Earlier this month, one of my all-time favorite podcasts Everything Is Stories returned from a long hibernation with the story of Lonewolf Smith, the mortician who cared for the body of infamous Boston bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev. Morally complicated, fraught, and revelatory, the episode is typical of the kind of stories EIS shares—tales of off-the-grid mystics, Standing Rock protesters, would-be portal hoppers, and private press cult songwriters. It’s how these stories are shared—slowly, deliberately, sans narration and soundtracked by ominous synth soundscapes—that excites me most. EIS episodes unfold at an unhurried pace and without a tidy moral delivered at the end. They ask you to sit, to suspended judgement, to wait for revelations that sometimes never come.
Created by Mike Martinez and Tyler Wray, the show’s new season was produced in partnership with Oscilloscope Laboratories. I corresponded with Martinez about the show’s return and 2024 plans.
The podcast is named for a quote by Harry Crews: "Truth of the matter was stories was everything, and everything was stories. Everybody told stories, it was a way of saying who they were in the world.” How has your understanding of this quote changed in the decade plus since beginning the podcast?
Ah, good catch with that. Off the cuff Everything Is Stories seems like a really generic/all-encompassing name—especially for a podcast—but it does have deeper significance rooted in the principles of storytelling. I’m glad you caught it.
It’s no secret the writings and ethos of Harry Crews, and many others, have been a tremendous inspiration and influence on our work, but the one thing that has changed over time is I find myself more drawn to the line right after that quote where he says: “It was their understanding of themselves.”
This also resonates with Joseph Campbell's assertion that, "Stories show us how to bear the unbearable, approach the unapproachable, conceive the inconceivable." We’re on a similar vantage point about storytelling and with EIS have made an effort to preserve these personal histories that are often pushed aside or not told at all. But where we differ is in our approach and we make a conscious effort to remove ourselves from the story and make room to let the person tell their story. Our aim is to honor the profound impact of storytelling while allowing the essence of each individual's narrative to take center stage.
My favorite episodes of the show feature people who exist outside of systems or who view their calling as coming from a higher source: a cattle thief, a mystic Christian musician, a mortician tending to the body of someone declared irredeemable by the surrounding community. What kind of criteria goes into deciding whose story will be featured?
That’s a great question, we don’t have any criteria per se, but when it comes to hunting stories for our show, we jump right over any rigid criteria in favor of narratives that defy convention and emerge from the margins of human experience. Our penchant lies in tales that traverse unexpected paths, weaving through consequential personal transformations and challenging societal norms. We typically find that people who have lived through some sort consequential changes to their notion of self and/or the world have the best stories. The tension is always there. Personally, I also have a fondness for stories that start in one place and end somewhere far far away from where they started.
If it isn’t already apparent, we prefer the long form as well, letting the story dictate the form rather than the converse. In fact, our upcoming season finale epitomizes this commitment to allowing stories to unfold organically. Originally envisioned as a single episode, then a two-part series, it soon became evident that the story's depth and breadth were too grand for even two episodes so we decided to roll with it. As the interviews continued and new tape emerged, the story ended up being three episodes, each over an hour in length. It’s by far the most comprehensive story we’ve ever worked on but the payoff is huge and it comes full circle in such a beautiful and haunting way.
I like the challenge and feel there’s a charm in letting the story dictate the form instead of delivering something compromised and trying to cram it into one episode or dragging a story out into a 10-episode full season thats’s mostly filler and deflates the narrative.
Oscilloscope is a cool company that's been responsible for a lot of interesting projects. How did you connect with them?
We’ve both been huge fans of Oscilloscope long before EIS was born. They’ve put out some of our favorite films and docs over the years. We first connected with them back in 2016 through the production company Filmscience (and by the way, we’re also huge fans of both Green Room and Blue Ruin). Anish Savjani from Filmscience is a big fan of the podcast and got in touch with us to see if we’d ever be interested in trying to turn one of our episodes into a documentary.
We had a story nearby, got some friends on board and went and made a five-minute proof of concept. They loved it and looped in Oscilloscope and to help us produce a short doc. In 2018 the doc, Reviled and Maligned, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and was eventually short-listed for doc of the year. Sadly, we didn't win, but Oscilloscope and Filmscience were both instrumental in not only getting the film to the finish line but also landing it in Tribeca.
Working with them has been a real breath of fresh air. They dont helicopter but are also tactical about the decisions they make and how they've navigated the re-birth of the podcast. Can’t say enough good things about working with them. It's nice to bring EIS back to life with someone outside of the podcast orbit and someone who's work we've long admired.
You've been devoted more to videographic projects in recent years. What prompted the return to audio-based storytelling?
EIS has always been a multi-media project at its core, so audio was never out of the question. Last year, we were chatting with Oscilloscope about another project we were working on and it came up about what if we brought back the podcast. They were also interested in getting into the podcast biz and after some back and forth we started to put together a team and then went back on the hunt for new stories. We spent the better part of last year piecing together this new season.
I should mention that we’re trying something new this season trying to change the filters and slow the pace a bit. All of us are constantly assaulted by content these days, much of it is disposable and just a distraction. We’re trying to do something more thoughtful and everlasting and so with this new season we’re only releasing one episode a month over the course of the year. By challenging the norms of content consumption, we hope to invite the listeners into a space of contemplation and genuine engagement with each story we share.
Many podcasts focus heavily on walking the listener through the story, and in some sense, telling them how to feel about it. EIS avoids this, and often there's no trace of the interviewer, only the interviewee sharing their story. How did you guys come to the conclusion that this was the way to present these stories?
It was a conscious decision we made early on. We wanted to treat these stories more like a great novel or an exercise in point of view rather than hard journalism or anything that put us in front of the story or with a box to put these stories into. I think it’s important for us to stay in the shadows and not try and steer the narrative one way or the other or tie things up nicely. Not a fan of a tidy resolution or a nice endings. I find it’s more interesting to let the listener make those decisions for themselves. Our listeners are wise and don’t need us to spoon feed them or neuter these stories so they wrap up nicely in a bow.
I find myself most attracted to narratives that challenge my own moral boundaries or pre-conceptions about the world. In today’s content landscape, there seems to be an invisible contract between creators and the consumers, promising easy understanding and a comfortable or predictable outcome and it just comes off as inauthentic. We do want you to feel something without us telling you how to feel. Letting the listener dwell in confusion and wonder only encourages a more earnest reflection.