A Modern Scottish Tale
Podcasting is a beautiful medium. Though we have our preconceptions on what a podcast is like, anyone can use the medium to spin a creation of any size or shape. To illustrate this, let me tell you about a more bite sized podcast called A Scottish Podcast.
Yes, that’s what it’s called. I mean, yes it’s also a podcast with a Scottish heritage. But it’s called A Scottish Podcast. The name works on a couple different fronts.
And if you’re now thinking about a certain cursed Scottish play. Well, you aren’t entirely off on that front, either. A Scottish Podcast is about those types of cursed horrors, and anything paranormal really.
It starts with this washed up radio host and DJ called Lee who is just trying to get by after losing his radio career. I mean it was partially his fault, but you know, let’s overlook that for now.
Okay, actually, that’s not a great explanation. Yes, he’s lost his radio career, but rather than being down and out about it, he sees podcasting as his next LEGAL hustle. So he hit the ground running on a new show. Or crawled through abandoned underground tunnels beneath Scotland searching for something mysterious.
Lee’s new podcast is called The Terror Files, and he wants it to be the next big sensation, and he’s going to do whatever it takes to get there. With paranormal investigations, that means going out on location. And in the case of podcasting, that may mean promoting any contextually strange products when checks buying the ad space clear.
Of course, we aren’t listening to The Terror Files, though it would be a podcast from Scotland, so I can see where the confusion would arise. What we’re actually listening to is a sort of behind the scenes show. We get aspects of the production, like traveling to these locations, events from their day to day lives, and the aftermath of the show’s releases. And this is a part of what I think makes the show so great. This perspective gives them the chance to better utilize Lee’s sense of humor and to follow Dougie, Lee’s friend and occasional sidekick, through his own mishaps and misadventures. It’s not a podcast about things you may or may not be inclined to believe in. It’s not trying to sell you an improbable story the same way it sells hemorrhoid cream. And look, it’s not like The Terror Files isn’t going to be a great podcast. From the glimpses we do get, it looks well done, and I do like shows about paranormal investigations even if they’re occasionally outlandish and campy.
Instead, A Scottish Podcast goes in a different direction. Instead of ghost stories, we get to watch Lee — who is not a great, angelic hero by any stretch of the term — try to move on to what he thinks will be greener pastures and running for it as hard as he can. It’s a tale of an indomitable and somewhat shameless spirit on his own epic journey. It’s the tale of a modern hero. And the modernity shows itself in a variety of ways. For one, there’s Lee’s nature. Far more abrasive and crude than anything you would have seen in old stories. Gone are the idyllic days of idolized perfect characters that we could hope to emulate. All of that is over. Even if we don’t want to admit it.
Just like the days when someone could expect to work at a single job or even in a single industry from their entrance into the workforce to their exit. If you’re on the younger side, you don’t know what I’m talking about, but you also may not know what was happening when in movies or television you had the trope of a character receiving a gold watch when retiring from a job. If that’s even a trope, but you know what I mean. The gesture can seem overly extravagant and personal, but those were days when people had a different relationship with their jobs and employers. Those were days when you stayed at a single company until the day you left the workforce, rising through the ranks and planting firm roots into the office floor. Not in a bad way, necessarily. I’m sure for some people their workplace was a second family.
And that seems nice, doesn’t it? But that’s just not the way things work anymore. No pun intended, assuming that was a pun. I’m really not sure on that one.
Our characters, Lee and Dougie both went for their dream careers only to have things fizzle out, forcing them to find new directions. That’s the typical experience now. But maybe it’s not even a dream career but just a career. Regardless of the details, we can’t expect our employment situations to last forever. Gone are the days when everyone would take a job with a single company and stay as long as possible. And even if that statement comes without blame or condemnation, it’s not without consequence.
Modern life is one that happens in motion. For all its charms, it can be messy and disorganized as you find yourself once again trying to ground yourself in unfamiliar territory or as you find yourself thrusted into an unfamiliar space, knowing all too well that you’re not going to be there for long anyway. The world around you is and has been constantly shifting. As a result, nothing is easy or perfect, but there’s certainly a pressure to pretend that everything is fine. Because while the reality is gone, the ideals remain.
And A Scottish Podcast blows that right out of the water. Which I think was pretty necessary.
A Scottish Podcast is the story of a man trying to dive into the modern iteration of the world he has known, but ultimately, the trajectory of the story without the details does much the same thing. It’s a modern man living a modern life with all its problems therein. Things that he does not always handle well. Like most of us wouldn’t.
But beyond that, it’s also well edited, the characters are funny, and the story moves around rather nicely. But as someone who isn’t Scottish, fair warning for anyone jumping in this podcast. But the Scottish dialect can take a few minutes to get used to.
