little bit about What Would You Do If? and how it came about?

Callum: Jess was brainstorming ideas for a show she did on FRQ.fm and came up with the idea about three years ago. After a bit of planning, we decided to go for it! And now, WWYDI is the podcast you didn’t know you needed.

Jessica: You sound so clichéd!

C: In each episode, we look at a different scenario like ‘WWYDI you’re attacked by a bear’ or ‘WWYDI you were stood up on a date.’ We answer the question with how we would react, but then Jess answers how you should handle the situation.

J: So, I guess he’s right. It’s a podcast you need… in case you come across a wild bear.

What about your own backgrounds? How has this fed into the show?

C: I’m the producer of Fully Charged with Graham & Nathan on SPIN 1038. Right now, we’re focusing on creative ways to make the listeners experience more fun. I’d like to think my job experience plays into this and I’m good at coming up with new podcast ideas.

J: Ah, it definitely does. One of the big reasons I wanted to do a podcast was to work on my presenting skills, so I think any radio training and experience both of us have had is a benefit. We’ve heard people do things in podcasts that you wouldn’t get away with in radio.

C: Like saying ‘hello to our listeners’ instead of just calling them ‘listener.’

J: That’s such a pet peeve for me. When I’m listening to your podcast, it’s just me listening. Don’t say ‘hey listeners.’ It’s just me.

C: Actually, we’ve not mentioned this so far either – we’ve been in a relationship for nearly three years now so you get an insight into our lives in the podcast.

J: I feel like that’s a way to get people not to listen! Everyone has such boring lives right now. Work, listen to podcasts, sleep and repeat.

What can new listeners expect? What sorts of guests or episodes have you got planned?

J: We’ve got a few episodes planned, like the bear attack one that we mentioned. I researched that episode topic last year and a couple of weeks ago, I watched Michael McIntyre’s The Wheel and there was a question about bears. I was freaking out, screaming at the tv because I knew the answer from the podcast. I could have won £42,000!

C: Maybe we can get Michael McIntyre on the podcast? Otherwise, we don’t have a lot of guests planned right now. Although, I want to do WWYDI You Won The Lotto with a real-life lotto winner. I keep buying tickets with the hope I can interview myself.

Okay, you’ve got my attention. So, why should I go and listen right now? Convince me!

C: We have fun in every episode and we try to make it fun for the listener as well. Like when we play quizzes and games with each other where you can play along with while listening. Plus, I promise you that after listening to an episode, you’ll have learned something new. And if you haven’t, my new “Money Back Guarantee” means I’ll give €1 out of my own money to you as compensation for your time.

J: Really?

C: No, but a really good thing is that our episodes are only around 20 minutes long so they’re perfect for your lockdown Power Walk. And if you come across a bear on your walk, you’ll know what to do if it tries to attack you!

J: We’re all about the bears today. There are episodes completely unrelated to bears as well!

What sort of bonus content can members expect if they sign up to support the show?

J: We’re working on an exclusive video series called “What Would You Do If You Couldn’t Cook?” where Callum is going to try and teach me how to make food. I’m never the one trusted with cooking in the house, probably because I told Callum the story of how I made lemon chicken.

C: You shouldn’t tell people this story!

J: When I was about 18, I loved lemon chicken from the Chinese. One time, I tried to make it myself for everyone’s dinner. Except I never thought of looking up a recipe. I just boiled chicken breasts and poured lemon juice on them. It was absolutely disgusting.

C: So if something happens, like Jess burning down the kitchen, we’ll also be posting some bonus episodes of the podcast and some fun material to go with episodes!

Anything else you desperately need to tell potential new listeners?

J: WWYDI is an easy listen where you can have a laugh and learn something new. And it’s probably the only time you’ll hang out with a couple you don’t know without feeling like the world’s biggest third wheel.

C: If there’s a scenario you don’t know how to handle and you want us to find out, then you can tell us all about it at whatwouldyoudoifpodcast@gmail.com. We’re always open to hearing what you think!