188: Drive-Thru Podcasting

Tim opens by teasing Patreon news for the end of the episode, then Brady shares an unexpected visit to his Melbourne office. A woman from Switzerland, visiting Adelaide for a wedding, had been told by her friend Wes that she should visit Melbourne Uniting Church and look for a collection of clues connected with the podcast: the sofa shop, Brady, and the “black stump.” She arrived without notes and only a vague memory of the instructions, but Brady showed her the shelf in his office containing a miniature museum of objects and merchandise associated with the Unmade Podcast. The woman recognized references such as the sofa shop and Brady’s mechanic, though she had apparently listened to only one episode closely. Tim and Brady joke that she was a “fan who’s not a fan,” and propose measuring connections to listeners through “six degrees of Wes”—a version of Erdős or Kevin Bacon numbers for people connected to a Wes who listens to the podcast. Brady also compares the encounter with a previous experience at a mathematics festival, where a family waited in a long Numberphile queue simply because it looked important, without knowing who Brady was or what Numberphile did. The visitor took a photograph of Brady beside his collection but did not ask for a selfie, autograph, or merchandise.

Brady recalls another festival encounter in which a parent and child queued for 25 or 30 minutes to meet him, then admitted they had no idea who he was. They had seen the queue and assumed that whatever was happening must be interesting. The hosts wonder whether the family would have considered him “queeworthy” if they had understood his work, and joke about Brady and Tim swapping identities so that one could impersonate the other at a mathematics or science convention. Tim then tells a less glamorous story from a petrol station. Filling the hosts’ large car cost about 180 Australian dollars, so he joked to the cashier that he had come in to take out a mortgage. When the cashier asked whether he was an RAA member—a roadside-assistance organization whose members receive 5% off at participating stations—Tim automatically said no, then realized he had just paid and missed out on roughly ten dollars. The cashier looked genuinely distressed and said, “Oh, I’m so sorry,” which moved Tim despite the mistake. Brady calls it an exceptionally boring story, and they agree that Tim uses the podcast to test stories before deciding whether they are worth telling his wife and daughters at home.

The hosts give a shout-out to Luke in Canada, who sent a photograph of himself listening to the Unmade Podcast at the AFL Grand Final. The match—Brisbane versus Fremantle—is described as the Australian equivalent of a Super Bowl and was played at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. Luke apparently attended the major event and deliberately held up his phone showing the podcast, making him the only confirmed Unmade listener in a crowd of roughly 100,000 people. Brady and Tim invite listeners to send photographs of themselves listening in unusual or famous places, and ask anyone else who attended that Grand Final to report whether they were also listening. They infer that Luke is a regular listener because the photograph showed episode 186 and he seemed to be a “proper civilian,” though perhaps not a Patreon “stakeholder.” The story also connects with Luke’s longer account of how he became interested in Australian football and eventually attended the Grand Final, demonstrating how the podcast audience can lead listeners into local Australian culture.

Brady revisits his earlier idea for a podcast about “unsung heroes”: strangers who help someone in a memorable way but whose names are never learned. His original example involved a holiday in the European Alps, where he, Kylie, and their son Edward reached a large outdoor marble run but had no money to buy one of the wooden balls. A woman appeared with her child, helped them obtain money and a ball, and then disappeared into the mountains. Brady had treated her as an anonymous angel who rescued the day. On a later family visit to Cornwall’s Eden Project, which has a series of marble runs spread around its botanical-garden-like grounds, Brady arrived prepared. He bought three wooden balls at the entrance, one for each member of his family, rather than repeating the earlier mistake. At one station, another family arrived without a ball and watched enviously while Edward played. Brady handed one of his balls to their children and told them they could keep it for the other marble runs. One of the children was also named Edward, which made Brady feel that the moment had the symmetry of a film and that he had repaid the kindness he had once received. The hosts call this “marble karma.”

Brady reads listener responses to two earlier prompts: moments of being “unduly proud” of something trivial, and the stories behind bodily scars. Anna describes carrying a plaster in her wallet, a lamp in her car, and a tick remover everywhere. Each item was unnecessary until the precise situation arose: a child needed a plaster at a skate park, an apartment in southern France had no electricity, and she found a tick on her shoulder at 11 p.m. Her partner could see how proud she was to have been vindicated by her preparation. Another listener, Snoopy1221, claims to estimate air temperature within about one degree between 20 and 110 Fahrenheit, calling it a pointless but reliable superpower. Kerr Javakissa is proud of choosing exactly the right nearly-white paint for a corridor: warm enough not to look grey or blue, but still white in every light. Brady adds that he was unduly proud when Edward read “coffee” on a sign, while another listener remembers asking in a queue at the Jorvik Viking Centre what “rape and pillage” meant. Scar stories include Alex Armstrong’s six-inch, 15-centimeter arm scar, caused by a spiral fracture of the humerus during an arm-wrestling match. His arm required a plate and nine screws, and NHS staff could recognize his file before calling “Mr. Armstrong,” a joke made funnier by his supposedly weak arm. Andreas from Switzerland cut his index finger to the bone with a Swiss Army knife while trying to drill a hole through a dog treat. The hosts consider creating a gallery or “wall of honor” for listeners’ scar photographs.

Tim’s podcast idea is “Stakeout”: two police partners sitting in a car during an overnight surveillance operation, drinking coffee, eating takeaway, and gradually revealing personal information while waiting for a suspect. He imagines the partners moving from minor friction to genuine understanding—one might advise the other to ask Judy out, or reveal that they take ballet lessons—before abruptly spotting the suspect and rushing into action. Each episode would end with the same transition from quiet conversation to “There’s our guy,” followed by doors opening and the officers running out. The idea is inspired by the cinematic appeal of stakeouts, where police officers appear to be getting paid to sit in a car and eat. Brady recalls the 1987 film *Stakeout*, starring Richard Dreyfuss and Emilio Estevez, including the contrast between the main characters and the dull officers who take over their shift. Tim also mentions the scene in *Point Break* where Gary Busey and Keanu Reeves are distracted by ordering food and miss the bank robbery. Brady likes “Stakeout” because it gives two people a natural, unusual setting for a conversation, though he questions how real police officers could be persuaded to allow their stakeouts to be recorded. They also joke about alternative phrases such as “stakeout with takeout” and “before the breakout,” but decide not to overthink the name.

The Spoon of the Week is a short, stubby teaspoon with a broad, shell-like scooping bowl and a menacing black or dark-blue butterfly mounted on a sprig of flowers. Tim says it came from Cairns: his father bought it there in 1988 while visiting Tim’s half-sister. The hosts discuss whether the spoon’s shape is a recognizable genre and whether the person who invented the “scoopy shell” should have patented it. Brady recalls visiting Cairns, snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef with what he considers an alarmingly inadequate introduction to scuba equipment, and taking an excellent bus tour run by someone called Uncle Brian. Brady’s first drive-thru concept is a network of listening posts dedicated to the Unmade Podcast. A listener would pull into a small roadside driveway, lower the car window, and hear the latest episode through a tinny speaker. Number-plate recognition might identify the listener’s progress and resume the episode from the correct point. He imagines dozens of these around each city, and eventually drive-in cinemas where listeners watch the hosts on a giant screen while hearing them through their car radios. His second version is a global network of drive-thru podcast-recording booths. Tim could pull up at one in Adelaide while Brady used one in England, with both recording remotely through microphones positioned beside their car windows. The booths could be shared by other podcasters, and the same location might offer two buttons: one to listen to Brady and Tim, and one to record a podcast. Tim worries about traffic, birds, and weather noise, but Brady says modern AI could remove it. Tim thinks the concept has an appealingly rare, analog quality because the podcast would be available only at particular physical locations; he also says the two half-formed ideas might become one good idea if combined.

Brady explains the Patreon change that was promised at the start of the episode. The current system lets supporters choose a tier—perhaps one or three dollars per creation—and Patreon charges them when a main episode is posted. The hosts usually release two main episodes per month, sometimes three and occasionally only one, while bonus material is generally posted without an additional charge. Supporters can also set a maximum monthly limit, such as two or ten dollars, so the hosts cannot charge them indefinitely by posting unusually often. According to Brady, Patreon and Apple are involved in a disagreement or policy change, and the per-creation model is being phased out in favor of one monthly payment. Patreon’s usual transition would reportedly triple a supporter’s per-creation amount: someone paying two dollars per creation might be moved to six dollars per month. Brady did not accept that for this podcast, because the hosts generally aim for two main episodes each month. He says Patreon agreed to move supporters to a monthly tier roughly double their current per-creation amount instead. Existing spending limits will still be honored, though the tier itself will change, and Patreon will send its own emails explaining the transition. Brady emphasizes that the change is not the hosts’ decision and says Patreon is essential because it allows the podcast to exist without advertisements. He and Tim plan to add bonus content and look after supporters during the change. They will also release a previously recorded and difficult-to-edit “Tim in England” episode as this week’s Request Room, using the Patreon post linked in the episode description.