#they’re all on Spotify as podcast episodes

[daily-podcasts]

Intro to The Podcast Directory Wiki + this blog: 🪄

This is a side-blog to share podcasts that you may not have heard of before! There will be one post per day, (hence the blog name) highlighting a specific audio drama and linking to their page on the wiki. (main blog is @james-spooky)

They’ll be themed posts aside from the daily ones but it was mainly to have a fun side hobby to get the word out there about some niche podcasts! :]

The Podcast Directory Wiki has over 300 podcasts logged, categorised into many useful groups in order to effectively find ones suited to your tastes. 😋

Detailed info below on how to effectively use the wiki👇

NAVIGATION: 🧭

As said above there are many ways to navigate the wiki and find different podcasts!

Here’s the breakdown:

Masterlist: A list of every podcast logged on the wiki from A-Z 📝

Genre/Subgenre: If you only like horror podcasts or are looking for found footage, musical theatre or something more specific like a plane crash or cryptids, all can be found as categories under these pages :] 📄

Length: By either episode length or total number of episodes for the podcast. e.g. you can browse podcasts that have under 10 episodes, or 20-29 or if you don’t like long episodes you can look at podcasts exclusively that have an average runtime of 20-29 minutes etc. ⏰

Completion Status: We’ve all been there; getting sucked into a podcast only to learn that it was never finished or you have to wait months for a new episode! 💔 And a lot of the time, we love to binge a whole series in a day… With these categories, podcasts are broken down into “completed”, “incomplete” or “ongoing”; this way you can easily dodge those heartbreaks. 😉

LGBTQ Rep: Audio dramas in general are known to have a significant amount of LGBTQ Representation within their characters and storylines. Under this category, it’s broken down into specific representation such as “trans rep” or “lesbian rep”. This way if you want to find more podcasts that represent you, you can! Be mindful that “representation” differs from active protagonists and engrained storylines to side characters or smaller roles. More detailed information surrounding this should be on the individual podcasts page! 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

Transcripts: Sometimes it can be frustrating to find a really good podcast but there’s no transcript available! 😓 On each Podcast page it is noted whether or not transcripts are available (with a ❌/✅) or you can browse from the category “transcripts” which includes ONLY podcasts with transcripts available to avoid getting invested in ones without.

Network: If you particularly like the work of a certain podcast network, such as QCODE or RustyQuill you can use these categories to find all of their projects! 🖊️

Prominent Podcasters/Voice Actors also have pages dedicated to them with links to their imdb, itemising all the projects they’re involved in if you want to hear specifically more of your favourite actor or writer! 🎭

Randomiser: A lot of the time it can be overwhelming with all the choice! How to choose what to listen to when your “to listen list” is miles long… With the randomiser at the top of the page, it will give you a random podcast, freeing you of the weight of choice 😅 Additionally, you can randomise a genre/subgenre if you want to see what else is out there…

These are the genres/subgenres that are covered:

PAGE LAYOUT EXAMPLE:

Each page has all the information you need, website links, spotify links, transcripts, cast etc.

Spotify linked trailer/first episode to gauge whether you want to invest!

You can easily see the genres, number of episodes, seasons and whether or not it has transcripts available. Even the combined listening time of the podcast so you know what you’re getting into!

All podcast pages have every episode linked to spotify in the collapsible tables. (Logging podcasts with episodes in the hundreds was when I started to regret this decision…🧘)

Each podcast has a small section dedicated to other audio dramas which have a similar vibe so you can find more like your faves! As there are always more podcasts to add, your help or contributions are appreciated. 💪

Take this information and fuel your podcast addiction ten fold ✨👀😏

[puckpocketed]

Trying to absorb everything there is to know about ice hockey within the shortest amount of time possible really does strange things to a person. You come up against questions such as what do defensemen even do aside from skate backwards and do tummy time to protect their goalie? (Broadcasts aren’t the most informative) What the hell makes defensemen effective? What do the casters mean when they say “gap”? What are defensive details?

I love watching games back, I love trying to understand the game. I love hockey <3 But sometimes it’s nice to have help, and sometimes my favourite writers/podcasters collaborate!!

Here is part 1/3 of a podcast mini-series about defending, putting it here so I can have a copy of it in case it ever gets taken down + wanted to share with everyone some of my findings! (All episodes are available if anyone just wants to listen to them!) Transcript + edits done by me, all mistakes are mine.

Published 6th November 2024, Hockey IQ Podcast: Modern Defensemen (with Will Scouch) Ep #1 - by Hockey's Arsenal, hosted by Greg Revak (apple / spotify / youtube / bonus substack link)

part 2

[START Transcript]

Greg Revak: On the Hockey IQ Podcast today, we open up a new segment: we’re bringing back our favourite Will Scouch. If you’re on the Hockey IQ Newsletter you know his work by now.

Will, good morning. Earlier than most of us probably normally get up, but it’s a good day.

Will Scouch: Yeah, Greg, thanks for having me, it’s a lot of fun. Me and Greg go way back. We’re boys from years ago and I’m excited to hop on the show. I’m a keen listener, keen reader. 

[They exchange pleasantries]

GR: Beautiful. Well, today we’re gonna talk about three concepts. We’re gonna break it into three spots though, so everyone’s gotta come back next week and the week after that.

We’re gonna talk about defensemen, because everyone knows they’re important but how do we actually play the position well?

WS: Yeah, I mean, it’s a position that’s still, to me, being explored; both by, I’d say youth and junior coaches and pro coaches alike. There’s a lot of different ways that you can do it.

I mean, I watch a lot of hockey from around the world, all kinds of different levels. I’ve watched guys develop from 15 to 24 at this point, and just seeing how their games evolve and everything, and how effective various versions of this position is. And I think it’s a very interesting area that’s still being explored in a lot of really interesting ways, for sure.

GR: Yeah, I think back to David Savard; he comes out of the [QMJHL] as this high-flying offensive defenseman, and if we just forgot about the rest of his career and you just saw him today as this great shutdown, defense-first player, you’d be absolutely shocked.

I mean, you think about Rasmus Dahlin — kid didn’t even play full time defenseman until his actual draft year, he was still playing forward a ton. There’s so much to be explored here.

I feel like [to get a lot of] — for you NHL fans — to get a lot of value in the later rounds out of your defensemen, take those offensive players first, and we can find a lot of hidden gems later.

WS: Well, yeah. I mean, actually, I’ve said this a few times but your listeners probably don’t know, but I did a presentation during the pandemic at the Ottawa Hockey Analytics Conference about this topic exactly; how, when you look at the numbers and the defensive value of players in the NHL, I found that there were just as many in the top 50 defensive value of players in the NHL, there were just as many undrafted players as there were second round picks, second and third round picks combined.

So the draft isn’t really a great historical gauge on defensive ability. Offense is a different story from defensive players, which we could probably get into a little bit.

But I find, personally, that evaluating defensemen and projecting defense to the NHL is still really spotty and questionable. And I don’t know, in my line of work, watching a lot of defensemen, a lot of the ones who I think are some of the better defenders kind of go a little unheralded, because a lot of the time you don’t need to be particularly noticeable to be a good defenseman, but scouts are always looking for the noticeable guys.

So it’s a very interesting world and it’s a very interesting thing to pick through, but there’s definitely a lot of case studies you could dig into, and a lot of players you could look at as cases of, “Oh yeah, nobody was really paying a whole lot of attention to them!” or maybe people were thinking about them the wrong way. But if you think about things a little bit outside the box, you might be able to see something really interesting there.

GR: Yeah, so let's dive into why that may be. Classic example would be Lane Hutson, so maybe we'll pick on him a little bit, but I definitely want to talk about Rasmus Ristolainen, because he is an interesting case study that we wrote about on the newsletter.

So where I want to start with this is just modern day defending. How are defensemen defending today versus old times? A lot of times it was the big hit, separate the head from body. The puck’s somewhere, but let's separate the head from the body, and we’ll worry about the puck later — that is going bye-bye.

Every coach I talk to now, they prefer having the puck rather than having a head on a stake. So for me, it comes back to this old saying of, “position before possession.” We're gaining body positioning, we're not so much separating head from body, but puck from player.

All right, so we've got position before possession. It's super valuable in gaining the space that you need to have first whack in a puck or put the puck where you want it, or just push it to a teammate. Just having the idea of owning space and there's no better league at this and no league that values it more than the NHL. If you don't do this well in the NHL, sooner or later, you're going to find yourself out of a job making a heck of a lot less money in a league that probably no one really cares that much about. You want to be in the show, the big lights: you have to value this more than anything.

And this is actually the one thing that I noticed about Hunter McDonald. He's in the Flyers’ system now — he was an overager, but I was like, “This guy is unbelievable!” He’s a huge frame, you can’t miss him out there. He would just get the positioning before possession, and I was like, “Okay, that’s interesting, let me watch him further.”

And I feel like he’s going to be one of those bottom of the lineup guys who, unlikely, made it out of being an overager in the [United States Hockey League], going to college for a few years, but has those little details of a defenseman that you see in modern day play, which is positioning overall, which is an NHL trait to the nth degree.

WS: No, I know. I think I would definitely agree. Those are the players that are always really, really fascinating to me because you look at a guy like Hunter McDonald and the production just isn't amazing. But it doesn't — to me, when you look at defensemen, it almost doesn't really matter. That's kind of a very secondary-slash-bonus style of thing that comes with a player.

I see a lot of defenders every year and it seems like a thing where a lot of them, maybe at the lower levels, there is a little bit more of that “separate the head from the body”-type of player. And I think there are NHL scouts who still gravitate towards those guys but, at the end of the day when it all comes out in the wash, it's a lot of the time the guys that are kind of, I hate to say ”boring”, but just very effective, and just they're always in a good position.

The guy I always reference as a young defenseman who, I think, is just a really, really high-end defensive guy is Kaiden Guhle in Montreal. We're going to talk a little bit about Lane Hutson in a second, but Kaiden Guhle is a guy who, when he was in the junior level, just played such a great, balanced style of defense.

He was a good skater, but he had really good length. He was a guy who didn't just lay the body every single time, but he certainly could if he needed to. It was about his lateral mobility, it was about tracking rushes, keeping inside the dot lines, and preventing chances from inside and leading with his stick, but then finishing with the body if he had the opportunity or the need to do so. And he seemed to have a really good read of just how to do his job really, really well.

And so that's been a lesson for me for sure. He was a really interesting case study a few years ago, and he's become a pretty solid NHL defenseman. I mean, on a team this year that’s kind of struggling defensively I think he’s been one of the brighter spots on that defense group there, [he’s] doing a pretty good job at least suppressing chances against.

GR: I don’t watch as much as you do, prospects, but Guhle I did catch. For me, the play style wasn’t very good. He had elements of it, you could see the flashes, but he was just really brash. His decision making and his reads were quite poor. But the tools were there, and it was like, “Can he adjust?” Which I think he’s done a phenomenal job [of], and I think Montreal is probably the perfect place for him to develop a lot of that.

So I think you're spot on like, “Okay, how does he actually apply?“ Having assets is one thing, having the tools is one thing, but how do we properly apply those assets, those tools that you have in a good way? So I think another piece, for me, is if you do have the speed, is just making sure that you're controlling speed and then you're also keeping small gaps.

And just knowing with my high school team that no one knows what a gap is, let's define that real quick, which is: the difference in space between the forwards and the defensemen. So the space in between, “How much space are you [allowing]?” in hockey term slang. It's underneath you versus on the other side, which is above you or behind you. So, “How much space, what's that gap between D and O?”

(Editor’s note: He says O instead of F here, I assume because the person attacking isn’t always a forward. As in, “How much space between the defenseman and offenceman?”)

So you got the speed, shrink that gap as much as possible. Don't give them the space to operate or work in, or, I even call it the space to think, which [it often becomes] for forwards, especially unsophisticated ones.

WS: Yeah, I mean, that's really the bread and butter of a lot of the position. It's so much of this, like you said, gap control. I actually just did a bit of video work for a really high end player, [an] NHL draft pick playing in Sweden this year, who is producing really well.

But in terms of the defending side of the game, he's not the most incredible skater you've ever seen, he's not the biggest guy in the world. And a big thing that I noticed, that even at the professional level that was kind of a bit of a work in progress, was that gap management. Especially because the footwork wasn't amazing, [he was] keeping his feet a little too stationary, gliding backwards and sort of allowing that gap.

And when you watch the NHL that's the point of the whole exercise, watching the NHL and how they play. Forwards are fast and they're smart, largely. The guys who can score are the guys who know how to get through soft defensive pressure, the guys who know how to find lanes and cross up defensemen, and if you don't have the footwork or the mobility or the reach or all of it — all of the above — to track all that and manage it, then it's going to be a lot tougher to do your job.

But the interesting thing, though, is that there's a lot of different ways that you can get defensive jobs done. That's always been very interesting to me; seeing how different players approach the position in different ways and seeing the efficacy of that come out in the wash, and how their offense balances with their defensive ability. It's a very interesting world to dig into, for sure.

GR: Yeah, I think you've got a rabbit hole there. You just kind of opened up around defensive skating. What do clean feet look like? What does defensive posture look like, that actually allows you to have that kind of mobility?

So we'll leave that for another day. If anyone wants to go check it out on the Hockey IQ Newsletter, they can do so. Just look up defenseman skating development. We've got two good pieces there talking about building and maintaining defensive posture and keeping clean feet, which — actually massive base for anyone.

It allows you to have the proper gap that allows you to kill plays early, and ultimately, it's a lot about just controlling speed. You don't want McDavid building up to full speed. You don't want MacKinnon building up to full speed. You don't want anyone coming up to you at full speed. It's very hard to maintain that kind of speed going backwards [that we] even generate in the first place. 

How do you kill it early? How do you get a hand on someone? Or, my favorite example is just proper pivoting. A guy dumps a puck on you, how are you going back? What does that pivot look like?

I'll let you open that up because at the NHL it's almost too good, where you can't see what a bad example looks like, but you can see it's everywhere.

WS: Yeah, I mean, it's a make or break skill in the NHL. It's where a lot of defensemen die. I mean, it's a cliche at this point to talk about pucks in deep, to talk about [getting] pucks deep in the offensive zone, get below the goal line, dump and chase. People make fun of dump-and-chase kind of stuff. But if your team is built to do it, you can do it.

You can take advantage of defensemen in the NHL who just don't have the speed or the agility or the skating ability that some of your forwards might have. It is a lot easier to skate forwards than it is to skate backwards. That's just, you know, anecdotal, but also pretty factual — you're naturally going forwards.

I think an interesting trend that you're seeing a little bit more of [is] what they would call ‘scooting’. You're the coach; I don't know if that's exactly what the terminology would be, but [it’s getting] your defensemen in the neutral zone, kind of pinching a little bit more and having them skate forwards, tracking play towards the boards.

So it's not necessarily that they're doing their backwards crossovers, it's not necessarily that they're entirely skating backwards, but you see guys who are really talented skaters or do have a lot of quickness driving play to the boards in a more aggressive way than having the play in front of them. It's about them sort of tracking that play laterally, which is an interesting thing I think you're seeing more of now.

I think there are definitely coaches and systems that love to play their defensemen more that way, and the weak side defense can sort of fill between the dot lines for them and sort of leave the weaker side of the ice a little bit more open. That's kind of what I mean. There's a lot of different ways to achieve these kinds of goals, and I think you're seeing a lot of different things popping up to adapt to this. 

In situations where you have a dump and chase or something like that, or just getting pucks in deep or whatever you say, when you have a defenseman who has trouble with their footwork and turning around… Trust me, I'm a defenseman, when I play hockey, I strap on the skates — I play defense myself and that's where I fall apart, when I do fall apart. Which is often. But definitely, when play turns around and I’ve got to change directions or change my area of flow, it can be tricky. And in the NHL, I can only imagine how tricky it can be there. 

GR: Yeah. I mean, a good pivot you're looking at three steps total, like boom-boom-bam and you're there. You watch an amateur game and it could be like five, six, seven, eight chops before [they] finally get going and [it’s] looking like a proper forward stride again. [Or just] getting into a good defensive posture and positioning. It's total scramble mode.

A big one for me, too, is just the direction that you pivot. Do you wait for that offensive player to commit to their lane? It's just a great defensive habit in general, letting the offenceman make the first move. If you're making the first move, you're the one showing your cards. It's kind of like showing your cards first in Poker.

Let them make the decision and then you can pivot into them. Now you can get that position before possession, or at least get a chip on them, slow them down. You can either make it easier for yourself or your partner. So one, there's the clean footwork on the pivot, and two is making sure that we're controlling the speed and we're pivoting properly in the direction that we want to pivot.

There's a ton of times where I see, especially the lower levels, players coming up, they're in a bad spot, they're skating forward, defenseman skating backwards and they just chip it off the boards. And the defenseman is like a dog just following the puck and it ends up in the middle of the ice where the forward actually went. Again, the NHL is the best at this so it's really hard to see bad examples of pivoting into and controlling the space of the opponent.

WS: Yeah. I do a lot of work outside the NHL, and the biggest thing I notice is not necessarily the number of chops it takes, but the amount of time. You can see guys taking two seconds, maybe more, to get themselves turned around, tracking pucks below the goal line.

To me hockey is a game of milliseconds a lot of the time, right? I was working with someone years ago who really shared the idea with me that, in the NHL, generally goals are not scored if you have the puck on your stick for more than either half a second or a second.

I can't remember off the top of my head, but it's so fast in terms of; when you score goals in the NHL, it's when you touch the puck for a very short amount of time in the offensive zone and get a puck on net. And so, if you have guys who take too long — and “too long” might not be very long… If the difference is relatively short at the time you're making those pivots or those changes, but the [opponent has] got a lot more speed than you and you're [taking more] time to then start generating that speed to match the opponent, you're in trouble.

And in my opinion, I think that you want your defensemen to be more assertive. I always fall back on the strategy of; make them make a decision, make them commit. That might imply that you do the committing first, but that's where the importance of footwork and tactics come into question. 

You have to have strong support, whether it's from backchecking forwards or your partner. You want to be able to adapt to quick players who might fake one way, go another, and be able to use your stick or use your feet or both to be a factor regardless of what happens. 

It's very interesting to watch defensemen play. I find it really, really interesting to see the different approaches of different players and especially how they evolve and get into the NHL.

But yeah, I mean, [it’s so pivotal], the skating ability; defensemen who can skate, it unlocks so many doors for their career. If you're an elite level skating defenseman, it just unlocks so many doors that interest me. If you're not, and if that's not a strength of your game, then it can be a big struggle, especially against faster opponents. Even if you're big and physical and pretty good throwing the body or whatever, there's a lot more of the game in the NHL these days. Very, very interesting stuff. 

GR: I think that's actually the perfect segue into someone who, early in his career, threw the body too much and sold out too much on plays that he probably shouldn't: Rasmus Ristolainen.

Great case study, great case study from when [John Tortorella] started working with him to where he is now. Will, I'll send in the link here from the Hockey IQ newsletter so we can track a little bit better with each other. 

I found him to be a fascinating player. High draft pick, 8th overall in 2013. Really pretty, smooth skating, big body — has all of the tools that you would traditionally say, “Yep, that checks [out].” And then you looked at his stat profile and it was just abysmal. His micro stats were terrible. I think the only thing he was good at was D-Zone Retrievals, which, being able to take contact, it was kind of an easy thing for him.

WS: Yeah. I remember watching Ristolainen when he was in junior hockey, because that was the earliest years of me being kind of curious about that side of the game, and I did not really recall that being a premier area of his game.

I remember him being big, but pretty mobile, and has some skill to play around with. He did have a bit of a physical edge to him, but it feels like it was that tail end of an era in the NHL where those big, mean, physical guys were kind of in vogue, and people were kind of curious and needing guys like that. And I guess that's what Buffalo drafted him to be.

I remember being very surprised that he was in the NHL the year he was drafted. It just did not look like it was really working out there. And Buffalo just seems to have been not a great fit for him, they kind of turned him into something that he wasn't, but I do think that he's turned into some sort of serviceable defenseman.

But he, to me, is a great example of one that I always look back on and go, “Man, what if?” Like, what if things went a little bit differently for him? Because there was good stuff there, it's just I feel like the development was focused in the wrong areas.

To me, 65% of the work [is] scouting, and developing — the easy part is drafting good players, the hard part is developing them and bringing them along into being good NHL players.

So to me, if you can find the most amount of things that get in the way of that process being easy, then you're doing a really good job. And with Ristolainen, I feel like in his case they inserted more things to make that journey more difficult and sort of turned him into something that he wasn't, which is always a scary thing for me to think about doing to a player.

But it's not over for him, obviously. He figured it out. Obviously, Tortorella found something for him to do, and he has shown a little bit better. But yeah, he's always been a what-if guy for me.

GR: I always liked how Tortorella, after the 2022-2023 season, was doing his media stuff and he was like “Yeah, he's our most improved player.” You're a guy who's getting paid big bucks — I think he was making five million plus that year, still is, probably — and even him, he was like, “I was just bad the first half. And then around Christmas break, I started getting going. The second half was much better.”

Basically, the first half, they were just trying to rebuild his defensive game, and this is true for anything. Zach Benson's another good example of this. If you can't play defense in the NHL, you're going to be out quick. Benson can play defense despite being — I think they list them at five foot 10, but there's no way.

WS: Yeah, no, no. I know. He's a little guy, but he's another great example of a player where I, in my work, I do not care how big you are. I just care about how you play. Even in the NHL. And I feel like Benson's a really, really good example of that; a guy who, just forechecking alone is a really… The easiest way to defend is if he can cause turnovers in the opposing team's offensive zone, a guy like Zach Benson does that extremely well.

And if he needs to track guys through the neutral zone and backcheck, he'll do it, and he does it really well, and he does it at a speed that I found to be projectable to the NHL. And again, that's another one where I was a little surprised to see him in the NHL so fast, but he didn't really look out of place there.

He's had a bit of a slow start this season, but just a really, really talented player, and one where you kind of do look at and go, “Yeah, these smaller guys can definitely defend.” They just — the expectations are a little bit higher, and maybe for good reason, but he checks all the boxes for sure.

GR: Yeah. So for Rasmus (Ristolainen), there's two big things that, when I dug into this, that Torts was working at. At this point, I was so intrigued [that] I was tracking every single time Torts spoke and Rasmus spoke to the media. So I was like, “I wonder what they're actually doing?” Which, Torts can be tight-lipped, but he gives it away if you follow long enough.

The big one was just inside, like too much, he was finding himself, Rasmus was finding himself on the outside. So whether that be outside the dots, outside on bad ice, for whatever reason, or just finding yourself outside, like losing defensive side positioning to the offensive player.

If you finish contact, but now you're on the wall and your player's got to step to the net, that's trouble. There's a great, great clip the other night featuring, I think it was (Aliaksei) Protas [who] ended up scoring the goal and K’Andre Miller of the New York Islanders. So Caps — Rangers, not Islanders — Rangers… Where [Miller] went in soft, didn't really take positioning, got beat back to net, and Protas just put out a stick and just tapped it in, Igor Shesterkin never had a chance.

A similar idea of; okay, good, maybe you got some contact, you tried to make the stop, but you still need to maintain defensive side positioning. You still need to finish on the inside. So if you're doing contact, you can't overreach.

You just can't do that. You have to stay in good positioning.

And the second piece was just, finishing with contact to get stops, like stopping movement. Offensive play is a lot about movement, and defensive play is about stopping movement, AKA getting stops. So he would maybe make a play, or get a poke check, but the puck was still moving and could be easily on the other team's stick. 

So how do you make sure you're always staying in good positioning? Staying on the inside, as Torts put it. Or the other piece, which is getting stops, or finishing with contact — but smartly, not chasing the contact for contact’s sake? Being tactful in your play.

I feel like Risto really just learned how to play defense smartly. He was actually thinking and being intentional about what he was doing, rather than like, “I see a puck and a player, I'm going to go end that!” And then, boom, in the big scheme of things, it’s a net negative. Even though at the moment, it may have, especially to him — otherwise he wouldn't make the play — seemed like a positive, really it was a negative for the team.

WS: Well, that's the interesting thing too, going back to talking about junior players and the context in the draft and how defensive players might go a little bit underreported or undervalued in a sense.

I see this all the time, especially with North American defensemen, especially with Canadian ones, but there are definitely players who everybody talks about how good they are defensively, everybody talks about how solid they are. They're big, they're physical, they're mean, blah, blah, blah. But then when you watch things in detail, it's this sort of Ristolainen-style thing. You're talking about K’Andre Miller where it's like, they're along the boards, they're doing the thing along the boards, but they're losing.

They're allowing guys to get low on them, get through them, and even in the junior level, right? What good is it if you're trying to pin a guy against the boards and they give you a little shove, crouch down a little bit, chip the puck three feet out from you, you don't adapt to that, they get three feet of space on you, throw it out in front of the net, and boom, you got yourself a scoring chance, right? I see that all the time.

It's the focus on the body and not focus on the turnover, turning that possession back over, that really seems to be a tough lesson for a lot of defensemen to get over. I find that a lot of defensemen from the age of 18 to 23, in the grand scheme of things, their style of play doesn't drastically shift all that often.

And so, when I see things like that happening, I'm going, okay, I gotta either hope that this guy puts in the time in the gym and becomes, just, a strength nut, and pins that guy to the boards so they can't do anything, or they figure out a way to get into those situations, take a step back, chip at the puck. Really battle for the puck rather than focus on the guy.

Because I've seen it so many times with guys who are bigger and more physical, they apply it in a way where I feel like coaches will go, “Wow, look at you go, you're playing hard, you're playing the thing!” But then they escape, this opponent might escape, and create a little bit of space for themselves. And again, this is a game of inches, it's a game of a couple of feet, and every inch matters.

So in some cases, yeah, you get those situations where guys like Ristolainen, yeah, you're doing the thing, people clip the hits, people clip the physical play, but then five seconds later, someone's got some space on you and they generate a scoring chance. And so what do you really value, right? Personally, fewer scoring chances would be ideal.

GR: I love it. Last piece to wrap this up, because I think it'll go well into our next piece, which is point play. Shorting the zone.

I was able to find some phenomenal clips and do some photos of this for the newsletter. But the concept of; if you're watching a game in the NHL, if you can see all five of the people trying to break the puck out, low in the zone… A lot of it, you think about the NHL today, is like a swarm. We're going to do close support. I'm going to try to crowd the puck out.

A good way to respond to that is to short the zone, which basically means your defensemen, instead of hanging out at the blue line, are going to go into the offensive zone. And they're going to start with small gaps, they're going to be [at the] top of the circles, if not a little bit lower.

Tortorella is another big fan of this, so you can see it with the Flyers a lot, too. I would say [Sheldon] Keefe is another example of a coach who does this a ton. So you saw a lot in Toronto, now you'll see a lot more in New Jersey, which is  the perfect d-core to make all of this work. So I think Devils are going to be good for — that's going to be a great fit.

But just the idea of crowding in the space, setting small gaps, so when you do start defending, you can either cut a play off early — it's an easy pinch there if you don't have to go very far — you can cut it off. Or, 2; create a turnover in a much better spot than what is in your own zone. Why not make it in the o-zone? So from a positioning standpoint, phenomenal place to start, good way to kill plays early.

Before they can get going, before the team can build speed, and just being able to put yourself in a good spot to take advantage both from a defensive standpoint, but offensive standpoint.

WS: Yeah, I love when I see this being deployed. I think, again, I'm a geek, like I'm a math guy, and even just thinking about the numbers here, it makes such a difference if you think about it.

The offensive zone from blue line to goal line is 64 feet. So you're looking at the difference between a guy standing at the blue line being maybe 75 feet from the net or at the top of the face-off circle where you might be 20 feet closer, maybe 20, 25 feet closer. So you're cutting down the time at which you give the defense to adapt, the goaltender to adapt. You're cutting that time down by a third-ish, a quarter to a third. I'm ballparking here, but that automatically is just based on where you are on the ice.

If you can compress the offensive zone on your opponent, you're laughing. The second thing I wanted to mention here is this is, again, why skating ability and quickness and speed are so important to me. Because it is objectively a better position to be in when you're in that position — closer to the top of the face-off circles for your defensemen.

But if you do have a situation where the opponent has possession of the puck you have to get set up, you have to cover that gap, you have to cover for yourself, or you have to have some sort of system in place where a winger can cover for you if you're caught in the offensive zone. Ideally, you have your defensemen who can wheel up, get some speed going, get positioned well to counter that attack, and have a system that can swarm whoever has that puck in the offensive zone.

I think it's a really interesting trend for sure. It's a simple little thing, it's a concept that you see definitely a lot more now than you used to, but I'm all about it. It just makes sense mathematically, and it plays into exactly the styles of player that I always look for: guys who do pinch a little bit more aggressively, but have the mobility and the skating ability to cover for themselves.

I would rather have a player who tries something creative, or tries some sort of play that could lead to a high scoring chance, but may relinquish some space on the ice, but has the ability to cover for themselves.

And I can at least as a coach, rely on them — not that I'm a coach — but rely on them to cover for themselves. To go, okay, I can rely on them to try these things, because I know that if it doesn't maybe go their way, which happens in hockey all the time, I'm not going to be upset at this player, but I know that I want them to backcheck, cover for it, because I know they're capable of it.

I think that that's sort of the trade off that you have to live with, but I'm totally cool with it.

GR: All right, so we're going to call this end of the day on some modern day defending, and we'll pick up on point play in episode two.

[END Transcript.]

part 2 <- convenient link at the bottom <3

[brf-rumortrackinganon]

“With the tree of life behind them and the garden representing fertility, life and moving forward, they didn’t need any direction,” said photographer Misan Harriman of shooting that moment.” Didn’t he later admit he added the tree of life to that picture after the fact? Could explain why they needed no direction if they’re just lying in an empty field.

Well, it’s a bit complicated.

First, Misan went on BBC Radio’s Private Passions podcast in March 2022. He was asked about the photo session and spoke about the willow tree.

Here’s the podcast episode, unfortunately only available to listen in the UK at this point. (While the podcast is available on Spotify, this episode - among many others - are missing so I suspect BBC Radio is being selective what they post.)

(Posting this without having listened to it. I couldn’t find a transcript to follow along with.)

Tom Bower gave the episode a listen and used it as a reference for Revenge:

Back in 2021 after the photo was originally published, Misan gave an interview to Good Morning Today, an American breakfast show on NBC (fyi, then-bestie Gayle King is with CBS). You can read about Misan’s interview and his comments here:

Then Getty killed the Waleses’ Mother’s Day photo for editing and people began complaining about the Sussexes’ photos being edited, citing Misan’s comments on BBC Radio, to which Misan responded:

Misan was furious enough that eventually he released the original photograph he took and some metadata to prove that all he did was apply a black and white filter, which is in line with Getty’s requirements.

Personally, releasing the metadata doesn’t give any proof that he manipulated image. All he did was show us the real photo and its metadata, but what he needs to do is show the metadata of the black and white photo. That’s where the proof is.

And note that there’s no timestamp or date on the metadata screenshot. So how do we know he’s showing us the metadata for the correct image?

But don’t forget that there were two images created for the pregnancy announcement. Yes, there’s the one where they’re sitting/lying down, but there’s also this one:

For which there’s no metadata and that even Misan himself seems to have forgotten that he took. It supposedly was taken in the same iPad photo shoot, but not included in the pregnancy announcement. Instead, it was distributed right after the Oprah interview on March 8, 2021.

It’s murky, but someone is lying because why would Misan talk about editing in a willow tree if - as per his defense two years later - he didn’t answer the question BBC was baiting him with?

So anyway, I’ll just end with this.

First, what Misan and the Sussexes are claiming is a jacaranda tree doesn’t look like any jacaranda tree I’ve seen. I’ve never seen one sprout horizontal branches/limbs that close to the ground (they’re usually up a few feet).

And second, from a columnist of the LA Times:

Seems pretty fitting that the Sussexes used a jacaranda tree after all, doesn’t it?

Link

[autumnpodcast]

Autumn Episode 1 is OUT!

It’s finally out in the world like a little baby bird taking flight and we cannot be more excited about it!

Listen wherever you get your podcasts, including Apple Podcasts and Spotify!

Jade Adler has worked for wellness influencer Autumn Gandara for years, believing that they’re helping people feel healthier and making the world a better place. But when Autumn launches a new supplement powder without Jade’s input and customers report strange side effects, Jade’s belief in Autumn and their mission falters. The more she investigates, the stranger things become, pulling her into a dangerous and supernatural conspiracy, where wellness has a price.

This is a brand new supernatural mystery audio drama, created by @themadelynstarr and made by an amazing group of people and friends all in it for the love of the craft. It stars Leesa Kim, Carolyn Vasko, Caroline Stevens, and David Rogers. More info at autumnpodcast.com.

We can't wait to hear what you all think, and enjoy the autumnal vibes!

[sun-undone]

can we please get in depth podcast episodes on Spotify for season 4?

well i was gonna make a separate post about this but i guess this is as good a place as any to say that i will officially be ending the diver down podcast.

i’d been promising for a long while that i’d get to season 3 and had just recently decided to skip it entirely and cut right to season 4 instead since i enjoyed part 1 so much. but after part 2, it really REALLY fucking sucks, but i think a lot of y’all will understand me when i say that i do not want to participate in meaningful analysis of this show for a very long while (maybe ever again) after the complete disrespect we as fans have been shown by the writers and (some) actors of this show. it hurts so fucking bad and it sounds dramatic but i feel like a safe place has been stolen. we all joked about the pates’ lazy writing and bent over backwards to make their decisions make sense sometimes, but this is a whole other level of bullshit that feels personal. it’s not just the jj stuff either. sarah and pope’s storylines (if you could even call them that) also reeked of some very foul ideologies that the pates seemed to be able to hide well enough in the other seasons but suddenly decided to bring to the forefront in a very disgusting way in 2024 of all fucking years.

i’m just incredibly disappointed and betrayed and angry and while i had a lack of motivation and lukewarm disinterest in deep diving season 3, this is an entirely different level of visceral distaste.

so i will not be making any more podcast episodes about outer banks.

from the bottom of my heart, i’m so very grateful to everyone who have listened and found joy in listening to all of my rants. it means so much that i could be a bright spot in people’s lives, even if it was just for one single hour. this fandom has created so many incredible fucking pieces of art and i feel so lucky to have added a small piece of my own to that. as betrayed as so many of us feel, no one can take away the community we’ve formed and the art we’ve produced. i don’t regret a single second of it because of that.

i’ll probably make a short explanation/goodbye episode but it will likely be very concise and not go into detail about my specific thoughts on what went so very wrong. i hope some of y’all stick around if you’re interested in the other stuff i’m watching/reading cause wow they’re miles better than obx and i will always have rambles to share.

thank you so much again and i’m sorry if this is disappointing to anyone or a piece of even more bad news after an already taxing week ❤️

[youareinlovetv]

you wake up. you get out of bed to your alarm set on your phone, and go downstairs to eat breakfast. you decide to go on tumblr for your morning scroll while eating, and find that the ads have gotten more frequent now. they’re all for mobile games. and you can’t mute them because there’s no mute button. you decide to go to youtube to watch a video instead but remember that you have to skip 2 15 second ads just it watch, with 10 ad breaks in an 8 minute video.

you get up and finish getting ready, and go drive to work. on your way, you see dozens of billboards advertising medicine, restaurants, and other things. you turn on the radio to be bombarded with an ad break that feels longer and longer each time you turn on the radio. you open spotify instead and find out your premium subscription expired because you forgot to pay it. no worries, you don’t need it! you shuffle your playlist and after the first song plays, 3 30 second ads play back to back, with the most annoying sounds possible. after your ad break is over, spotify teases you and gives you a 10 second ad saying how you should buy premium.

you arrive to work and open your email inbox to find that half of it is spam, filled with ads and offers for services, dumb skin care products, fake deals on stores. you close your email and decide to listen to a podcast while you work. 5 minutes into the podcast, without warning, the hosts go into an ad break and talk about their new sponsor. this goes on for 5 minutes more. you turn off the podcast and decide to work in silence until you go home.

on your way home, you see the same billboards teasing you like they did in the morning. you don’t get tempted.

you decide to go to the store to get a sweet treat for yourself for all the work you did today. as you’re checking out, the cashier asks if you want to join their rewards program. you say no. they insist. they describe all the “offers” and “benefits” of the program. after saying no 6 times, and waiting 5 minutes, they stop trying. you leave the store.

you go home and decide to watch a show. you open your streaming service to find that they demoted you down to an “ad-supported” tier, and to get no ads again, you have to pay a higher price. but it shouldn’t be that bad. you start playing the show, but 5 minutes in an ad break comes on. it lasts 5 minutes. there’s 6 ad breaks throughout the 44 minute episode. you quit watching after the 2nd break.

you decide instead that maybe you can watch some tiktok to unwind, but that was a bad decision. half of your for you page is cluttered with sponsorships, temu-grade products, and livestreams of people baiting for money.

you close tiktok and think about how boring your life is, so you google “things you can do to make your life less boring”. the first 10 results are all ads for amusement parks that cost too much money and games that also cost too much money. after scrolling through the ads, you find articles with lists of ideas, but by #100 they start repeating the same ideas, but with different wording. you closed the tab after seeing the 6th pop up asking you to subscribe to their email list.

maybe you can read a book! you’ve already read all your physical books, so maybe you can read one of the books you got for your kindle. you pick up your kindle and see an ad on the screen for some dumb product. you put the kindle down and decide to go to bed early.

laying down in bed awake, you wonder how we got this way. how riddled our society is with marketing, corporations, and ads. why everyone wants to sell you something. why instead of making something you love and sharing it with the world, you ruin it with greedy marketing schemes and tactics.

but you can’t do anything about it, can you?

you close your eyes and try to sleep.

you dream about a world without greed, and realize that it’s never going to become a reality.

[bullet-prooflove]

Prey!Series Part Four: Free - OA Zidan x Reader

Tagging: @trublu2u @mrspeacem1nusone @greenies-green @rosaliedepp @whateversomethingbruh @anime-weeb-4-life @daydreaming-belle @burningpeachpuppy @scarlettsakura @divergent146 @upsteadlogic @malindacath @skyesthebomb @yezzyyae @redpool

It’s another basement, but this time it’s a happier ending.

Omar sincerely believes that as he stands outside of a house that costs upwards of a million dollars and watches the girls who now stand in the garden, that overlooks the beach. There’s over twenty of them.

They’d been crowded into another damp basement, one that was barely bigger than his kitchen. The conditions were cramped, squalid. Each one is in a state of disarray, their clothing is brightly coloured, barely there. Most of them had still been turning tricks up until the moment you’d gotten your hands on Snake. Now they’re mostly huddled together in groups, thermal blankets wrapped around their shoulders as paramedics review their vitals, triaging the ones that need the most urgent care.

Seeing them all out here in the fresh air, the sun on their faces…

It settles something in his chest because for the first time since stepping into country they’re free.

As soon as the perps are taken into custody, you’re on the phone. The Human Trafficking Division has crisis teams in place to handle large scale operations like this. It won’t take them too long to scramble. He knows it’s going to be a long night for your team, there’s going to be interviews with the girls, strategy meetings, leads to chase down, connections to other networks.

It never ends. There’s always going to be another and then another.

He understands to most people it’s a game of whack amole but when he looks at these girls, the difference it makes on an individual level, he gets why you do it. He sees the reason you keep hammering away at the problem despite the fact you’re swimming against the tide.

It takes a special person to do what you do and not become jaded. He’s still thinking about that when he sits across from you in a coffeeshop later that evening. You’ve chosen somewhere lowkey, open late. There’s jazz playing in the background, something he recognises from a lifetime ago.

You’re wearing your hair down tonight; it falls across your features, hiding the bruise that’s now blossoming across the left side of your face. He resists the urge to reach out and brush it back behind your ear. He likes this version of you, the woman outside of the job. You smile a lot more, you’re more relaxed, carefree.

The music has him telling you about his teenage years, how he used to sneak out at the age of seventeen and visit jazz clubs in Harlem. He’s still a fan of the genre, he has a few friends who play in a band, they have a gig coming up in a couple of weeks. You make plans to attend, work permitting, and he realises in that moment that he’s not the only one looking towards the future.

He finds himself laughing when you tell him you used to be a ghost walk tour guide back in Delaware. You were good at it too; you show him a recording of one of your tours and he finds himself enamoured. You have such a talent with words, the way you tell the stories, it’s so visual, he gets chills up his spine.

“I have a podcast.” You reveal, a blush creeping up your cheeks. “It’s on Spotify, I tell ghost stories from around the city. I don’t usually tell people about it.”

“Show me.” He urges.

You end up on his side of the table, his arm resting on the back of the seat as you lean in close. The scent of your perfume floods his senses, nectarines, and something floral. Jasmine, he thinks. The two of you scroll through your episode list as you describe each of the stories to him. The way you light up when you talk about your passion, truly it’s beautiful.

You tilt your head up towards him and you have that look in your eyes, the one that makes his heartbeat just that little faster in his chest. His thumb chases over the line of your jaw, and you close your eyes, savouring the sensation. It’s been a long time since you’ve allowed yourself to be touched, he can tell from the way you respond to him.

“Hanna…” He says, tipping your chin up and you know what he’s asking.

If this is as far as you want to go tonight, he has no problem with that. He’s ready to take things at your pace, as slow as you need to go.

“Kiss me.” You whisper and he does.

His mouth is heated, soft. He kisses you with a tenderness you’ve never felt before, and you know in that moment that you’ve met the man that you’re supposed to spend the rest of your life with.

Your soulmate.

Omar Zidan.

Love Omar? Don’t miss any of his stories by joining the taglist here.

Interested in supporting me? Join my Patreon for Bonus Content!

Like My Work? - Why Not Buy Me A Coffee

[oh-tobeafrog]

(no tmagp spoilers)

first of all, MAGNUS PROTOCOL YIPPEEEE

second, does anyone else wish they’ll upload the episodes onto a different spotify podcast than tma? there’s already SO many episodes in the tma one, and it’ll make finding episodes a lot harder if they’re all there (since when they’re all released, you cant skip to the first tmagp episode by going to top).

just wondering if anyone thinks similarly / if rusty quill has said they’ll change this after a week or two…

[crescencestudio]

can i give u all an unsolicited recommendation

if u struggle w insomnia or falling asleep for ANY reason. i can not. recommend. the “sleep with me” podcast on spotify enough.

this is what you’re going to do ok.

search “sleep with me” on spotify and there should be a podcast by Dearest Scooter. it’s like 1000+ episodes and they’re each at least an hour long

u will play it on your phone while you’re in bed. set the sleep timer on your spotify to whatever time you want (i do 45 mins, 1 hr, or the full podcast depending on how i’m feeling). and then just play it.

this person is the perfect blend of boring and interesting. like he’s not so boring it’s distracting but he’s not so interesting he keeps you up listening (he does this on purpose!!!). IT HAS WORKED FOR ME EVERY TIME IVE EVER STRUGGLED W FALLING ASLEEP AND I HAVE HAD CHRONIC INSOMNIA FOREVER!!!!

can’t sleep bc of trauma, grief, anxiety, insomnia, U NAME IT!!! IVE ALWAYS FALLEN ASLEEP LISTENING TO AN EPISODE

if i have to die on a hill defending a niche recommendation it would be this. i hope it helps one of u.

[mungoed]

hi everyone!!! making a little announcement here— at least for dharma & greg fans..

im starting to put every episode of dharma and greg onto spotify as a podcast

this is mainly for me so i can download episodes but its public for anyone else who wants to! ill be releasing episodes when i have the time and they’re all high quality

also keep in mind it is only audio!

tagging people i think might use this-> @greg-montgomery @ssahotchnerr @mrs-ssa-hotch @montyfandomlove @reidersspencer

[chemicallywrit]

I’m terribly inconsistent with audio drama sunday but there are so many stand-out eps this week that i HAVE to

@eelerschoice holy HECK, what a fantastic move with a blind protagonist, taking it as an opportunity to describe the world. Malevolent does it, but i think i like the way eeler’s choice does it better. Wonderful.

My beloved Steeplechase ended this week, and what a good ending. Endings are hard, and I know Justin wasn’t super thrilled about DMing, but he did such a fantastic job. I love these old man criminals so much. If you’re looking for Balance from the adventure zone, i’m not sure that’ll ever be recaptured, but if you want a good story, please listen to Steeplechase.

I am OBSESSED with the @kingmakerpod’s synechdekey (sp? i know it’s a synecdoche reference). What a fantastic plot device. This week’s ep was, as always, lovely and hilarious.

Forgive Me! was incredible. Yeah Father Ben, you punch out that scumbag misogynist. I’m so…proud of him? Yeah, proud of him.

I have a weird relationship with Leaving Corvat, because I like it, but it’s really clear to me that it’s American horror written by a European. It maybe actually adds to the horror, because everything feels very slightly…off? You know? However, this week’s episode had me feeling for Sleeper like I never have before, like he actually wants to be a good person, and suddenly I’m much more invested in his double who is married and expecting a kid. It took a very cool turn.

I’ve been catching up with four podcasts at once, as is my wont, and I just finished up Madame Magenta: Sonos Mystica. I. Love her. She’s so good. I can’t wait to start Madame Magenta Presents.

I’ve also been listening through Fall of the House of Sunshine, and if you told me which characters would survive to season three, I don’t think i would have believed you. A dozen of the songs of this show are ending up on my spotify playlists. They’re just so. So! You know? I’m on 3.8 and I’m wondering when the next cringy gross song will happen. We’ve had too many heartfelt ones lately. This is the one i keep thinking about this week:

I also just started Gastronaut! And i didn’t know what I was expecting, but I think I’m in love? More on that another day, I expect.

For personal news, I am hype for the last few weeks of Re: Dracula, especially with the miniseries we’re planning soon. We’re halfway through recording season five of Inn Between, with recording on hold for a bit while I sort job stuff. Gotta make sure you can pay people. I’m also HYPE OUT OF MY MIND for the premier of The Dead, a zombie project I’ve been working on with Bloody FM that premiers on Halloween. Keep an eye out, i’m going to show it off all over.

Speaking of job stuff, I’m currently trying to make rent before i get my first paycheck from my new job! If you liked this or like the other things I do, i’d really appreciate a stop by my ko-fi. Get a sticker while you’re there!

Until next week!

[puckpocketed]

https://www.tumblr.com/puckpocketed/761214416380411904/corey-pronman-being-a-transparent-carter-yakemchuk

I must know what podcast this is I have to fight this man over who is a bigger yak fan

oh !! hello cecilia (checks notes) carter yakemchuk enthusiast dot tumblr ! how did I not notice you before this… take my fin i also believe in him <3

the podcast is the Athletic Hockey Show, and it’s their episode called “Michkov or Celebrini the Calder favourite?” In which Pronman gets grilled over his hot takes (U-23 rankings, archive link), which I’m given to understand he gets attacked for every year, like clockwork? I think he likes stirring the pot for fun at this point. good lortd there’s a lotta comments on twt and in the article itself and on reddit and. well. probably every other forum under the sun.

Here is the spotify link, grilling starts at 12:10 and you don’t have to listen far to get to the Yak section, though the first part i found very fun as a Sharks fan!

something I love about the Hockey Podcast Milieu is how quickly news will spread until they’re all just in conversation with each other without having exchanged a single word <3 everything begins to look like pastiches of each other, only biased towards one of 32 teams — whomever is hosting — everyone thinks their guy should be ranked higher, or at the very least THAT guy should be ranked lower, and how dare Pronman say Lane Hutson has “average puckhandling”?? tomatoes!! tomatoes!! etc.

idk i’m just delighted that the podcast sphere are at each others throats about their little guys <3 i love the chaos of it. if you follow enough media about enough teams you soon realise how little attention is being paid to the world outside of their bubbles. on the actual podcast these so-called ‘experts’ name “zetterberg” as a sharks player . i giggled. no one knows anything. i think thats beautiful !

[capriprov]

Watch the FULL version of our trailer here!

CAPRICIOUS PROVENANCE is an award winning D&D 5e AP Audio Drama fusion set in an arcanepunk, partially homebrewed world of Eberron! After The Last War devastated Khorvaire - and their lives - fate follows four unlikely friends attempting to grapple with their own destinies as the fate of the world falls into a chaotic uncertainty.Join our…heroes(?) as they navigate their ever-changing lives in the wake of destruction, wading in the depths of their trauma as they connect with the troubled people living in a fragmented world. We’re an all queer & trans, majority BIPOC cast of tabletop creatives that bend the rules, change the lore, and break the game to tell a story of fighting tooth and nail against the way things are, and daring to hope for change.

Capricious Provenance is free to listen to, and advertisement-free. Our team is small, and we have started this project with no funding. This podcast is a labor of love and collaboration between a group of friends that are very passionate about the art they create. We are hoping to acquire funding and grow the team in the future! For now, you can support the show via Ko-fi.

Will I like Capricious Provenance?

While Capricious Provenance’s main game system is D&D 5e, we use a mixture of different games in the podcast - such as Pathfinder and 1400 Sneak - to help tell our story. Additionally, while the world is set in 5e’s Eberron, it has been altered significantly and partially homebrewed to suit our main characters, featuring elements from various supplements such as Heliana's Guide to Monster Hunting. Capricious Provenance is full of magic, whimsy, gods, monstrosities, political intrigue, and queer romance. There is a heavy focus on storytelling through character roleplay that makes room for heart wrenching character arcs and gives space for relationships between the characters to organically develop. The show explores themes of found family, generational trauma, religious trauma, healing, self discovery, the cost of war, freedom and revolution against an oppressive regime. It is ultimately a story of hope in dire times, embracing the monsters within ourselves formed by the world we live in, and finding the beauty in brutality. If you are a fan of media such as Dragon Age, Castlevania, Monster Hunter, The Owl House or Baldur’s Gate 3, you may enjoy Capricious Provenance!

Capricious Provenance Features:

A mixture of actual play and audio drama that places you in the shoes of our characters as we roll the dice.

Award-winning immersive narrative combat scenes that put you right in the center of the action. (Rainbow Roll Fest 2023)

Tarot readings and content warnings at the beginning of every episode so the listener knows precisely what they’re getting into.

Supplementary content, such as a short “radio broadcast” series providing updates directly from the world of our campaign and animatics illustrated by our artists.

Episode re-caps and lorekeeping, and more!

Where to Listen & Where to find us:

Listen on the Official Podcast Profile Listen elsewhere: Spotify || Pocket Casts || Google Play || Apple Podcasts || iHeartRadio Listen & watch more content on: Youtube You can find us on: Twitter || Instagram || Tiktok || Bluesky

Check out our website for cast information, character profiles and more details about the world: capriciousprovenance.carrd.co

[eddie-redmayne-italian-blog]

Why Eddie Redmayne and Gayle Rankin Love the ‘Organized Chaos’ Backstage at ‘Cabaret’

By Gordon Cox

If you think there’s a lot going on onstage in “Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club,” you should see what’s going on backstage.

Speaking on the latest episode of Variety’s theater podcast, “Stagecraft,” the Tony-nominated actors Eddie Redmayne and Gayle Rankin revealed the boisterous behind-the-scenes life of “Cabaret,” where the show’s full cast, plus the cast of its prologue performances, plus its food and drink servers, all overlap. “It’s organized chaos,” Rankin declared — but a chaos modulated by the precision of synchronized watches.

“There’s so much hedonism and so much debauchery going on a minute away onstage, but we’re all backstage like, ‘I’m going to put my wig on now and synchronize my watch,'” Rankin says.

Redmayne adds, “What’s lovely is that some of the dressing rooms are now used as kitchens, and as you’re running onstage, you’re passing waiters who are coming back.”

“I almost stood on a fork last night!” Rankin interjected. “There was a fork on the floor.”

“The ‘Cabaret’ hazards,” Redmayne laughed. “But there’s something wonderful about that because you feel like you’re part of the whole building, from the dressers to the makeup artists to the waiters to the prologue cast.”

With luxe cocktails flowing at every performance, “Cabaret” has spurred talk of rowdy audience members disrupting the show. It happens, admitted the two actors, but not all that often. “It doesn’t feel like a chronic problem,” Rankin said.

“In [the opening number] ‘Vilkommen,’ I’m trying to really pull this audience to a place of ecstasy and joy, so I love someone that I can interact with,” Redmayne says. “And what has been known to happen is I get perhaps too interactive with people who I then realize, well, part of the reason they’re so interactive is because they’ve had a glass of champagne too many.”

He continued, “I’ve also been offered a few drinks — and I’m never one to turn down a sip of champagne during quite a workout of a number!”

Also on the new “Stagecraft,” the actors discuss the “umbilical cord” linking their characters, Sally Bowles and the Emcee; Redmayne reveals how he’s managed to play the Emcee four different times now; and Rankin talks about why Tony night, June 16, is an especially big night for her — because it’s also her premiere episode as a season-two star of HBO hit “The House of the Dragon.”

To hear the entire conversation, listen at the link above or download and subscribe to “Stagecraft” on podcast platforms including Apple Podcasts, Spotify and the Broadway Podcast Network. New episodes of “Stagecraft” are released every other week.

https://variety.com/2024/legit/podcasts/eddie-redmayne-gayle-rankin-cabaret-at-the-kit-kat-club-backstage-1236016522/

[disasterarea-podcast]

Aww, look, new people! *waves*

Okay, so just a quickie 101 for anyone who’s never listened to the podcast before:

“Disaster Area” can be found at pretty much anywhere you listen to podcasts - Apple Podcasts, Spotify, etc.

The podcast has an Instagram, a Facebook page, this page, and a Twitter I don’t use much anymore if at all for obvious reasons. It also has a Patreon page which you can find the link to if you just scroll down a post or two. If you sign up for the Patreon, you can get episodes ad-free AND early.

I do almost all of this myself (some kind people have been nice enough to help by doing research, which I’m so grateful for) so bear with me when it comes to, say, audio issues. (I try to make sure it’s good enough for government work, but your mileage may vary. The writing and research is my wheelhouse.)

There are 218 episodes at this point and if you’re going to start at episode one … uh, you don’t really have to, those early episodes are unsurprisingly me getting into my groove, they’re kind of messy, but it’s been six and a half years and I’ve gotten way better. Well, one hopes.

If you listen to earlier episodes, I start off the episode by saying I am open to requests. Right now, I have a loooooong list of requests to work on, so requests are on hold.

I have a pet peeve with podcasts which start with a half hour of chatter (I mean, sometimes I’m cool with it, sometimes very much not), so each episode dives directly into the action. I save my own personal discussions for AFTER the meat of the episode is over, so if that’s not your thing, you can just stop before *I* start babbling.

For anyone who wants to avoid politics, politics and disaster response and recovery are almost always tied together. However, I don’t care what your political party, if you’re a politician who made bad decisions before, during, or after a disaster, I will call that out.

I wish I could say the podcast comes out on a regular schedule, but I have a full-time job, a part-time job, and depression and anxiety with my biggest issues being fatigue and executive dysfunction, soooooo. It comes when it comes.

Oh, about me … my name is Jennifer, I am 45 years old (for the next 27 days), I’m bisexual, I have a beagle named Professor whom you will probably hear clacking around the apartment or barking at stray cats in the background sometimes, I have been devouring everything I can learn about disasters since I was eight or so, I like crafty stuff and road trips, and I adore Halloween so much my bedroom is decorated for it 24/7/365.

[royal-confessions]

“the spotify exec was right, meghan and harry are lazy grifters who just want to complain. they didn’t want to deal with the brf so they left to go do their own businesses, expect meghan could barely scrape together a few episodes of the podcast. people complain about will and kate being lazy but at least they can show up with a snails and do their job with no complaints. meghan and harry can’t do anything within or outside of the brf, they have no skills. they’re doomed in america honestly.” - Submitted by Anonymous

“All the projects carried out by Meghan after leaving the royal family have not gone so well. The serie "Pearl" canceled without even appearing on screen, her podcast canceled after the first season, her children's book has not sold that much and her self celebrating awards are ridiculed by the press. Only the documentary in which Harry appears as well and his biography got a lot of interest. I think Meghan overated her own abilities. She's not as intelligent as she thinks she is and besides her pretty face she is not good at anything else.” - Submitted by Anonymous

“Thank you Spotify for taking a chance on the Sussexes and proving to the world that if you give them all the time, money & freedom in the world, they will produce very little, what they do produce will be of poor quality, and they will try to paint YOU as the problem as they get shown the door. I believe now more than ever that they never meant to leave TRF and Megxit was a reaction to them being TOLD they were being transitioned out of being working royals.” - Submitted by Anonymous

“Meghan and Harry don't deserve their contracts with Netflix and Spotify. All that funding could have gone to people to with substance. Talking shit about personal problems is not talent, that's being tactless.” - Submitted by Anonymous

“Meghan and Harry can afford all the help in the world to take care of their children and house yet they could not met the requirements of their Spotify deal. Millions or billions of people in the world have children and do not have the help that they have yet they successfully do their jobs. If they can do it, why can’t Harry and Meghan?” - Submitted by Anonymous