Podcasts

George The Poet + Benbrick: Midnight Chats – Episode 83

How to make a podcast so brilliant it can alter peoples' perspectives

In 2018 one podcast series soared above pretty much every other: Have You Heard George’s Podcast?

Rewind to 2015 and George Mpanga was signed to Universal Music and appeared on the BBC Sound Poll. The spoken word artist, writer and rapper was at the beginning of a promising music career. But the format wasn’t right; he was never going to be able to explore his experience and all his thoughts as a young black man from a north west London council estate who studied at Cambridge University in a 4 minute hip hop track. So the podcast was born.

He teamed up with producer and sound designer Benbrick, and the outcome was a perspective-altering piece of storytelling: a true game-changer for audio. That’s why it won all the British Podcast Awards.

On Monday 4 November the keenly-anticipated second series of the podcast begins on the BBC Sounds app.

Earlier this week I went to Benbrick’s London studio to meet the duo to hear about that, and so much more.