Why I started a podcast – and what I learnt

Kate interviewing 94-year-old Auschwitz survivor, Renee Salt, for the podcast

Kate Thompson, the author and podcaster, looks at why she began From the Library with Love, the podcast series in which she interviews Britain’s wartime generation. What lessons has she learned during the past six months?

I was given a piece of advice recently by a female writer far wiser than me: we all need a full portfolio. By that she meant: have lots of strings to your bow, diversify from books, use as many media as possible to get your stories out there.

With that in mind, I decided, in the spirit of nothing ventured, to set up a podcast. I’m laughing to myself as I write that line, because back then I was so naïve. “How hard can it be?” I thought to myself. “It’s only talking.”

Six months on, it’s the backdrop of my daily life. Checking downloads is utterly addictive, as is dreaming up new episodes.

The seed of an idea had been rattling around inside my mind for many years. Ever since I wrote my debut novel, Secrets of the Singer Girls, in 2016, I have been pounding the streets of London in search of social history.

It started out as research, but, if I’m honest, it’s now become something else. I love sitting on the sofa of a 90-something woman, cup of tea in hand, listening rapt to the raw and unfiltered gush of history. I love interviewing our wartime generation. The more I listen, the more I hear.

It can start off about the day-to-day stuff, tea dresses and Spam, Victory waves and vermillion, but then it graduates to the guts of wartime life, the pain and the loss, the hopes and the dreams. When I start a conversation without knowing where it will lead, the past is no longer dusty and sealed off behind a door, but bright, fantastic and vividly real.

The urgency to document the stories of our wartime generation grows daily. In five years’ time there will be no more lively reminiscing. ‘Primary sources’, as I believe proper historians call them, will no longer be around to tell us their tales.

History books will only tell you so much. Oral history is a different beast. It’s in these conversations, in the spaces between the reflection, the best china cups laid out on saucers, the framed photos on the wall, the body language and gestures, that you really get to explore and crucially understand history.

It’s the 94-year-old Blitz survivor you interviewed who insists on sitting near the door because “it’s funny, ain’t it, but all these years on I still have to know where the exit is.” (You later discovered she was buried alive in an Anderson shelter for three days.)

Or the Auschwitz survivor who absolutely insists you must eat the shortbread she has laid out for you. “My grandmother has a few issues around food,” explained her grandson after the interview.

Or the 88-year-old gentleman who collects half-used miniature pots of marmalade from hotels because he can’t stand to see waste. Turns out he nearly starved to death during the Occupation of Jersey, in the six month period known as the Siege.

These tiny details are the sinews and connective tissue that bring alive the extraordinary stories of ordinary people.

I began recording these conversations and by last Spring realised I had amassed a large amount of material. It occurred to me as I listened, how wonderful it would be to share these unique voices with other people, to have a central place, a library of interviews if you will, where I could document these stories.

And that’s how From the Library with Love was born.

What I have learnt:

Don’t expect to make money out of it. You do it because you have a burning message or story you want to share with others and it feeds into other aspects of your work.
So why do it at all? I like to see myself as a brand, and these podcasts are an extension of that. We are all in the business of sharing stories and podcasting is just one more way of doing that.
Be in it for the long term. Set a goal and fulfil it. It can take a long time to grow a podcast following so be consistent and stick at it.
That word, ‘consistent’. In podcasting, it’s everything. I post every Saturday without fail, and I tweet, Instagram and Facebook the hell out of every episode.
It’s a great way to come across potential book ideas. Through interviewing, I now have my next idea for a novel.
Writing is an isolating business at times. Not when you podcast. I have met so many fascinating authors and connected with publishers, editors, marketing and PR contacts. Plus the voyeur in me is loving hearing how other authors work. I’ve picked up some amazing tips along the way.
The more popular podcast episodes tend to be with our wartime generation. 100-year-old Betty Webb, a former Bletchley Park codebreaker, sharing the details of her remarkable wartime work is my most listened-to podcast.
Shortly followed by an episode about the surprising history of reading in wartime.
Third most popular is an interview with the inimitable Christy Lefteri, author of The Beekeeper of Aleppo, who urged me: “write what you feel, not what you know,” and discusses the power of storytelling and how happiness is found in a Greek deli on the Piccadilly Line.

Podcasting is a lot of fun. It gives you the chance to be creative on your own terms and, once you get in the mindset, suddenly, potential episodes and people to interview are everywhere. A female vicar who campaigned to get a plaque to one of Jack the Ripper’s victims put up in her church? Yes, please. A cemetery historian who uncovered a plague pit under Sainsburys? That’s a no-brainer.

The possibilities are endless. Now, it’s about time I went back to some actual writing!