Nothing like a good old fashioned Murder to bring a community together

You should be listening to the 'My Favourite Murder' podcast hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. The format is simple - each episode they each bring a story of real life murder they have researched and tell it to each other, without the other knowing in advance what it will be. The murders could be from any era and any place, whether it was a century ago on another continent, or a month ago down the road. The MFM podcast has grown into a cult hit, that has enabled the hosts to do sell out world tours of a live version of that basic format, and it's not difficult to see why such an enthusiastic community has grown up around it.

'My Favourite Murder' is a great example of the unique way that the contemporary podcast medium works best. Certainly a podcast needs an interesting topic or information to reveal, and just like radio, even with a good subject, it still comes down to personality, personality, personality of the hosts. Yet unlike radio, you always experience a podcast from the start and can listen to it all at your own pace and in your own time, which means that a good personality for podcast isn't the same as for traditional radio. There's no need for constant bombast, wit or erudition, nor the need avoid anything complex or in depth, lest you lose the majority of the audience that only just tuned in. Instead, a story can be told in detail, can ramble and go off topic, you can have the ebb and flow of a normal conversation, and ultimately come across in a far more like normal human beings interacting.

A podcast gives you the chance to feel like you're joining a conversation with a couple of friends, and the charm of good podcasters is they make you feel like you'd want to hang out with them in real life (or like you already do). It's a quality that both Karen and Georgia have together in spades, and what has enabled them in just two short years to build a community of fans who all feel intimately connected to them. So while yes, the podcast is about murder, and that can seem morbid, (though often it can be a good twenty minutes of daily life anecdotes before they even get to the murders) the experience is more akin to spending time catching up with a friend, who happens to be telling you about the horrible thing that happened to someone they know, and can you believe it!

I only discovered the podcast through a Cracked video on Youtube (see below). I like Cracked's sensibility, so their clear endorsement and enthusiasm was encouraging, and Karen and Georgia being such enjoyable anecdotists on the panel, had me keen to give it a listen. You should too, and in the words that have inspired so many pieces of fan art, Stay Sexy and Don't Get Murdered.