Years ago, I’d remember listening to Simon Mayo on Radio 2 (by accident) as he asked if podcasting was the future of broadcasting.
I was fascinated at that stage and investigated into what people were doing and what was happening, but it took a while to gain some traction and then it went totally mental.
I was into podcasts and then I was out of podcasts because I found it hard to focus because I kept getting offered so many different ones which all seemed so exciting which scattered my brain.
One of the best things I listened to was S Town which became one of the most famous podcasts and also the Sweet Bobby podcast that Tom introduced me to which is about catfishing.
But with all of these things what I realised was that you need to be able to focus people into an area that they want, and your audience will be extremely small.
It’s only the real lucky guys who are the big hitters like Steven Bartlett that get the enormous interest.
And so, we started podcasting. First Andy would do the Academy podcast stuff and I would do Incisive Decisive with my friend Shaun Sellars.
The Academy was just interesting guests and Incisive Decisive was ethics and philosophy in dentistry and Shaun and I have had discussions now about restarting this because it stopped through the pandemic because we couldn’t get face-to-face and then life got in the way.
It’s worth remembering though that we designed specifically into our new building a podcasting room which is now our general manager’s office because we then realised that we could podcast anywhere.
And so, a while ago we decided to reinvigorate the podcast and realised that it would have to be regular and authentic and passionate in an area that we were really interested in and felt that people would benefit from the knowledge that was provided through the waves.
And so, The Campbell Academy podcast got renamed to ‘Nothing but the Tooth’ and I decided to try to put together episodes that I would really like to listen to (and I do).
So, one of the things that fascinates me the most is how the most successful people that I meet had the most atypical pathways to that success.
So, we started to interview people with that in mind and we first did a Zoom podcast with John Gibson because I wanted to help and I wanted to promote his new charity and he finds himself in a position of running a foundation in the memory of his son through a completely atypical pathway that he never hoped, dreamed or nightmared that he would be in.
John’s the only person that’s ever done a Zoom podcast on this edition of the ‘Nothing but the Tooth’ podcast and he will be the only one that ever does as far as I’m concerned.
But we’re able to talk to other amazing people like Rony Jung whose pathway being one of the most respected and well-known implant surgeons in the world is ridiculously convoluted.
Sara Symington who is a director of Olympic and Paralympic performance at British Cycling with an amazing and fascinating patchwork life.
Gurmit Samra, the director of ‘Get Gone’ a film on Amazon which has now been streamed millions of time but has fought against discrimination and racial barriers through his whole career.
The most recent version of the podcast though was Louis Dunne, which is a weird and bizarre choice for many because he’s not (yet) famous outside a small group of triathletes in the East Midlands.
But Louis’s story is devastating and inspirational and wonderful and terrible altogether (a bit like your best ever Disney movie).
If you don’t know who Louis is, you can read my introduction to him here but if you’re interested in dedicating yourself to be good at something and your aspiration is to be in the top 100 in the world or even just the top 100 in your street it’s perhaps worth listening to what is actually required.
Louis’s description of his routines and his sacrifices which to him just drip off the tongue and seem completely normal are, to the rest of us, verging on superhuman.
I’ve been able to watch this story first-hand and wide screen for the past 6 years, but you can have it condensed in about 40 odd minutes of fascinating and insightful instruction into how to be better.
You can view all the episodes of the podcast here and so we’re only at 5 now but very soon we’ll be at 50 and then 500 and then 5,000.
When I started to do the blog, I thought it might get to 10, it’s now at 3254.
Drip, drip, here we go day after day.
I hope you have a look at it. Not because I want to be famous for podcasting because I don’t, and I won’t be but because I really feel that the people that we talk to can give us an insight to help us become better versions of ourselves.
Blog Post Number - 3254
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