A Lovely Week For Feedback

CONTENT WARNING: reference to rape

Just a quick post reflecting on a wonderful couple of weeks of listener feedback. The first tranche has been to do with two episodes of The Modern Mann. We interviewed a listener who'd got in touch after we'd asked for stories, and she discussed her experiences of what happened after she was raped: the police interview, the court case.. and beyond.

Guest Martha Adam and presenter Olly Mann got a huge amount of praise for the conversation, culminating in a great review in the Observer this weekend: which put that story into the minds of a much wider audience than the podcast could ever reach alone.

The second episode, released this Tuesday, detailed the altogether lighter topic of Ollie Peart's challenge to write a new Christmas song. This has been our season arc, with the first few weeks leading up to the first play of the track... what happens next (do we release it, will people buy it?) largely depends on how our audience responds. So far, it's been encouraging...

@themodernmann Ollie Peart's Christmas song (second version) actually gave me chills. So much for being humbug about the holidays, I guess.

— Glenn Johnson (@realspacemodels) November 21, 2018

“Un-jingle the bells”: ALREADY a classic, this... #mannchristmashttps://t.co/1VGUL77TBr

— gem (@gemmyred) November 21, 2018

Finally, over on Happy Place this week Fearne Cotton welcomed charity founder Kris Hallenga to her house to discuss her remarkable life. Diagnosed with breast cancer at 23, she started Copafeel! from scratch and has devoted her life to helping others.

One teacher got in touch, I hear, after listening in the car on the way to school. She scrapped her planned lesson (by chance, it was on mortality) and got the students to listen to the whole podcast.

For all the stats we have access to now, about how long people listen and suchlike, it's still this kind of feedback that shows the real power of audio.