Evie wasn’t sure whether she would still have dropped out of her course knowing what she did now. She would definitely have opted to do the podcast all over again. She’d learned so much during the research, planning, networking, editing and marketing of the show, and she wouldn’t have seen a lot of films she’d ended up loving if it hadn’t been for the podcast. And though the audience they’d developed over the years was relatively small, they were very engaged and enthusiastic.

Now Evie had insight into the future, she also knew that podcasts would soon go gangbusters. Depending on what happened in her time-travelling journey—whether she stayed here in the past or was somehow magicked back to her proper life—she had knowledge about the things that could drive the success of their podcast, even before they’d started it. She would start dedicated social media accounts as soon as it launched and spend a decent amount of time building up their followers. And she’d start challenging the status quo even earlier.

‘Hey, you know what we should do?’ Evie said suddenly.

‘Chat after the lecture?’ Ben muttered.

‘Start a podcast about film and TV,’ she said, ignoring him.

‘What the hell’s a podcast?’

‘It’s like a TV series but for radio,’ Evie said, her excitement increasing.

‘Who’d be interested in that?’

‘Just think about it,’ Evie pressed on. ‘You can listen to a podcast while you’re driving, walking or doing housework. And podcast makers provide information, stories, interviews and a whole range of other stuff to their audience. It’s perfect given how much people have to multitask nowadays.’

Always up for new ideas, Ben thought about it for a few moments and then said, ‘It sounds kind of interesting.’

‘Yeah, I think podcasts are going to be huge one day. We’re only getting busier, radio is very general, and people will want to find a way to listen to people talk about things they’re interested in while they’re on the go.’

‘What sort of things would we talk about?’ asked Ben.

‘Given you’re more interested in docos, you could research the best documentaries hitting the market and I could research indies and romcoms. Once we’ve chosen the films we want to cover, we could both do reviews and interview the directors and other creatives. It would be an awesome way to get our foot in the door of the industry. And we could try and make some kind of difference. Shake up the space a bit, while promoting our own work.’

Ben nodded slowly. ‘I reckon you’re onto something, Berry, and it’d be fun doing it together. Plus, it’d be a nice résumé filler.’ For a budding creative, Ben could be so practical. ‘We could maybe do interviews over lunch or dinner?’