Roderick on the Line is one of those most podcast-y of podcasts. An opportunity for two friends to catch up with one another, regale the audience with strange tales and musings, whilst being off-handedly comical and silly. It combines the podmaster Merlin Mann (You Look Nice Today, Back to Work and 43 Folders) with the cantankerous harrumpherer, musical powerhouse and charming old-school rascal John Roderick, of The Long Winters. Charming, ridiculous, daft and high-minded all at once, combining the immense wits, knowledge and considerations of two people who are at once clear friends and co-conspirators.
John Roderick and Merlin Mann
The show is essentially a free-form conversation, usually exceeding an hour and always covering an almost bewildering array of concepts, at least half of which are discussed in alarming depth. Across an episode or two they might, say, go from a long tale about why exactly you shouldn’t kiss Cockatiels, to a vehement argument about pizza before segueing into why exactly Howard Hughes wasn’t quite as crazy as you thought. As with all good podcasts though, the lynchpin is not it’s variety, but the chemistry. Working intricately between the pair’s penchant for facetiousness and love of a semi-serious screed over the nature of the world is their tangible affection for one another. Their endless humour and sheer enjoyment of one another’s company is reflected throughout, coming across most pertinently in the way they care about each other’s thoughts on a topic, no matter how much they might come out of it with the same opinion as they arrived with. There is too a shared love of almost being nonsensical in their thoughts and realisations, using this warped vision to get across something truer than might otherwise be available.
Why it’s Mr. John Roderick Esp.
This nature of nonsense is pretty unending and very much a cornerstone for the show. An almost artistic approach to being facetious that is every inch the delight, with much of said madness emerging from the mouth of John Roderick. It is to Roderick’s great credit that he is not only blessed with complicated and elegantly described thoughts on any topic, mixing brutal analogies with lovely and very much old-school moments of sageness, but that he has the gusto to discuss them until he feels they have been properly discussed. Naturally, this results in such homespun genius as: ‘It’s very difficult to teach people things now that we can’t use branding irons,’ or filigrees of perfectly reducted philosophy, for example on the subject of ‘unconditional love’: ‘the number one condition that people place on love is that the other person must love them unconditionally first.’ His intelligence is a constant joy for the show, leading him down many blind alleys and then leading back into the light, with new nuggets of proper learning. And being able to ally this with the incredible life experience and stories he has come to possess over his years as a musical troublemaker mean that he is unending fascinating, forever owning a unique perspective on the human condition. This ability to skewer human life, combined with his idiosyncratic take on the ways of people make for a speaker who is not only knowledgeable, sharp and honest, but also one who has something very distinct to make sense out of.
Merlin Mann looking a little forlorn
Working opposite, or alongside, this is Mr Merlin Mann. A constant podcast personality and cottage industry on the subject of work, Mann shares Roderick’s passion for deconstruction, unremitting facetiousness and willingness to dig behind the sofa of human life. Operating as a quasi-interviewer, he pushes Roderick to announce the thoughts in his head rather than allowing him to drift (though little invite is often needed) but also working beyond this to deliver his own very specific considerations to the table. In one episode he reduces automated tills to: ‘Buying onions you don’t understand from a computer that thinks it’s better than you.’ Another aspect aligning the two is a very distinct brand of ‘in my day’ type traditionalism, but one which also is perfectly focused on the future. They don’t simply aim to challenge the present with the spectre of the past, but to instead bring the world to rights, making it realise all the ways in which the past is vital to the future and focusing on the ways in which things used to be better, without the rose-tinted spectacles that so many might bear. It is what they share that brings them together, their similarities and not their differences being the focus of the enterprise.
Roderick on the Line is an example to junior podcasters, showcasing a dynamic and knowledgable pair of hosts who use their experience, intelligence and wits to explain and deconstruct the issues that crop into their heads. It is prototype podcasting, and something which many would do to take a lesson from.
You can find the podcast on iTunes or up on www.merlinmann.com/roderick. You can also tweet in their faces @hotdogsladies (for Merlin) or @Roderick