There are a lot of beautiful aspects that lie within podcasting but one of the best has to be the freedom. Creators are free to do whatever they want, with no network breathing down their neck, no sense of loyalty to anyone in particular and you can just forget about censorship. Although with this freedom comes a question, how regularly do you need to update your podcast before it is classed as dead? Since 2005 a lot of podcasts have come and gone, some are still with us and will seemingly never die and others update so irregularly that you give up all hope until one day, out of the blue comes a gasping breath of a single MPEG file.
Chances are that if you are a big enough nerd you will have already heard about the Yogscast. Their empire stretches far and wide over the internet, mainly finding home on Youtube. Similar to Roosterteeth, The Yogscast is a group of extremely nerdy people that like to play games and share their adventures with the world. Dissimilar to Roosterteeth, The Yogscast has a podcast that doesn’t feel forced or as if it was designed by a committee. That’s no slight on Roosterteeth and even if it was, what would they care, their podcast is extremely popular but The YoGPoD has a much more organic feel than that of Roosterteeth.
Lewis Brindley and Simon Lane or Xephos and Honeydew as they are more fondly known to the Yognau(gh)ts host the show. Over time they have had various guests, namely Warwick Davis, Brian Blessed and even The Queen pops over from Adam and Joe to say hi every now and then. As I alluded to before, The YoGPoD feels like a very real show and the humble beginnings were nothing more than two friends try to make each other laugh through the power of the internet. Since then the show has evolved, developed and mutated through various different stages. Animated stories, Dungeons And Dragons recordings and interviews have all popped up on the feed.
Whilst the variety and entertainment value of all these different releases are fun, none are more fun that the annual Halloween Spackular. The Halloween specials are the only surviving remnants of The YoGPoD right now and for this I am very grateful. These episodes are a more heightened version of the ones where Lewis and Simon would talk bollocks for an hour. Don’t be fooled by the comedy aspect of this show either, these episodes can get genuinely scary and legitimately creepy when the two swap ghost stories in between some fun talk and ridiculous games. I would highly recommend listening to these at night, alone and maybe even outside, I did that with the second special and I will never forget the story of The Smiling Man.
There was a time when this podcast dominated the iTunes charts and I understand that a lot of people will have heard of it but since then I feel that whenever the podcast rises to the top again it is down to the release of the Halloween episodes and the die-hard Yognau(gh)ts update their favourite podcast. So hopefully I can bring a great show to a few new people. Also, if you have heard of The YoGPoD and you are not interested because you do not like their work on Youtube, I’d still suggest in at least giving it a go because if I’m honest, I am no huge fan of their Youtube stuff either. Not saying it’s bad, it’s just not for me.
A word of warning though, it has been said that listening to The YoGPoD may have the chance of turning yourself insane. Now, while I don’t have the full story, I think it’s important that I at least stress that this is a possibility. If it’s a challenge you are up for than The YoGPoD can provide three brilliant tasks for you to undertake, make sure you bring a shovel. Even if the show doesn’t get updated very regularly anymore, there is still one hundred and five of these little gems of human entertainment available on the iTunes feed, some that date back to 2009. There’s are argument for saying the earlier episodes are the best but isn’t their an argument for that in most forms of entertainment? However this is not to say that the later episodes aren’t still great and as their name suggests, the Halloween episodes are pretty spacktacular. Now, generally this is the part of the recommendation where I try to awkwardly insert a reference to a running theme from the podcast. Don’t worry, I am still planning on doing that but this one is so out there, that I need to make it clear that I have nothing to do with this absurdity and that there is a quite funny back-story to this phrase’s origin. So here we go; “I AM DAVE! (EXCLAMATION MARK) YOGNAUT AND I HAVE THE BALLS!”
