Paul Bae checks most of the buckets for a stereotypical Canadian. He’s disarmingly nice, genuine, and pronounces “sorry” like “soorey”. After speaking with him, you realize his social media presence — often depicting him hanging out with three very good pups with sweeping views of mountainous Vancouver — is a perfect encapsulation of his personality. Before becoming a full-time podcaster, he was a teacher. His previous career is evident as he’s able to maintain excitement throughout a conversation around podcast mechanics and effortlessly articulates complex concepts using simple examples.

If you’re an avid fan of audio drama podcasts, chances are you’re familiar with Bae’s work — even if you’re not familiar with himself specifically. Together with partner Terry Miles, they created the sensational audio drama podcast, The Black Tapes. As Bae tells it, Miles was already experienced with podcasts and wanted to start a new project with Bae. After initial reluctance, they realized they already had the foundation ready to go. “We had written something together about The Black Tapes, more like a screenplay. Out of frustration, I said, ‘too bad we can’t turn The Black Tapes into a podcast. His eyes lit up, ‘why the hell not?’”


Released in 2015, audio dramas were in their infancy — you can argue they still are. Welcome To Night Vale came out a couple years prior, but there wasn’t the plethora that we see today. The Black Tapes had a more unique goal: to make a scary episodic podcast. Both Bae and Miles had a different narrative model in mind as well. Instead of a first-person immersive audio drama, they wanted to make a more fictionalized journalism story format complete with an unreliable narrator.

Becoming a new podcaster required a steep learning curve. “I really thought it was going to be easy, because Terry was like, ‘oh, it’ll be a cinch, don’t worry!’” Bae continued, “it was so much work … I was very naïve about how much work went into an audio drama.”

The hard work paid off. Though at the time Bae wasn’t regularly on social media, both he and Terry received gratifying feedback when The Black Tapes was praised on the Nerdist Podcast claiming “they are taking podcasts to a new level … The production value on it is outstanding.”

Since their launch and continuing today, audio drama podcasts have been on a meteoric rise. Several, including Welcome To Night Vale, Homecoming, and The Bright Sessions, have outgrown podcasts and received adaptation deals for TV and film. This is a quickly growing trend among podcasts as a whole, but specifically audio dramas as studios get their hands on new original IP. Bae echos this, “if you talk to any of the major Hollywood talent agencies, they have podcasting departments.”


Asked if that’s ever in his mind during the creation process, Bae responds, “I haven’t put too much thought into it because you can drive yourself crazy. Thinking about how to engineer an audio drama series people will listen to and for TV? You’ll drive yourself nuts that way.”

The podcast to mainstream highway appears to work both ways, however. Bae speculates that, like all podcasts, the low barrier of entry is appealing to creative types to work on a new project with a relatively low investment. Audio dramas specifically, he theorizes there are “ tons of writers who were overlooked by publishers or big theater companies. You have a bunch of people who are passionate about writing, story, and narrative, and then you have these other people who are passionate about audio. You combine those together and then you’ve got the world of audio drama. It’s incredible the way it’s grown.”

Bae has directly contributed to this growth. Released in late 2017, his second project, The Big Loop, further expanded the audio drama category. Instead of a journalist taking you directly through the story, Bae modeled The Big Loop after This American Life and Love+Radio but with some Black Mirror vibes. Fans of Love+Radio can see the inspiration in episode one, where a voyeuristic neighbor discusses what they’ve seen. The episode, albeit with a completely different tone and story, echoes some of the best sentiments from the popular Love+Radio episode, “The Living Room”.

While it’s not uncommon for audio dramas to have intricate sound editing and mixing to provide an immersive listening experience, The Big Loop further differentiates itself by incorporating original music from bands, sometimes made especially for the podcast. The music becomes the the send-off note matching tonally with the theme of the episode. Bae explains, “I want the listener to feel either joy or desolation or sadness for a lost relationship or that mixed joy/sadness of having a sick child. I try to end on a certain note, and it’s all wrapped up in the music. So I try to find a song, and I write the whole episode towards that song usually, plot-wise, tonally-wise, and just aimed at that song.”

With the premier of Alex, Inc on ABC, and more and more podcasts appearing on more mainstream entertainment channels, audio dramas remain ripe to continue to lead this podcast to Hollywood charge. Bae reiterates this and says, “I don’t know what the percentage is, but it feels like 50% of them are audio dramas.”

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