A Midnight Miracle
I’ve been wildly out of love with podcasting for the last few years, and until I heard 'The Midnight Miracle' podcast, I couldn’t understand why.
I’m not impressed by much.
One of the worst parts of working in the entertainment and creative industries is that it takes the magic away.
It’s hard to enjoy movies, tv, and podcasts, and I don’t watch standup comedy.
It can be a miserable existence.
Enter, The Midnight Miracle.
I found this podcast accidentally (I had heard of it but wasn’t interested), and I’m glad I did because it has inspired me in ways I haven’t been in over a decade. The last time I had a fire in my belly like this was when I sat in the same dark theatre for the entire Just For Laughs Festival, watching Jimmie Carr do the same set over and over each night in preparation for his television gala taping. Watching Carr work his material and write and rewrite night after night taught me about being a pro.
I should note.
This podcast doesn’t need my rave review. Three famous dudes doing a podcast isn’t unique or notable; I get it.
I’m also aware this could be perceived as Dave Chappelle fanboy bullshit because I’m a comic. I’m also aware Chappelle is problematic for many of you, AND, as a comic and a fan of Chappelle, I’m conflicted about all of that and will write about that here very soon.
I’m fired up about this podcast for more reasons than Chappelle.
I was one of the first Indigenous podcasters in the world.
I started podcasting in 2008 before Apple even had a real podcast directory.
I loved podcasting the second I hit record inside GarageBand.
The earliest days of podcasting were incredible because there were no rules or expectations. My first project, Life According To Clarence Two Toes, had no audience, no advertisers, and there was nothing like it in the world. To this day, fifteen years later, it’s my favourite thing (not the best thing) I’ve ever done.
Podcasts and podcasting, and podcasters have been a big part of my life for a long time.
I’ve been wildly out of love with podcasting for the last few years, and until I heard The Midnight Miracle, I couldn’t understand why.
BONUS CONTENT FROM THE VAULT
LIFE ACCORDING TO CLARENCE TWO TOES - HIT THE HIGHWAY (2009)
The Boom No One Saw Coming
Podcasting going mainstream was the thing that most people didn’t see coming. I didn’t see it coming. One day podcasting is the nerdy thing I do instead of Youtube (I quit youtube after a few years of building a decent-sized channel because the space was crowded with “native comedians,” and I got sick of people biting my shit). The next day a podcast called ‘Serial’ changed podcasting forever.
As someone that was podcasting before podcasting was even really a thing, I get curmudgeonly about how the cool kids have gone and fucked up everything good in our beloved space. As grumpy as I act, I appreciate my favourite medium's expansion and evolution.
The industry finding the mainstream has a long list of pros and cons. The moment could have been truly exciting for everyone, and all of this could have (and should have) created a more inclusive publishing space than traditional media (tv, film, radio) allowed for. This was podcasting’s greatest opportunity - celebrate, nurture, and support diverse voices. All of these were new reasons I fell deeply in love with podcasting.
The primary upside of podcasting going mainstream was that ad revenue could be available for small to medium-sized shows, meaning those of us with a (small, mighty, humble) listenership might be able to make some scratch doing this podcast thing by selling you mattresses in a box or frozen food subscriptions. Fuck I wanted to sell mattresses to you all; what a dream!
On the industry and tech side, there was also more development and resource into podcast platforms to improve discoverability. As an independent podcaster making your show from home, it’s easy to feel like you’re drowning in an ocean of podcasts. The mainstreaming of podcasting meant the platforms heard the call from the industry that we (podcasters) needed help finding audiences. Hence, they enhanced their ability to present podcasts, making everyone develop better artwork aesthetics and design that had been previously missing. Charts became a thing on these platforms (even though the market, advertisers, and podcasters) had no idea how they worked.
The agenda was set with the injection of cash, human resources, and creatives from both the podcasting world and beyond. There was money and a wild west feeling to the moment. The industry was born.
Perhaps predictably, massive amounts of available ad dollars (mostly) went to the big podcasts and venture-backed companies like Gimlet, Wondery, VOX, WNYC, and others. Podcast charts were dominated by the same 50-ish podcasts weekly - mostly White Folks talking about White Folks Things with a privileged curiosity of the weird, wild, and wacky world around them.
In the early days of the boom, the expectations of listeners were high - the big companies were, consciously or not, producing an NPR-ish sound that found listeners' hearts, minds, and imaginations of listeners. Every show host wanted to be Ira Glass. The race was for the new nerdy idea or surprise niche that would play with listeners' minds. While in meetings for my podcast projects, I was always asked to give comps to other shows - the comparables executives were looking for were always shows from the big companies that dominated the charts.
I was sucked into the world of podcasters like Ira Glass, Roman Mars, and Gimlet’s hit show, ‘Start-Up.’ I gladly signed up for ear fuckings from NPR-inspired, down-talking, smug yet interesting, professional whisper speakers. I couldn’t get enough - audio documentaries, live storytelling shows, and interview pods.
Success found the few, and the roadmap to podcast success was laid out for those that dared to copy, compete with, and steal from those at the front of the line. Interview shows. Dailies. Adaptations to film and tv. Celebrity shows. Fiction podcasts. Reaction shows.
The podcast world was the most exciting thing I had ever participated in.
I was all in.
Until I wasn’t.
Life And Death of Red Man Laughing
I made Red Man Laughing for 12 years. I published 10 seasons of the show. 175 episodes in all. A good run.
Red Man Laughing found a sizeable audience and was a very successful podcast. 2014 it was turned into a National comedy special for CBC Radio One.
With success came expectations.
Around 2015, the podcast began filling a reconciliation hole for listeners.
Decolonization was becoming a pop culture buzzword in Canada.
I walked into the reco-decolo-Canada-White Man-stolen land-back slap-handshake and fake smiles, internet content mess with my eyes wide shut.
But.
My listenership was growing.
That felt significant.
I fell for the trick.
It’s an embarrassing thing to admit - unconsciously (I promise), my show was being made to inspire and transform Indigenous lives and community - AND - White People’s lives and communities. I kept a tongue-in-cheek touch on the show to build my non-Inidgenous listenership. I thought that if I kept pumping out podcast episodes that led the conversation on reconciliation and decolonization, listeners would come in droves; that’s what podcasting is all about, right? Listeners. Advertising. Cheques. Food on the table.
The content I was making was hard to ignore.
It was loud and brash and irreverent.
It was unapologetically Indigenous, and there was (and still isn’t) anything like it on the planet. Soon, Red Man Laughing got me into CBC Radio and Television, someone must have told someone something about the show, and then someone told someone to invite me in for meetings. The platform I created for myself had grown so that the industry couldn’t ignore me or my work anymore.
The mainstream needed my voice because I simply didn’t give a fuck about who I pissed off or who I impressed (and I still don’t).
This created a problem I hadn’t anticipated.
I played into the vision the industry and the audience had for me and my show, the space desperately needed Indigenous voices, and I just happened to be the loudest one around then.
I became one of Canada’s favourite Angry NDNs.
Worse than that, a listener survey told me 8 out of 10 listeners were white.
As the seasons passed, the show and the pressure of creating the show began to mount.
What was once an arts and culture show with its thumb on the pulse of everything new and groundbreaking in NDN country slowly evolved (or devolved) into one long rant against colonialism.
I didn’t start the podcast to become a teacher.
I didn’t start the podcast to share the emotional burden of being an NDN in Canada for the world to gawk at.
I never did and never want to speak for NDN’s but people were taking the show and its guests as gospel. It was weird.
Slowly the podcast (and some of its counterparts in the Indigenous podcasting space) became a vacuum that sucked the life out of Indigenous knowledge and whitewashed it to be palpable for White People to consider, understand, and value.
I grew with the show, but there were parts of me I left behind to make the show, the funny part of me.
The show was called Red Man Laughing. In the end, the show was anything but funny. Yes, it was poignant, sharp, and timely (some say important), but it wasn’t funny.
I had lost my way and I couldn’t get back.
In 2018, I made the first season of the Thunder Bay podcast with Canadaland. It was critically acclaimed and a global hit in podcasting by all measures. We were named to the BEST OF list 2018 on platforms like Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Vulture, Buzzfeed, and others major platforms. My partnership with Canadaland meant there was now even less time spent on RML, and I was just fine with that.
I went all in on Red Man Laughing. The series had an important place in the culture - it was the culture. In the early days, I met with RPM.FM and others to talk about partnerships and platforms because there wasn’t anything on the internet supporting Indigenous arts and culture (spoiler: there still isn’t), and I had the vision to fill that hole.
I just never got to where I wanted to go. I failed myself and the show.
The series made a brief comeback through the pandemic but by then, I was tired and needed out. I slipped from a decent production schedule and slowly let the show disappear.
It’s hard to talk about, and writing this brought up a lot of emotion - anger, disappointment, sadness, a few smiles.
I’m grateful to the listeners, the partners, the live venues, the festivals and conferences, the communities, the guests, and all the guests. Thank you for bringing Red Man Laughing to life. There is much to be proud of in that podcast series; I couldn’t see the way forward anymore.
Forest fires bring flowers.
Enter The Midnight Miracle
The Midnight Miracle breaks nearly every rule in podcasting. This is what excites me.
The sound design and the presentation of the show bend the expectations of what we believe podcasts can be, which is impressive given that in the last eight years, the podcast space has found itself in a contest between investor-backed podcasting companies and the little independents alike.
There are other panel shows out there that have become wildly popular. Usually, the shows have celebrity hosts that run their guests through the podcast circuit to announce their new something or other, the same way late-night television used to.
Big interview podcasts on the internet do one thing well - they land big-named guests and platform those with large platforms already.
To be successful in podcasting, we are told the format is king. Episodes need to be around the 40-minute mark. We shouldn’t speak over each other; we should have polite discourse and smile-whisper-talk into the vacuum our podcasts create.
The Midnight Miracle doesn’t do any of this.
There is no format for the show.
There is always debate.
And the discourse is personal and reverential and charged with the good, the bad, and the ugly of our host’s careers. Yes, the podcast works because each host is popular and famous, independent of the show. But there are a lot of podcasts hosted by famous people that are absolute dogshit. This isn’t one of them.
The Midnight Miracle is full of discovery, truth, and tension.
The show builds tension through a search-and-destroy mission for the truth in each episode through the personal storytelling of Chappelle, Bey, and Kweli. Once we land at the truth in the series, what we discover therein, whether you agree with it or not, always seems new; it always seems to offer the culture, the people, and us, something.
In 2023, in an era where saying the wrong thing gets you thrown under the right/left/woke/snowflake/white-supremacist bus, this podcast series is a fucking lifesaving discovery that reminds us that, for better or worse, bravery and courage are the only way forward as artists.
FUCK, I NEED(ED) A MIRACLE
Every creative person with a career in art falls asleep at night, wondering if their phone will ever ring again. Over my twenty-year career, I still go to sleep with this worry.
I’ve asked mentors and colleagues working in creative fields longer than I have if that ever goes away. You may or may not be shocked to learn that, no. It never goes away.
Waves of doubt and self-pity still find me. Usually, they show up when I’m right in the heart of a new project, usually at the pinnacle of a creative endeavour that will undoubtedly propel the project into the sacred territory of holy-fuckin-shit-this-is-good-land. It’ll be then and usually only then, just when the vibes are good, when that little shithead voice inside me reaches my heart and mind to remind me I’m shit, my work is shit, and my ideas are shit.
This is where I’ve been for well over a year.
I’m shit.
My work is shit.
My ideas are shit.
Enter The Midnight Miracle.
As annoying and maybe pretentious as they may sound, I started recognizing pieces of myself in these men as I listened to this podcast.
Creative.
Driven.
Faulted.
Brave.
Independent.
Listening to these men on the podcast reminded me of who I have always wanted to be as an artist. Fuck that; it reminded me of who I am as an artist.
If you know these guys, you know what they do and how they do it.
Chappelle puts himself in the crosshairs with his brutish views of the world around him, yet his character has a deep sophistication and gentleness.
In all his success, Kweli works hard to hold down the community and his creative force with grace and humility.
Yasiin Bey charts his path everywhere he goes, often to his detriment. Bey works at his speed, under his rules, yet is forever cemented in the world he helped build in hip hop.
I am all of these things too.
My work puts me in the crosshairs, often to my detriment. I strive for grace and humility in my professional life, no matter where my work takes me. And. Well. I have always charted my path everywhere, often to my detriment.
I will never be as successful as any of these men.
I hope that when I die, my work has some of the impacts and staying power some of their work has had.
For now, I’m back in the birchbark canoe (not back on the horse or in the saddle, cuz, you know, fuck cowboys), and I’m paddling upstream.
I lost my way with Red Man Laughing. I will probably never have a commercially successful podcast like the Ira Glass’s or the Radiotopia podcasts of the world.
But ‘The Midnight Miracle’ has reminded me of who I am, what stories are important to me, and who I am telling these stories to and for.
It’s nice to be back.
I’ve launched a couple of new podcasts. I’ve launched, We’re All Mad Here with my partner Madeline. I’ve also launched a podcast here on Substack called Joke Talk Yell Write Podcast.
It’d mean a lot to me if you subscribed and shared my new shows. They’re available wherever you listen to podcasts. We’re working hard to make them good; you’ll enjoy them.
I’m not making these new shows with anyone in mind. I’m free. It’s amazing to be free.
RM
"Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts." - Yasiin Bey (quoting Winston Churchill) on The Midnight Miracle
I thought I just wrote a magnum opus about RML. Humphit.
Seen that your June 21 gig got cancelled. I can’t hire you but it would be nice if you came to ceremony with us. 13 matriarchs canupas/ospagans for prayers for community, for the children for safe spaces. It is at Wanuskewin Heritage centre June 21-22. Our poster is on buffalo people arts institute FB page. Take care, Joely. Gonna listen to the miracle podcast you recommended. ❤️🦬